It’s dark. That’s the first thing Rex notices – it’s dark and it’s quiet. But he’s awake and startled and scared, as though someone had crashed a pair of cymbals right over his head. There’s something wrong. A pervading sense of unease seeps in as he crawls towards consciousness to figure this out. It’s – it’s the floor. That’s the second thing that breaks through to him. The floor is cold, jagged, and rough, scuffing his palms as he struggles to sit up. He’s on the floor. That’s weird. Rex doesn’t sleep on the floor. Most people, like him, sleep in beds. So… why, exactly, is he on the floor?
He glances down at the loose pants and dark shirt he wears as pajamas, squints on his shoe-less, sockless feet, and recalls, dimly, crawling into bed that night. He’d been sleeping earlier; he hadn’t started out here. A trickle of common sense eases back into his mind as he wakes up, making him stand, peer around the room. The room is dark (he knew that) making it impossible to see farther than a foot or two. That, or there isn’t anything to see… Wait. Hadn’t there been someone in his room? Hadn’t he been afraid of… of something? Anxious now, Rex flails his way to a good, solid wall, and begins to feel his way around.
He’s hoping for a light switch, or a door or a latch to a window or – or something. But there’s nothing. Just… nothing. Rex is suddenly wide awake and terrified. Gloveless fingers scrape at the cement wall for any bump or doorway-shape, and he finds he’s counted at least four corners but no door. He goes around again and again, just to be sure. Ten seconds later, he’s breathless and dizzy and not sure at all. What if the room is made up of six corners? What if he’s somehow skipped a section completely? What if he’s dizzy and confused? What if the door’s in the center of the room?
What if he’s trapped? It’s finally thinking the word that does it. Rex barely feels himself stumble to a corner and crouch there, arms straining around his trembling self as his eyes look and look into the darkness. “I’m trapped. ” His mouth mutters. “I’m in the dark and I’m trapped. I-I-I… ” A firm, Doctor-Holiday-like voice whispers urgently in his mind. Calm down. You have to breathe, and calm down, Rex. Remember the rule of threes. Rex tries to think, tries to function as all the oxygen seems to flee the room. “U-um.. uh… ” The human can survive three days without water. Holiday voice prompts.
Then three hours without shelter, and three minutes without air. Without air… he thinks the air in the room is dwindling. He isn’t sure if he can feel his toes. Rex. You can only survive three seconds if you don’t have… what? What, Rex? What do you need most to survive? He hears himself breathe. In, and out. In and out. It takes more calm than he currently possesses, but he fakes it, and he makes himself think of anything else. “Hope. ” He whispers to himself. “You need hope to survive. ” Fingers in front of his face, he counts to three and breathes again. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Hold.
He counts to three another time, and another, until his heart no longer pounds in his ears. When he is finished panicking (though he’s still too sheepish and too scared to admit that’s what he really was doing), he swallows and stands. He continues to talk to himself, because he’s found that it helps. Plus, apparently he knows a lot more about this survival thing that he knew he knew. Cool. “Okay. I can get through this. I’ve been kidnapped. Apparently. ” He sucks in air through his nose, and lets it go shakily. “Again. But I can get out of here. If this is… if this is what happened last time –”
He doesn’t let his mind dwell on all that comes with the last occasion of his kidnapping, the one he wishes he could completely forget, and instead steers his thoughts to something useful. “– then I know at least one thing. I can escape. I did it before, right? So I’ll… I’ll just do it again. ” Yeah. Easier said than done. If Rex knew what he did the first time, he wouldn’t be having this conversation with himself right now. Wait. Wait wait wait – he’s made this mistake before, he made it (hopefully) less than twenty four hours ago. He’s leaving his nanites out of the equation.
Chuckling mirthlessly at himself, he shakes his head, and feels that oh-so-necessary hope start to flare to life in his ribcage. “Alright guys, go for it. ” He tells his nanites. And they do. Though his eyes have adjusted as much as they can to the darkness, he still can’t quite see the build – but that’s okay. He can feel it; his weight shifts to the balls of his feet, his shoulders ache and his arms feel large and bulky. “Giant fists don’t fail me now. ” He jokes, then wonders if that’s a reference, and how exactly he remembers that and not something useful, but that’s just life right now, Rex guesses as he pounds at the wall.
It’s satisfying. It makes him feel a hell of a lot more in control. It makes him laugh. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be doing much in the way of giving him an exit. So, smartly, he switches walls. He tries every wall, he knows he does, because his fists leave craters in them and create debris on the floor. Now he can verify that there are, indeed, four walls. But all four walls are not budging. Rex works and punches until he’s breathing heavy and he’s slipping in his sweat, but he doesn’t see daylight and he doesn’t make himself an exit. There’s rock on the floor.
