Chapter Text
Lance woke to the steely shhhnk of his cell door opening and disappearing into the gap in the left side of the wall. The stagnant, bleach colored lights protruded from the threshold and lay like a gray rectangle in the dark room. Lance, rubbing his eyes and stretching his unused limbs, stood and approached the door with caution.
Usually the door only opened if one of the MC personnel was coming to take him to what Lance liked to call the “Drugs Room.”
On one side of the room there were always bottles of pills crammed onto shelf after shelf, clear containers containing tablets of red, orange, blue, purple and white. On the other, was why Lance dreaded making the journey. There were vials upon vials of injectables, ranging from a harmless clear liquid to a thick, navy blue. Those vials were his only concern.
Sometimes while he was sent there, he’d see others, usually the Unstable, get that drug pumped inside them, to which they’d immediately rejected the liquid and writhed a short time, some shouting obscenities or starting to bleed from their noses, eyes, and ears, before going still, eyes closed. Lance had watched them curiously, waiting for them to move again, watch for a breath, a cough, something. He even watched for just how long it took for their orifices to stop the blood flow.
But even though those who he saw get that certain treatment never came out of whatever stupor they were in, they were always alive. He could always sense the telltale signs of life, a shallow breath, a faint heartbeat.
Sometimes, if he concentrated hard enough, he could hear the victim’s passing thought, barely making sense of the contents of it before a tic in his own drugs hefted him up and slammed him back into his own brain.
He remembers always looking down, to brace himself for the prick. Every time he did, the syringe was translucent green, filled almost completely in the clear tube. It took a good thirty seconds for the liquid to drain from the needle and into his bloodstream; Lance would have painful bruises on his arms for days.
This drug, that Lance had been taking, every day, without fail, since he’d gotten to the facility eight years prior, was why he’d barely felt any semblance of emotion now. It was like his mind had been dipped in honey. He was never in a hurry, taking the time to analyze even the most familiar of surroundings for impending doom. Though his movements were slow, his thought process was much more acute and aware of any outcome of any situation he may find himself in.
Lance was never able to shut his brain up long enough to interact with people, however. He was hardly even able to form sentences coherent enough for people to understand anymore, let alone in a time frame where the silence between him and said person /wasn’t/ verging on uncomfortable, to say the least, and he’d gotten considerably quieter since.
Talking had become an unnecessary chore, and he didn't really care what people thought of him anyway. Lance never noticed (nor cared) for what others were feeling, as his dulled mind didn’t anymore comprehend that others wanted a response to inquiry than how pain would have addressed a wound.
In fact, he didn’t even remember the last needle he’d actually felt, as in, the pain. The sharp pinprick was imperceptible to him now - all of the nerves in his body had been shot to hell and back years before. It was something he cherished getting through; no more pain meant he could continue with his life normally.
With his emotions gone, he no longer had to worry about having ties to people, he didn’t feel an obligation towards them. The vices of physical and emotional agony that were holding him firmly in place had vanished, leaving him to do whatever he wished, to whoever he wanted, and nothing could keep him from doing so.
It was the perfect way to silently bite back at the agency for doing this to him, letting them think he was hurting him when in reality, they were giving him even more power.
One day, I'm going to be strong enough to collapse this entire building with everyone inside, Lance thought naively. It would take him years to realize that he was playing right into the agency's hands.
Now, however, he was peeking outside his cell, slightly suspicious that none of the soldiers had threatened to drag him out by force or shoot him to death. All he saw beyond the confines of his prison within a prison was long, white, ceramic concrete floor flooding into thick metal walls.
Lance frowned. Never before had he been allowed to leave his little hole in the wall without a guard. Two guards, in fact. But there was no one even walking through the corridors. There was only an eerie silence, which Lance took as his cue to escape.
~