[ He pushes despite the way his stomach is burning, but it's getting the fucking lock open that takes longer because his hand won't stop shaking. Because he's scared, because he doesn't want to, because what the fuck is he even going to do when he goes out there and sees them holding Mace down and cutting into him and he's got no fucking weapon and he can barely fucking move and there's gonna be more than one of them and no backup, no protector this time, just him and he can't not because FUCK, because he fucking let himself give a shit again--
He yanks the door open, fingers gripped tight around the screwdriver he made earlier. It's long, longer than the knife long enough to go through eye socket and into the meat of a brain and maybe that'll be enough.
He stumbles down the hallway like it's twisting, like gravity's propelling everything left, with a hand flat and one knee dipping down - not from injury, but from nerves.
To the living room.
To an gourney that's empty except for one thing, one moving thing, one thing he thinks must be a small animal attached with electrodes to the beeping monitor.
Everything... slows... down.
There are no surgeons. There is an entire hellish Georges Mathieu painting of blood on and around the gourney, splattering up the walls. No Mace.
Just a single still-beating human heart that his feet propel him toward of their own accord. As if in a daze. As if entranced by this disbelief, a need to see it up close with his own two eyes to know if it's--
Like he might know if it's...
He stands at the edge of it where the surgeon probably stood, holding a screw driver instead of a scalpel, watching it beat.
Shocked to a blank mind. Dead unaware of his surroundings.
Healthy, strong. Alive.
Dumbly, something in him thinks, does that mean he's still alive, wherever they took the rest of him?
no subject
He yanks the door open, fingers gripped tight around the screwdriver he made earlier. It's long, longer than the knife long enough to go through eye socket and into the meat of a brain and maybe that'll be enough.
He stumbles down the hallway like it's twisting, like gravity's propelling everything left, with a hand flat and one knee dipping down - not from injury, but from nerves.
To the living room.
To an gourney that's empty except for one thing, one moving thing, one thing he thinks must be a small animal attached with electrodes to the beeping monitor.
Everything... slows... down.
There are no surgeons. There is an entire hellish Georges Mathieu painting of blood on and around the gourney, splattering up the walls. No Mace.
Just a single still-beating human heart that his feet propel him toward of their own accord. As if in a daze. As if entranced by this disbelief, a need to see it up close with his own two eyes to know if it's--
Like he might know if it's...
He stands at the edge of it where the surgeon probably stood, holding a screw driver instead of a scalpel, watching it beat.
Shocked to a blank mind. Dead unaware of his surroundings.
Healthy, strong. Alive.
Dumbly, something in him thinks, does that mean he's still alive, wherever they took the rest of him?
Suffering and carved out?
Should he- should he- put it out- ]