Story time (flash back)

Who: Everett
Where: unknown
When: April through August

Without the sun or moon, without a clock or calendar, without even basic words shared with another human being? Time lost it's meaning. Everett had no idea just how long he'd been the subject of his captors' amusement, but by now he was near-convinced he'd never live to find out. The only variation in his day was the irregular trip between his bare cell and the room, the only other room he knew of in this place. His cell was about the same size as his bathroom in the old house had been, swapping out a shower for a squat and low bed, if it could even be called that. The door told him nothing; grey and heavy, with only an eye slot on his side that looked out to a plain white hallway. He would sit in silence for what might have been days, sleep when he could, and sometimes? Sometimes pray for death. Everything else was futile.

Ev had learned fast that he couldn't stop the men when they came to his cell, though not for lack of trying. The first time had been the arrival of a meal, a desperate attack at the masked man who held his food tray. Ev had dropped him solidly and had enough time to start gloating before he got hit by a stun gun and kicked unconscious. After that, there wasn't food for a while, maybe days. And while he never got to see the damage they did to him too well, Ev knew it was there. Still, it wasn't the last time he tried. But for any hits that Ev got to dish out, he never got a word from his captors. No, all he got was changing repercussions.

Sometimes it was the starvation, others it was solitude. The lights would turn up so blindingly bright that sleep wasn't an option, noise would filter in from speakers Ev couldn't see. It was, by turns, the least and worst torture they could use. Random noise was one thing, he could ignore it. But then there would be stretches of audio logs from the house; him and Rain, him and Kales, Dave, Lina, the soft crying that he thought was Nic or the sobbing of Natalie in the days after Greg's death. Against that, the beatings were nothing.

But there were far more of the beatings, no doubt about it. They'd knock him into submission, cuff him, and bring him to the other room. 'Minimalist' didn't do it justice; one chair, a table, and the door he was led in through were all there was to it. They'd cuff him to the chair, and from there he never knew what to expect. Sometimes two of them would work him over in tandem, or all three of his captors would take turns. A few times they'd used electricity, twice they'd asphyxiated him until he nearly blacked out, let him breath, then repeated. But during it all, he couldn't turn off the eye for details.

He was on the ground, still cuffed into the chair, when he noticed their boots. Combat cut, military issue. The soles probably matched the prints he'd found after Emma had been raped and Holly had been murdered. Another time, they'd been taking turns pistol whipping him, and he finally got a good look at the pistols. .45s, chromed slides, black resin grips... Ev knew the gun. It was a Smith and Wesson special make, rare and desired in the states because it had originally been made for the KGB. Which meant either there was a very careful fake trail being shown to him, or he was in Russia. Of course, by now? He just didn't know what to believe.

It never got easier, especially not when his captors began to mix the mind games into the violence. He would be brought to the room, restrained, and just when he thought the beatings would come? The game would change. A TV would be carted in, flickering with images of the house he'd left behind. A single piece of paper would be set on the table in front of him, bearing updates that his former housemates supposedly got from their overseers. A two way radio with the send-button broken away, and faint voices coming through... voices he recognized. They were the only voices he'd ever hear, for there was never a bare word from any of his tormentors.

And though there could be no specifics for how long had passed, Everett gradually began to puzzle out that it had indeed been some time. If he was beaten enough, they had to let him rest. They didn't want to kill him yet, or they weren't allowed. Which meant that days would tick by between incidents, and in those days? Well, he began to comply with the unspoken rules of this place for his own sake. If he was going to escape, he needed strength, which meant he needed the meals they provided. If he was going to die here? He may as well die with a full stomach.

He became as silent as his captors, staring holes into the wall of his cell between visits, praying to forces he didn't believe in for the others' safety, and waiting. Waiting for death or a chance, Ev didn't know, it was just his only option. When the change came, he could feel it. It was indescribable, a current in the air that made him shiver in his brooding and spend the time running both hands along the coarse hair that had grown in along his scalp and cheeks, but it was there. It was real.

