Chapter 2
Chapter 2.
The next time Francis was ready to receive Wade, he was rolled to the operating room, where Francis was already waiting for him with a whole fucking tableau of horrors. There were all kinds of sharp and exciting knives there on display, a big electric-looking box with wires coming out of it, and probably a boogeyman hiding in a dark corner somewhere.
“Wow, Francis, all this for little old me? Is it Christmas already?” Wade tried to hide his mounting fear behind flippant words. “Some of those knives look pretty phallic, compensating for something there Francie-boy?”
Francis smiled mildly, as usual with no feeling behind the eyes. He was like a creepy-ass painting with that never-changing expression. Wade didn’t know how, but Francis was definitely getting off on the torture somehow.
“Normally I’d have to sedate my patients for something as invasive as this or the stress and pain might end up killing them. But with your wonderful new healing factor, that won’t be a problem. Hell, I won’t even have to give you painkillers.”
Wade tried to struggle again as Angel strapped him down to the surgery table face-down but her grip was unyielding and Wade had to watch helplessly from the corner of his eye as one of the facilities doctors picked up a knife and stepped closer.
They had to gag him almost immediately after the surgery began. Apparently, his screaming and cursing was making it more difficult for the surgeons to focus.
Wade could feel in excruciating detail as the doctors cut his skull and neck open and dug around in there like he was a car jacked up for maintenance. He fainted several times during the surgery, every time hoping he wouldn’t wake up again. No such luck.
“The incisions won’t stay open,” one of the doctors complained. “His healing factor is too fast. Makes for tricky brain surgery.”
Wade blearily wished them a hellish death.
“That should do it. But we should check it works as intended.” From the corner of his eye, Wade could see one of the doctors flip a switch on the big electric box next to him and pick up one of the wires. The wire disappeared as it was brought to the back of his skull.
The following burst of electricity straight to his brain made him faint immediately.
--
Wade’s dumb fucking healing factor meant that he was already physically fully healed the next day after the surgery. Angel carted him off to the same room with the oxygen tube and the chair. Wade tried not to glance at the tube as he focused on keeping his breathing steady. Fuck if he let Francis see fear in him.
“Missed me already Francis? I’m sorry but you’re just too clingy for me, I think we should break up.”
Wade was surprised when Angel freed him from the gurney and didn’t immediately strap him down to anything else and just held onto his shoulder tight as he was allowed to stand on his own two feet for the first time in who the fuck knew how long.
Francis smiled, as per usual. “Raise both hands above your head, Mr. Wilson.”
“Go stick your head in a blender, shitwad.”
Wade was ready for the pain when it hit, this time. But it was different from the last time, it was like the whole fucking thing was focusing entirely on his skull. Wade dropped to the floor, screaming and writhing and clawing at his skull to make the pain stop. It was indescribable, like, like his brain had been lit on fire and stabbed at the same time. He must’ve been dying, he hoped he was dying. He thought he could smell his flesh burning and he couldn’t breathe anymore, he couldn’t – he couldn’t –
And then he couldn’t think at all anymore. There was just the pain and nothing else, no thoughts, no words, no person outside of the pain. And beyond the pain, there was just an endless quiet, with the faint echoes of receding pain and the feeling of his brain slowly healing itself.
“Stand up, Mr. Wilson,” Francis ordered.
Wade didn’t move, not understanding the words, not enough of a person to react.
The collar went off again, a shorter burst this time, and Wade screamed and shuddered through it, the horrible quiet swallowing him up whole.
Francis grabbed Wade’s head to make sure he had his full, undivided attention. Wade stared blearily back, head eerily quiet. He didn’t know what was going on, what was wanted of him.
“If you don’t do exactly as I tell you, the pain will come back, Wade. Now, stand up.”
Wade didn’t understand the words, didn’t know what was going on. But he knew pain and his empty husk of a body would do anything to make it stop.
Wade’s body dragged himself to his feet, unsteady and wobbly.
Francis smirked and then there was no more pain.
--
Francis wasn’t satisfied so easily. Not with just one test, no, no. The following days he seemed to take a lot of pleasure in testing Wade’s new functions. He fried Wade’s brain until he was an obedient zombie and watched how long it took for Wade’s brain to knit itself back together, how long it took before he started to resist orders.
