The silence was the first thing that really got to you. Not the absence of light, or the immobility, or even the numbness in the flesh. Its was a different silence from what most people knew. A dead silence. The kind that pressed in on your eardrums until you could hear the blood pumping through your own useless, paralysed limbs.
My MP3 player had died about an hour ago. One moment, I was lost in the prose of the novel I was listening to and the next, just… nothing. The sudden absence of sound had been like a physical blow. It had been my lifeline, that stupid little plastic brick. My only window out of this tomb, aside from his irregular appearances. Now, the only sound was the faint, almost subliminal whir of a fan, somewhere in the guts of this concrete box. Air conditioning, probably. He was meticulous about things like that. Climate control for his… captive.
It was pitch black. He hadn't been back to turn on the single, shitty bare bulb that usually illuminated my prison. My world. Funny, how quickly you could get used to a new definition of 'world'. This one mostly consisted of the rough texture of the canvas tarp beneath me, the slight, constant pressure of the pillows he'd arranged to stop bedsores (thoughtful, in his own detached, clinical way), and the taste of stale air.
Boredom. Gods, the boredom. It was a physical ache, worse than the phantom pains that still sometimes ghosted along my unresponsive spine. My mind, my beautiful, brilliant mind, was a finely tuned engine designed to build, to create, to destroy. And it was currently stuck in neutral, idling in the dark, with nothing to process but the texture of my own gag and the rhythmic, irritating whir of that damned fan.
I tried to reconstruct schematics in my head. The temporal stasis device he'd so casually, so infuriatingly, improved with a few spoken equations. His criticisms, damn him, had been… accurate. Annoyingly, infuriatingly accurate. It was like having your class assignments as a kid reviewed by a college professor, if said professor was a condescending, stuck-up dickbag.
And that was the really messed up part. A tiny, treacherous part of me almost… looked forward to those moments. When he'd talk, his voice that flat, neutral tone. Not often. Not about anything that mattered, not really. Mostly about my work. My babies. He'd sit there, on that rickety folding chair, surrounded by the disemboweled corpses of my beautiful creations, and he'd… analyze them. Critique them. Understand them. It was… stimulating. More stimulating than anything since Cornell, since the first glorious, world-shattering moment my power had bloomed.
Pathetic, Keiko. Absolutely pathetic.
Stockholm Syndrome. I knew the term. Read the papers. Another of his audiobook recommendations, slipped in between Machiavelli and some truly dreadful classical Japanese poetry. He was educating me, in his own twisted way. Or maybe just messing with my head. Probably both.
But was it really Stockholm if you kind of… respected the bastard? Not liked. Never liked. But respected? He was efficient. He was intelligent, worryingly so. He hadn't gloated, hadn't tortured me beyond the initial, necessary crippling. His care was impersonal, the bare minimum to keep his captive alive, but it was consistent. Food, water, even hygiene. Small comforts, but in this void, they were lifelines.
I tried to shift, a pointless, ingrained reflex.
The fan whirred. Wher-r-r-r-r.
I strained my ears, listening past it. For what? Footsteps? The distant rumble of the storage unit's main door? The click of his key in the padlock of my door?
Anticipation. That was the new, unwelcome guest in the echo chamber of my skull. Not just the dread of his return, of the next round of clinical ministrations or unsettling intellectual dissections. But… anticipation. For something to happen. For the darkness to be broken by that single, harsh bulb. For a voice, even his, to cut through this oppressive silence.
The thought was a dangerous one. I tried to push it away, to cling to the hatred, the fear. They were familiar anchors in this sea of helplessness. But the boredom, the silence, the darkness… they were relentless. They wore you down.
My throat felt dry. The darkness felt heavier now, pressing down. I wondered what time it was. How long since he'd last been here? He was late today. The routine was off. This felt longer than usual. A knot of something unfamiliar tightened in my chest. Not fear, exactly. More like… impatience. The way you wait for a delayed train, antsy, testy, your carefully scheduled day thrown into disarray.
