Blood must have dried on his eyes; he couldn’t open them all the way, though he’d been awake for several moments.

They’d strapped him onto a cool metal table. The chill air of the room raised goose bumps along his skin and he knew without looking or running a hand over his thigh that he was naked. He felt shriveled and small and each quiver of cold made his muscles ache. Every breath he drew was painful and he could feel the skin drawing tight across his bruised diaphragm. He desperately wanted to curl in on himself, lick his wounds, but he couldn’t.

He could hear movement outside the room. He turned his head toward the door and found it open. He didn’t suppose it mattered, he couldn’t move.

He heard footsteps and a squeaky wheel heading in his direction. The sound echoed down the hallway, echoed through his brain as the headache he’d woken with pounded anew against the back of his eyes.

He jerked his head around and as the wheel stopped outside his door. A small, round, hairless head peered through the crack.

“Awake, are you?” The man left again, and the wheel, which JC could now see was attached by long, rickety legs to a small tray, resumed its squeak.

“Good for people to be awake, before they’re activated.”

JC didn’t give him the satisfaction of crying or pleading or even wincing at this pronouncement, nothing that indicated his understanding.

He watched as the man prepared a shot, sticking a long needle into a small vial and drawing back on the syringe until the bottle was emptied. He flicked the syringe to bring the air bubbles to the top.

JC squeezed his eyes shut. Activation he could maybe handle, needles he could not. Every muscle in his body tensed in anticipation and he hissed as he flexed bruised muscles.

“Oh, you don’t want to do that,” the man said, grinning. “It’ll hurt more.” With a small laugh, he jabbed the needle into the flesh of JC’s shoulder.

JC screamed as the man pushed the drug into his veins. He could feel it spreading down his arm like liquid fire, burning a path as it went. It moved back up, over to his chest, and his back arched, stretching the already bruised and damaged muscles of his stomach and chest.

He felt every cell in his body scream in protest as the drug spread. He could suddenly hear things beyond the corridor, could see the individual pits in the metal plated ceiling, could feel every inch of the metal touching his skin, burning like cold fire through his back.

He’d never felt such extreme pain.

“They’ll fade, your senses. When it decides which one it wants to save.” The man might have been talking in a normal tone, but to JC’s ears it sounded like shouting.

JC barely noticed when he left.