When Jonathan came to, he tried to get a bearing of where he was. He tried to think of what happened before he blacked out. He clearly remembered the pain of being cut open, but now he was having a hard time feeling anything besides his dried throat. He tried to swallow his saliva but when he did, he felt something in his gut. Something that moved.

He felt himself get colder as he tried to focus his field of view on his torso. At first he was having trouble focusing, but with some effort he saw the gloved, bloodied hands of the silver haired man, Augus, searching his insides for something. Instantly, he felt the pain running down his torso, he felt the cold of Augus’s hands digging into him.

Jonathan tried to distract himself from the pain by counting down in his head from 10 in five second intervals. Anything, anything to get away from the pain. Without warning Augus suddenly stopped, apparently satisfied with what he saw and removed his hands, pausing to catch his breath. Then he grabbed a needle the size of his middle finger that was attached to a thread and before Jonathan could realize what was happening, he thrust the needle into Jonathans flesh.

Jonathan blacked out for the second time on the first day of the “examination”.

“What you gotta do is; breathe, call out your name, surname and age. Then you repeat. That’s how you get through torture”

“How the hell would that help me in my situation? And how would you know anything about torture?”

“In Captain America, when Bucky was caught, that’s what he did to keep his sanity.”

“But that’s a movie, bro, I don’t think that’s how it works in real life. Plus, I think that was just to keep him from sharing allied secrets with HYDRA.”

“I never understood that phrase”

“What phrase?”

“’Sharing secrets’, I mean, that phrase implies that the secret was spread as a form of goodwill when secrets are usually spread without the consent of the secret holder, or through some form of coercion.”

“Like torture?”

Eddie smiled and nodded.

“Like torture”

“I get that, but that’s not very helpful in my situation, man. It’s a girl, not HYDRA, that I want to go out with.”

Eddie shrugged.

“I just meant that just do something repetitive to get your mind off your nerves. Like counting or spinning a pen. You have shit hand-eye coordination, so just count from 10.”

“That…was actually kind of helpful. Now before I go, are you sure that this one has no boyfriend?”

“That only happened once, you gotta get over it man.”

When Jonathan came to that night, heard a loud ringing sound and opened his eyes to see words, in his field of vision that stayed in his vision no matter how he moved his eyes, as if they were burned onto his pupils;

[Congratulations! You have learnt the skill: Pain Tolerance Lv.1]

On the second day, Jonathan awoke to find a crude, thick tube stuck in his arm, an IV drip. Despite what Florence had said, it seemed that they wanted him to live as possible, or at least for the week. Jonathan couldn’t decide if that was a good or a bad thing. For now, he thought, I have to focus on getting out. He found that he had regained the ability to move, although he still felt limp in his extremities. With this revelation, he had also realized that he was hungry. It had been days since he last ate.

“Nothing I can do about it while stuck here” he said, quietly to himself.

To distract himself from his hunger, he tried to examine himself, at least as much as the dark would allow. He found that he had two sets of scars that ran continuously down his chest onto his belly. One was straight down his chest onto the top of his bellybutton, where Augus had cut him open. The next set of scars seemed to be ornamental and ran down both sides of his ribs, but he had trouble seeing the exact pattern in the dark.

“You don’t see it” a smooth deep voice rang out. If Jonathan were to describe it, he would say the voice sounded tired, not physically but in a way that made it feel like the owner was worn out, as if he had been saying the same thing over and over and yet nobody listened.

“-but you were also marked on your face, your throat, and arms, just above your wrists.”

The owner of the voice was Augus, the man who spent the previous day investigating Jonathans insides. He was sitting on a stool next to a large bucket in the dark but he lit a candle when he heard Jonathan stir.

“Forgive me, I wanted to talk to you as soon as you woke up but I fell asleep here before you woke up. I’ve had a long night, I’m sure you understand.”

Jonathan, surprising even himself, stayed calm when Augus startled him and even mentioned when he mentioned the scars he himself had carved into Jonathans flesh. Instead he focused on something else.

“I can understand you. You aren’t speaking English but I understand you.”

“You are pretty sharp, young man. It usually takes 20 minutes or so of panic on average before anybody notices. Yesterday I inserted translation devices into your ears and your throat, so that you understood and spoke Octavian standard, the language we are using now. It’s no use to have a slave who cannot understand what you say.”

“I see. So I take it the ‘marks’ are to show my status as a slave in a manner that is hard to conceal?”

“Yes, it is. You are taking this pretty well, all things considered. Usually people scream their throats raw or scratch and claw and struggle until they break something, usually something I have to replace. Perhaps it’s the influence of your [Calm Mind] skill.”

“I guess it’s just how my mind works, I figure that any struggle on my side will at most only inconvenience you and hurt me.”

Augus smiled.

“That’s good, this means I can spend less time educating you and I can spend more time in making sure you survive your upcoming life.”

“Does that mean that the examination is over?” Jonathan said with the sound of hope in his voice.

“No I’m afraid not. The purpose of the examination is to ensure that you can survive the tribulations of the average slave to keep up empire standards. In other words, we are to ensure that a slave can perform all functions that his or her master dictates.”

“Empire standards? What does that mean?”

“The average empire slave is worked, quite literally, to the bone. So most of them don’t last very long. Most last a year or two.”

“Jesus. How fucked up are you people?”

“Yes, it is a situation do not I enjoy very much either. Believe it or not, up until our reserves started to run out, slavery was outlawed in all our territories until it was the only way to keep our position. Between you and me, I do not enjoy my job…much, anyway. But one does what one must for ones’ country.”

“So you’re a patriot, huh?”

“Unfortunately.”

A loud silence filled the room. After a long beat of silence, Augus continued.

“Anyway, as I mentioned, usually, the goal of the next four days is to get you to the level of the average slave by empire standards. But the empire standards are too low for any actual living, so the next few days will be spent trying to get you to learn skills essential for survival.”

Jonathan nodded to get him to continue. He figured that getting on Augus’s good side for now would be beneficial in the long run. Maybe he could use a bit of Augus’s influence to escape. Jonathan wasn’t sure that Augus had a high position, but he was sure that he was higher up on the ladder than Florence, he had been able to order him to leave afterall.

“It would be impossible to increase your attributes in four days without leaving this room. So you will have to learn skills.”

“My attributes are that bad, huh?”

“The average ten year old child has attributes higher than you, so yes.”

It was exactly as Jonathan had feared. His stats were awful, although he hadn’t thought them bad to this extent. Augus continued.

“Even if you were to escape, as you no doubt are thinking of, you wouldn’t be able to survive a fight against even the most mediocre of citizens. And even if you somehow do escape, the wilderness outside of the empire would be too extreme for you to get through. So throw away any thoughts of escape.”

Jonathan panicked, though he tried not to show it, what was left of his shirt was soaked with his sweat. Augus walked up to Jonathan and spoke;

“The first skill is very essential for survival. Unfortunately, for you to learn it, I have to drown you.”

Before Jonathan could react, Augus brought a bucket filled with water up to Jonathans face and unloaded it onto Jonathans face without any warning.

The water felt endless. Jonathan struggled and pulled on his chains in futility. His vision started to blur, and he started to see black spots in his vision. He started to black out, but he realized that he would die if he did. So he struggled and coughed up what he could and he shook his head when a ringing sound suddenly rang in his ears and he saw a notification.

[Congratulations! You have earned the skill ‘Will to live’.]

[You have fulfilled one of the conditions for the title ‘Survivor’]

Then Augus stopped. He smiled at the confusion on Jonathans face.

“Shall we continue?”