Chapter 3
Chapter 3.
That was the start of Wade’s new routine, what he could make sense of it, anyway.
He was sent on a mission somewhere, fully restrained and guarded, with the guard’s thumb constantly on his collar’s controller. When they reached the destination where Wade was supposed to start killing people, he got fried until his head went quiet. Then he was given his orders: kill this or that guy, destroy this or that resistance/group/army, torture this or that guy until he or she talked.
Afterward, he’d come to, restrained and guarded again. Sometimes he wouldn’t come to at all and those chucklefucks would keep him all blank through the whole thing and he’d only wake up during transport to his next mission. He’d started to prefer that. If they kept him blank for long enough, sometimes he didn’t remember everything he’d done while under.
That was enough to make Wade really make an effort to be an annoying shit to his captors, and lo and behold, it wasn’t that difficult at all to annoy them enough to make them turn the collar on. And then Wade didn’t have to think again for a blessedly long time.
But sometimes he didn’t have a new mission waiting after the first one. And presumably, he still had to sleep sometimes, he wouldn’t know. So sometimes his captors threw him in a cell between missions, restrained so he couldn’t rip his head off to get rid of the collar. Yeah, he’d tried that once, he just should’ve made sure no one would catch him in the act, first. Whoopsie.
He hated the long waiting times in the cells the most. Hated waking up slowly, with the memory of a dark-haired woman on his lips. The woman always smiled and said his name and Wade knew he loved her. But he could never say her name back to her because he didn’t know what it was and he knew he should know it.
Turns out having your brain matter continuously burned off and grown back had some fun side effects memory-wise.
There was also a voice in his head now, which Wade thought was probably new, but he couldn’t be sure of that, of course. It was the same voice that whispered to him when he went blank. But when he wasn’t blank the voice didn’t bother whispering, hell no, mostly it just screamed, incoherent screeching of rage and sadness and hurt and although Wade fully agreed with that assessment of everything, it wasn’t exactly constructive criticism. Sometimes the voice told him to kill his captors, real classic voice-in-your-head stuff, and while Wade was very enthusiastic to follow that order, it always just ended with him twitching on the ground while pain drained all thoughts and feelings out of him and the screaming in his head slowly faded back to whispering he almost couldn’t even hear.
But hey, on a lighter note, Wade did catch those dipshits unawares a time or two. And oh, how he enjoyed getting his kicks and punches in before they could react, sinking his teeth into their flesh. He remembered killing at least one guard before his brain was flambeed and he held that memory very dearly, just behind the memory of the woman with dark hair.
--
He woke up again in the middle of a bloodbath. He idly watched blood trickle down the hilt of a knife he’d just stabbed into someone’s gut. It must’ve been a long mission, he realized, a little surprised to find he could think in actual sentences while still holding weapons. The man he’d just stabbed was a young one, more of a teenager than a grownup, really. Wade could see the light in his eyes dimming already. No healing factor for the poor sod, Wade was jealous.
The image of the dark-haired woman flashed through his mind again. He couldn’t remember what she looked like anymore, how she’d smiled, or what color her eyes had been. All he knew was that she’d had dark hair and that he’d loved her.
She would’ve been ashamed of me, he thought as he watched the kid die. The screaming inside his head started again.
Wade surveyed the room he was in. There was a woman huddled up in the corner, crying, terrified for her life, and another teenager hiding under a table, trying to not make a sound despite his hitching breath. Wade had orders to kill them all, along with anyone else he encountered at the house. He could vaguely remember carving his way into the place, through a mountain of bodies. He had no idea who any of these people were.
Behind Wade stood his guard of the day, a thumb firmly on the trigger of his collar.
“Get back to work,” the guard barked out, annoyed like this was something he had to tell Wade all of the time. Maybe he did, Wade was a little hazy on the details.
The screaming in Wade’s head stopped for a second, startling enough to catch his attention.
Hey, let’s fucking kill that guy, the voice suggested. Wade thought that was an excellent idea.
Wade rounded on the guy, who seemed to catch on quickly that something was wrong.
“Shit,” the man cursed and pressed the trigger. Wade flinched, waiting for the pain… that didn’t follow?
Wade opened his eyes uncertainly, to find the unlucky piece of shit in front of him clicking the trigger again and again to no avail. There was absolutely no pain in Wade’s head, just the voice laughing like a maniac.
Wade let out a chuckle too, giddy with relief and thoroughly enjoying the mounting horror in Mr. about-to-be-murdered-horribly’s eyes. ”Oh man, you’re so fucked.”
Wade broke the guy’s arm before he could press the button again. His screams were a balm to Wade’s soul. He really took his time to pummel the man to the ground, he couldn’t remember enjoying anything this much in, well, ever really, considering he couldn’t even remember last Tuesday.
Wade could hear the other people in the room make a run for the door while he was distracted, he silently wished them the best of luck.
The guard made one last pitiful whine before Wade killed him. He couldn’t linger here forever, he had to get out of here before someone came looking.
Wade exited the building, covered in blood and satisfaction thrumming through his veins. Huh. Now that was a new feeling. Even the voice had stopped screaming for once, though its mad cackling did sound mildly unhinged.
Wade disappeared into the crowd - or tried to anyway. He had a feeling he knew how to do this, once, but now all his memories were hazy or blank spaces, nothing where there should’ve been something. He had no idea where he was and he couldn’t speak the language. The people around him seemed to be mostly white, which didn’t exactly narrow it down. He also felt nauseous and his head hurt, recent memories had started to trickle through the void he called a brain. Mostly it was just memories of his latest missions. He’d killed a lot of people and he had no idea why or who they’d been. He felt like those things were important to know, before killing someone, or at least should’ve been. The screaming was now back again too, which, again, not constructive. Sheesh. Fickle fucking disembodied voices.
Wade hunkered down in the first nondescript hovel he found. His head hurt. He couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t think gay either. Ha-ha. Ow. Growing brain matter sucked. Oh hey, his last name was Wilson! He hadn’t known he had one of those.
He felt there was something else he should be doing besides hiding.
Getitoffmegetitoffme. Get it off me! Get. It. OFF. Me! The voice screamed and had been screaming for a while. It was easy not to notice these things when the voice was always screaming anyway.
It? Wade’s hands fell on the collar. Right. This fucking thing. Wade tried to pull the collar off himself with force but all he managed was making the damn thing go off, just a short burst of blanking pain to make Wade heave into a corner, a shaking mess.
Wade was in the middle of throwing up when he heard the telltale noise of footsteps hurrying toward his location. He was back on his feet in a second and muscle memory had him throwing himself on the first person through that door.
“He’s her-“ the words were cut short by a gurgling scream as Wade cut the guy's throat mid-sentence.
Wade managed to take out a couple of guards before someone with the trigger must’ve gotten in range of his collar and Wade dropped to the ground, screaming inside and out. He panickily tried to break the collar before it was too late but the creeping blankness won before he did.
Wade fell limp on the floor, his head going quiet. Somewhere in a far, abandoned corner of his mind, there was a whisper that sounded like it was crying.
Heavy footsteps landed next to him and kicked him in the ribs several times, hard. Wade’s body didn’t react.
“The fucking collar is broken!” a low voice growled. “I’ve been pressing the trigger non-stop since we got here and it only worked now. Fuck!”
There was a long round of everyone’s favorite game of ‘Let’s beat the shit out of Wade!’ before someone grabbed him by the arms and started dragging him away.
“We need to take him down for maintenance.”
“I hate dealing with that smarmy fuck, Ajax.”
“Everyone hates him. Just gotta suck it up this time.”