Eilene's home; May 21st, 2002: 7:49am

026 Woke up zip-tied to a chair. It wasn't a nice chair either; it was one of those nasty old metal folding chairs, and it was rusty, too. He could tell because the bruises on his knuckles were pressed into the coarse bar of metal beneath the seat. The whole room smelled of lavender febreze and wet pennies.

On top of it all, he was blindfolded, and a musty old rag had been stuffed so far into his mouth that he had to suppress his gag reflex every time he went to inhale. He would have panicked—should have panicked, actually. Maybe he was getting used to being bound and gagged, or maybe it was just the febreze.

Honestly, he wasn't too sure.

026 tried the zip-ties, but the more he yanked, the more the plastic sunk into his flesh. Whoever invented these things should be shot. Unfortunately for him, neither the man who'd invented zip-ties, nor his guns were present. The torturous silence only stretched on as he came to his dreaded conclusion. Only one person he knew went this far with the theatrics of kidnapping, and she was the only one he knew who would even consider using lavender febreze. The audacity was the thing that made it familiar. That also told him they weren't in any of her facility buildings or unusual rented chateaus-or-whatever. This was a location he knew well, and the only one that smelled like this.

It was also the place he'd lost his fingers.

026 gave up the idea of escape even before he heard her footsteps: perfect and delicate as snowflakes. Her pull, however, was rougher than diamonds as she ripped the blindfold off his eyes. He let the scowl ripple over his face at the sight of her, his locs loose and messy in his face making an easy comparison to the perfectly sleek bun collected at the back of her head. Aw. She'd even worn a hairnet for him.

How flattering.

He tried not to flinch when she slipped her fingers under his chin—they were so cold.

“Good morning, my little puppet,” she said, “How are you feeling?” Her voice was gentler than he expected, a strange warmth hidden in it. 026 could almost have mistook her tone for affection.

The basement itself was colder than her hands. It was a large stone box, really, with a concrete floor and foundation bricks hidden behind all that deceptive plaster. The drywall had been painted a particularly boring shade of beige, but the ceiling itself was pretty much nonexistent. A few vintage-looking lightbulbs hung from the rafters, both activated by a pull switch. It looked like a torture dungeon, and that was exactly what she used it for—except, of course, for the little laundry room in the corner to his left.

“Well! Let's get started then, shall we, love?” Her smile was as sharp and venomous as a rattlesnake as she set her armful of materials on a little cart alongside her favorite pair of black leather gloves and a deep red washcloth. 026 made an attempt to curse her out, but the gag brushed against the back of his throat like a demented finger and he tried to cough. He struggled against the zip-ties, defiantly pushing up the one middle finger he still had, despite the fact it was trapped behind his back.

Her gentle hands made him shudder as she pulled the rag from his mouth, letting him gag on nothing for a few moments. He knew her well enough to read the mild air of amusement about her.

“Fuck you!” were the first words out of his mouth before he choked on his own saliva and spent the next two minutes coughing.

“Is that all?”

“HA! You wish, bitch. How about you get out of my goddamn sight and fuck yourself in the backyard with that blowtorch!”

“Oh,” she said mildly, “It's not for me, darling. But we can experiment if that's what you're asking.”

“Damn, at least—” he struggled against the zip-ties, grinning at her as he ineffectively threw himself forward, “—buy me a drink first… if you're going there!”

“You know, I think I like you a little better when you can't speak, 026,” she soothed, a tight smile decorating her face as she pulled on a surgical mask with her dancing fingers. “You're so much easier to talk to when you listen, after all.”

He inhaled, stared her defiantly in the eyes, and screamed as loud as he could possibly manage.

She frowned. It was followed by those clammy fingers of hers closing around his throat and siphoning off the noise at the source. “Now, now. I understand I've been too lenient as of late, but that doesn't give you any excuse to fight me. What have I done? Hurt you? I'm doing what I must, darling. You kill people. Am I really all that bad for making certain you do your job right?” She leaned in close, tapping a single finger delicately against his nose. “I'm certain the electric chair is much worse.”

That shut him up.

026 eyed her cart of instruments, particularly what looked to be a fire poker beside the blowtorch.

