By the time the Suburban stops, Eren is out of tears, and just about anything else his body can produce.

  The air is thick with the smell of blood and refuse. The acrid odor stings his eyes, but he can’t blink it away any longer. Dried blood coats his hands, his knuckles cracking and flaking with each movement.

  They have been driving for hours—at one point Eren passes out entirely, dreaming that all of this is just one awful drug-induced nightmare. The fantasy doesn’t last long.

  It ends when the vehicle drives over a large collection of bumps, rattling the insides of Eren's head as it sends him clattering around in his metal prison.

  He slides in his own excrement, desperate to stop his skull from colliding any harder against the walls. When they finally come to a stop, he nearly dry heaves from the smell plastered to him. For a moment, he wonders why he even bothers.

  Maybe it’s better to let his head crack against the wall and put an end to this.

  Eren lets his hands rest on the floor and raises his head, ready to strike it down as hard as he can as many times as he needs. They wouldn’t open the door, and they wouldn’t care. He could put an end to all of this right now and just be done with it all.

  Eren sucks in a breath, a breath he regrets—but holds.

  He wants to cry, as once again his body doesn’t obey him. It refuses to let him follow through.

  “Come on...” he begs, arms shaking, his whole body shaking. He wants to end this nightmare, he wants to wake up, or bash his brains inside this metal box until the pain, the smell, and the agony ripping its way through the remnants of his psyche leaves him.

  But he can’t do it, his arms lock in place. He fights against the very will of his own body but can’t quite seem to beat it. It refuses to listen.

  Eren cries, though no tears escape. Barely any sound does either, his throat is so raw, burned by the flood of stomach acid and vomit and reeking air, joining the dry blood that cakes his lips.

  A breath rasps its way through his broken body, a poor attempt at a scream, but it’s all he can muster.

  Light—brilliant and blinding—floods the metal trunk as the door opens for the first time in hours.

  Eren recoils from the sudden burst of white, half throwing himself against the back wall with enough force to drive the air from his lungs.

  His body functions on primal instinct alone, feet scrambling against the floor, arms swiping at anything that might emerge from the opening. Eren presses himself into the corner, longing for the metal walls to swallow him up.

  Hands reach for him, each one gloved and grabbing at anything they can get a hold of. He kicks and screams, or rather breaths at them. His body is so weak it’s like throwing himself at a brick wall.

  They grab hold of him and tighten their grips enough to send ripples of pain across his body as he struggles against them.

  Before his eyes adjust, a bag is thrown over his head, smothering him in darkness again.

  He tries to fight as he is hauled away—kicking and punching, wriggling around. He doesn’t know why or to what end, other than he doesn’t want to be in this position, his body demanding he flee. The men bind him then, tying something tight around his wrists and ankles, so tight it digs into the flesh, ripping at his skin as he struggles, sending droplets of warm blood down his already disgusting arms and legs.

  Before long, the adrenaline wears off, leaving him nearly limp in his captor’s arms. How long has he been awake now? How long was he in that metal box? It’s all catching up quickly. Every muscle in his body aches from the effort and raw exhaustion that gnaws away at him.

  The familiar sensation of being dropped fills his guts, lasting for only a moment before his body makes contact with the hard floor, battering the air from his lungs and sending him wheezing.

  With a deafening BANG, a door closes, and he is left alone in the dark once more.

  The cold ground feels nice against his skin. He hadn’t realized how hot that metal box was now that he’s left it. He lets the cool concrete soak through the sack over his head to quell the bruising around his mouth. Blood still gathers at his wrists and ankles, but the pain is inconsequential to the hurt that continues to wrack the very depths of his soul.

  The sight of his mother’s butchered corpse burns into his retinas. No matter how hard he closes his eyes, her cold, dead eyes continue to stare up at him from the depths of his mind. His sister’s unmoving body under the blankets in her bed, the star-shaped hole in his father’s eye.

  He can’t even cry anymore, It hurts so bad. The pain is indescribable, his heart is gone, an empty pit somewhere deep in his chest where his soul should be. It’s an abyssal emptiness that swallows him whole, leaving him without any thoughts other than agony.

  Why is this happening? Why is he here? Why did they kill them? Why is Eren still alive? Why why why why why?

  Didn’t they know Sophie had her tournament coming up? Didn’t they know mom was making her soup so she could get better? Didn’t they know Dad took the day off early to see her? Didn’t they know that Eren hadn’t had the chance to apologize yet? Why would they do this?

  Eren wants to die.

  He wants to die so he can be with them again. He doesn’t want to live like this, he doesn’t want to remember their hollow faces, their cold bodies, their pale skin. He wants to be with them.

