He doesn’t like the taste of blood in his mouth. It doesn’t usually herald good things. There is a time that comes when he finds himself in a windowless room, arms tied, and with little idea of his location – that he thinks that he should have chosen another career. Choices – all people have them, and yet we are influenced by circumstance far more than we care to admit. Despite claims to the contrary, that old chestnut of the American Dream, it is much easier for a legacy of Harvard to become president than it is for a kid in Harlem. The deck is never distributed evenly, and Matteo has done the best he could.
He’s alive, which is a feat in itself. Homeless children on Night City’s streets never did have a breathtakingly high survival rate – gang members could recruit them for running drugs, but gang members also were known to have notoriously short tempers. Such children could fall into worse occupations, or simply die by the wayside, a losing battle in the midst of an unforgiving situation with no one to protect them. Matteo should – strictly speaking – have been a statistic, and some of that was luck, some of that was timing, and some of that was down to intrinsic traits, such as the ability to read terrain and keep his head in a crisis. Like now.
The room is small, and judging by the lingering scent of mothballs, he considers that it may well be a closet. That in itself brings a shred of irony – he had just learned this new phraseology, and no, he hasn’t been closeted for some time. There’s a faint light under the door, none in the room, but that filtering of light is enough for him to see some details. Time to remain calm as much as possible and access what was working and what wasn’t. To try to remember what had happened.
Roll call –
Head. Head was ringing; mouth was wet, tasting metal. Struck in the mouth with something – perhaps a split lip. There’s an ache at his temple that seems almost to pulse with his heartbeat, and his hairline and the right side of his face feels wet. Blow to the temple. Well, at least that explained why he was dizzy – and why he was unconscious.
Chest ached too – upper chest and abdomen, ribs, his breath was wheezing unpleasantly. That was inconvenient. Torso was stiff, but he expected some of the blood covering him wasn’t entirely his own. That was also unpleasant. And unsanitary. He’d have a lengthy discussion with the head of the Torturing Committee on Best Practices.
All of a sudden, it makes a little more sense. Matteo’s killed someone. It wasn’t something he usually forgets, but he is under duress at the present moment. Two someones to be precise. Sudden attacks make him jumpy and irritable, but he had lost consciousness too soon to deal with the other two. They owed him a new knife, by the way. And a pistol.
Arms – were tied behind his back fully, knotted creatively, but luckily he’s had a bit of practice at this, although usually in less unfortunate circumstances. He’s reflectively working at the rope as he continues his meticulous cataloguing.
Legs – uninjured, but they feel weak, and he isn’t entirely optimistic about their ability to keep him upright. He’s lost a lot of blood from elsewhere.
Final catalogue – injured, but nowhere fatally, and all injuries done with fists or blunt objects rather than guns or knives.
Meaning – someone wanted him alive. He doubts it is someone from his own side, Marcello and himself rarely see completely eye to eye, but the Mafia Lord also wasn’t stupid enough to want him out of commision (and he hasn’t done anything to his knowledge deserving of punishment). He has, quite frankly, very little idea of why he is shoved in a closet, but that is to be expected, perhaps, he did just suffer a sizable head injury. Tongue runs slowly over aching lips, and he spits red to the side. Ugh.
When the footsteps come – he counts them. Three people now. Not too many to take down if he was armed like a private militia, but impossible trussed up and without a penknife to his name. He only catches a glimpse of them, bloodied face tilted up and eyes blinking in the harsh, sudden flood of light, a fleeting impression of stranger’s faces, before fabric goes over his eyes, blinding him.
He is afraid, as he feels himself dragged to destinations unknown, but he has to keep his head. This was his best chance of survival. Keep his head, endure what he can, and manipulate the situation as much as possible. This was, broadly speaking, what he was good at, but it wasn’t much consolation when he felt the ropes loosen only to tie against a hard surface – as he’s forced into a chair. Feels contacts of something else placed on him – equidistant things placed, cool against his skin. The snake of wires.
It isn’t much consolation.
There were better things he could be doing, he thinks, in the spaces between the pain that follows. In those spaces, he simply focuses on breathing. He doesn’t talk to them – doesn’t pull out any information. What he does do is in each of those small spaces, is take the few seconds afforded to work away subtly at the rope. It’s rough fibers, cheap. He thinks he can weaken it over time. If he has time.
Eventually, he is incapable of motion. There are still thoughts in his head, but they are fractured, as the shocks get worse. His body continues to shudder even after the current is cut off, and his head slumps forward, chin to chest.
Re-record, I need a better shot ---
He needs to stay calm. He needs to think of a better plan, but his hands are shaking too hard to try to free himself. His thoughts are fractured. It is inconvenient. The intervals between shocks are shorter, and the voltage is higher, but the transition into unconsciousness again is sudden and surprising. There is a moment of black fear.
Fuck, guys, he’s not moving. He’s not breathing – what the fuck, guys -
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Night had befallen the desert and as per usual the men had grown weary of behaving, so just like that Lucas took his leave of the trouble and chaos. Settling himself at the entrance of his humble tent, it was a little on the older side now but it had served him well throughout the years out here amidst the sand and heat. The evening had brought a cooler wind and a colder night, so Lucas had tugged on that heavy woollen coat—a relic of a life he’d left behind. A life that he still hoped to return to one day.
Heavy blue eyes glanced to the sky with a sombre weariness, he knew very little of the stars but out here he’d grown a new appreciation of them. Always found himself wondering the same old question each evening, where they looking at stars too? Where they wondering where he was? It had been a long time since he’d seen or even simply spoken with his family, his younger sisters would be all grown up now, no doubt fighting their way through life. Part of him wondered what the young man he’d met during his university years was doing, whether he made a mistake letting him go, he’d been young then, foolishly so.
The tattered book that he’d been reading was still open in his lap—never bury my bones apart from yours, Achilles, let them lie together… Was it foolish to think that he could find his own swift warrior? The notion seemed plausible out here, after all he was surrounded by men more than capable of being the warrior, a knight in perhaps not quite so shining armour, and he had found…companionship in the arms of one man in all of the years of duty he’d spent out here. But such a feat hadn’t been repeated, and he didn’t think it likely. The latest pairing of soldiers assigned to him were much like the rest, loud-mouthed and young, one was particularly tenacious—uncomfortably so.
It was as if Lawrence knew that his thoughts had dwelled on him, albeit briefly, because the moment that he looked up it was none other than the devil himself. In the middle of a chanting circle about to embark on what appeared to be yet another fight, Lucas sighed, if the man got himself into anymore trouble than strictly necessary he’d be the one to pay. Extra time patching him up and gods be damned he wasn’t sure if he could take anymore of him tonight.
Lucas stared with with a zealous intensity at his novel, determined not to give the damnable man any reason what-so-ever to approach him. Perhaps tonight would be his lucky night—wrong and wrong again.
