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In the cold Apega I dwell.

Trapped by a thousand thorny whispers.

The world fades to black, and in my belly grows a serpent.

_* * * _

Same day. __Somewhere in Brazil...

The metal door opened with a drawn-out, dissagreeing screech as it scraped across the underlying concrete, like fingernails latched onto a old-school blackboard. The sound hurt deep in his ears.

Light from the hallway lamps cast a sheet of yellowish, dingy ambiance over the trails of water woorming down the walls, slightered across the dust-covered concrete floor in dark tracks to finally pour down the gaping void of a maw of a drainage shaft, like thin long maggots or imacicated vipers.

In reality little more than a jagged hole, seemingly constructed in all haste, it's wet, rushing gulps sent a nauseting pang of almost-motion sickness through the boy's stomach, or perphaps, it were the hunger-pains again, roaring voicelessly to be sated...

Heavy thumps sounded across the soggy concrete. Water slouched in brief golden ripples across the floor in front of him.

Through sheer force of will, the boy stilled the shivers that wracked through him. He wouldn't let them see it: the sign of the fever burning him, draped him in hot-cold waves. Probably too dark for them to see it clealry but he'd take no chances. The pretense of strenght was all he had left.

Rick's face burned but there were no tears, dry, steely gaze instead focused, stared a hole into the wall in front of him, as if staring into the gates of the City of Dis itself.

No tears and no begging. The simple mantra leapt to the forefront of his weathered mind, rose tall and frosty like a immaculate silver shield.

A furry hand appeared in his field of vision, wraped in a fingerless glove. He bared his teeth and smacked it away before it could touch him. Another pair clamped around his shoulder, hard enough to send aching jagged jolts through them. His face tensed, he burried the impulse to flinch along the pained groan.

Rick grit his teeth and bared it silently as they hauled him to his feet. Chill water seeped in through the netted front of his blue sneakers. The skin on his legs and stomach peebled, and for a terryfing moment, he feared he'd wet himself, his legs were too hot but the rest if him were too cold. The edges of his jean's were caked with dirt and did nothing to keep him warm, same with the rugged, faded cotton jacket in grey. His eyes landed on his own warped reflection staring frozen from the puddles; oval, slighty angular face thin and pale, so very pale...blonde hair slick and volumless and a shade too dark.

Running away from home hadn't prepared him for this. For any of it. He'd thought his mother would have called him, frantic for him to come home. He didn't even know where his phone was now. Maybe they had taken it, or destroyed it? It wouldn't do him any good now. He twisted in the guards' grip even as the fever made his heavy head dizzy.

The room began to tilt, scew to the side, as if his head were a scale and the weights on it were placed all wrong.

“Let go of me—where are you taking me?!" The same question every time. And every time it was met with the same bark of command: Shut up. Did time even move forward at all? His feet caught on the treshhold as so many times before. What little room of hell would he be forced into today?

In his mind's eye, all he could see were the operation room: the iron bed, the tools, the scalpel. The straps to make sure he couldn't struggle—because by god he did. The chemicals waiting to be pumped into him...Like napalm in his muscles, tracing over every unguarded nerve-ending...Charred him through and through.

Nausea strobed through him, oily and slick. His throat constricted. He were alone—all the other kids were dead. Tim had gone before him, Bianca even earlier than Tim. All they had left him with were hollowed out body and an hopless,wasteland of a mind.

No-one would help him. The only one he could rely on were himself.

As he were dragged through the featurless hallways of concrete, the cold light of the lamps overhead lanced and pricked relentlessly at his stinging, coarse-feeling raw eyes, the notion that he himself were not the greatest of help sank in.

What could he do? He was sick, small and not to mention the fact that his captors had guns.

Heart hammering, Rick's mind branched franticlly for any kind of answers, grasped at straws for any kind of hope.

Every plan he conjured up concluded with him staying a prisoner or dying...Though wouldn't it be better to go out in a blaze of glory, instead of slowly, in agony wait for the sick experiments to claim his life? Stubborness could only sustain him for so long...

Rick swallow. He'd die here, he was sure of it. He'd never get to apolgize to his mother for failling classes, for causing so much trouble and headaches. Never smell her perfume again, or feel the warmth of her arms around him, holding him close. Never hear his brother's silly jokes or hear him laugh again. Never meet their smiling blue eyes with his own again. Never.

He wanted to scream out. Wanted to claw that choking, horrible truth out of his throat.