Had something happened to him?
The thought sent a strange pang through me. Not concern. Not exactly. More like… annoyance. If he got himself killed, who would change my IV? Or feed me? I would starve with no way of getting help. More importantly, who would charge the damn MP3 player? Who would I talk to…
Damn him.
The fan whirred. Wher-r-r-r-r.
I closed my eyes, though it made no difference in the absolute blackness. Waiting. Just waiting. For the click of a lock, the scrape of a door, the return of my meticulous, maddening, indispensable captor.
Days like this, when the darkness and silence became a physical presence, when the only input was the numb ache of my body and the monotonous whir of that damnable fan, I wanted it to end. Just… stop. I'd find myself almost wishing he'd walk in, not with the nutrient paste and the wet wipes, but with something final. A needle. A bullet. A creatively designed little device of my own, turned back on its creator. Poetic, in a bleak sort of way.
But he wouldn't. He wanted me alive. For some goddamn reason.
My mind, starved for stimulation, gnawed on that particular problem like a dog with a dry bone. In the beginning, I figured he was a contractor. Some rival gang wanting to pick my brain, maybe steal my tech before putting me down. But the care… it was too meticulous for that. The IV fluids, the turning schedule he'd started me on after the first couple of days to prevent the worst of the sores, the way he cleaned me. No gangbanger would bother.
Then I'd flirted with the idea he was some rookie hero. One of those bright-eyed idiots who'd stumbled into something over his head, crippled me in a panic, and was now desperately trying to hide the evidence to save his precious reputation. But that didn't fit either. There was no panic in him. Just a chilling, unnerving calm. An absolute certainty. He'd dismissed my demand to know his motives with a lie so blatant it was almost insulting: a whim. Captured Bakuda, the Bomb Tinker of Brockton Bay, on a whim. Preposterous.
Regardless of his reasons, this wasn't a spa day. I was a villain, sure. A goddamn artist of destruction. Hundreds dead on my hands, cities scarred by my genius. But did I deserve this? This… prolonged, helpless, boring-as-all-hell indignity? No. I deserved a blaze of glory, a city-wide crater, a legend whispered in fear. Not this slow fade in a dark box.
So, yes. I hated him. The nameless, faceless (well, not entirely faceless anymore, I'd seen what he looked like under that ridiculous ski mask he'd worn the night he took me) bastard who'd done this to me. I wanted to kill him. Slowly. Preferably with something involving acid and a very small drill. I wanted to hear him scream. Or at the very least, kill him.
And the truly fucked up part? I could. I could kill him, even as I was.
The door rattled. My head, propped on the pillows, was already turned that way. The heavy corrugated steel groaned upwards, admitting a rectangle of dim, grey light from the corridor. His silhouette filled it for a moment – tall, leaner than I first thought. He stepped inside, dropped the heavy door back down with a clang that echoed in the sudden confinement. The fluorescent lamp above sputtered, flickered, then cast its cold, even glow over my world.
He dropped a plastic grocery bag in the corner. It crinkled. More supplies.
"Evening, Keiko," he said. Casual. Like he hadn't shot me in the spine. Like I wasn't his prisoner.
I managed a noncommittal grunt. It was the most defiance I could muster through the gag.
A smile touched his lips, making his blue eyes narrow in amusement. The bastard. He walked over, knelt, and carefully lifted the dead MP3 player from my chest, then plugged its charger into a nearby wall socket. The small red charging light was an obscenely cheerful beacon in the room.
Then he was beside me, those cool, competent hands beginning the routine. Propping my limp body against his, one arm securely around my shoulders. The scent of him – faint, clean, like soap and the outside air – filled my nostrils. He started to undress me for the daily wash.