“I'm keeping you out of it, after all. Aren't I? I think a little bit of gratitude is in order.”

He glared at her in response, making a subdued snarling as her only consolation.

“No? Well, I did try my best. It seems you're really begging me to do this the hard way. It could be so simple if you only listened to me, dear. I don't understand why you must make me hurt you.” She released his throat to write something on her little notepad.

“I HAVEN'T MADE YOU DO ANYTHING!” He thrashed in his bonds as she fired the blowtorch into the end of what was now revealed to be some sort of metal stamp. He could gather nothing from those deep wells that were her eyes, for there was nothing in them besides solemn determination. She was a woman of her city, and Ethynoé was a monster.

“Yes you have. It's not my fault you're uncontrollable and rebellious. I'm trying to help you. You've only been arrested because you didn't follow my orders.”

He knew there was no way out. She was right. He didn't want to be okay with that, but somehow, he was. Resistance had become a performance because even he didn't know what he believed anymore.

She twirled the long metal rod around her fingers as easily as if it were no more than a pen. It ended pointed to the ceiling, the burnt end of her soldier's bayonet to the sky. Her grey eyes probed his muddy black ones, scraping the dirt out of him with a thousand tainted needles.

Eilene's advance stilled his struggling as he stared at her in wide-eyed terror, like a deer in headlights. He barely heard the click of the blowtorch shutting off as she placed it neatly back in its spot and returned to the iron hell in her hand. All he could do was close his eyes.

She was gentle when she bore the brand into his ribcage. Fire licked at his bones like white-hot metal against metal; it was roaring sparks and lungs full of water. A wave of hot nausea screamed through his nerves as they cried a plea for mercy and then died. A hiss of air escaped from his mouth as pain like teeth growing from his organs made him gag on his own tongue. Skin sizzled.

He was torn in half and put back together again, strings snapping like the prey of a hungry parasite. Pressure built in his head, a thousand knives twisting in a delicate dance along the brand. She sank into his flesh. Acid flowed through his tear ducts, and in all his thrashing for freedom: he was only rewarded with rotten meat—his meat. He awoke to hot coals filling his windpipe.

Chemicals carved deep gouges into every inch of his soul in a vain attempt to extinguish her flames. Her knuckles brushing tenderly across his cheek drowned out all his willpower and killed the plea for mercy budding in his throat. Steel sliced through tendon, charring at the edges like a well-done steak. He couldn't tell the metal from his bones when his vision turned white. It hurt so much he wanted to throw up, but he was a fish on a hook, and she was the lure. When she removed the brand, it peeled layers and layers of sticky, broken skin away with it. Blood filled his lungs, and agonized sweat carved rivulets of salt into his open wound. It bubbled like a witch's cauldron, stinging enough to produce another strangled shriek from between his straining teeth.

026 was too busy gasping for breath to realize what she was doing. His head slumped forward, begging for any sort of reprieve. He didn't want to know what Eilene had carved into his body. Her sessions of madness usually lasted longer than a half hour. It felt like a lifetime, but he knew it had been less than ten minutes. If he was lucky, she might consider stopping; but 026 didn't think he'd seen a single four-leaf-clover his whole life. He was still thinking about luck when he smelled the isopropanol.

His muscles tensed. For a moment, he forgot again what she'd done. The burn pulsed violently like an overheated gun or a misshapen blade. It was as if she were reforging him in a gas fire he couldn't put out. Fury burned in him at the same time as sickening curiosity. He wasn't ready for the excruciating eruption of a firework beneath the skin of his open wound—or at least, what little skin was left. Charcoal debris lodged in his flesh.

026 hated tests. He hated her. He'd seen the types of things she put in that fucking notepad. Things like: ‘Still resistant’, ‘Perhaps a tolerance?’, ‘Simulants provide complacency’, or even his least favorite; ‘He remains the optimal outcome. How much further can he stretch?’.

The sting of alcohol came like a stormcloud on a sunny day. A sudden, hot flash of death and searing metal pressed burning liquid into his open wound, almost hotter than the brand. Then it moved, in all of its disgusting, agonizing glory. It swept over the edges of the wound, shredding his muscles into carrion as desperate maggots seeped their way in, laughing at him from the shadow of his involuntary tears.

