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Summary: Nicholas comes face to face with the man who lead the attack on his family last November.
Date: October 1, 2012
Log Title: Mutant
Rating: R
Small Church - Secret Passageway
A doorway hidden behind the confessionals leads to a set of stairs that go down to the lower levels of the church, ending in a single, dimly lit hallway. Along the hall are doors… the left side holding an armory and an extra room for storage, while on the right side, a door marked 'Surveillance' sits with an ultra-modern scanner pad next to it, and further down is what looks like a bathroom. Towards the end of the hallway is a large steel door with a high tech lock and a heavy pad lock to keep it shut, the only sign of it's intended use the spraypainted symbol for Mutant used by the FoH… done in blood red.
The drugs were finally starting to wear off and Nicholas slowly opened his eyes. He never knew if he was waking up in the cell or in the interrogation room, right now, it was in the interrogation room. He groggily remembered the Purifiers dragging him out of the cell and putting a cloth with some thing faintly sweet smelling on it, struggling as he could only breath in the chemical the cloth was soaked in. Nick realized it must have been chloroform or something similar as he was now waking up strapped down tightly to some sort of board or table so that he was tilted slightly backwards from an upright position. The leather straps dug tightly into his several spots on his legs, arms, waist and even one at his neck, above the collar, making it slightly difficult to breathe. He realized two things, that he couldn’t move an inch and that he was alone; it was always harder to endure their horrors when he was alone.
After leaving Nicholas hanging for an extended period of time, to build up anticipation, only one Purifier enters the room, it’s one that he’s never seen before in the interrogation room but his face might seem familiar to the telekinetic, he was the one who lead the group when his parents are murdered. “Nicholas Gerhardt, I honestly never thought we’d meet again. To say I was surprised when you escaped, leaving your parents to their fiery fate, would be an understatement. That’s what we had to kill that one lad, who helped you escape, what was his name? Something with a D or was a B, it doesn’t matter either way, he’s dead.” There’s a cool tone of amusement to his voice, a blasé enjoyment at Nicholas’ predicament. “So, do you remember me yet?”
It’s the voice that gets Nicholas first, a voice that’s haunted his dreams ever since that fated day. The Purifier didn’t even need to ask that last question, as soon as he spoke Nick knew exactly who he was. “You….Fuck you!” He yells pulling against his bindings as hard as he can. “I’m going to kill you! Just like you murdered them!” The anger starts to burn in him with a renewed fierceness he hasn’t felt since the days after he lost everything. “I don’t care if it’s the last thing I do but I will make sure you felt what they felt!” The strap at his neck starts to choke him a bit as he pulls against it and Nicholas has to just lie back against the surface of the table, able to do nothing except shake in a mix of fear and anger.
“Oh so you do remember me.” The Purifier says with a chuckle. “But I don’t think you have any way of killing me considering the situation, but the threat is a lovely sentiment.” He jests as he walks around to the backside of the table that Nicholas is strapped to, undoing the latch for the strap behind his neck before pulling it tighter so that the mutant can’t breath. “You see, right now you are at my mercy. If I wished to kill you right now, I could and nothing can be done for you and your revenge. You’d just die, nothing more than an angry, lonely mutant orphan.” He lets go of the strap before buckling it to how it was previously then walks away from the table to a cabinet where he starts pulling out small instruments and bottles, placing them on a tray.
Deep breath shakily goes in, deep breath shakily goes out as Nicholas is allowed air once again. Right now he’s trying not to let this guy see how afraid his is, so he closes his eyes and just focuses on breathing, and holding back tears (no way is he going to let this guy see him cry) for the time being. Once he doesn’t feel like his lungs are burning, Nicholas then opens his eyes to see the back of the Purifier to him. “So what’s with all these games then, last time you weren’t afraid to just try to kill me without all this. And this time you have my friends involved cockbreath.” An insult he learned from Shane.
“Yes, speaking of last time, I was wondering how it was you were able to escape.” The Purifier remarks casually as he picks up the try and walks over to Nicholas, placing the tray down on a small stand. He pulls over a stool and sits on it so he can watch the mutant for a while. “I mean you were able to escape but leave your parents behind to burn to death, and then that other young lad who was there with you, you left him to be killed too.” He says in a mocking tone. “You escaped justice, young Nicholas, and now it’s up to me to make sure that you suffer for the crimes you committed. Murder? I’m sure that’s going to leave a black stain on your soul.”
