☆ CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT! ☆
028. the world from a box

|| SUCKER FOR PAIN ||
❝I torture you, take
my hand through the
flames, I torture you,
I'm a slave to your
games.❞

➳➳

THE SCREAMS I heard from my room were defined, like shadows that collected faces the more they hovered by the light.

It was strange how I could pin each scream, each pitch, to someone that I knew within seconds of the sound ringing out within my small cage. I could train the syllables to the people who bothered to pronounce the full words, and those that couldn't even finish a single shout when they were pushed so far it sounded like they were about to crack. I could tell how close they became by the length of the drawl and the volume, and I could tell by the exhaustion that no matter who it was that was screaming, they weren't saying a word.

I wasn't sure what was worse; the pain and torture that occurred just outside while I sat completely healed, or the knowledge that it was me that brought them here.

Or maybe, it was neither.

Perhaps the very worst part was that I knew it was coming. With each set of footsteps, and each turning of a door I withdrew into myself until there was nothing left but the voices that I foolishly thought had gone- until my cage was filled with more people then I had ever had around me in my life. And then, as the footsteps started again and another whisper rounded the corner, yet another would appear before I could crawl up a little bit more- only they kept getting worse.

It was friends to begin with. Like they were there to leave traces of hope in the sounds of people actually moving around without having to exclaim a death, or about how little they poked me with a pile full of accusations I could never match. They sent me smiles, occasionally in the darkest hours I felt them braiding my hair until I glanced around and saw the scrawny straws that replaced my hair that once bounced with volume. But when it happened next, I would believe it over and over without fail.

Then, Carmella and Evelyn turned into allies, and after that people that weren't even dead.

And then, when I couldn't even tell if it was the night or morning when the boots scratched the floor- enemy's taunted my very existence.

This time, and I heard two pairs follow up the hallway it was Atlas that stepped into the light. Even after all this time, his green eyes and tanned skin was in the highest definition my eyes could muster, and the slit that should of killed him was instead just one large white scar running across a face and neck that should of been lifeless. He smiled with teeth whiter than his skin should of been, and he laughed with a harshness I didn't think existed.

He shouldn't of exited, but he was there.

"I didn't try to kill you Lorna." Johanna managed to whisper out in her state of wheezing beside my cell.

She was the one that was thrown away like a toddler's oldest toy after her screams, but I could barely focus on it. Atlas kept staring with every single colour I had ever experienced inside his eyes, and in the middle, a light so white it would put an angel's wings to shame.

"I was supposed to get your tracker out." She continued as I felt a single drop of wasted water fall from my cold sweat. "That was the plan me and Beetee had, and I did do it. I got the tracker out of Katniss but I- there wasn't enough time.

Atlas tilted his head to the side as he taunted me. It was an unspoken challenge that he had thrown into my corner- a dare of sorts for me to speak up after days of just listening to the words everyone whispered around me. He was offering me a voice; maybe because I didn't quite remember his.

"I'm not sorry for hurting you, but you don't fucking know how sorry I am for not doing it in time." She swallowed once more, although I couldn't see her wince.

"You're the only thing I have left Lorna- please talk to me."

Go on, Atlas taunted once more with his deranged eyes. Even if the hatrid was supposed to be fake, it was the realest thing I had seen since my eyes first scanned the rocks for eyes. But I didn't know what to say- I didn't know what there was left for me to tell the girl that had risked her life for me, only for us both to fail.

"I'm sorry." I spat silently, but not at her. I just wanted him to to away.

"I did this to myself-"

"Just leave me alone." I cut her off. I was looking right at him now, with the same delirium he had sported so often it became his signature look. I felt hysteria bubble up after days of hearing so many visitors, only for this one to stay silent.

He blinked, and then a twisted smile made it's way from each tooth until his entire face was folded into it and it took over even his hatrid. Atlas was getting his rise; after days I felt the need to screech at something that wasn't just the impenetrable wall.

"Leave me alone!" I screamed at him, but he only smiled more. "Go away! Haven't you already taken enough?

The metal that encased my own door began to scream with me as it was pulled open, but I was too fixated on the actions of the only monster I had ever met to care. I screamed once more, this time taking a swing at his face when he pulled his fingers across his scars.

He was mimicking the way I killed him, and it had finally tipped me over the edge.

