Unexplored Territory

Ice cold water being poured over his head woke Christian up with a gasp and a yelp, goose bumps already rising on his flesh. His teeth chattering, he was prepared to yell at Yuki, when the previous evening came rushing back. At least, he thought it had been the previous evening, he thought, glancing warily out the high, barred window at the twilight sky.

When he had turned his head, he had realized just how stiff he was. A quick tug, and he found that his wrists and ankles were chained, pinned against an unforgiving surface. Apparently, it was the table or whatever that he was on that had made him so sore.

“Oh? Confident enough to face away from me? Or just suicidal?” a deep bass taunted him, and Christian’s muscles froze, fear flooding through him as he turned slowly to face his captor. The man grinned at him, and Christian swallowed, mustering a scowl to aim at the killer.

He growled out, “Who the fuck do you think are you, bastard?” It wasn’t the most pressing question on his mind, less important than ones like ‘What are you going to do to me?’ or ‘How long before you kill me?’ or ‘Why do you kill?’, but it was the one that he thought the other man might answer.

Shrugging, he smiled winningly as he replied, “You can call me anything you’d like. But the name’s Michael.” When Christian just stared blankly at him, he blinked. “Oh? Yuki didn’t tell you about me? And here I thought for sure he’d tell you, since you’re the only partner he’s ever had since I ‘died’ two years ago.”

Realization dawned on Christian, as what Michael was saying finally sunk in. “You’re supposed to be dead!” he exclaimed, his voice almost accusing, if it hadn’t been shaking so badly. Michael apparently found this highly amusing, as he laughed uproariously, irritating Christian. This man might be a serial killer with some serious Talent, but he was annoying as hell. What had Yuki seen in this guy?

Michael must have read the disgust in his expression, because he stopped laughing, his eyes narrowing at the man lying chained and prone on the steel table. Without any more warning than that, Michael’s hand flew out and he backhanded Christian across the mouth.

Christian felt something tear, and blinding pain exploded across his vision as he heard a crack. Blood flowed down his throat and he gagged, trying to spit it out and choking on it instead. Finally, he got his head turned enough that he could hack it up, making a mess in the process.

When he managed to finally catch his breath, he glared at Michael, his cheek throbbing. The other man just reached down and pressed casually against his cheek bone, causing Christian to let out a low moan of pain. He would have screamed if he could have opened his mouth wide enough.

“I wouldn’t glare, if I were you. Although it does make you rather…striking,” Michael purred. Moving his hand, he eyed Christian’s cheek critically. “Hmm….looks like the ring did more damage than I had intended. I have a bad habit of forgetting just how strong I am,” he murmured.

Christian could feel the blood oozing from the wound on his cheek, but he had no idea how deep the wound was. ‘Strong, my ass,’ he thought darkly, lowering his eyes to hide the pain and helpless fury that he knew was in them. Next time, the man might actually break his jaw, instead of just flaying open his cheek.

Instead, he asked another question. “Then why are you here? Why are you still alive?” Michael seemed open to talking, and Christian tried to ask the right questions, a small part of him still hoping for rescue. He didn’t know if Michael knew that his former partner was a Talent or not. After all, Michael didn’t have the same Talent as Christian, so he might not be able to recognize others.

“Oh? Hoping to get a confession out of me before you die? Still hoping for rescue?” Michael taunted, his eyes glittering darkly. “Very well,” he conceded willingly enough. “I’ll answer these last two questions, and then we’ll have some playtime, okay?” There was something dark and insane in his eyes as he spoke, the anticipation practically oozing from his pores.

Christian shuddered, trying to suppress the fear. He needed answers. Even if he wasn’t rescued, at least he’d know. His curiosity had been aroused, and while sheer terror threatened to choke out his natural inquisitiveness, he refused to back down. If he didn’t find out, and survived this encounter, he’d never forgive himself.

Seating himself on the table next to Christian’s hip, Michael leaned over, his hands on either side of his captive’s head. “I’m alive because the injuries I sustained protecting Yuki didn’t kill me. Then that bastard left me. He didn’t even check to see that I was still alive. I saved his life! And he abandoned me!” Fury rang in Michael’s voice, and he bared his teeth, snarling.

“As for why I’m here, it’s simple. I’ve had a knack for killing since I was young. Strays, neighborhood pets, a wild animal while were out camping. I had never killed a human, of course, because I was raised with better morals than that. Animals were food. Humans were not.” Michael frowned, his eyes glazing over as he remembered his past.