“I DIDN’T MURDER THEM! YOU DID!” Nicholas shouts in anger as his attempts at struggling are renewed. “You’re just upset that you failed the first time and you’re trying to put your crimes on my shoulders, I know I didn’t kill them!” Though the guilt is still there that they died because of him. “They did nothing wrong but you had to go and decide to destroy my life and the life of everyone else who you don’t agree with! Just because you don’t believe it, doesn’t mean we’re not people too! We are exactly the same as the rest of you, just with gifts! I never did anything wrong with mine, until you came along and destroyed my life!”
There’s a laugh that comes from the Purifier. “Oh Nicholas, you just keep telling yourself that you didn’t murder them. If you weren’t a mutant, if you never had this…what you call a gift from Satan, your family would be alive and well. You’re nothing like us at all, you’re an animal, nothing more. Another creature that God has bestowed power over, we have no qualms with killing pigs or sheep, why should this be any different?” Grabbing a rag from the tray, he grips Nicholas’s face with one hand and tries to shove it into his mouth. ““Now then, I think we’re ready to get started, we don’t need you to bite off your tongue or anything. We don’t want you dead, not yet anyway.”
Nicholas tries to fight the rag, but his strength isn’t what it usually is and after moments of struggling he finds he can’t say anything back to the Purifier. He knows this is going to be worse than the other times, for one there are no questions to be answered and no way to answer them even if asked. Nick just stares daggers at the man, wishing there was a way out of this. He closes his eyes and prays to God, to give him strength to get through this and survive.
The Purifier picks up a thick pocket knife off the tray and dips it in a jar of rubbing alcohol before moving the sharp object to press against Nicholas’ skin. “I got in trouble for you escaping alive, and punishments here aren’t given lightly. I’m going to make you suffer, I’m going to make this last as long as I can as payback.” True to his word, he takes his time cutting into the flesh slowly and with precision, as he cuts line after line across the chest of the mutant, pausing only to wipe away some of the blood. When he’s finished, he looks at Nicholas to make sure he’s still conscious before starting the process over again, retracing the lines he previously made. By the time he’s finished, it’s been nearly an hour.
Every moment was agonizing pain for Nicholas, his screams muffled by the rag as he clenches his teeth into the cloth in attempt to help bear it. His limbs move against the binds, trying to get free, but no matter how much strength he uses, he can barely budge. Nick tries to think of other things, his horse Orion, the guys in the other cell, the friends he made back at Xavier’s, anything to bring his mind away from what’s going on, but it’s hard. He focuses on the pain and his anger to try to keep the hopeless feeling he’s afraid of showing in front of this guy away. Towards the end, the screams turn into whimpers and the struggles have stop as most of his energy has been drained.
When finished the Purifier reaches up to pull the rag out of Nicholas’ mouth and pats him, with to much force, on his cheek a few times. “There now, that wasn’t so bad. Shall I get a mirror so you can see my work?” He walks over a cabinet and grabs a mirror, walking back over to Nick. He wipes the blood off Nicholas’ chest and holds up the mirror so Nick can see that carved into his chest, in jagged letters, is the word: MUTANT. “Now anyone who sees you will know you for the disgusting creature of mutant scum you are.”
Nicholas can’t even say anything he’s just breathing heavy trying to stay conscious. He barely hears what is being said to him and is in slight daze until the mirror is held up in front of him, seeing the words and hearing the last part of what the Purifier says is like a punch in the gut. It’s one of those insults where the hate behind the action just hits him. “I hope you die a painful and lonely death.” Nick says between his teeth to the Purifier after he’s recovered from the initial shock.
The Purifier just laughs. “And I imagine you hope you weren’t in the situation either, but alas what he hope for doesn’t always come true. Now let’s get that bandaged up for the night, not like we want that to get infected.” He says his voice thick with sarcasm, if he could careless what happens to Nick. He reaches for a bottle of rubbing alcohol to start ‘cleaning’ the wound by dabbing the cuts with an alcohol soaked rag, not being gentle about it at all.
Nicholas thought he couldn’t scream any more and he thought his chest couldn’t hurt anymore but he was wrong as the burning pain of the rubbing alcohol caused him to scream, loudly. He doesn’t know how long he kept screaming but sometime during it all he passed out from pain, falling into a very welcome relief from the pain and torture, unconsciousness.