Acid soaked into his body, and he had to tolerate it through his blurry vision and rapidly fading conscious thought. It was wet. His body was soaked in flames and the desperate pus-like fluid of cells attempting to replace their dead siblings.

Tears accompanied the rubbing alcohol in burning him over and over again. He knew curiosity made her pull the soaked rag away from his wound, warm with sweat, speckles of blood, and whatever else was gushing into his canyon of charred skin. He didn't feel real anymore. All that remained was dizziness and muffled sobs.

“Oh?” Eilene crouched to be eye level with him, her grey eyes as blank as a new chalkboard as she studied him. She made a disappointed note; he wanted to kill himself.

“I'm sorry, Ms.Hallon–”

“I'm certain you are.” Her voice held the faintest hint of malice as she grabbed something smaller from the table and pulled up a stool a few inches away from him.

As he returned from the corners of his mind, she cut the zip-tie around his legs and pulled one of them up to rest on top of her lap.

“What the hell-”

The blade of a potato peeler was a strange sensation against the front side of his knee: scarred and discolored as the skin already was. Her scrape was faster than his train of thought.

“MOTHERFUCKER—!" He tried to pull away as fast as possible, but the blade was already biting his skin before he could. It sunk in, tore, and then peeled as smoothly as a ripe banana. The long ribbon-like strip of flesh hanging from his ankle dripped onto the floor: rhymically, like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. She went slower the next time, the small fold of skin beneath the blade catching on the metal easily.

He thrashed in his bonds to get away from her, but she did nothing to indulge his petty, fearful struggling. Strips of flesh collapsed from his body onto the floor like spaghetti, the color of the concrete sometimes visible through the translucent folds drowning in red.

Her face remained still through it all: gracefully still—almost umovable. She never faltered, even when he tried to kick her. All that remained behind her eyes was her sick fascination with making him feel pain.

And feel it he did—every boiling inch of it, separating his flesh from himself until he couldn't remember what he was. Eilene kept scraping. The humanity peeled off of him next: in rhythmic, pristine, straight lines, her hands carved him. She moved to his other leg. His struggles weakened with every piece she took until his head hung limp, like a dead sock puppet, dark eyes staring vacantly at his own dripping appendages. He didn't even realize when she was done.

Nothing stopped the cold, bitter tears from draining down his face. Eilene made a note. He didn't notice. The strangled sob that came out of his mouth when she poured the alcohol on his new wound came from a dissociative child, not a weapon. He flinched when she zip-tied his legs back to the chair, but he didn't speak.

When 026 woke back up in hell, she was waiting. He opened his mouth to speak, but she emptied the bottle over his head as one last humiliation. He stirred to life when she turned her back on him.

“Is– IS THAT ALL YOU GOT, BITCH?”

When she swivelled around again, her tight grin glued his mouth shut. “Yes, for now. It did a pretty good number on you, I think. You look like a piece of roadkill.”

“You did this to me!”

“No, no. I think it's in the eyes,” She said absently, her fingers easily finding the railing of the stairs.

“Oh, and by the way,” 026 watched her grab the light switch, “Ray is dead.”

The long silence that stretched between them accentuated the sound of the door slamming as she plunged him into darkness.

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Ethynoé; May 17th, 2002: 4:21pm

026 hated the color of dried blood. It reeked of old iron and death: and occasionally, it got the cops called on him. He especially hated how it looked on the floor of his shower, because it reminded him of the slimy strings he could still taste in his mouth. Goddamn laced drugs.

Mornings had always been his worst enemy, and whether he hated them or his sober brain more was a subject of constant debate. His only clue to what had happened the previous night was the hole in his wall.

Another hiss of acid seeped through the crevices of his brain, accompanied by a rising pressure, and the familiar seizing of his muscles as his organs exorcized another round of saliva and blood through his mouth. They gave out a moment later, and his sternum hit the floor a moment before his bruised jaw.

Sour warnings stained the back of his tongue as he scraped his right hand beneath him, using the last of his clarity to spread his fingers slowly open like a blooming flower. The warm tiles met the blisters on his palms, and the pressure sent half of the muscles in his body another panic signal for contraction. “Agh-! FUCK!"