He didn't fight when they came to his cell, offering his wrists for the cuffs he'd come to understand so much better now that he'd been on both sides of them, and bit down on his tongue when the man cuffing him cracked a fist into his jaw for no reason beyond the act itself. He kept his head down, counting the steps from his door to the room for the hundredth time, and Ev barely needed a shove to plant him in the chair of the other room, his eyes on the table. The television was already there, waiting and showing his dull reflection in it's empty screen. Ev stared into it as he felt his arms being yanked behind his back, shackled through the bars of the chair. Was that him? So lean and rough, haunted in the eyes beneath the swelling of his cheek and brow? Had they found a way to make him doubt his own existence?

The screen flitted to life before he could decide, casting his reflection away in favor of other images. There was Rain, pale and green in a night vision filter as she moved from her bed to her dresser. Ev watched her fish out a bag from the drawer, pouring something onto the countertop, leaning in, and snorting it. Ev's heart twisted in his chest, was it real? Had she relapsed again? He wished that was the only worry as he watched her raise a hand to her nose and hold it there, her fingers gradually darkening under what he realized was blood. Her blood. Behind his back, his hands fisted tight as he watched Rain collapse, straining for the door knob. The door opened and there was just enough time for Everett's spirits to lift in hope before they died again. Garbed just like his captors, a figure entered the camera's view and shut the door, stepping lightly on Rain's outstretched arm and holding it down as she convulsed in a heap.

There was no sound, but Ev could hear Rain's whimper anyway. Suddenly the picture changed, and it was Torlin he was seeing. Small and delicate-looking, she seemed to aim her gaze at the ceiling as she dragged her desk chair towards an impromptu noose, practically acknowledging others watching her in this moment. Ev's vision blurred, threatening tears, and he tried to look away, only to earn another smack in the jaw. Still he tried, snarling and twisting his head, but strong, gloved hands closed at his jaw and yanked his head back towards the television. He squeezed his eyes shut instead, refusing to see this whether it was true or lies. Then there was a small flare of pain, the feel of a knife point near the corner of one eye and the heated release of blood trickling down his cheek. The message was clear: Look, while it's still your choice.

He opened his eyes just in time to see the noose slip around Torlin's neck, her lips moving soundlessly on the screen, and the picture changed again. It was a hanging, but all other similarities were gone. He was there on screen, tying off the wrists of Eris, looping a belt around her neck to make it look like a choking game gone wrong. He lingered in the footage, watching her weight work against her, her movements pulling her harder into the strap around her throat.
Just as quickly, it was gone, but nothing promised to make it any better. There was wilderness footage; wolves chewing at a body, maybe Greg. Shots of Jason, Dave, Lina, and Emma trudging among trees followed it, casting doubt on Ev's assumption of who the wolves were eating. Natalie slept in another image, leaning in her chair with a glass tilted towards the floor but still clutched in her hand. Then there was Eris again, and Everett himself crouched at the foot of her bed, watching the slow loll of her tongue working past her lips.

Hannah in her room, alone at her desk, with a shadowy figure in the doorway of the bathroom seeming to wait. Eris again. Jason catching him leaving her room, and Everett remembered his promise to help hide the murder. Eris. Rain, curled in his lap with her head tucked into his chest and his arms around her. He felt the disconnect in his mind; the rise of something dark and unnamable inside of him, and Everett welcomed it. Yes, he told it, I don't care any more. On some distant level he felt pain from the cuffs, a rough biting around each wrist as one of his captors moved to turn the television off, and another pulled a radio from his belt. Clicking it on, he turned to let Everett hear the speaker plainly. A woman's voice, all too brief. "We're done. Escort him outside. Shoot him in the back of the head."

Later, in the first days of his second escape, the details would piece themselves together for Everett. They would fall in place like those dark memories of the war, of the things he'd done to survive. The cuts circling each wrist, for starters; but those were the rewards one earned for snapping handcuffs apart. On his feet in an instant, the rage that washed over Everett felt terrible to the part of his mind that was a spectator to this moment. Chains still dangling from his wrist, he seized the man with the radio by the throat and yanked him off-balance, slamming his head into the corner of the table with a sharp crack. Everett let him go, grabbing the edge of the table as both the man on his left and his partner on the other side yanked their guns free with trained efficiency.

