dramatispersonae | (no subject)

(no subject)

You lurch sideways with the abrupt sensation of being punched in the heart.

For a few moments, darkness clouds your vision. You can't breathe, your chest is clenching, you gasp and no air comes. Your skin crawls with frantic fear. Your body feels heavy, your limbs awkward, your belly distended. Needle-shocks of pain shoot through your legs, and you want to throw up, but can't. You're hiccuping; you hear someone screaming and you can't tell whether it's you. Your mind feels fragmented, and for a moment, you cannot even remember your name--

Everything goes black.

And then you are, almost gently, set on your feet in a new place...

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What is this. . .?

"An escape plan," he says dryly, swallowing and hanging his spoon on his nose. "Of sorts."

Escape plan. . .?

[. . .

eyes the rations and offers the swiped apple]

He blinks at that, and reaches for it hesitantly.

"They can't ever use me to replace Miles again. Even if he does make it back alive...do you want that for something?"

[shakes his head]

Please take it.

He takes it, and starts polishing it on his plain knit pants, then digs around in his ration tray, cleans something off, and holds it out to you.

"Here."

It's a broken third of a sphere, black with purple flecks.

[takes it]

What is this?

"A...piece of me." He flops back against the wall, ration tray still in his lap, takes a slow bite of the apple, savoring it. "God, that's so good after trays of the same damn freeze-dried meal. Thanks. It needs to go somewhere, I don't know where, but..."

. . .Then I will keep it safe until I find the right place.

"Thanks." He scrubs his hand over his face, takes another bite of apple.

Is there anything else. . .?

He just shakes his head.

"The next part sucks. The next part's why I...like doing this to myself." A vague wave at the crate of food, his swollen belly--though not nearly as swollen as in the monitors. "It was so I wouldn't look like Miles, but...I liked it. I could eat all I want and nobody would..."

He trails off into his exhausted depression again.

"Doing this"? Eating?

"I...couldn't, before. Not enough, anyway. Always hungry."

[. . .nods]

Alright. Thank you.

[m-m-moving on?]

The door is half-blocked by the crate of food, but with the sphere fragment on you, it seems remarkably easy to shove aside.

[onwards!]

The door creaks open, revealing yet another twisting, claustrophobic corridor, no doubt leading to a third dead-end door, lined with monitors and speakers. Paleon is beyond screaming now, breathing in tiny, agonized gasps around the feeding tube, belly swollen beyond belief. "Mostly raw fat and caloric content, of course," one of the techs is explaining pleasantly, "along with assorted metabolic aids to speed digestion and fat deposition. You'll be glad for the digestive aids when the next feeding comes in three hours, I'm sure. And anti-emetics, of course, the strongest we've got. You won't be able to throw it up, no matter how hard you try."

. . .

[staring at the ground and briskly moving through the corridor tyvm]

You're in a small, cell-like room made entirely of black metal. As you enter it, a strange combination of smells assault your nose, simultaneously tantalizing and nauseating. To one side stands a dinner table, holding the leftovers of a truly sumptuous meal. To the other is a treadmill, and to one side lies Paleon, teenaged and scrawny, shirtless, red-faced and sweaty with sheer exhaustion, with light burns on his back and shoulders, in a puddle of vomit. The electric tang of ozone hangs in the air.

The door you came from has disappeared, leaving only a blank wall. The way forward is a heavy black door just past the slowly spreading pool of vomit.

Paleon-san––?!

[going to check on him]

He's just kind of oozing there for a few moments, coughing, hyperventilating from exertion.

With a staticky hiss, a brief, hallucinatory image flashes across the walls of the room--the young Paleon, clutching a glass of water, hands shaking with hunger. "The hell--come on, it's been five days, give me something--"

"No food," a man's voice snaps. "No food until you're back down to his weight. I don't care if it takes a month, Miles, you know what's necessary."

[reflexively looking for the source of the voice]

Who. . .?

The images disappear again, like some sort of ghost of a memory. And then another image hisses and flashes across the walls, here and gone in a second.

"That was just to celebrate, it can't stay in your system, you know that. Don't be foolish. Keep running." An electric snap, an angry pained moan. Paleon running on the treadmill, nauseous from exertion, a man shocking him painfully with a stick-like tool every time he stumbles.

Room empty except for the young Paleon, finding his breath, slowly picking himself up from the puddle.

[attention drawn back to Paleon, trying to carefully help him]

Hey. . .

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