026 sat still for a moment, cursing out Eilene as the bruises screamed, and he propped his forehead against his wrist, gasping for air—a single breath would have been enough. He managed to roll onto his back, leaving him to stare up at the flickering bathroom light, buzzing at him like a disapproving horsefly. He closed his eyes to beat out the dizziness.

Right now, the mornings were definitely winning.

In truth, this was progress from the past two hours he spent slumped over in the shower, too hungover to move. The headache remained, begging him to close his eyes and surrender to the void. He was close to obeying when it pulled the knife.

4:58pm

026 was propped up on the sink when the nausea took its final toll, rippling up his shuddering arms and producing a strange, unholy sound from between his gritted teeth. What followed was a dry heave and a groan, sending the fibers of his being into an unsteady tremble as he leaned over the dirty counter, teetering on the edge of humanity.

Skin shed into raw flesh, and saliva dripped in crystalized blood which stained the plug of his sink. He was sick on an empty stomach—sick on cravings. His eyes found the mirror. Eilene’s face stared down at him from the rapidly-dimming light, her gaze probing his face judgementally. He shrank away from her as his lungs heaved a protest, and his nerves danced in a dizzy butterfly-stumble beneath his skin.

026 clung to the sink for dear life, trying to identify the feeling as his head spun like a frisbee and his organs struggled against one another like worms in a gladiator arena. Several intact bones complained about being broken, and bruises that hadn’t been there last night pulled at his brain like a parasite curling into the darkest corner of his heart.

“You’re better than this,” she said.

He gripped the counter until his knuckles turned white, forcing himself to lock eyes with his own reflection. Dull black irises stared back at him: stained in hatred, exhaustion, and pain. They begged for a reprieve; they would get none. Long unruly locs of hair veiled his twisting, agonized expression from view like a blackout curtain.

He turned away; it wasn’t enough. He still felt dirty: as if there were a spotlight on him that announced every single mistake he’d ever made. There was, at most, a single moment of hesitation before he pulled the mirror open and rifled through his collection of mostly illegal medications. He told himself painkillers couldn’t hurt anything. He knew it was a lie, but right now he didn’t care.

It clicked against itself like a plastic latch opening, and the contents tumbled free into his hand. They almost looked like pearls, or beads of some sort; only, of course, they were duller. The stark contrast between the pills and his skin tone was startling: like ink spilled over a pristine white canvas. He deliberated over the choice for a moment. It wasn’t long enough to stop him from outdoing the recommended number by three.

The second thing he grabbed from the mirror was a hair tie.

5:30pm

The sour taste remained on the back of his tongue even after he’d brushed his teeth four times. Scrubbing everything into a presentable state worked better—that was if you ignored the bloodstains, wrinkles in his clothing, and discarded needles everywhere that had accumulated throughout the past several months. Normally, cleaning those would have been his first priority; right now, however, 026 was perched on the kitchen counter, scraping off Prince with a dirty old sponge gripped between his left thumb and little finger. Those two were the only fingers he had left—as the other three were laying next to his thigh on a ratty old towel.

026 cursed under his breath as he dropped the sponge into the sink on top of an old plate that hadn’t been cleaned since God-knows-when, and started scraping at the dried blood with his thumb nail instead. He’d already contemplated using his razor, but he liked his remaining seven fingers, so he decided against it.

Cautiously, once it was done, 026 slipped off the counter and limped into the main room in order to grab his other weapon—an AR-15 named Princess. Both of them had needed oiling anyway, and now seemed like the perfect time. He was as sober as he would get outside of an impromptu overnight session with Eilene, and it was still raining despite the sunlight sparkling through the city streets. 026 remembered passively that he’d once heard this weather called ‘the devil beating his wife’. It felt ironic, but in a way, he couldn’t place.

Regardless, it fit: how the sound of the rain faded into the background as it hammered down on the window like pinstriped silver needles, pooling just on the lip of the window before toppling over the edge and falling five stories to their demise on the cold concrete below. There, rippling in those comatose puddles, it would become victim to the deception of spilled oil: defiling it before it even knew what it was. Maybe that was the irony.

