[chaptered] Breaking Zero Kelvin - Chapter 13 (Brain in the Vat)
since I'm currently on a ~holiday of sorts~ i am going to attempt to post this more regularly sigh.
Title: Breaking Zero Kelvin (Multichapter)
Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx)
Pairing: Kazuyuri
Genre: Fantasy/Scifi
Summary: AU. They are two runaways, chased out of society through a deep-rooted stigma though they have no say in it at all. Only relying on word-of-mouth rumours and a set of sketchy directions, they now have to set out on their own journey to accomplish the impossible: escape.
Notes: Character list here.
Previous chapters: Prologue | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12
~
13: Brain in the Vat
Once again time begin to meld together for Tae. She had given up trying to tell when it was night and when it was day, since all twenty-four hours were spent in the same dimly lit cell.
A couple more interrogations went by in the week that followed after the public opening, each even more painful to endure than the last.
“They’re getting desperate,” Shizuna told her. “It happened to me too. Probably means that your trial is coming soon, so they know they don’t have much time left to get information out of you.”
Tae sighed, running her fingers gingerly over a rather large scab on her leg that had formed after Professor Clipboard had decided to pull out a cat-o-nine-tails to use for a little while.
“It would be a lot better if they just came to the conclusion that I’m not going to spill anything and just stop the torture,” she muttered.
Shizuna shook her head sadly.
“They think you’ll become desperate, especially after your trial. They’ve been telling me they’ll postpone my execution if I give them information, but all the same I haven’t told them much, really.”
“I hate this place,” Tae groaned eventually, trying to curl up to go to sleep while ignoring the screaming protests of her legs and various scars. “If not for the fact that there are officers everywhere I’d try to fuse that interrogator’s clipboard to his face and make a break for it.”
Shizuna bit back a short laugh, and grinned ruefully.
“If only,” she said. “They drug our food, Tae. Haven’t you noticed that you’re no longer able to even sense your pool of magic within you?”
Closing her eyes and concentrating, Tae realized that Shizuna was correct. Whereas before she could feel the well of magic within her like a candle flame, now she could feel nothing but emptiness, and a thick wall that seemed to prevent her from sinking any deeper in an attempt to access her magic.
“Is the effect temporary?” she asked, and Shizuna shrugged.
“I’ve never tried starving myself for long enough to know,” she muttered dryly. “Dying of starvation’s got to be a more painful death than whatever they’re using to execute us.”
Stretching her arm in front of her, Tae uncurled and curled her fingers idly.
“True,” she whispered.
~
Kei watched idly as Kenta began to practice making a clone in the likeness of Tae.
“Don’t overexert yourself,” Kohei murmured, and Kenta made an indistinct mumble in response.
Taking his eyes off Kenta, Kei turned to Kohei.
“What happens if he does overexert himself?” he asked curiously, never having actually exhausted his own magic before.
Kohei’s face clouded.
“The last time it happened, he was pretty much out for a really long period of time. Magic is like our energy, what keeps us moving, so if we use it all up our bodies will shut down or something until we’ve gotten back enough. I had to spoonfeed him for ages and hope he managed to digest whatever food I gave him the previous time. Not a good experience, really.”
Pulling a face, he shot back another worried glance at Kenta, who was now working on the clone’s face.
“It’s scary how he can do that after he saw her only once,” Kohei continued, abruptly changing the topic.
Kei followed his gaze and saw that the face of the clone did indeed look a lot like Tae, only with slightly darker, straggly hair and several injuries and bruises replicated in scarily close detail.
“He’s an artist,” Kei said dryly. “I guess it’s some naturally ingrained talent or something?”
“Just like his talent to eat anything and think it tastes good?” Kohei asked jokingly, and they both laughed while Kenta pretended to ignore them, putting the finishing touches on his clone.
“How does it look?” he asked them quietly once they had stopped laughing.
Feeling Kohei’s and Kenta’s gazes on him, Kei studied the clone critically.
“Looks good,” he said, and Kenta smiled at him, before snapping his fingers and dispelling the clone. Almost immediately, he sagged to the ground and Kohei rushed up with a can of beans to start shoving into his mouth.