  The ache in his stomach nearly drives consciousness from his mind. Eren curls up on himself. He wants to hug his own legs, but his arms are bound, so instead he balls himself up as tightly as he can. It hurts so much.

  He wants the pain to stop, he wants to claw out his eyes so he doesn't have to see their bodies. He wants to cry, but he can’t, and the fact that he can’t makes him want to cry even more.

  He needs to vomit, but his stomach is so empty nothing will come up. He doesn’t have the strength to dry heave. It feels as though he’s choking on nothing at all, that the air won’t ever reach his lungs.

  He wants to breathe, but he also wants to let himself suffocate.

  ***

  By the time he wakes, the ground is no longer cold, and the blood around his wrists is no longer warm. He lay there in silence, smelling of sweat and piss and blood, unsure of what to do next.

  He’s given up on hoping any of this is a dream or delusion. The pain is too real, the smell too real, all of it just too real. He calls out a few times, but his voice never makes it far. He stays still for a while, hours maybe. The strength returns to his body but not to his mind. He can’t bring himself to move. He wants to disappear into the floor, but that would make him too lucky. When did he ever disappear when he wanted to?

  Eren can’t hear anything beyond where he is, but where exactly is he? It’s hard to say for sure with the bag over his head.

  It doesn’t take much effort, only a little wiggle before the bag is up and away from his eyes. He pinches it against the ground and shifts until the light from the room he is in nearly blinds him.

  It takes a while to adjust, but soon enough he blinks away the dried sleep to see where he is.

  The room is a prison cell, or something close to it. Twenty feet long, fifteen feet wide, and eight feet tall. A single fluorescent light set into the ceiling casts hard shadows against the stained concrete. A single stainless steel toilet sits against the back wall, facing a solid metal door featuring two slits, one at approximately eye level and one at around chest level, both of which are closed.

  Additionally, a single camera is set into the corner of the room, looking down with a full view of the space, a faint light blinking red near the lens.

  His hands are zip-tied, and blood, urine, and feces coat him up to the elbows and knees. A part of him knows he needs to clean his wounds, and soon, but another part of him wants to let himself rot here.

  The camera, the fact that he is alive at all, what is it for? Is he going to be trafficked? Maybe they wouldn’t want him if he was half dead or dying. Dying alone in a prison cell sounds much more pleasant than living through whatever their plans for him are at least.

  Yeah, he will just let himself rot here. He will allow himself to die. If he can’t kill himself, then he’ll do nothing and let infection do the work…

  ***

  Eren hates himself as he washes the blood from his wrists in the toilet. It had only taken an hour before his body disobeyed him, again. He hates that it does that, he hates that his subconscious refuses to let him die.

  It takes several flushes as the water gets dirty quickly, but soon the cuts on his wrists and ankles are clean along with the rest of his body and clothes. The water in the toilet doesn’t smell bad, thank god, and aside from the old blood stains on the concrete the space is spotless.

  There is no bed or place to hang his belongings, so he lays his washed clothes out flat against the ground nearer the door, avoiding the risk of a backsplash as he uses the single facility in the room.

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  The camera gets a good show, but that doesn’t matter. They will likely come for him soon enough and do a hell of a lot worse than watch him.

  His mind keeps drifting toward his captors. The guilt that crawls its way up from the pit of his stomach is immense, but it’s all he can manage to hang on to, the last shred of sanity he kept tucked away. Every time the image of his family surfaces, the logic center of his brain fights it off with theories about why he’s here. He hates himself for that too.

  He just wants to grieve, to let the pain eat away at him. Knowing the word “survivor’s guilt” does absolutely nothing to alleviate the crushing weight of it, and he supposes his mind knows that, which is why it fights against his desire to implode.

  It’s like playing an awful game of mental tug of war with himself. On one side is the guilt, the terror, the need to curl up and hide, or die, or let the ground fall out from under him so he can spiral in peace. On the other side is that primal, animal part of his brain, the one that tells him he isn’t dead yet. It fights alongside the logical part of his brain, the part that tells him he can still get out of this—he still has a chance to escape if he can devise a good enough plan.

  It’s stupid, so incredibly stupid. There is no way he can get out of here, but still his mind wanders, seeking a solution to avoid thinking of the corpses of the people he loves.

  “Fine...” He rubs his hair, slicking it back. He used the toilet water to clean himself up the best he could, but without soap, it still leaves him greasy.

  He had been followed for weeks, possibly longer, including bugging his phone and installing cameras into his home. Whatever this operation is, it’s organized and efficient. The men in his house were wearing all black, gloves, and masks. They were looking through the family’s things. Why?

