((Sorry for the long wait, my internet got cut out for a while. But this chapter is a bit longer than they usually are for this story, so you've got a bit more!))
My eyes fluttered open and I took in the dim scene around me, my eyes slowly adjusting to the dark. I recognized the basement, my hands shackled to the wall. Ian was nowhere in sight.
I struggled against the chains, tried to wiggle my wrists out of them, I even tried to pull the chains out of the wall itself. But it was no use. I gave up on escape after the first three hours yielded no result.
The basement was cold. Wherever water dripped there were thin pools of ice. My uniform was of course fit to combat these types of conditions and more, but my hands and face felt numb from the cold.
I heard the door open and the sound of footsteps traveling down the stairs. It was, of course, Ian, carrying the same dark uniform he had been wearing when we first met. He didn't say anything as he walked past me towards the back of the basement- to a chest. He took his black scarf and folded it up into a tiny box with a decorative lock and placed it alongside his uniform in the chest.
He again walked past me and headed for the stairs- ignoring me once again. I called out to him but he merely glanced at me with his crimson eyes grimly before returning upstairs.
He didn't come back into the basement for at least a week. My stomach growled with hunger and my mouth was parched with thirst- but again, as a country such things could not kill me. When Ian returned at last to the basement, he finally decided to acknowledge my presence…
"Ivan… are you still here?" he asked, looking into my eyes with a serious look plastered on his face.
"Of course I'm still here! Why am I down here? What's going on?" I asked frantically. Something hard smacked me across the face- a shovel.
"If you don't stop blabbering I'll burry you in the yard," Ian said calmly as a tear rolled down my face. "Now back to business, I'm afraid China's been catching onto my behavior lately. I need you to talk me through what to say to him."
"What?" I asked, still terribly confused.
"How should I react when China asks about my behavior if I don't want him to realize what's going on?" Ian said each of the words slowly as if he were talking to a child.
"If I help, will you let me go?" I asked, fragments of hope clinging to my words like sand.
"If you help, I won't hurt you," Ian obviously wasn't up for negotiation. I reluctantly walked him through his behavioral problems, teaching him how to act more and more like me.
He would come back every now and then for advise, offering me food in return for my assistance. I would gladly help him, hoping that I would be rewarded with something a little tastier than bread and milk, like maybe goulash or a pirozhki! Ian did occasionally bring me such treats, but it was a rare occurrence indeed.
Quite a few years later- I didn't know just how many- when Ian descended down the stairs, I was greeted by a different set of eyes- deep purple ones…
"What happened to your eyes?" I asked in awe of the beautiful purple orbs.
"Contacts," he said, pulling out a blue piece of plastic revealing his crimson eye underneath, "I had these specially made, although they might start selling the colored ones soon…" I didn't really understand a lot of what he was saying, but I knew that he'd no longer have to hide his eyes as much as he had before.
Ian had slowly been growing even more restless. He frequently came down in the middle of the night to give me a good lashing in his frustration. He never talked about it, but it seemed like he was studying something- something that he couldn't seem to grasp his head around.
He modified the basement some more, added more places for chains and added racks of frightening instruments. He tested a few of them out on me, but he grew frustrated again quickly. It wasn't long before the first "guests" started showing up in the basement…
The first was a younger looking girl- who I later found out was a micronation of the time. He tortured her for a long time, her blood spilling everywhere. She of course healed, but she didn't stop crying for days.
Ian didn't enjoy this torture work, he seemed to have a particular goal in mind, but never managed to reach it. This was when I first met Oliver.
Oliver was a light, dainty man, with an accent I couldn't recognize. He dressed in bright clothes and had a cheerful attitude… most of the time. In less than a second he could transform into a murderous psycho- his eyes changing from blue to purple.
When I first saw him walking carefully down the steps I thought he was another prisoner- since no one else ever came down there anyway. But when he wasn't accompanied by Ian, I realized this wasn't the case.
He approached me and the girl carefully, a look of surprise on his face. He brought his hands up, covering his face as his eyes grew wide. He looked from me to the girl before knelling in front of the sobbing figure.
"Oh, poppet, you really have been through a lot you poor, poor thing!" he brought his hand to her face, gently cupping it. His eyes grew wider for a second and the girl screeched as she discovered the knife that had just been thrust into her.
The pink haired man began rapidly slashing at her, delighting in her cries for help. He quietly muttered things to her as her skin was torn open, saying how she wasn't really a country, how it was rude of her to think she was, how lovely her blood looked all over the floor… It was mad. And then a strange thing happened. The girl died. A nation, technically a micronation, but a nation nonetheless. Dead.
The man blinked, as if in surprise. He called out to Ian who came rushing down the stairs to see. The two stared at the dead one. Ian took the man's bloody hand and shook it.
"Oliver, I'd be glad to have you as my partner if you'd accept."
"Anything to have a bit of fun, Ian, dearie!"
From that point on micronations, 2p nations, small nations, all sorts of people were brought into the basement. Oliver was told to try several different methods to kill them. Some would work on them all, some would only work on the 2ps. But after each and every death, the same method would be tried on me.
I'd been poisoned, drugged, used as spell practice, injected, beat, verbally abused, mentally damaged, and more. And after every time I'd be stabbed, shot, smashed, or worse. But every time I would heal. And every time Ian would grow more and more displeased.