“As I grew older, I discovered that not only did I have a talent for killing things, but I also had the ability to look at a corpse and see how, exactly, it had died. It gave me more insight than most cops ever dreamed of. And so I became a homicide detective,” he continued, and Christian found himself enraptured in the story, hoping that Michael would keep talking.

His captor didn’t disappoint. “I was good enough to not need an assigned partner. I was just put with whatever team happened to need me at the time. Occasionally, I was farmed out to other nearby precincts. Much like you are now,” he acknowledged, his eyes meeting the sapphire ones of his prisoner. “Eventually, though, they found a partner that they felt would be…suitable…for someone like me.”

Michael smiled. “And he was. Cold as ice, but proud and noble, too. He had a certain recklessness to him that was charming, though he tried hard to restrain it. I had noticed that he was attracted to me rather early on. It wasn’t long before I had him in my arms and in my bed. I melted all that ice he had built up, broke him down and molded him. And he was most…accommodating.” Christian couldn’t stop the glare this invoked, but Michael just ignored it, more interested in continuing his story.

“And so obedient, too,” he muttered, his tone wistful. “I had never known anybody who was so easy to manipulate. Of course, he was young, and he had fallen in love with me…I made sure of it. I could play his body like nobody else, and every day, he fell deeper into depravity. Oh, the things he let me do to him, all in the name of love,” he scoffed, his tone mocking.

Christian clenched his fist. If he wasn’t chained, he would have decked this asshole by now. Instead, he let out a snarl. “Bastard!” he howled, rage blinding him. He didn’t give a damn what else this man might have to say; he was going down, just as soon as Christian got hold of him.

Michael growled at the interruption and stood up, striking Christian’s cheek a second time with the back of his hand. Again, the pain exploded in Christian’s head, but he grit his teeth, refusing to cry out. The rage flowed through him, dulling the pain, though he was sure he’d suffer for this later.

Reaching out, Michael grabbed his forearm below the chains that bound his wrists and squeezed, grinding the bones together. His other hand went between Christian’s legs and grabbed hold of him, tightening and twisting. Christian cried out, writhing under the other man’s grip, but Michael didn’t let up.

“Were you that eager to get to playtime?” he asked viciously, his eyes burning fever-bright with his madness. He squeezed Christian’s forearm tighter even as he released him with his other hand. Seconds later, twin cracks echoed in the small room as the two bones in his arm were crushed.

Christian screamed then. He screamed and screamed, until he could no longer draw the breath or energy to scream. While he was busy trying to cope with the agony, Michael had seated himself again on the table, staring down at him and smiling as if nothing had happened.

“There, now. Do you want to hear the rest of the story?” he asked, his voice soothing, almost hypnotic. Christian nodded, trying to put off any further pain for as long as possible. If Michael kept damaging him at the current pace, he wouldn’t survive the day, much less live long enough to be rescued.

Michael smiled, pleased with his answer. “As I was saying, Yuki was so obedient, especially in the bedroom. I suppose that’s the reason why, when that gang finally caught up with us, I stepped in front of him and took the barrage of bullets intended for him. I woke up several hours later, to find frozen body parts scattered around me.”

Christian’s breath caught in his throat. He couldn’t mean what he was thinking, could he? Michael confirmed his suspicions quickly enough. “It had been Yuki. He had frozen them all where they stood and then shattered them, like fragile spun glass. It was beautiful,” he reminisced. “Pure, shimmering ice laced with rich crimson blood. Prisms were scattered all over the ground. It was stunning, and took my breath away,” he sighed.

“Unfortunately, Yuki didn’t see it that way. He was traumatized by what he had done, and was ready to turn himself in, despite being a detective himself. Only the commissioner stood between him and prison at the time. And so, I did the only thing I could think of at the time…I erased his memories.” He caught the sharp look that Christian gave him and shrugged. “I had more than one Talent, I suppose,” and Christian heard the capital letter. So this man did realize that there were others like him out there. Yuki being one of them.

“Unfortunately, I made a miscalculation. I didn’t erase his memory of the entire night, just of the time after I had been shot. So, as far as he was concerned, I was dead, shot by the gang we had been tracking and which had finally found us, instead.” Michael shrugged. “I thought about going back and explaining, but by that point, I realized that I preferred being on my own again.”

