Hello, Everybody!

Ah yes. Lame title is lame. This is another prequel – not really sequel to Part 0, as it happens sort of before and during. Basically, all the 0's {and there's three of them with two other parts that will tie the whole freaking thing together in the end} are set in the same time frame: before Parts 1-4, but all over the place in context with each other. Before, during, just after. In and around and up and down. Wheeeee! It's like I got the story drunk or something…

…Or hooked on Zydrate.

Also, I'd like to give a shout-out to L. Hawk for their stunning review on Part IV. Thank you so much!

Disclaimer: I do not own Hanna is Not a Boy's Name, nor any of the characters/locations therein. I also do not own Repo! The Genetic Opera, nor any of the characters/locations therein. I do, however, own the story.


Escape from Crucifixus – Part 0-2

This was bad. He was going to get himself into big trouble for this. This was bad. This was really bad. But he couldn't stop. It would hurt too much to stop. So he couldn't stop. He had no choice.

There was no choice, no choice. His parents were dead; victims of the plague. They had spent everything they had to save him when he'd first been infected so that they had had nothing left to save themselves. And they hadn't told him. They had just…died. Just died and left him all alone with no other choice than to become a street thief and an addict just to get by – to survive.

Bad thoughts, bad thoughts, don't think them, don't think them.

He had to pay. He had to pay or GeneCo would come and get him. The RepoMan would come and get him. So he stole. He picked pockets. He snuck into people's dingy little holes-in-the-walls and took anything he could. Sometimes it was valuable and he could sell it for cash and then use that cash to make a payment. Sometimes it was edible and he was able to stave off starvation for just a little bit longer. Sometimes it was wearable and it kept him warm when the rest of his clothes were nothing but tatters.

But anymore, if he could sell it, if it was money, it went to pay for Z.

Z.

Zydrate.

Glow.

Oh gods, he was in really big trouble.

But it wasn't like he was doing it to get high. No, not to get high. It was for the pain. He had to make the pain stop. The pain of old surgery scars getting nicked open and infected, the pain of yet another piece of his insides stating to rot. He was going to die. If he couldn't get another surgery then his body would shut down. If he couldn't pay for that surgery then he would be murdered by the RepoMan. It was a catch twenty-two, is what it was. Because he barely had enough money to squeak by with his payments already. There was no way he could afford to fix himself again. So he was a dead man either way. At least Z kept him going a little bit longer, just a little bit longer. Maybe if he could pay off at least one of his first surgeries, then he could get that new one. Maybe, just maybe…

He stared at his face in the mirror of the filthy, decrepit little bathroom he had found. It smelled like blood and vomit and death, but at least there was running water...sort of. And it was a place to hide. A place out of the cold night air, out of the moonless night air of that cruel city. Crucifixus. He wanted out. He wanted out of his debt, out of this cycle of death and preservation of self, out of Crucifixus. But that was impossible. Nobody escaped Crucifixus. Nobody ever escaped.

He ran a hand down his face. Gaunt, dirty, bruised. Dark circles under his eyes – sunken in and dull. He looked like he hadn't eaten in weeks – and he probably hadn't. He struggled to remember the last time he had had food and he failed. He remembered pain though; there was plenty of pain. And Z. This is bad, bad, bad! He barely recognized his own reflection. Who was that? Was that what he really looked like?

He tore his gaze away from the stranger-that-was-him in the cracked and tarnished glass and patted down the pockets of his threadbare black coat. He felt the lump of metal and glass and reached in his hand to withdraw a Zydrate gun and a little glass vial. He watched himself in the mirror light up with an eerie blue color. Glow, indeed. He felt a dry sob clench in his chest as he lifted the vial to the gun, snapping it in like a battery. His parents would be so ashamed of him, so disappointed in what he had become. But he had no choice. He had no choice. He was a thief and an addict. He was broke. He was in pain. He was an addict.

He put the needle of the gun to his leg, to his upper thigh – didn't want it to get too close to his heart, it could stop it, ha ha ha – and let out a jittery, miserable breath of air. Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Dad. I'm sorry…I'm so sorry. With violently trembling fingers, he pressed down on the gun and pulled the trigger.

