Sacrifice Part 6
Going Under
2457 was curled up and blindfolded in the corner of a pitch-black room, wrists handcuffed behind him.
He was neither sleeping nor in a coma, despite the way he had been beaten by them when they had caught him again. It was a nanotechnic stasis, a condition closer to death, a condition that allowed the nanomachines to repair the damage he had inflicted on himself less than twenty-four hours before.
He was healing. There was an EKG monitor hooked up to him by the electrodes on his chest, a blood pressure cuff cinched to his right arm. His gunshot wounds were scabbing over already, healing up. Beneath the ugly bluish blackness of the bruises the new Superiors had inflicted on him when he was... punished... for his escape attempt, his bones were already knitting, wounds fading slowly.
The drugs they had given him for his transport from one colony to the next kept him quiet and still. Even when his heartbeat and respiration were close to normal, he was seldom alert. Even during the periods when he could almost remember... he couldn't, he was confused, aware that he was functioning in a robotic, animalistic state.
He didn't know how old he was. He did not know exactly where he was, who was holding him. He knew that at one point he had had a great goal, an important Mission, but now he could not define its purpose or what part he had played in it.
Sometimes he thought that he had killed people, even though he couldn't remember who, but then he did remember, briefly, and shrank from those terrible memories.
==The girl... the little girl and the dog... I'm lost... I'm so lost... please help me...==
Other times, he thought about escaping, about killing someone, everyone and anyone, because he knew in his heart that they would never let him go, that they would always hurt him, that they always had hurt them and their promises didn't mean anything.
But he had tried to escape. He did remember that. And they had hurt him. Oh, how they had hurt him.
He made soft, urgent noises under his breath as he sat in that twilight state, although he had not spoken in almost two years. He didn't dare. He twitched and spasmed as if someone was raining blows on him. Even in his catatonic half-sleep, he relived the beating he had taken. Coming up out of semi-consciousness, the memory of that violence rousing him, he stumbled to his feet. Using his body as a hammer- bang! - he rammed the door, felt the double-thick titanium cell walls bruising his naked shoulders, but he couldn't help himself. He rammed it again - bang, bang! - smashing, smashing, not trying to escape, just trying to feel something. To drive pain through the numbness he had been feeling for the last two years, because pain felt real. He didn't know it had been two years; time didn't hold any kind of meaning for him. Only pain and rage and mindless obedience defined his days.
He shrieked wordlessly as he felt his right shoulder dislocate against the hard metal, shrieked against this new agony, but was glad for it too. His mind was clearer now. Only pain could cut through the fog the drugs had enveloped his mind in. The drugs they had given him.
He dropped onto the hard metal tiles, feeling the insane strength drain out of him, feeling the urge to destroy and kill drain away, fell forward onto his chest, head turned to one side, gasping.
==Duo will come... They all will... He promised...==
That thought disturbed him. Who was Duo? He laid on the cold tiles, breathing hard, trying to recall the face and the identity that went with that name...
He heard footsteps in the hall. He stilled, pretending to be unconscious. He heard the door to his cell slide open.
"What in the hell do you think you're doing?"
Be still. Quiet... so still...
"Hm. Knocked yourself out again? Not a quick learner..." The voice retreated, the door slid closed. Footsteps going back down the hall.
==Duo can't come because Duo is dead... I killed him only a few hours ago...==
2457 shook his head. No. That wasn't Duo. That was-
Horror washed over him as he remembered what he had done. He remembered the man he had killed. The man he was thinking of... that wasn't Duo. That was-
==Straub. His name was Straub.==
::You think you're dangerous now? You think you're bad?! Get up, you weak little bastard! I've been through the same Program you have. I'm going to show you what dangerous really is. Get up.::
He flinched.
He remembered beating the man, mercilessly hammering the man until the bones in his knuckles had cracked, and then he had kept going, cutting his fists on the man's teeth, breaking his jaw, his cheekbones, fracturing his skull. Images of the man's face, a mask of blood, twisted in terror, flickered through 2457's memory like fuzzy snapshots. Had he done that? No, it couldn't have been him. He had hit the man, maybe. But not killed him. But then he remembered the other men, the ones in the hall, when he had tried to get away. Tried to get away, so they wouldn't hurt him anymore. He remembered them, too.