His toes have stepped on the pieces enough times to make him swear. He’s doing something, he has to be, but somehow he’s nowhere near being free. Breath heaving in his lungs, heart roaring in his ears, the terrifying thought comes back to scare him, now with even more proof to back it – if he can’t find a door or windows, where is his air coming from? It’s still not a cheery thought. Not helpful. Soon he’s hyperventilating and he can’t tell whether it’s because he’s used up all his air or he just thinks he did. “Breathe. ” He whispers frantically. “Breathe, breathe, bre -” But he can’t.
He can’t. It’s like telling someone terrified of reptiles that there might be a snake in their room and then turning out the lights. The room is getting darker, his fists shrinking to normal, oddly fine hands (except for the broken arm that hadn’t hurt in giant mode), and he is sure people around the world can heart his loud, loud heart. Rex has just enough sense to sort of wobble into a crouch before everything crashes down on him and his head is tipping over, his limbs out of his control.
Then he’s gone. “How? How?! ” “Holiday, if you can’t calm yourself, you will be removed from the premises. A huffy, amused scoff. “Oh, just try me, White. I dare you. How could you let this happen to Rex? Again?! ” “Nobody let anything happen – ” “You sent Six on a wild goose chase yesterday! If he hadn’t been somewhere in Europe looking for Van Kleiss on some- some flimsy rumor, he could’ve prevented this! ” The stench of unwanted pity fills the room. It’s covered up quickly, replaced by something like guilt. “We… I thought Breach was in Asia. Van Kleiss hasn’t even tried to break into our facilities for months, Holiday. I thought… he might’ve given up. ” A broken laugh. No, a sob.
Strength under the tears. “You thought wrong. ” “By the time my people informed me of Breach’s meddling in our other stations, it was too late, Holiday. She’d found the right base. There was… nothing we could do. ” “Right. Of course. ” That’s sarcasm, angry and heavy. A heavy, heavy sigh. “Just like last time. ” The sound of silence and regret stifles the chamber, and not a soul speaks for a very long time. A deep breath. Courage and perhaps understanding. “You’re going to be the one to tell him. ” It’s petty revenge, in the scheme of things. For now, it is enough.
“Alright. ” And we will find Rex again. We will. ” “Alright. ” Daylight makes everything better. Of course, when you’ve been kidnapped for the second time in the past year, probably by the same people as before, and slept through the previous night by hyperventilating yourself into unconsciousness, well, better isn’t much. It is something, though. Light pours in from high up windows, their cracked panes filling with a sort of pride – maybe he hadn’t seen them last night, but he’d at least hit them. A couple of times. The room is illuminated enough for him to spot the outline of a door, too.
It’s reinforced, probably, and has no nob or handle, but has a clear crack around it where it should open. “Wow. Can’t believe I missed that. ” Rex mumbled to himself, after he’d already dug his fingers into the cracks and tried to open the door in vain. Except, yeah, of course Rex missed this because he’d been kidnapped and panicked and it had been really dark, okay? People don’t think straight when they’re terrified in the dark. Something jolts through him, and a voice flashes through him like a volt of electricity. “Afraid of the dark, are we? ” “No. I’m not. He hears himself say, still feeling defiant despite the bruises.
That cold smile makes him regret it. “We’ll have to fix that, Rex. Don’t you know what lives in the dark? ” He’s not going to say it, he shouldn’t say it, he won’t – “Cockroaches like you? ” A blink of gold is all his warning before he’s yanked up by his wrist, the one that already aches, and white, spindly fingers creep up his arm. Rex tries to fight – he flails, his feet off the ground, and tosses his fist toward the general direction of his opponent. He’s not stupid. He knows what’s coming and he doesn’t want it.
But. But. He hasn’t eaten in a while, or slept a full night’s sleep, and in this state he can’t control his nanites. He’s human and pathetic. He can do nothing in the face of this monster. Van Kleiss laughs at him. “Didn’t your parents teach you manners, dear boy? No? Leave it to me, then. ” That’s when the cutting, the slicing with small, sharp knives, starts. A cut along his hand. “You’re weak. ” A slice down his forearm. “You’re pathetic. ” The bloody knife bites into his shoulder, and he cries out without meaning to. “You can’t even save yourself. ”
Now there’s a bleeding cut on his neck, on his cheek, on his ear. “You deserve this. Only the strongest survive, Rex. Be strong, or suffer. ” The knife hesitates on his cheek, right under his eye, and he can’t breathe, he can’t move – “P-please,” He says. “S-stop! Stop! “Stop! ” Rex is jolted from the flashback the same way he’d gone into it, and he comes to himself scared and sure he’s bleeding. He’d… he’d just remembered. It hadn’t been a confusing, frightening nightmare, or a jumble of images and emotions he coudn’t make sense of, but a whole memory.
Not even a scene or something that he thinks might have happened. A real memory. Rex really, actually remembers that. He recalls how he felt, what clothes he’d been wearing, how, despite being nauseated, he’d still been so very hungry. “I remembered something. ” He says to himself, shocked and numb. “I remembered something… ” And how unfair is it that the first memory he got back is a bad one? “I remembered something. ” He says again. Rex can’t do anything for a long while but wrap his arms around his knees and rock back and forth.