He upended the entire table, putting his shoulder into the underside with a primal scream and bearing it forward. The mass of polished steel bucked against him three times as the man beyond it fired into it and the TV fell free, crashing to the floor. Running it straight into the wall, Ev growled in satisfaction at the tortured scream from the other side and the snapping sound of an outstretched arm suddenly caught tight between table and wall. He spun in place, instinct reminding him of the third man just in time to let him see the weapon train on him and fire once. Fire coursed through him, yanking the breath from his lungs and dropping him in a heap.

Stock-still on the floor, Everett couldn't breathe. He saw only black, flecked with sparkles of light. But he wasn't dead, the floor under him was too cold to be Hell. And in the center of that pain, of the burn in his ribs, Ev felt something out of place. It was familiar, but he'd gone so long without thinking about it that was, at first, alien. The table finally crashed back down around Ev, followed by agonized sobs from the man who'd been trapped behind it and brief, halting words in another language entirely. Ev listened, forcing himself to go without air, to accept the pain in his ribs. Listening so close, he heard the best sound he could, a lighter clatter, but still metallic. Daring to open his eyes, he could see the gun the crushed man had finally dropped.

He waited tensely, sucking in an agonizing breath in time with soft footsteps from his side, from the man who'd shot him. All at once, as the two pairs of boots became closer, he dragged himself forward, one hand darting out from the table's edge to grab the discarded gun. Ev screamed again as he lifted it weakly, a scream of pent-up agony that couldn't hope to convey the raw, red hate inside of him. He pressed it forward into one leg and squeezed the trigger, drinking in the pained cry that mixed with the gunshot. His target collapsed weakly; the unharmed man, bringing up his own gun, too slow to matter. Pulling his trigger twice, Ev didn't even flinch as the man's ski mask ripped apart, his body jumping as the wall behind him was painted a sudden, dark red.

He was dragging himself out from under the table on his knees, getting a good look at the unarmed man and the compound fracture of his arm, and whatever expression Ev wore must've been hideous, judging from the terror he saw in that man's eyes. The man's good arm crossed over, reaching for his partner's gun, and Ev was quick to press his gun into the man's elbow and fire. Blood splattered across the floor with another howl of agony as he dragged himself out from the table, slung an arm along it's top, and pulled himself up. Reaching for the ski mask, he yanked it free and threw it aside to reveal short brown hair framing a much younger face than his own. A white man, blue eyes wide in terror as he started babbling to himself.

Ev listened with a pained heaving in his chest, gradually picking out the cadence of the speech. In any language, he could pick out a prayer. He raised his gun again, hoping he'd beat the man to any lines about forgiveness or atonement, and emptied the clip into him. Everett dropped the gun, crying out in fresh pain as he leveraged himself to his feet. One hand rose to his chest where he'd been shot, feeling that strange but familiar shape under his shirt. He tugged the shirt up to reveal already-bruising skin, dark and mottled, and at the center of it? His badge. The miniature shield had been hopelessly ruined, the bullet pressing through it and breaking skin beneath, but it hadn't killed him. His first steps away from the two bodies were slow and unstable as he moved for the radio one had dropped, and when he bent to pick it up the pain was nearly enough to make him vomit.

One hand closed around the dense plastic as Ev raised it to his lips, pressing in the 'send' button. "Run," he said plainly, dropping it immediately after and starting for the door. He was nearly there when another sound hit him, the nerveless scrabble of boots on the floor. He turned to look to where his chair had been, to the body of the first man, blood seeping through his mask as his limbs acted of their own accord. Slow steps led him to the man, and genuine caution kept him ready as he pulled the unfired weapon from it's holster. He trained it down at the prone form, finger on the trigger, and hesitated. The pistol was instead tucked into the waist of his pants, and shaky hands closed around the back of the chair. Looking up at the ceiling as he'd seen Torlin do, Ev raised the chair and lined up one of the legs with the man's face. "Run," he repeated, driving the chair down with a wet crunch, "Don't ever stop."

He let it go, tugging open the door away from this room and wearily shuffling away, every breath a fresh torment. There had to be supplies here somewhere; a coat, bandages, maybe even more food. As for where 'here' was? And what waited beyond? He couldn't care. He was already dead in some capacity, if any one of the things he'd been shown was true. Already dead, Dupree. All that matters is how far you get before you realize it.