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necessary_child) wrote2007-08-17 07:48 pm
Millitimed to Monday 6th August...
When Sam came to, throat like sandpaper, his immediate thought was that he was thirsty. His next thought was that he was cold, very cold, and his head throbbed dully, which was odd, because the regeneration trance should have taken care of that. But, mostly, he was cold. He tried to wrap his arms around himself for warmth and found he couldn’t, becoming conscious of something even colder than he was, firmly attached to his wrists and digging into his skin.
He opened his eyes, blinking and wincing at the cold, clinical white light surrounding him. His head throbbed harder when he moved it, but his hands weren’t obeying his orders to rub his forehead. The reason why became clear when he managed to blink painfully at where they were supposed to be. Tight iron cuffs manacled his arms to what appeared to be some kind of hospital bed, palms upwards so that the veins of his wrists and arms were presented. Attempts to move his legs suggested, judging by the icy, sapping metal digging into his ankles, that his feet were manacled in a similar fashion. Normally, iron, despite being the magic-sapper that it was, would have been no hindrance to a magic-user as powerful as Sam, but weakened and dazed as he was, he could feel the metal tugging at him, at his magic, and distracting him further so that he struggled even to concentrate through the buzzing of the white noise in his head.
A tall, handsome man moved into view, holding up a hand for silence. “Well, this is all very nice and... entertaining of you, I’m sure, but I really prefer calling my subjects by their proper names. Don’t you, Lucifer?”
Eyebrow. “You’ve been doing some research, I see. Did you go through my bins as well, or was that some other mangy tomcat?”
“More research than you’ve any idea, Mr Lucifer. You’re a terribly interesting... being, it’s true.” The man’s eyes, Sam noted, were worryingly manic. Intense people tended to do stupid things, to his way of thinking, especially when they had you chained to a bed and a needle in their hands. The needle was for the moment lacking, at least, but he suspected it wasn’t far off. “But no, the cat wasn’t ours. The fox that gave your bins and defences a cursory inspection at 2.03am Saturday last, on the other hand...”
He was lying, Sam noted through the fog of pain and confusion, but he was doing a very good job of it. “Do I at least get your name and a pint out of all this?”
Ahh, so Trixie it is, then, Sam thought. Funny how these things go...
“Well, Trixiebell, do I at least get a drink out of this apparently worthy endeavour of yours?”
The man raised an eyebrow, but otherwise seemed unbothered. “I wondered if you were going to say something like that. Drink this, then.”
Sam raised his head a little, finding a plastic cup filled with some innocuous-smelling liquid pressed to his lips, and sipped gratefully. All too soon, though, the cup vanished, and the doctor with it. “Without so much as a goodbye, either,” he grumbled, before gasping as a sudden barb of agony shot through him like a skewer.