His eyes narrowed as he growled, “I found out three days later that a few of the gang members had escaped. Such an insult was not to be tolerated. So I hunted them down and slaughtered them, like the beasts they were,” he snarled, his hands clenching into fists as he recalled those first few days of using his power to kill those who had dared to attack him.

He smiled again, and Christian realized just how unbalanced this man actually was. He was smart, and clever, but there was no sanity, no reason or logic inside of him anymore. “And it was beautiful. Not as beautiful as Yuki’s killing had been, but beautiful nonetheless. And it was then that I realized why murderers did what they did. There’s something addictive and enchanting about slaughtering somebody, watching the blood flow from their bodies, seeing vivid colors tattoo themselves across flesh, staring at the sharp contrast between gleaming white bone and vibrant red blood, watching muscles pull and contract, trying to hold a body together when the bones and sinew are snapped and broken.”

By this point, he was crooning, and Christian fought not to sick up. He doubted Michael would appreciate it, and it would probably just get him hurt again. He remembered the pictures of the bodies that had been strewn across his desktop the first time he had looked at the case file. He remembered wondering what sort of sick bastard would do something like that. He remembered thinking to himself that the man had been creative, at the very least, but that there had to be a goal in there somewhere.

Now he knew the goal, reading between the words spoken from the mouth of the killer, and he wanted to scream and flail and cry, but he did none of this. Instead, he closed his eyes, trying to swallow down the condemning words that wanted to tear themselves from his throat. Michael wanted to murder somebody and make it as “beautiful” as Yuki had when he had attacked those men that had killed his partner and lover. He was using every method he had ever seen or heard of to try and find his own aesthetically pleasing murder.

“The perfect murder, huh?” he asked, his voice low and tired. Michael didn’t grace him with an answer, lost in his own frightening thoughts. Christian supposed it didn’t matter either way. They both knew where this was headed, and that it was just a matter of time. Warily, Christian watched Michael from under his lashes, peering up at his captor, waiting for him to remember that he was there.

Michael refocused and looked down at him. Leaning down, he breathed against Christian’s mouth, “We’re going to have lots of fun before you die, you know.” With that, he pressed his lips against Christian’s, and released his own Talent, the insanity and bloodlust crushing down on him, suffocating him in sheer madness.

Christian screamed, the sounds muffled by Michael’s mouth over his, as the crushing black waves overwhelmed him, drowning him. His limbs jerked against the chains that bound him, his mind not even registering the pain of his broken arm or his torn wrists and ankles.

He became aware an interminably long time later, to realize that Michael wasn’t even in the room anymore. Shit. The bastard had been bombarding him for who knows how long, while he wasn’t even in the room! Christian’s whole body ached and stung, his broken arm sheer agony, the bones no doubt jostled about while he had been thrashing.

Squeezing his eyes tightly shut, Christian refused to cry, the tears held back by force of will alone. Blood dripped down his arms from his wrists, where they had been rubbed raw against the steel chains that bound him, and his ankles were in similar condition. His cheek still bled sluggishly, no doubt kept from clotting by his writhing and screaming.

Christian was more tired that he had ever remembered being. For the first time in his life, he almost wished for death. Almost, because there was still a very small part of him that hoped that Yuki wouldn’t forget about him, and would decide to come after him. His only chance now was for his partner to find him before Michael decided he was done playing and killed him outright.

He shivered, and realized that the room was gradually growing cooler. Goose bumps rose on his naked flesh, and he paled. Michael was mocking him, flooding him externally with the cold, a pale imitation of Yuki’s Talent. But weak or not, the result was the same – Christian was slowly freezing to death.

Rather than making him more miserable, though, this actually heartened Christian. It brought back to mind those few days shut away in the hotel with Yuki. Then, the ice had been inside and out, and there had been no escape. Now, though, there might still be a chance. One that he hadn’t thought of before, because he had never tried it. After all, one doesn’t exactly have any need to reconnect with corpses.

He had felt Yuki, had adjusted and accommodated his Talent, and he used that now, trying to “feel” the other man. He brushed up against Michael and winced, but kept moving, sliding past the horrible feel of the other man. He was only interested in finding one Talent, and it wasn’t that one.

The cold of the room helped to focus him, giving him a connection that he might otherwise have not had. He didn’t know how far he was from Yuki right now, but it hardly mattered; he hadn’t left the city. After all, Michael never left the borders of the city that he lived in. Taking a guess, Christian suspected that Michael was still rather close to Yuki, as he seemed to have enjoyed the idea of taking Christian from his partner while he slept.