  Eren’s mind races backwards through time, replaying the details of the anomalies he encountered until the day of his capture.

  They had to have gone through a lot of trouble to bug his phone, install a camera in his room, and so on. Assuming now that he isn’t crazy, the resources required to plan all of this out and execute it must be incredible. They wouldn’t have only done this once. It would have happened before—who knows how many times to how many other families. The chances of all of this happening to him alone are functionally zero, he thinks.

  The men had placed a bag over his head before bringing him here. There was also a toilet and two slots on the door, like a prison. Obviously they went through the effort of capturing him alive, but don’t want him to see where they had brought him. If there was nothing around, nothing significant at least, then why bag his head? Surely it wouldn’t matter that he saw the men, they didn’t bag his head when throwing him in the metal box in the back of the suburban after all.

  Eren can conclude that there is something in the immediate area they don’t want him to see or know about. He recalls the path they took to get him into the cell—it was mostly straight lines and right turns. They weren’t bothering to hide his physical location, or maybe they didn’t anticipate someone counting the steps and the number of turns to get here.

  Looking up at the camera, the light, and the toilet, a thought occurs to him. If they had done this to other children, which he more or less could confirm given the stains on the ground here, then the chances of them having other adjacent rooms are pretty high. The infrastructure required to supply electricity, plumbing, and a doorway into a single room in the middle of a long series of hallways is slim. It looks like a prison, so chances are it is a prison.

  He needs to confirm if other people are nearby, but the walls are concrete, and he hasn’t heard anyone. Maybe it’s too insulated?

  “Hello?!” Eren calls out.

  He waits for a while before trying again.

  “Hello!” he shouts louder. His voice is mostly recovered, though it still rasps in his raw throat.

  Still, no response. If there is anyone else they can’t hear him, but that doesn’t mean there is no one.

  Stepping over his drying clothes, Eren raps his knuckles on the door. Three loud bangs, hoping the sound will get someone’s attention.

  It’s quieter than he hopes—the door must be incredibly thick.

  Three more knocks, but this time a shadow casts under the door.

  “Hello?” Eren tries, pressing his ear to the door to hear what could be on the other side.

  The middle slide at chest height opens, and from it, comes nearly unbearable pain.

  The air crackles with light, and fire arcs through the skin of Eren’s bare chest. Every muscle in his body tenses and seizes. He can taste iron in his mouth and smell his flesh crackle and pop in time with a high-pitched wine deep within his ears.

  He can’t breathe—his lungs tighten, his diaphragm seizes, and the spit in his mouth foams as he fights to pull himself away from the agony.

  As soon as it starts, the pain stops. Eren collapses onto the ground, convulsing, his eyes blurry, watching as a rod is pulled from the middle slit of the door before it recloses itself.

  Breathe, breathe, breathe for Christ’s sake! His mind screams at him. His lungs won’t follow the direction, his vision blurs, the smell of his own burning body makes him sick.

  Then, a deep inhale stops the world from spinning around him.

  His arms reach for his chest to touch the raw, pink flesh. Burns form thick black lines through him, cracking the skin around it with each deep inhale.

  He stays there for a while on the ground, letting the ringing in his ears die down enough to think.

  There is someone out there, someone who doesn’t like him banging on the door. He will not be doing that again.

  After several more deep breaths, Eren crawls his way back up to a standing position and rests against the wall, guiding himself to the toilet to sit down on.

  He needs to know if someone else is in the same position he was, but without the ability to get sound through the walls or knock on the door, he needs another option.

  “Damnit...” An idea occurs to him then, but it will really suck if it doesn't work.

  Sitting up from the toilet bowl, Eren tries to remove the top. Much to his dismay, it’s secured on tightly. Instead, he wiggles the flusher, spotting the gap between its action and the bowl itself.

  It takes a little time, but soon Eren pries the lever off, revealing the hole into the toilet’s tank.

  He can barely get his fingers inside to feel around, though it doesn’t appear to be soldered closed. Tapping around the space, it feels as though the top is being held on by some sort of glue on the inside. Picking away at it, he can feel it flake off into the bowl and peel away in larger strips.

  The better part of fifteen minutes pass before he can remove all the glue within reach from the lever’s hole.

  Next, he grabs a sock from his pile of clothes and stuffs it into the gap. The top of the lid protests as the rest of the glue refuses to give in the areas he couldn’t reach, but still, it acts as the start of a wedge. The gap on the outside is still not large enough, so he grabs another sock, pushes it into the gap created by the first attempt, and slowly spreads them apart. The two sock wedges slowly, slowly, slowly create a usable gap from the outside.

