The Binding, Part 3

[gamemakers]

Who| Karkat (possibly Ruffnut, Darcy, Harley, Aragorn, and/or Haruto later) + a surprise guest or two...
What| Rebels must be punished. Here is but a little sample of what some of them have experienced.
Where| A prison in the capitol.
When| Three days after the break-in.
WARNINGS| Police brutality, brainwashing.

It’s been three days since they were arrested. Three days in private cells wondering what might happen to them. They've been given nothing more than bread and water by the rather furious peacekeepers working there. There’s a definite impression that the chaos caused is coming down on them more than it is on those apprehended. And they are not happy about it. The peacekeepers look for any excuse to brandish their taser wands. Occasionally the guards talk to one another, complaining in hushed tones being denied justice, how if it were up to them, well, it wouldn't be pretty.

The cells are bright and there are no windows, making it difficult to keep track of the time. There’s no word in or out of what’s happening to anyone. But time does pass and eventually the cell door opens. Peacekeepers drag you roughly with tight bruising grip, regardless of whether or not you are resistant.

Comments

[crabmunicator]

His hissing dies off, or at least subdues when they tell him that. Nothing happened? What do they mean, nothing happened? Something definitely happened and these people wouldn't be stuck here, worrying, waiting, if not for all of it, all their effort.

The one on the right gets another pain sound out of him for the jerk.

The rest filters in too damn slow. He's not going to be shot? And if it's "nothing" then where are they taking him? What for? He can barely tell whether to be glad or not that he's going to live before they come up on the white door, and the wait does nothing to reassure him. All he does is try to get his good leg under him better to take the pain off the right.

Are they going to hurt him? Are they going to torture him? Is he going to be interrogated for answers, or made an Avox, or threatened, or--?

The door opens, and they force him again to step inside and sit, dragging up another curse before he can settle, sweaty and breathing hard from fear and exertion. He can't see well with how bright the lights are - he's nocturnal, you bastards - and he squints to fight against it and try to make out what else is in this room with him.

[carnagecarnival]

It's traditional for Avoxing teams to compete with one another. The longest time for the making of an Avox took four months. The shortest ever on record, three days.

It's been three days.

The door slams shut as the Peacekeepers vacate. There's another chair in the room with Karkat. There's someone seated upon it.

He's dressed still in a white patient's gown, clearly taken straight from his treatment to where he sits now (and clearly expected to return to said treatment), with his head bowed and his hands upon his knees. His cheeks are hollow and bruised, but not near as much as his eyes seem to be. They are completely and utterly blank. He looks a lot smaller than he really is.

The Initiate doesn't make a sound.

[crabmunicator]

Karkat's eyes finally find their focus, the rings of his irises tightened sharply against the harsh light. He sees a figure, a chair: someone seated, dressed in white. A shape on the lap, hands. Grey hands. His eyes trail up.

In his own way he can't look much better, with makeup smeared and rubbed off, his costume torn with bloody holes around where his leg was shot. His contacts are out and he lost his wig somewhere along the way, and he hasn't had a shower in three days. He's tired, bruised, scraped, sweating still for all his nerves won't calm.

He tries to swallow. He can't.

For all he looks like shit, the person sitting before him is worse off.

"M... Makara?"

His lids twitch around his eyes. White gown like in human hospitals, a hollow face, blank gaze: none of those say anything good. There is something coiling tight in his gut. The troll sitting before him means a cocked gun, but he can't tell where the shot's going to come from.

[carnagecarnival]

The name means nothing in his ears. Karkat may as well have not spoken a single thing. Karkat may well be as muted as the one before him.

There's a static crackle in the air. It may take Karkat a minute to figure out what it is, for there is no visible source. But then the voice comes. It's not the Initiate's.

"You know your orders. You remember the details of your task. Fix this, all of it."

Only now does the Avox's head lift up, the voice of one of his many masters tugging at his puppet strings. Though he didn't respond to Karkat, he is not deaf. Though his eyes are blank and empty, he can still see.

He sees the look upon Karkat's face, the shock and growing horror. He knows when they flip switch, because suddenly, he can feel it.

The order comes; "Wipe him."

The Avox's eyes blink and all at once they are bright, flashing between pink and indigo at rapid speed. The fear that comes is nothing like Karkat's known, and yet made up all of old fears. It's a lifting of boards, wood whining as it's pried free, nails snapping off in all directions. He dodges artfully past them all, the thousand little details, and lifts the next pieces. All it takes is a simple switch. An erasing of this very moment right here. A placing down of a plot, a treachery, a manipulation and betrayal. It's all too easy, playing right upon fears the victim already has; painted faces and utter uselessness as it all comes apart. It makes perfect sense, with a looming figure of mythical daymare and the execution of another ancestor alike. It's simple as the flick of a switch. Even easier than the making of an obedient non-person that has been one already.

And then, for Karkat at least, there is nothing.

[crabmunicator]

He jerks at the sound of static, looking up and worried all the more for not knowing where it comes from, but it turns out that that part doesn't even matter. Orders? Fix this? What does it mean? What's going to happen--?

The Initiate looks up, and Karkat's gaze twitches back. He is scared, more than the worrying unease and fear for what happened to him. Then comes the last order, and he has no time to process before it's happening to him.

It's like the first time but not at all, a rumbling discourse of nerves and unease replaced with a torrent of horror. The rapid shift of color bleeds out into his own vision, eyes a mirror of those causing it, but the awareness lifts out of his brain as easily as picking off a speck of lint.

He can see it: the moments he went through, the very day Initiate sat him down and told him everything, each word laid like a promise to ruin but meant in terms he never knew. Every conversation made in lies, the start of a friendship knit together like a web, choking, entangling, snaring him up. It hurts, like seeing Gamzee covered in blood, like the sword through his chest, like the lava that finally burned him to death. A clown is a clown is a FUCKING CLOWN, from Gamzee on up to the great, looming terror of the Grand Highblood himself, the troll who ordered his ancestor's death, who brought pain and suffering and an end to any farcical hope that their society could be any different.

A scream has started up in his throat and played through the process. From soft little noises, the start of the real dread, on and up, louder, sharper, harsher until he shakes with it. His throat might taste like blood for how raw he screams it at the end, but his mind is all on what he sees.

It's him--

It was always him--

And following him would only mean the same.

Suddenly, easily, like the cutting of a puppet's strings, Karkat falls silent, unconscious, and off the side of his chair.

[carnagecarnival]

Karkat collapses, slumping to fall of his chair. The Avox still doesn't react, but in a short moment, his eyes cease their flash, going dull and empty once more. His task is complete.

The doors open up again and he's ordered out, others going and taking his place for whatever purpose they had in mind. In short time, they would handle the waking Karkat and inform him of his freedom, his safety, and show all reason why he should give gratitude-- though he does not know this. It was not his place to ponder and he doesn't do so.

For now would be a return to the Avox conditioning center for further conditioning. There was to be a show and he would soon need to stand attendant. The victory of the Capitol was not something to stay seated for.