His foot hit the doorway, and it tried to twist and root around anything that might save him, even though only two things could: A miracle. Or death. And Rick didn't believe in miracles.

The only thing left for him were to struggle. To not make it easy for them. As he were dragged over yet another doorway, he struggled until his head pulsated and he were out of breath.

Somehow, he found the will to speak.

“Let—let me go." He managed to wheese out through his parched throat, though it were a pitiful command, close to a whimper.

A hand slapped him accross the face. “Damn it, I didn't sign up to babysit some fuckin' orphans or some shit!" One of the guard's said, a tall malmute or wolf, Rick couldn't tell which honestly: Beastmen were not common outside the Swedish capital.

Rick bit his lip and glared at the guard that slapped him. Asshole. Touch me again and see what happens! I'll bite your finger off.

Softly panting, throat burning despite the air not being cold, he jerked as he became aware of what room they'd dragged him into, and the pit of his stomach caved in.

The large, sarcophagus-like machine took up a big portion of the room, thick, silver cords and cables trecking across the dust-covered floor like phytons and rattlesnakes from various places on the walls to feed it with energy. Blue lines pulsated in rhytmic bursts along the smooth, reflective surface.

They heaved him closer by the arms. “All right brat," one of them said, “Be a good boy and go in!"

Rick flinched back as much as their hold would allow. Blue eyes nailed onto the machine, dirty blond hair sticking to his sweaty forhead. At once, his heart lunged into his throat.

He shook his head wildly. “N-No! Don't lock me in that again—I won't let you!" He feared the cold, metalic darkness, wouldn't know if he'd ever wake after every 'session'; couldn't move while inside, didn't even know if they'd come and get him out. Or if they'd leave him to suffocate inside the metal prison.

A tense pricking sensation plunged into his neck, caused him to gasp, heart painfully aflutter.

His legs began to feel like water, as if the bones inside were melting like wax.

No, no—not again! He grit his teeth as the numbness spread through him like ice-water, put everything to sleep. Limbs tingling, he had no choice as he swayed under the remaning guard's palm, heartbeat punching painfully against his ribcage.

One guard went to the keyboard at the end of the machine, situated at a slope in the metal and started keying in commands, the surface of the machine split into two, oppend to the side like the cavity of an Iron Maiden cabinet. Inside, the metal deepened in hue to a deep blue; cold, glacial and barren.

Rick's eyes winded, teared as he wiggled his feet, the only form of resistence left for him, as the one guard picked him up and reached over to settle him down into machine's empty, wating void. A sacrifice on the cold god's altar.

The metal burned his feverd skin with its cold kiss as he were settled onto his back into the narrow interior, tears pooled in his eyes, unable to be kept at bay any longer. He felt sick, swallowd down the bile pushing at the back of his throat. He'd get them. He'd make them pay for hurting the other kids. For hurting him. One they he wouldn't be powerless.

One day they'd pay.

He forced himself to look at their faces, memorize them as the lids began to slid closer together, a buzzing whirl filled his ears like a plauge of bees. The surface under his back vibrated.

He'd remember them.

A tear curled down from one steel-blue eye, over his chin, its trail red-hot.

He'd remember them all he thought as the light shrank away, darkness closed in, his feet and legs vanished in a shroud of black, like midnight-shaded water.

Rick's chest heaved silently as the hate burned inside, hellish bright. His eyes borred a hole into the expanding twilight around him, chest sucked together so tight it felt like a vaccum. Rick's thoughts thumbled around, the same word's roared and crashed inside his head:

I'll get out one day, you bastards...I'll get out!

The machine closed in around him with an almost a hungry sigh. Conciousness began to drift from him like sand through a crack in the floor.

He clung to the last burning thought with all his might; let it sear deep like a devil's brand, even as the blue shining geometric shapes began to flicker and pulsate like veins in front of his eyes, mesmerized unwillingly, no matter how much he wanted to look away, he couldn't.

The patterns began to emtpy his mind, cut away tatters of him even as he desperatedly reached out and clenched his mind around them like he would with his hands. A flash of horror lunged through him as he grasped and pulled at himself. His eyes windend. Don't take me away...Don't destroy me!

As the injection whittled away at the last concious piece of him, like a tower eroded by the relentless, constant rough beats of the ocean's hand, a chilling calm settled over him as he carved his oath onto the inside of his mind, were it would be safely tucked away, away from the creeping darkness and ice. A tiny flame, nourished and protected until it could burn into an vengeful inferno.

I'll get out. And then you'll know what its like to fear the dark...What its like to fear me_._