Kei turned his head to glance at the makeshift calendar they had carved into a stick. Long scratches represented days, while little dot-like gouged-out holes represented night. The next weekend was approaching, and with it their next opportunity to put their plan into motion.
Wait for us, Tae, he thought silently, as though she could hear him. We’re coming for you.
~
It came as a huge surprise to Tae when they had gotten off at a different floor.
The officer had come for her, as usual, and she had begun to mentally prepare herself for another interrogation session. However, they got off at a different floor, and she found herself being led down a set of unfamiliar corridors, before stopping outside a particularly large brown metal door.
“Wait here,” he growled at her, before rapping smartly on the door.
A small side window opened, and the officer muttered something in lowered tones to the person peeking out of it. After a while of whispering, the window was closed again, and then the door was pulled open from the inside.
What met Tae’s eyes was a courtroom, only next to where the judge was standing was something huge covered by a sheet that had a screen standing next to it. The officer roughly shoved her into a chair standing on a platform in the middle of the room, and immediately metal bands shot out to shackle her in place.
“Yoshitaka Yuriko?” the judge asked her in a booming voice, and she nodded mutely. The judge pursed his lips and nodded, before turning back to his papers.
“You have been arrested for being a witch, and for committing crimes against Central. Do you deny this?”
Everybody in the room suddenly turned to look at her, and Tae squirmed uncomfortably under the hostility in their gaze.
“Answer the question,” the officer standing behind her hissed, and she scowled a little.
“I did not commit any crimes against Central,” she said, slightly grumpy.
The judge raised an eyebrow.
“You do not deny being a witch, though?”
Tae said nothing, and suddenly the screen standing next to the judge sprang to life.
SHE IS A WITCH AND SHOULD BE TRIED AS SUCH
“Of course,” the judge murmured, eyes scanning the line of text that had appeared on the screen.
SHE IS GUILTY
Murmurs of agreement rose at this, and Tae’s eyebrows scrunched in confusion. What on earth was producing those words on the screen?
She voiced this question in a quiet undertone to the officer behind her, who snorted.
“That is iT,” he growled to her. “iT is not a thing, so show some respect, witch.”
Somehow, the judge seemed to have heard this, for he smirked before signaling to some people behind him. They ran up and pulled away the sheet obscuring the large thing behind him.
The sheet fell away to reveal something dark pink swimming in green liquid.
It was a brain. In a vat of liquid.
GIVE HER THE DEATH PENALTY, typed the brain in the vat.
~
Kohei watched as Kei fought against an imaginary enemy.
“I don’t even get why you do that,” he said dryly after Kei had pinned the imaginary enemy to the ground and was holding his glowing gun to its imaginary forehead.
“I’m bored,” came Kei’s reply. “Besides, I haven’t fought anyone in ages. This is good practice.”
He ignored Kohei rolling his eyes and went back to his fight. Next to Kohei, Kenta chewed on a piece of dried cuttlefish, eyes following Kei.
“He’s just got too much pent-up energy,” Kenta said calmly. “That’s all.”
Kohei snorted, reaching over to rip off a small piece of cuttlefish from the uneaten end of Kenta’s large piece.
“He’s going to be exhausted tonight though,” he pointed out, stuffing the fishy morsel into his mouth.
Kenta shrugged.
“It’s only a couple more days, really.”
“True,” Kohei sighed.
~
If Tae hadn’t been in a crowded courtroom filled with officers she would have screamed her lungs out.
As it was, she could only stretch her eyes wide in horror, staring at the brain in the vat in utter disgust and horror.
The thing we’ve been taught to love and revere all this while in the convent is just a brain in a tube of liquid?!
Nobody seemed to pay any mind to her outright horror at iT’s appearance. In fact, if anything they looked quite entertained by it.
“The death penalty, you say?” the judge asked, addressing the screen now.
YES.
“That sounds like a fair punishment,” continued the judge, scribbling something down. “When should we schedule it?”
Tae felt rather annoyed by this.
Don’t I get a say in this too, if it’s a trial?
Again, she asked the officer behind her about this, and he smirked down at her.
“Witches don’t get a say in anything,” he told her coldly. “You see, only normal citizens get lawyers and such.”
Tae fought hard to keep a deep scowl from forming across her face, and turned back to face the judge again. It appeared that the brain had announced a date, though she had missed it while talking to the officer.