Either way, he didn’t give a shit.

026 lasted longer on his feet than he expected to, but that didn’t change the fact that the pain flaring through his jaw tasted like blood and dust; nor did it stop the dizzy floor from spinning beneath him as his fingers tingled like static. Shifting his weight down onto the tattered mattress, 026 reached behind him with his good hand. Once he had the toolbox, it took only seconds for him to get to work: pinching the rubber grip with his left hand and delicately maneuvering the metal utensils with his right, making sure each movement matched a precise measurement.

Of all the possessions he’d ever been allowed to keep, these were customized: tailored to his hands and approved of by Eilene. They were what made him special. Just like the extra range he’d added to the sights and modifying the inner mechanisms just enough to feel comfortable—embodied by everything these guns were to him: weapon extensions.

He tried to fold his leg, but in an instant, his shin rolled to support his body, and he cried out in pain, dropping his tools. “Shit! Agh… ow, you bitch!” He’d forgotten about the bruise.

There was a long pause that followed as he collected the pieces of Princess, musing about the sorry state of his apartment to distract himself from the pain and frustration of his mistake. Nothing in his kitchen worked: not the fridge, nor the oven, or even the microwave. He’d smashed the smoke alarm himself with Princess’ stock one night while in a drug-induced delirium because it pissed him off. It was a miracle anything in his life was still operational, but he’d gotten this far; it didn’t matter what Eilene said.

He winced at the thought of her. Who was he kidding? She was the only thing that made living bearable. Striving to please her was his purpose. Even if she broke everything he owned and chained him to the floor, he probably hadn’t done his job; he deserved it. The particular memory of shouting at her twinged at the back of his mind.

“God, 26, get ahold of yourself!” he said, shaking his head and pacing despite the nausea. He took a break near the sink to splash his face with cold tap water. He had to think straight, think right. She hadn’t really taken anything that mattered. All he cared about anyway were his guns and his rice cooker. All three had been named, and they were the only things he owned that worked—the rice cooker he was particularly fond of.

He’d named it ‘Creature’ when he bought it, as the name amused him. If he could count on anything to be loyal and consistent: it would have to be an appliance he’d actually bought himself and understood how to fix. Eilene had always loved to remind him that if he wanted something done right, he had to do it himself. Creature simply sat there vacantly on his counter. Dust particles drifted through shafts of light around it, showing off its blue coloring, as bright and clear as the sky. 026 decided he would rather shoot himself than eat anything.

His thoughts were interrupted by a rough knock on the door.

A moment of annoyance came over him at the sudden intrusion into his routine. He grabbed his favorite leather jacket off of his windowsill, pulling it over the discolored sores on the underside of his arms as he stalked toward the door. Once he reached it, he straightened his shoulders, shoved the pain out of focus, and kicked as many of the various needles and trash items out of view of the door as he could. If he was to be recognized by anyone, he would have preferred it to be any one of the girls or drug dealers he’d screwed over at 3am on some random Friday. However, recognition was still recognition, and he hated being noticed.

His neighbor was on the other side of the door—the annoying one.

026 dropped his fake smile. “What the fuck do you want?”

“I came to ask if you’re okay, man.” Joel crossed his arms, peering down at 026 in barely-veiled skepticism. Despite the fact his neighbor was larger than him, 026 had no inhibitions about fighting the man.

“Go fuck yourself.”

He was rewarded with a brief scowl. “You screamed. I heard it through the walls. They’re not very thick.”

“And I can hear your goddamn music every time you bring a new bitch home with you, but I don’t go making that any of my business now do I?”

This time, the frown was much more real; it stuck, and Joel took a small step back, the pause sharpening into angry shards of glass as he muttered under his breath: “Sorry I asked.”

“Damn right you are. Now leave me the hell alone!”

026 slammed the door in his face and retreated inside. The moment the conversation had started, he’d already given up trying to stay aware of the world around him. It wasn’t too hard to find a solution to the cravings problem, and once he found it, he spent the waiting time trying to scrape the taste of rot off of his tongue.

It didn’t work.

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