Artificial Willpower

Guilt

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This time he didn't bother to play dead. With an understanding of the situation, closing his eyes felt dangerous. He knew full well he could do nothing to stop whatever was coming. But to stay alert almost made him feel better.

He opened his eyes, and quickly assessed as much as he could with his limited mobility. There were two guards stationed at the heavy duty door. Not any guards he had seen at the prison though. It made sense to him, because this... place didn't seem to be physically connected to the prison.

His eyes darted about the room. It was unnaturally clean and white. The air was hard to breathe, because of the heavy smell of disinfectant and chemicals. He saw a couple other people in lab coats looking over some papers on an bland monotone desk.

His eyes finally landed on Doctor Pitch, who was on the other side of the room. He had a coffee mug sitting next to him as he typed on a computer that looked mounted onto the wall.

The metal felt cold beneath Yancy, and he could feel his wrists getting rubbed raw beneath the straps. As he stared at Dr. Pitch, the physical pain faded, as pure hatred for and fear of the doctor took its place.

He knew neither emotion would get him anywhere. Not if they were raw. If he could possibly harness the anger and let the fear increase reflexes... there would have to be a window of opportunity for him to try anything though. Mindlessly yanking at the restraints would only put them on guard and wouldn't get him anywhere.

But how long did he have? How much longer before they literally took off parts of him and added new ones?

The thought made him feel like vomiting. The heavy smell of chemicals with the unsavory hint of lemon that the disinfectants held wasn't helping his nausea.

Doctor Pitch pressed one last key. He picked up the coffee mug, and took a swig of it, before setting it down and looking at Yancy once again.

The Doctor looked tired, like last time, but more irritated as well. He got up " that set back our schedule. And showing up passed out had already heavily delayed things. We're on a tight schedule, Mr. Jones" he said sharply.

Yancy kept any emotionally charged words back. He couldn't have them more on guard than they were. He couldn't let them know how he'd love to smash the doctor's mug over his head...

" Why can't youse just operate on me while I'm passed out..? Youse ain't gonna do it with me awake, right?" He tried to keep his voice steady, but it still wavered.

Dr Pitch picked up his clipboard "Since all of this is done legally, there's technicalities and formalities that are required. One of which is the specific sedative they issued. In order for it to give a properly artificially induced sleep, the subject needs to be completely awake. You were hardly awake for 15 minutes last time, not allowing time for everything to be fully functioning."

Yancy tried to shift, feeling uncomfortable on the hard metal, only to feel the pain in his wrists again. He tried not to think about what was going to happen. He tried not to think about how they saw him as less than a rat here.

He forced those unhelpful thoughts back.

The two other doctors were now watching him as well. He turned his head to look at them. There was a woman, maybe in her mid 30s. She had brown hair pulled into a bun, a grey button up and black pants.

The other looked the youngest of anyone in the room. Yancy was 28, but this Doctor looked just a little younger. He also seemed the most anxious. The young blond doctor was tapping his pen absently on his leg. When Yancy looked at him, the doctor looked down at some papers in his hand as if there were suddenly the most interesting things he had ever seen.