Christian quickly grew more frustrated as his search failed to turn up anything. He had hoped that Yuki was actively using his Talent, but that didn’t seem likely. Christian touched on a few Talents on the way, but none of them were of a type that could help him, so he didn’t bother with them, simply moving on to the next one.

He was too focused on finding Yuki, though, that he didn’t sense Michael walking back into the room. The man narrowed his eyes as he watched him, and then attacked, slamming his fist into Christian’s side. Ribs cracked, and Christian was brought out of his trance-like state with another scream, the breath required causing his ribs to creak in protest. At the very least, he didn’t think any of them were actually broken.

Trying to focus through blurry, tear-filled eyes, Christian stared up at Michael in horrified disbelief. Michael wrapped a hand around his throat, squeezing as he leaned down, his lips next to Christian’s ear as he hissed, “That was stupid, Chris. Yuki doesn’t remember you, and even if you manage to bring him here, what do you think is going to happen? I’ll just take him, too. Maybe I’ll make you watch as I play with him, and then I’ll kill you in front of him. I’ll break you both before then, though.”

As he talked, his voice grew less angry and more aroused, and Christian would no doubt have thrown up if the hand hadn’t still been wrapped around his throat, choking off his air supply. “Tell me, Chris. Have you ever had another man? Or been had by one? I know you haven’t had Yuki, because I made sure that he’d never want another man.”

He released Christian, and the other man gulped in precious air, gasping, “You don’t have my permission to call me Chris.” The other man just laughed at him, leering.

“I don’t care what I have permission for, Chris,” he mocked, deliberately drawing out his name. “And you haven’t answered my question yet,” he rebuked Christian, sounding for all the world like a teacher chastising an errant student. Christian just glared up at him in response, refusing to answer the question.

He jerked, his legs yanking fruitlessly against the shackles on his ankles, as Michael checked for himself, shoving two fingers straight into Christian, not bothering with lubrication. He grit his teeth, making his cheek throb as he held back a scream. He couldn’t stop the strangled moan that escaped him, though, nor the tears that leaked from his eyes, born of pain and frustration.

Michael smiled down at him, scissoring his fingers and watching Christian writhe, unable to escape the punishment. His right hand moved up and grabbed a fistful of Christian’s hair, yanking his head up and twisting it back. “You should know better by now. If you had just answered my questions, I might not have done that,” he said, amused, and Christian couldn’t muster the strength to spit at him, though he would have dearly loved to.

“Now listen, and listen well,” he hissed, his voice low and dangerous, that mad glint back in his eyes. “When I ask a question, you answer. If you refuse, you get hurt. If you lie, I hurt you.. If you give me an answer I don’t like, you’re still out of luck. Understood?” he demanded.

When Christian didn’t answer fast enough, he leaned down and bit into Christian’s shoulder, worrying at the flesh and muscle there. Christian cried out, and finally answered him. “Yes!” Michael released him, sitting back up with a winning smile as he removed his fingers from where they had impaled Christian.

“See? That wasn’t so bad, now was it?” he asked, his head cocked to the side as he waited for Christian’s answer. Not sure what he wanted, but knowing better than to not answer, Christian shook his head. In an instant, a hand was wrapped back around his throat, squeezing. “I expect verbal responses, for as long as it’s possible for you to make them,” Michael snarled.

Christian gasped out, “I understand,” and Michael contemplated him for several moments before appearing satisfied, releasing him so that he could breathe again. A part of Christian had almost hoped that he would just forget to let go, and would kill him already, even as he sucked in several breaths of air, willing his heartbeat and breathing to go back to normal.

Michael stood. “Try and get some sleep, Chris. And I wouldn’t try to find Yuki if I were you. Just because I’ve never left the city before, doesn’t mean that I haven’t changed my patterns. I like being unpredictable, and you’re far too delightful for me to want our time together to be interrupted by rescue attempts.”

With that, he shut off what little light there was in the room, plunging the cell into total darkness. It was a new moon, and not even the stars could be seen tonight, out the barred window set high in the wall.

Christian’s body fell limp, his eyes closing as he sobbed softly, unable to hold back the tears any longer. He offered up anything if he could just get out of his prison, but his prayers going unheeded, and he was left, miserable and hopeless, inside the last room he’d see before his death. Yuki! He cried desperately. The cry rang out in his mind, over and over, Yuki’s name a prayer and plea. Yuki!