He took detailed notes on how long Wade needed to be zapped to make him compliant for the longest possible time and how much was too much so that it left Wade catatonic on the ground until his whole brain had grown back again.
Francis seemed to enjoy testing Wade’s limits, especially when it turned out that zombified Wade didn’t have any.
There wasn’t a lot of ramping up needed with dear old Francis, the sadistic fuck. Sometimes he’d give Wade relatively innocent commands (“Stand on your left leg, wiggle the fingers of your right hand, do the hokey pokey”) and then sometimes it was just shit that was meant to humiliate or hurt Wade (“Punch yourself in the stomach, kneel on the floor, lick my shoes clean”). There didn’t seem to be any pattern behind it, as far as Wade could tell. Not that Wade could tell much, with how confused the frying of his brain always left him afterward.
But the worst part of it all was that Wade’s brain always, always healed itself eventually and then he had to remember exactly what he’d done while offline.
Wade would just lay there, strapped to his gurney like he always was when he wasn’t being tortured, and feel his brain slowly start to function again, thoughts trickling back to him. The first thing he always remembered was Vanessa, like his brain wanted to remind him of what was the most important.
It felt like coming awake from a deep slumber, the kind where you woke up all confused and stupid. Often, he had his eyes closed too and thought Vanessa was right there, laying next to him in bed, that he was back in their apartment and his life was still right there, waiting for him. Then he invariably remembered the rest of it. What’d been done to him, what he’d agreed to, what he’d done when ordered this time. And then he tried real hard not to think of Vanessa again until the shame of it all dulled a little.
-
Wade was carted off to Francis’ special playroom again. Francis looked downright giddy to see him, as much as a sociopathic brit could, anyway.
“I’m afraid this will be our last time together, Mr. Wilson. You’re about to be sold off to your new owner today. You know, I think I’m almost going to miss you.”
“Fuck you, you limey, cocksucking excuse for a Spice Girl. Don’t think I won’t escape and brutally murder you, sooner or later.” Wade tried to convince himself he could still find a way to escape, his chances might be better after he was sold off, he could still have his life back one day. He could still be a person.
Francis smiled blandly and made Wade’s collar zap him until he was a vegetable again.
Francis looked down at Wade on the gurney and smiled. Some part of Wade, deeper than thought, turned his head to avoid the gaze.
Francis unstrapped Wade from the table, taking his time with it. Wade’s body lay there, unresponsive.
“Get on the ground, on your knees,” Francis told him.
Wade’s body obeyed without resistance, the quiet ringing in his ears so loud and empty. Some part of him, quiet even in the all-encompassing silence, whispered that he shouldn’t follow orders. But Wade’s body had long since learned how to avoid pain and so it didn’t listen to anything but the silence.
“Look up and open your mouth,” Francis told him with his eyes firmly fixed on Wade’s, a grin on his face.
Wade’s body did as it was told.
Francis unzipped his pants and pulled out his cock, already half-hard. He shoved the thing into Wade’s mouth. Wade gagged around the intrusion but his body didn’t move, listening to the dying echoes of his brain.
“Suck it,” Francis ordered, almost out of breath.
Wade’s body complied.
Francis shoved in and out of him roughly, grabbing the sides of his head to be able to go in deeper.
“This is much less fun now that you’re as ugly as you are. The pretty face would’ve been better for fucking. Guess I can’t get everything, huh?”
Francis finished inside his mouth quickly and told Wade to swallow. He did.
Francis finished buttoning himself up and bent down to Wade’s level on the floor. “What’s my name?”
Wade’s body didn’t answer, it couldn’t talk without a brain.
Francis smiled. “See, Mr. Wilson, I told you we’d fix that mouth of yours yet.” He turned away from Wade, satisfied by all counts. “Get him cleaned up for transport,” he said to Angel, out of Wade’s field of vision.
--
The next time Wade woke up, he was already in a helicopter, mid-transport.
Wade didn’t waste time, as soon as his first executive functions trickled back in he attacked his captors in a blind rage, his only goal to kill as many of them as he could. The slave exchange must’ve happened already, because none of the people on the helicopter were Francis but right now Wade didn’t care who he killed.
He’d barely gotten as far as snapping the neck closest to him when the collar was turned back on and Wade dropped to the floor, screaming.
This time Wade fucking welcomed the silence.