Voluntary Confinement || Grey Self Para
Bloodwork first, poking and pricking with needles and taking vitals. He studied the woman beside him as he sat in the chair, a sick feeling of dread settling in the pit of his stomach. The room looked similar to the one he'd had in Russia, with nothing he didn't need. There was a small bed, a small table, and two chairs. One door was the only entrance or exit and the door seemed to be simple with not even a lock. Either there was more to it or they were confident he wasn't going anywhere.
When she finished, the woman didn't say anything, she just got up and left. There was nothing, only silence echoing through the room, for ten minutes.
The person who returned was a man, coming into the room and taking the other chair again. "Greyson, I know you don't want to be here, but it's really for your own and everyone's good that you learn some new things."
There was a long moment of silence as Grey stared at him, verging on a glare.
Finally, the man said, "You just need to get some control, expand one what you can do with what you already have. I see your repertoire is fairly extensive." Taking out a piece of paper, he flipped through it and began reading. "Rohypnol, morphine, methamphetamines, ketamine, clopazine..." He looked up again, seeming to be waiting for a reaction. When he got nothing he sighed and stood up, gesturing for Grey to sit right in the chair.
Nothing happened for a long moment until the man took Grey's wrists and moved them to the chair's arms. From his pocket, he pulled two pieces of fabric. They wrapped easily around Grey's wrists and the arms of the chair, then solidified like rings of solid metal and he was trapped. "Just do your best, Greyson," the man said, then patted him on the shoulder and left the room again.
It was another fifteen minutes in seclusion before Vivian walked in and Grey sat up immediately. His mouth was open to say something, but the next moment, the woman who'd done his blood work came in and put a gun to Vivian's head, pulled the trigger, and splattered the blood all over him.
With a scream, he fought against the bonds on his wrists. Shouting obscenities, screaming of the betrayal, that he was here, doing what they asked, he jerked and tore at the cuffs strapping him to the chair.
With more audacity than stars in the sky, the woman sat in the chair beside him, just out of reach of Grey's touch, and started to clean the gun. "You could kill me if you really wanted, you know," she said softly. "You just aren't trying hard enough."
"I am doing what you say, I'm here, I came here, I came back." He pointed an accusing finger to the body. "What the fuck is this?"
The woman shrugged a bit, tugging on a pair of long gloves and then pulling on a jacket to cover them. From her pocket, she pulled a handkerchief and moved closer, cleaning the blood from Grey's face carefully. "If you don't do something, I'll bring in the lovely little Korean couple you like so much.," she said softly.
Another scream of rage was Grey's only reply and when his face was clean, she sighed and stood up. When the small, elderly woman was led in, he screamed again, filled with fury and pain. Tears sprang to his eyes, blood smearing from under the cuffs where he tore at his own skin. Again, blood splattered across his face and again, the woman taunted him while she cleaned her gun and then his face. Next, a small elderly man was led in and Grey's voice gave out as he screamed at him in Korean to run.
With the three bodies on the floor, piled together unceremoniously, he fell back in his chair. Rage was flooding him, the desire to pump her full of anything, everything, put her into a coma and then pull her out of it just to put her back under again, cause her the pain of every drop of blood on the floor.
Her gloved hand tipped his face up, wiping at the blood and the tears and the sweat for fighting. "You think we should keep going up? I know we started at such a high note, but I'm not sure if we can keep it up. There's only Mr. DuPont left, isn't there? Of those people you really hold dear? We could move on to that normal you're fond of. He's not useful in any way to us."
Fury washed through him, sorrow and pain and the desire to hurt. Fire burned in his lungs and he let out a breath, smoke billowing from his lips, up into the woman's face. She blinked, looking hazy for a moment, but he took another breath and blew again, smoke going into her face and her pupils dilated and she stumbled back, then tripped on Vivian's wrist and fell backwards, unconscious.
The door opened again and Grey looked up with a glare, huffing out a deep breath through his nose and letting smoke puff from his nostrils. He wasn't sure when that had come about, what he was doing, but if it was ranged they wanted, he would fill the room with clopazine until every person who walked in breathed the stuff and fell to the floor.
"Very good, Greyson," the man who had spoke to him before said mildly, a small smile on his face. A pair of men came in, both of them with cloths over their mouths and carted out the woman carefully as the man came to sit beside Grey. "Oh calm down," he said with a short laugh when every breath out of the boy was a puff of smoke, surrounding him in a cloud of haze.
"Why," he growled, too angry to tilt the word into a question. "I came back, I brought Kent back, I came where you wanted me to be. Why did you hurt them?"
The small smile brightened on the man's face and he walked over to the bodies, nudging the top one, Grey's grandfather, with his foot. "Look again. The transformation should fade any- Ah. There it goes."
There was a sickening twist in Grey's stomach and the face morphed into something he didn't recognize. An old homeless man from the streets. Tears sprung back into his eyes. "His name was Darryl," he mumbled, struggling again. "You made me- They're-"
The man bent and grabbed the half-destroyed head of the body that had been Grey's grandmother. Emma. Another homeless woman. Grey's eyes fell to the face that had been Vivian's. He'd seen the girl in the streets on his wanderings, but he didn't know her name. Her blood was still on his clothes.
"Not even your friends. I see you know them, though." The door opened again and the two men came back, picking the bodies up haphazardly and carting them away. The man stepped over the puddle of blood and sat beside Grey. "We'll do another test tomorrow and the next day. You responded faster than expected. For the rest of the time you're here, you'll be working on control. Making different things in smoke, which isn't what we expected, really." He puffed out, blowing smoke away from his face. "And we'll be bringing people in to make sure you can... maintain control under the right circumstances."
Grey narrowed his eyes, about to ask what the right circumstances were, but the man stood and a needle hit his neck. he thrashed again for a moment, then went limp.
The next few days were a parade of either the man or the woman, neither of whom he learned the names of, coming in and provoking him into using his power, people coming in and beating or threatening him while they lashed his bare hands to the arm of some sedated person he could no longer be sure wasn't Kent or Ever or Vivian. When no one was there with him, there was a device used to cut off his power and without sleep aid, he lay awake, trapped in his head, wondering at the names of people who had died to expand his power or force him to control it.
When he was released, Grey was bruised and battered, riddles with black and blue and dark, dried red. His hair was a royal mess, his wrists covered in cuts and tears, his arms and neck in trackmarks. But his power was expanded, and that was good enough for everyone else.
annaxmalina
dededos
stormborns