“It is settled,” the judge growled. “The execution of the witch Yoshitaka Yuriko will be in two and a half weeks from now. End of trial.”
Taking that as a cue, the officer freed her from the chair and bound her hands back into handcuffs.
Tae was silently led from the room.
~
“It’s night,” Kenta called from his perch on the ladder. Nodding, Kohei marked another hole on their calendar.
“We’re running low on water,” he called back up to Kenta, who looked thoughtful.
“I’ll go,” he said. “With Kei.”
Scrambling up the ladder, Kei followed behind Kenta as they headed to their usual haunt, leaving Kohei to guard their campsite in the tunnel.
The streets were silent as usual, and nobody interrupted them as they fetched several packages of bottled water from behind a grocery store. Quickly, Kei slipped some dried fruit into his pocket as well, and then they began to head back to the tunnel.
“I wonder why the lights are on at Central,” he mused, and Kenta looked up.
“Maybe they’re holding a trial now,” he replied thoughtfully.
Shrugging, they continued their slow walk back to the tunnel.
~
“I had my trial,” Tae murmured in a quiet voice to Shizuna, whose face softened.
“When is it?”
“I’ll be executed in two and a half weeks,” muttered Tae, kicking at a piece of straw that had come from their slowly disintegrating straw mat.
Shizuna looked away.
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault,” Tae returned somberly. “I’ll just need to hold on and not give in to them for another two and a half weeks, that’s all.”
Burying her face in her knees, her thoughts once again drifted to her partner. Where was he? What would he be doing in two and a half weeks?
She wondered what he would do if he had known she’d die in another two and a half weeks.
I hope he’s well, she thought, fingers curling into fists by her side. I hope he hasn’t done anything stupid or gotten caught by Central.
Valiantly ignoring Shizuna’s concerned glance, she tried to fall asleep, banishing the trial from her mind. It wouldn’t do to have it constantly on her mind, since there was nothing she could do about it anyway.
That night she dreamt of gigantic brains trying to strangle her, and of sneering officers trying to drop her into a boiling pot filled with fish with walrus moustaches.
This time there was no Kei to comfort her after she woke up violently from the nightmare, chest heaving and eyes wide.
She cried herself back to sleep.
Title: Breaking Zero Kelvin (Multichapter)
Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx)
Pairing: Kazuyuri
Genre: Fantasy/Scifi
Summary: AU. They are two runaways, chased out of society through a deep-rooted stigma though they have no say in it at all. Only relying on word-of-mouth rumours and a set of sketchy directions, they now have to set out on their own journey to accomplish the impossible: escape.
Notes: Character list here.
Previous chapters: Prologue | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12
~
13: Brain in the Vat
Once again time begin to meld together for Tae. She had given up trying to tell when it was night and when it was day, since all twenty-four hours were spent in the same dimly lit cell.
A couple more interrogations went by in the week that followed after the public opening, each even more painful to endure than the last.
“They’re getting desperate,” Shizuna told her. “It happened to me too. Probably means that your trial is coming soon, so they know they don’t have much time left to get information out of you.”
Tae sighed, running her fingers gingerly over a rather large scab on her leg that had formed after Professor Clipboard had decided to pull out a cat-o-nine-tails to use for a little while.
“It would be a lot better if they just came to the conclusion that I’m not going to spill anything and just stop the torture,” she muttered.
Shizuna shook her head sadly.
“They think you’ll become desperate, especially after your trial. They’ve been telling me they’ll postpone my execution if I give them information, but all the same I haven’t told them much, really.”
“I hate this place,” Tae groaned eventually, trying to curl up to go to sleep while ignoring the screaming protests of her legs and various scars. “If not for the fact that there are officers everywhere I’d try to fuse that interrogator’s clipboard to his face and make a break for it.”
Shizuna bit back a short laugh, and grinned ruefully.
“If only,” she said. “They drug our food, Tae. Haven’t you noticed that you’re no longer able to even sense your pool of magic within you?”
Closing her eyes and concentrating, Tae realized that Shizuna was correct. Whereas before she could feel the well of magic within her like a candle flame, now she could feel nothing but emptiness, and a thick wall that seemed to prevent her from sinking any deeper in an attempt to access her magic.