"Go away Atlas! Leave me alone!" Two Peacekeepers stopped me from falling when my fist went through his imagined skin. I didn't stop, I couldn't. "You killed him- you bastard, you killed him. I should of made you suffer, I should of-"

Electricity pulsed so quickly that it left me paralysed, and it wrapped handcuffs around my next scream before it could actually push its way out. As my flat brown hair lulled in front of my eyes I could smell the faint aroma of burning flesh and singed hair; my untied legs spasmed against the walls until the second Peacekeeper hissed for the other to stop.

"Stop it." The voice was laced with technology.

"Why should I?" The second man asked the first in an unnaturally low voice. "She's insane."

➳➳

The light slowly made my eyes ache.

Snow was nowhere to be seen, but one of the walls flickered occasionally like the force field would in the training room as I was getting stapped down with enough weight to crush me. And yet, I was so exhausted from my outburst that I couldn't bring myself to fight against it, or to hear anything other than the casual sway in each ear when they pulled me one way for the other.

Atlas still loomed over us, but his smile was replaced with the perfect frown.

The wall flickered violently until a hologram appeared with Snow's face on it, his ghastly smile and cold eyes were barricaded as he watched me with such an intensity that I felt like I had been pushed back. He loomed like Atlas did, but there was nothing young or ghost-like about his translucent white skin or his flickering imagine.

"Well I must admit I've seen you looking better Miss Titan."

I couldn't strain my neck to glance at the beard he kept so immaculate, but I could feel the vibrations of his voice as it channelled from two perfectly placed speakers into the seat I was left dangling from. When I tried to lift myself higher the floor beneath me split open, and just like a crack towards the centre of the Earth, the white tiles fell into the chasm created without even trying to hang on to the edge.

"Can you swim?" He teased maliciously as the floor continued to peel away until two thick metal chains were visible and a crane like machine rose from another side of the room. "Oh of course, Mr. Odair must have taught you."

My bare feet were curled over the edge of the pool like they had fingers of their own, and my hands gripped the metal around my waist so tightly it cut into my palm as I was lifted into the air. I'd never seen the appeal in flying, not when my entire body still felt like it was down in the depths of Hell beside the look Atlas was sending my way. I felt useless, completely out of control.

I didn't know if it was better to simply fall in.

"Your harnise will dangle you just above the boiling water- until I lower it so far it drops you in."

I hadn't noticed the bubbles that popped every couple of seconds as the water swayed against the generators; not even when it seemed so black instead of clear that I was sure it was intoxicated with dirt. I assumed it was the ground, but when the next tile dropped with a thunderous crash I saw the black water try to jump out.

It was the darkest thing I'd ever seen, and just like Atlas as he crouched to sit by the edge of the pool, I was sure it was real.

"Or you could tell us where Katniss Everdeen and the rebellion are. The choice is yours." Snow gestured to where the pool was as if it was some type to game; his eyes trained my already frantic legs as I was pulled further away from the ground one minute, and pushed down towards it the next. My heart had finally woken up from it's lazy Sunday meal, and the adrenaline that still managed to persist pushed every artery open a little bit more as I gasped for one solid breath.

I hadn't ever needed one good batch of oxygen for so long before, and I had never been so taunted by the face of somebody I used to know.

"Stop!" I groaned, right as Atlas dangled his foot almost into the water. With my scream, the crane dropped me a little bit lower.

"Stop it. Go away, please!"

Another drop, one that the President completed with an extra flourish I didn't catch between such clear green eyes. He only smiled at me as his black hair fell in front of a scar on his forehead- the President tried once more.

"Miss Titan?" Snow asked, his voice was even more unforgiving than before.

"You heard me." I called. "Leave me alone Atlas, just go away!"

There was a short second when I couldn't hear anything apart from my hear beat- when I was suspended in mid air and the boiling water hadn't encased me yet. It was stifling, and I thought about how the short cold breeze that flew through me would be the last comfortable feeling that I would feel for a very long time.

Because then the crane dropped me in, and Atlas still didn't leave.

••••••••••••
1951 words.

Well, that was eventful.......
My poor baby Lorna is
going through hell and it
makes me a lot more
reluctant to write these
chapters. I WANT THE
REBELLION TO GET THEIR
ACT TOGETHER ALREADY
AND GET OUR GIRL.