He felt the pain, the gut-rotting pain, melt away and leave him with a feeling of emptiness. He leaned heavily against the sink, looking up again into the mirror at the red-haired stranger. Tears. There were tears slipping from the reflection's eyes. Funny, he couldn't feel them. But then again…

I can't feel nothin' at all.

He let himself slide down the wall at his back and curled up into a ball on the grimy tile floor.


It's the grave robber that tips him off about his horrible mistake; the drug dealer – whom he had come to depend upon for relief from his pain – that had showed him kindness, taken pity on him, that told him to fucking run.

The man had grabbed him in the alley when he was looking for him, looking for another hit of Z, and pulled him into a dark little cubby set into the brick and steel walls. He had clapped one rag-wrapped hand over his mouth and whispered harshly into his ear.

"Now listen here, flea bite, you were stupid enough to go and get mixed up with this stuff in the first place," and here the dealer had flashed a glowing vial in his face, which he reached for, only to snatch it back. "Pay attention! You were stupid, yeah, but now you've gone and done something even stupider! What happened to 'paying it off', eh? Your little addiction's gone way too far." He had let him go, whirling him around to face him. His expression was riddled with annoyance and…concern? "You got the Repo on your ass now, little mongrel! Ninety days delinquent gets you Repo treatment, and you sure as hell haven't been spending that hard-stolen cash on food, now have you? Spent too much on your pain."

The grave robber gave a sigh and stuffed the vial held between his fingers into the pocket of his coat and gave it a pat. "You run. You run like all hell is chasing you, cuz it is. I don't wanna find your ginger corpse on my next supply run, you understand? Take that," he pointed to the glow of the Zydrate vial shining through the black material, "just in case you get away. Now go. GO!" and shoved him back out into the alley.

He had taken the man's advice and torn down the pavement into the darkness, hoping against hope that he could outrun GeneCo's legal assassin.

Until, that is, he came to a dead end.

And Repo caught up.

This was bad!


He wakes up what could have been days or months or even years later, he isn't sure. He's not sure about anything anymore. Never was, really, but most certainly not now. His whole body hurts and all he can think about is stopping the pain. When he's able to open his eyes, when he's able to sit up and look around, he sees that he is in what could barely be called a doctor's office. He searches for his coat, for the Zydrate gun and the little glass vial hidden away in his pocket. He tries to go over to it, but there's a sharp tugging at his chest and he looks down and nearly vomits up whatever could possibly be in the stomach that should not have been there after the RepoMan's ministrations.

A jagged scar. Long and zig-zagging and held together with staples and surgical thread. Somewhere in his pain-wracked mind it registers that he should not be alive and that someone has pieced him back together again like a jigsaw puzzle. Like a broken mirror. He slips off the metal table, staggers to his feet, drags the numerous wires and tubes and cords that have been attached to him to keep him from death. He wants to look in the mirror. He wants to see himself, see his reflection. He finally makes it over to the sink in the far corner and stares at the face that stares back at him.

Still the same, just paler. And, of course, with a monstrous wound on his torso. He swallows and nearly passes back out. Shouldn't be standing, shouldn't be standing…

Later, the doctor tells him that he has taken away his Z and gun and that he is not getting them back. He is to break his addiction. And somehow, he doesn't really mind – in fact, he secretly rejoices at the idea. He's been fixed, he won't need to drown out the pain anymore because he's been fixed! He's going to live. At least for now.

"Wha's yer name, kid?" the doctor asks him, and at first, he doesn't know how to answer. Nobody's ever asked before. Not even the grave robber.

"…Hanna." he finally says. It's true, too. His name is Hanna. Hanna Falk Cross. It's been so long since he's heard it, said it, thought about it at all, he's nearly forgotten it.

The doctor flashes him a weird, dark smile and lights up a cigarette. "Doc Worth, nice'ta meet'cha. Soon as you kin walk on yer own two feet, we're gettin' outta here; you'n me."

And he – Hanna – finds himself dumbstruck. They were going to escape.

They were going to escape from Crucifixus.


Sorry about the weird tense changes, it's supposed to be like Hanna's all strung out on the blue drug. Kind of gives you the feeling that you are too, doesn't it? Heh.

Musical Muse: NickleBack – Just to Get High