“Is the effect temporary?” she asked, and Shizuna shrugged.
“I’ve never tried starving myself for long enough to know,” she muttered dryly. “Dying of starvation’s got to be a more painful death than whatever they’re using to execute us.”
Stretching her arm in front of her, Tae uncurled and curled her fingers idly.
“True,” she whispered.
~
Kei watched idly as Kenta began to practice making a clone in the likeness of Tae.
“Don’t overexert yourself,” Kohei murmured, and Kenta made an indistinct mumble in response.
Taking his eyes off Kenta, Kei turned to Kohei.
“What happens if he does overexert himself?” he asked curiously, never having actually exhausted his own magic before.
Kohei’s face clouded.
“The last time it happened, he was pretty much out for a really long period of time. Magic is like our energy, what keeps us moving, so if we use it all up our bodies will shut down or something until we’ve gotten back enough. I had to spoonfeed him for ages and hope he managed to digest whatever food I gave him the previous time. Not a good experience, really.”
Pulling a face, he shot back another worried glance at Kenta, who was now working on the clone’s face.
“It’s scary how he can do that after he saw her only once,” Kohei continued, abruptly changing the topic.
Kei followed his gaze and saw that the face of the clone did indeed look a lot like Tae, only with slightly darker, straggly hair and several injuries and bruises replicated in scarily close detail.
“He’s an artist,” Kei said dryly. “I guess it’s some naturally ingrained talent or something?”
“Just like his talent to eat anything and think it tastes good?” Kohei asked jokingly, and they both laughed while Kenta pretended to ignore them, putting the finishing touches on his clone.
“How does it look?” he asked them quietly once they had stopped laughing.
Feeling Kohei’s and Kenta’s gazes on him, Kei studied the clone critically.
“Looks good,” he said, and Kenta smiled at him, before snapping his fingers and dispelling the clone. Almost immediately, he sagged to the ground and Kohei rushed up with a can of beans to start shoving into his mouth.
Kei turned his head to glance at the makeshift calendar they had carved into a stick. Long scratches represented days, while little dot-like gouged-out holes represented night. The next weekend was approaching, and with it their next opportunity to put their plan into motion.
Wait for us, Tae, he thought silently, as though she could hear him. We’re coming for you.
~
It came as a huge surprise to Tae when they had gotten off at a different floor.
The officer had come for her, as usual, and she had begun to mentally prepare herself for another interrogation session. However, they got off at a different floor, and she found herself being led down a set of unfamiliar corridors, before stopping outside a particularly large brown metal door.
“Wait here,” he growled at her, before rapping smartly on the door.
A small side window opened, and the officer muttered something in lowered tones to the person peeking out of it. After a while of whispering, the window was closed again, and then the door was pulled open from the inside.
What met Tae’s eyes was a courtroom, only next to where the judge was standing was something huge covered by a sheet that had a screen standing next to it. The officer roughly shoved her into a chair standing on a platform in the middle of the room, and immediately metal bands shot out to shackle her in place.
“Yoshitaka Yuriko?” the judge asked her in a booming voice, and she nodded mutely. The judge pursed his lips and nodded, before turning back to his papers.
“You have been arrested for being a witch, and for committing crimes against Central. Do you deny this?”
Everybody in the room suddenly turned to look at her, and Tae squirmed uncomfortably under the hostility in their gaze.
“Answer the question,” the officer standing behind her hissed, and she scowled a little.
“I did not commit any crimes against Central,” she said, slightly grumpy.
The judge raised an eyebrow.
“You do not deny being a witch, though?”
Tae said nothing, and suddenly the screen standing next to the judge sprang to life.
SHE IS A WITCH AND SHOULD BE TRIED AS SUCH
“Of course,” the judge murmured, eyes scanning the line of text that had appeared on the screen.
SHE IS GUILTY
Murmurs of agreement rose at this, and Tae’s eyebrows scrunched in confusion. What on earth was producing those words on the screen?
She voiced this question in a quiet undertone to the officer behind her, who snorted.
“That is iT,” he growled to her. “iT is not a thing, so show some respect, witch.”
Somehow, the judge seemed to have heard this, for he smirked before signaling to some people behind him. They ran up and pulled away the sheet obscuring the large thing behind him.