  Positioning himself over the lid, Eren manages to wiggle his fingers into the gap. Pressing his legs against the wall, he peels the toilet lid off. The metal groan echoes through the space, and it takes every ounce of strength, but with a resounding pop, the lid releases and clatters against the ground.

  Panting, Eren takes a moment to catch his breath before moving on.

  Now, with access to the inside of the toilet, he locates the valve water comes in from to fill the bowl. Flushing the toilet, he waits until all of the water has been sucked through the pipes, then quickly brings his hand down into the tank to seal up the valve, preventing any water from refilling into the bowl.

  It barely works. Some still manage to get into the tank, but he takes his two already-soaked socks and uses his other hand to stuff them into the bowl where the water would fill. Pressure continues to build as the tank struggles to fill. It’s now or never then. He can’t keep the water from filling forever.

  Lowering his head into the now empty toilet bowl, Eren flushes the toilet again to open the pipes up, and then he shouts.

  “HEY!”

  His voice echoes through the piping traveling away from him.

  He waits, and waits, the water slowly making its way past his partial seal. With water filling the bowl, it would be harder for his voice to carry. Sound still might, but it would be heavily muddled.

  “HEY!” he tries again, desperate as the bowl fills.

  “I’M HERE!” A voice responds, though it’s muddied and lacks clarity.

  Eren’s heart skips a beat. Someone else is here and has come up with the same plan. The voice is clear enough to assume no water blocks the space between his voice and the strangers. This means that the pipes are connected cell to cell before going out to a main line. It’s an old method; they don’t have those in modern prisons. He remembered that one from a documentary as well.

  Still, the water is refilling quickly, so Eren lets the seal go and waits for the toilet to fill again. He can still hear vibrations through the pipes, though no words make it through.

  He flushes again and once more blocks up the valves to buy time.

  “Do you know Morse code?” Eren shouts, praying that the stranger does.

  “No!”

  “I’ll teach you!”

  “How?”

  Water refills yet again, muffling the voice.

  Another flush, another block, another shout.

  “It will take a little while but—”

  The sound of his cell door opening causes the words to catch in his throat. Terror rips through his body, freezing him in place. Eren can see the shadow move behind him but can’t bring himself to look at it.

  A fist connects to the side of Eren's head, sending him crumpling away from the toilet and onto the ground.

  “Think you’re fuckin’ smart, huh?” the voice grunts in time with a kick that crushes into Eren’s ribs.

  Stomach acid and blood sputter from his lips. He tries to curl up in on himself, but with his hands and feet still bound he can barely block the strikes against his head, stomach, back, and arms.

  A hand grips his hair, pulling him into the center of the room. Another set of boots joins the first, crushing his arms, legs, fingers, and feet. His vision turns white with pain, the world spins, and his ears ring. He can hear more people filing in—it sounds like they are fixing the toilet he broke.

  Fire tears through him again. His body seizes, the smell of burning skin and the taste of iron return though this time it isn’t sudden.

  Eren passes out several times, and each time he regains consciousness the pain returns all at once before he passes out again. It feels like an eternity.

  By the time the men leave his cell, Eren can barely see. His eyes are swollen shut, save for a faint sliver of light that makes its way through, allowing him to see his mangled hands and feet and the growing pool of blood that escapes from his split mouth and torn skin.

  So that’s where the previous stains came from, he thinks, watching his own blood join the red in the center of the cell.

  Turning his neck hurt and shifting his body nearly sends him into unconsciousness again. The toilet has been fixed, and this time it’s soldered shut. He can see the fresh welds on the outside.

  That’s unfortunate, though at least he knows someone else is here with him, someone smart enough to come up with a similar plan, someone who was likely beaten just as badly as him.

  Eren is an idiot. He got so carried away he had forgot all about the camera.

  He watches it now and wonders if it watches him, watches him bleed, watches him groan, watches him shiver as the cold carves a hole in his body.

  Everything aches, everything stings, another tooth is broken. Eren must have swallowed that one too as he doesn’t see it on the ground. Now that he looks, he doesn't see his clothes either. They took everything, leaving him naked on the floor of the cell.

  The game of tug of war continues in his head. Part of him hoping he’ll bleed out here to put an end to the pain. Part of him fights to survive, forcing him to stare the camera down, to challenge it.

  He is an idiot, an idiot who thought he was smart. But he is also a survivor. He doesn’t know whether it’s the logical part or the animal part, but it won’t let him die, and if he isn’t going to die, then he will do everything he can to get out of here.