It wasn't sexual. Not even a hint. Not even as his fingers grazed my breasts. His touch was firm, impersonal, efficient. The same way he'd handle a piece of delicate, unpredictable machinery. Which, I suppose, was exactly what I was to him. But still. Being stripped naked by a stranger, day after day… it never got less… weird. A strange, tight feeling built in my chest, my skin prickling before the cold of the wet towel even touched it. Goosebumps erupted as he methodically cleaned me, his movements practised, economical.
Soon it was over. He dried me with a soft towel, then dressed me in a fresh, loose-fitting cotton garment. Brushed my teeth, the minty paste a small, sharp shock. Then he turned his attention to the IV stand, checking the drip, preparing a new bag of saline.
As he worked, his shirt rode up, revealing the lean lines of muscle in his abdomen. He wasn't bulky, not like Lung or some of the Empire brutes. Stringy, almost, but with that whipcord strength you sometimes saw in gymnasts or rock climbers. And young. He couldn't be much older than me, early twenties at most. That baby fat I'd noticed on his face the few times I'd seen it properly – when he'd fed me or adjusted the gag – was almost gone now, leaving his features sharper, more angular. Tousled blond hair that always seemed to fall into his eyes. Objectively speaking, if you ignored the whole 'psychopathic kidnapper' vibe, he was… not unattractive.
My gaze flickered past him, to the corner where he kept my stuff. The cache of bombs. My beautiful, beautiful children. They were right there. Within arm's reach of him.
I could feel them. Not physically, not like a normal person would. But… in my head. A shimmering network of potential energy, a symphony of destructive possibilities. It was new, this… awareness. Since being here, paralysed, my power had shifted, mutated. It was no longer just about the building, the tinkering. Now, I knew them. Every circuit, every gram of explosive, every precisely calibrated trigger. I knew their yields, their blast radii, their unique effects and signatures. I could feel them humming, waiting.
I could set them off. Right now. A thought. A flex of will. And this whole damn storage unit, him included, would be a rapidly expanding cloud of superheated gas and regret.
I hated him. I wanted him dead. Atomized. Scattered to the four winds.
But…
My thoughts didn't twitch. My will remained… un-flexed.
Why?
He finished with the IV, the fresh bag dripping its steady rhythm. He moved to the corner, to the grocery bag. Pulled out a small container of nutrient paste, the oversized syringe he used to feed me. But also… a small, brightly colored bottle.
He mixed the paste, then came back, propped me up again. The syringe touched my lips. I braced for the usual bland, chalky taste.
But it was… sweet. Citrus. Orange, maybe? With a hint of something else, vanilla. My eyes widened, the surprise genuine.
"What…?" I managed, my voice raspy around the edges of the gag he'd momentarily loosened for feeding.
He paused, a flicker of something unreadable in those blue eyes. "You complained last time," he said, his voice that same, maddeningly neutral tone. "Said the paste was bland. I stopped for some food flavouring."
I remembered. An off-hand comment. A piece of petty bitching designed more to annoy him than anything else. I hadn't thought he'd even registered it, let alone… acted on it.
A weird, uncomfortable warmth spread through my chest. I squashed it ruthlessly.
"Well, aren't you just a ray of sunshine," I snarked, the words thick. "Since you're in such an indulgent mood, how about fulfilling my other desire? The one where you put me out of my misery?"
He laughed. Actually laughed. Not a smirk, not a chuckle. A rich, honest laugh that crinkled the corners of his eyes. It was… startling. I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard a sound like that, so devoid of malice or irony.
"Not a chance, Keiko," he said, the amusement still lingering in his voice. "You're not getting off that easily. Besides, you haven't had a chance to see the new place I got for you. It has this fancy massage bed that set me back a few grand. I am sure you would love it."
…What?
He offered the syringe again. I swallowed. The paste was still, fundamentally, paste. But the flavor… it was a small thing. A ridiculously small thing. But it was… something.
My gaze drifted back to the bombs. My babies. Just sitting there. So close. One thought. One spark.
And still, I didn't.
Why? Why? Why?
The question echoed in the sterile, whirring silence of my cage, unanswered.