The sheet fell away to reveal something dark pink swimming in green liquid.
It was a brain. In a vat of liquid.
GIVE HER THE DEATH PENALTY, typed the brain in the vat.
~
Kohei watched as Kei fought against an imaginary enemy.
“I don’t even get why you do that,” he said dryly after Kei had pinned the imaginary enemy to the ground and was holding his glowing gun to its imaginary forehead.
“I’m bored,” came Kei’s reply. “Besides, I haven’t fought anyone in ages. This is good practice.”
He ignored Kohei rolling his eyes and went back to his fight. Next to Kohei, Kenta chewed on a piece of dried cuttlefish, eyes following Kei.
“He’s just got too much pent-up energy,” Kenta said calmly. “That’s all.”
Kohei snorted, reaching over to rip off a small piece of cuttlefish from the uneaten end of Kenta’s large piece.
“He’s going to be exhausted tonight though,” he pointed out, stuffing the fishy morsel into his mouth.
Kenta shrugged.
“It’s only a couple more days, really.”
“True,” Kohei sighed.
~
If Tae hadn’t been in a crowded courtroom filled with officers she would have screamed her lungs out.
As it was, she could only stretch her eyes wide in horror, staring at the brain in the vat in utter disgust and horror.
The thing we’ve been taught to love and revere all this while in the convent is just a brain in a tube of liquid?!
Nobody seemed to pay any mind to her outright horror at iT’s appearance. In fact, if anything they looked quite entertained by it.
“The death penalty, you say?” the judge asked, addressing the screen now.
YES.
“That sounds like a fair punishment,” continued the judge, scribbling something down. “When should we schedule it?”
Tae felt rather annoyed by this.
Don’t I get a say in this too, if it’s a trial?
Again, she asked the officer behind her about this, and he smirked down at her.
“Witches don’t get a say in anything,” he told her coldly. “You see, only normal citizens get lawyers and such.”
Tae fought hard to keep a deep scowl from forming across her face, and turned back to face the judge again. It appeared that the brain had announced a date, though she had missed it while talking to the officer.
“It is settled,” the judge growled. “The execution of the witch Yoshitaka Yuriko will be in two and a half weeks from now. End of trial.”
Taking that as a cue, the officer freed her from the chair and bound her hands back into handcuffs.
Tae was silently led from the room.
~
“It’s night,” Kenta called from his perch on the ladder. Nodding, Kohei marked another hole on their calendar.
“We’re running low on water,” he called back up to Kenta, who looked thoughtful.
“I’ll go,” he said. “With Kei.”
Scrambling up the ladder, Kei followed behind Kenta as they headed to their usual haunt, leaving Kohei to guard their campsite in the tunnel.
The streets were silent as usual, and nobody interrupted them as they fetched several packages of bottled water from behind a grocery store. Quickly, Kei slipped some dried fruit into his pocket as well, and then they began to head back to the tunnel.
“I wonder why the lights are on at Central,” he mused, and Kenta looked up.
“Maybe they’re holding a trial now,” he replied thoughtfully.
Shrugging, they continued their slow walk back to the tunnel.
~
“I had my trial,” Tae murmured in a quiet voice to Shizuna, whose face softened.
“When is it?”
“I’ll be executed in two and a half weeks,” muttered Tae, kicking at a piece of straw that had come from their slowly disintegrating straw mat.
Shizuna looked away.
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault,” Tae returned somberly. “I’ll just need to hold on and not give in to them for another two and a half weeks, that’s all.”
Burying her face in her knees, her thoughts once again drifted to her partner. Where was he? What would he be doing in two and a half weeks?
She wondered what he would do if he had known she’d die in another two and a half weeks.
I hope he’s well, she thought, fingers curling into fists by her side. I hope he hasn’t done anything stupid or gotten caught by Central.
Valiantly ignoring Shizuna’s concerned glance, she tried to fall asleep, banishing the trial from her mind. It wouldn’t do to have it constantly on her mind, since there was nothing she could do about it anyway.
That night she dreamt of gigantic brains trying to strangle her, and of sneering officers trying to drop her into a boiling pot filled with fish with walrus moustaches.
This time there was no Kei to comfort her after she woke up violently from the nightmare, chest heaving and eyes wide.
She cried herself back to sleep.