For one moment, he could remember everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, remembered enough to know that not only had he killed the men in white coats, he had enjoyed it, and he shook his head hard, not to clear it, but to drive the truth from his mind. The violent shaking was enough to make him dizzy, blur his vision, bring the fog back over his memory, leaving him confused and disoriented.
==Duo...==
::It may be none of my business, but I suggest you find a less painful way of committing suicide, buddy!::
==Buddy...==
Lying on the cold tiles, 2457 felt a small smile touch his lips. He laughed softly, and it didn't even sound human to him. He couldn't even recognize his own voice. The laughter was rasping, hoarse, like he had a throat full of gravel. He sounded damned.
He let out a silent, tearless sob. He was so confused...he couldn't remember...why couldn't he remember?!
==Remember the other pilots...==
What other pilots? He was the only one. Alone. He had always been alone.
Forget the other pilots.
==Remember the Gundams...==
He shook his head.
==I'm 01... I'm 01...==
He whispered his first words in almost two years.
"I'm 01." And he didn't understand them.
"I'm 01... I'm 01..." He repeated them, trying to find their meaning.
He thrashed against his bonds. He screamed again, and having screamed himself hoarse before, his larynx protested against this new abuse. "I'm 01! Do you hear me you fuckers!? I'm 0 -fucking-1!!!"
Running steps towards the cell. Three different pairs of footsteps. He heard the door slide open. "What the fuck is with all this noise?"
"He's awake."
"Hold 'im. He needs another shot."
"Another one? They just drugged 'im two hours ago. He should be flat on his back by now."
"It didn't work. Shoot him up again. Twenty CCs."
"Are you sure, sir? Couldn't it kill him?"
"Are you questioning my orders, maggot? Just fucking shoot him up already!"
2457 struggled, but couldn't move when one of them grabbed him by the chin and violently arched his head back, exposing his neck. He felt a sharp sting as they put the hypodermic gun to his neck, and the hiss of air when it injected him.
He struggled, trying to fend them off, but almost immediately felt the beginnings of the drug seeping into his system. He laid on the cold tiles, tremors beginning to course through his body. He began to shudder violently on the floor, back arching, hands clenching, feeling what little memory he had regained being pulled from him. and sensed the three men standing about him, watching him with indifference. He hated them for it.
He could hear himself distantly, the animal choking sounds he was making. His teeth clashed down, bringing blood from his bottom lip. He felt it running down his chin.
"Dammit, Gardell, it's too damn much, I told you that! Look at him!"
"Just wait."
"If we kill him, Gardell, Miller's gonna kill all of us! You gave him too fucking much!"
"Dammit! He's not breathing!"
Somewhere, 2457 could hear them, but the sound was becoming dimmer. A pair of lips on his, forcing air into his lungs. "Breathe, you goddamned piece of shit! Breathe!" Another breath from one of his keepers. "Breathe, goddamn you!" There was panic in that voice.
The other two, Merrick and King, stood by watching nervously as Gardell got down on his hands and knees, trying to resuscitate the soldier on the floor.
"I told you, Gardell. I fuckin' told you-"
"Shut up, Merrick, damn you!" When Gardell gave 2457 another breath and drew back again, the boy whooped in a giant breath and shoved it out. He gave another gasp and was breathing normally, in a semiconscious pant.
"Jesus Christ, Gardell, you scared the fuckin' life out of me. Next time let the doc decide when we should medicate him."
The three men were still arguing over 2457. But numbing sleepiness was closing him on him. His whole body felt heavy, so heavy he couldn't move. Their voices were becoming distant, full of echos. The words were coming to him over a long foggy distance. But there was a bright place up ahead, a place where he could lie in the short grass, in the central park compound of Colony, where he could rest and there were no dead girls and no dead puppies and no dead men. There were sparrows there who would eat from your hand. A large pond, with flowers around it. The cruel voices of his captors faded into a faraway drone.
The cruel, cold world he lived in faded away into the warmth of synthetic Colony sun, and the sound of lapping water.
TBC...
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