Chapter Text
Louis was floating.
At least, that’s what it felt like. Caught somewhere between awake and asleep, unable to move or think or do much of anything except breathe and try not to focus on the throbbing in his knees, his back, his arms.
The smallest bits of movement were fleeting. It felt like an accomplishment when he felt his fingers wiggling – but then, was he actually moving them or had he just convinced himself he was?
Time and consciousness and everything felt different completely blinded and cut off from the world around him.
His ears felt full in a way that completely cut off any noises from around him. All he could hear was the pounding of his heart inside of his head and it only served to make him feel more anxious.
He couldn’t feel the fabric of it over his face but he only assumed a blindfold was tied around him. Even with his eyes wide open the only thing around him was complete darkness. He blinked through it, squeezed his eyes shut until little white dots danced in front of his vision.
He couldn’t pinpoint exactly the positioning of his body, but the longer he focused on it, the more pain that radiated from his knees the more he felt he might be kneeling. His arms were numb enough he couldn’t feel them at all, pinpricks taking over the limbs entirely.
One moment he’d been walking through campus. Then, there was nothing.
Any energy he’d had when he woke up had been spent squirming, trying anything he could think of to break out of the restraints. The numbness through his body made it hard to be sure if he squirming enough or barely at all. A drop of sweat fell down his back and he exhaled deeply.
He flexed his fist just enough to feel the scrape of his nails against his palm.
Movement.
Finally.
He thought, maybe, if he could move just a bit more –
The sound cut back on around him all at once.
It wasn’t loud at all. Perhaps it would be barely noticeable if he hadn’t been so aware of the loss. Just a barely there whirring sound, the sound a breeze around him.
And then footsteps.
His heart sped up in his chest as he swallowed and counted them coming closer.
His vision blinked back into focus without warning, sending tears to his eyes as he squeezed them shut in attempt to adjust. There were two men in front of him dressed in black jumpsuits and heavy black boots that hit loudly against the floor as they walked as his vision focused, and he felt a new kind of panic rise up inside of him.
He felt cornered, trapped and unable to do anything about it.
It was only then that he could take in the exact position he’d been stuck in that left him feeling numb and unable to move.
He was entirely naked, left kneeling with each of his legs individually cuffed to the ground at both his ankles and shins. His arms were bound behind his back in some pattern he couldn’t quite see even when he craned his neck, fastened with a chain to a small loop bolted on the ground just between his feet.
One of the two men made a comment, but the words sounded foreign. He froze, dry lips parting just slightly as if to speak, but the words died in his throat.
One of them walked forward and behind him, moving out of Louis’ vision where he couldn’t turn his head far enough without pain.
“Where am I—”
A hard smack hit against the back of his head and he gasped, staring at the floor in front of him. “Do not speak,” He said slowly, enunciating the words sharply. Louis grit his teeth and forced himself to take a deep breath.
He felt the cuffs being removed from his calves first, the muscles beneath them twitching, and then his ankles. Then, the chain connecting his arms to the ground was unclipped.
He felt himself falling forward and squeezed his eyes shut, only to be caught by the chain. Weakly, he tried to lift himself and the stinging numbness only felt worse, sharper. He exhaled shakily, looking at the ground just inches from his face as he was pulled back up, then onto his feet.
A thick collar was clasped around his neck and a new chain attached to the end of it. Louis’ eyed widened, his face hot as he jerked back against it, but the man worked fast and clipped it on before he could put up a fight.
The feeling of needles prickling through his thighs felt worse as he put weight onto his legs. The men seemed to anticipate that as they each grabbed one of his arms and half dragged him out of the small, white room he’d been held in.
Slowly, they dragged home down an empty corridor.
The walls were covered in white, metal panels that seemed to span the entire building. Sensation slowly came back to his legs the longer he moved them and only when he felt solid enough on his feet did he take a full step on his own.
The grip on his arms didn’t lessen.
His eyes darted around again as they walked further, panic slowly making him feel sick. “Please tell me where I am – where are we going?” Another smack against the back of his head sprung tears to his eyes as the feeling of helplessness only felt worse than it ever had.
“That’s your second warning. Do not make me tell you again.”
He swallowed hard and planted his feet on the ground to stop his movements. “You can’t do this. You can’t just not tell me who you are, where we are, what you’re doing this is ridiculous,” His words were fast and his face felt hot.
The two men stopped walking and Louis felt a strong, unyielding shock from the collar around his neck, ripping a scream out of him as he felt his knees buckle.
Pain. Everywhere.
The men let him crumple to the ground as the shocks kept pulsing through him.
He coughed as he laid there, arms and legs shaking.
“It’s best for you to learn your place now. You will listen and do as you are told.” Louis blinked, rage overtaking the panic. “Now stand.”
He stayed on the ground as the two of them looked down, faces entirely devoid of any emotion. His heart rabbited in his chest as he stayed still. A refusal.
Another shock spread through his body after a few seconds of him not standing and he whimpered through clenched teeth, choking on his own spit as it spread through his body. His muscles felt weak, and he had the sudden realization that that was not by mistake. He’d spent so long struggling against his own restraints that any fight left in him had little way to show.
“Again,” The man stated. “Stand.”
Louis’ legs moved slowly, first to his knees, and then he got himself up. It nearly had him out of breath as he struggled to bring himself upright without his arms to balance.
The men grabbed him again and they walked.
They turned at least three corners and walked through several automatic doors as they continued down the corridor. Slowly, the sensation came back to Louis’ body fully. He could balance his own weight on his legs and could walk without assistance.
The grip on his arms felt like more of a warning than help.
They walked him through a final set of doors into a room that felt much smaller than the first. The floors were tiled with what reminded him of his gym’s bathroom floor. The door closed and locked behind them, a barely-there beep and flash of a red light indicating that he wouldn’t be leaving.
In the center of the room was a pole, stretching from floor to ceiling. In the middle was a bar across the pole with small hooks that matched hooks just at the bottom.
He took a step back from it, instinctively.
It earned him another smack and he tensed, waiting for the shock. It didn’t come.
“What are you doing?” His eyes darted between the pole and the men.
Another shock.
His sight went away without warning, leaving him entirely in darkness. Then, he felt himself moved, felt chains wrapped around his wrists and ankles, his arms placed and locked above his head, then his feet spread just far enough apart that he felt like he could fall over.
Panic swelled inside of him at the feeling. He could feel his arms being moved above his head, could feel the way his legs were moved to be shoulder width apart. Then, strapped in place. He thrashed and fought against the bindings put they – again – had no give. His inability to see left him even less able to fight against the predicament.
When his sight came back he was alone.
The white walls of the previous room had been replaced with a dark glass that he was unable to see through. The lights were still blindingly white, shining against the black reflective surface as his eyes darted around. Above him was what looked like a large shower head, taking up the entire space of the ceiling just above him.
His suspicions were confirmed when hot water poured down on him. He gasped, skin screaming with the sudden heat from the chill-cold room, eyes stinging with whatever soap was mixed with the water. He pulled on the restraints uselessly, but the pulling only made his arms ache.
The water stopped and he took a deep breath, shaking his head to get his soaking wet hair off of his face.
Then, a metal tube whirred down from the ceiling, a spray nozzle on the end pointed directly at him. A light blue liquid sprayed across his body, coating every inch of skin from his neck to his toes, and then gently over his face.
It smelled nice. For a moment, he allowed himself to relax.
Then there was burning. He gasped, feeling fire over his skin. Every part of his body felt alive with a seering heat, burning into his skin and down through his –
The water turned back on, washing the blue liquid away.
His body went limp and he sobbed.
The nozzle sprayed over him again and he tensed. The liquid was a different color. A dark orange spray covered him generously and smelled of sweet oranges. He braced himself for the sting, for whatever unyielding agony would come to him next.
It didn’t come.
The water poured over him again and the cleaning cycle repeated again.
A hot rush of air swirled through the entire room next, drying him from soaking wet to completely dry with an expert precision.
He breathed shakily as he stood, waiting.
Another tube extended from the ceiling, stopping just in front of his face. He closed his eyes in a wince, breath short.
A tube forced it’s way at his lips and he turned his head to avoid it. He could feel soft plastic against his cheek where it should have gone into his mouth. He relaxed. A win.
Another metal arm came from the ceiling – two of them, one on each side of his head – and forced his head forward. He whimpered, eyes shutting again as he felt the tube push inside of his mouth. It cleaned his mouth fully, rinsing it with water and sucking away the fluid before he could think about what had happened.
His handlers returned at the whoosh of a door opening.
“Now isn’t that nice?” One of them taunted. “All prepared for your future owner, mm?”
“What?” He exclaimed. “Owner?”
One of the men punched him in the stomach and he sputtered into a useless cough, unable to do anything to block the blow with his limbs restrained.
“Do not ask questions. You need to learn that you accept what comes to you. You don’t ask questions.”
In the middle of his coughing fit the other placed thin, metal bracelets over his wrists, and then over his ankles, too. They released the chains from the pole and he wobbled on his feet as he regained his balance.
Every hair was gone from his body. He reached up to feel his face and his head. The scruff that had covered his face that morning was gone, but his eyebrows and the hair on his head remained. He sighed at that, a small pleasure.
His sight blipped away again and he sobbed.
“No,” His voice cracked.
A ringing louder than anything he’d ever heard pierced through his ears. He screamed, covered his ears with his hands but it was entirely unrelenting. He fell to the ground, twitching as he curled up, unable to see and unable to feel or focus on anything other than loud loud loud --
It stopped.
“You’ll soon learn that everything is a privilege, no longer a right.” Louis trembled as the ringing in his ears stopped. He swallowed and his mouth tasted of blood.
His breath felt short and he blinked desperately to try and get his sight back, squeezing his eyes shut tightly enough that his head started to hurt.
When his hearing went away, too, he felt true desperation.
He felt himself being dragged away, moved somewhere else. He could feel the whooshing of doors and could feel the coolness of the floor beneath his feet as he attempted to walk beside the men, unable to see or hear.
Strong hands forced him to his knees, the bruised flesh warming in response. They pull his arms to his back, wrists crossed and immobilized between his shoulder blades. He allowed himself to be moved into position, unable or maybe even unwilling to fight and face whatever else they could throw at him. A collar was wrapped around his throat and his head pulled up. His back screamed against the pull of having perfect posture as he kneeled.
Then he found himself alone again.
Time felt different when he could see and hear. Without it, he had no way to judge a second or a minute, or an hour or a day.
He thought he could hear the faint ticking of a clock that he could not see – or maybe his mind fabricated the sound to make him feel more connected. He couldn’t tell.
Fear felt different as he knelt on the cold floor beneath him, staring only at white walls and bright lights. The fear was twinged with something like dread; an understanding that this was all a rehearsed movement. That these people were practiced at their craft.
He relaxed, just slightly, and felt the pull of the collar against his throat. It choked him just enough to force his posture back straight. A twinge of pain seeped up his back, through his shoulder blades and up his neck. He turned his head to the right and winced at the pain.
He turned back forward and drew in a deep breath. It settled him, somehow.
And then he waited.
The fear crept up inside of him again.
It was a crude tactic of making him submit. To make him give in to – whatever this was.
And the worst part: his recognition of it made it no less effective.