The hunger of the first several days was not as bad as I’d experienced in the past. As it was since I’d entered the deadzone, the radiation that surrounded me seemed to be sustaining me somehow, though it wasn’t perfect, and I found myself hoping another rat would wander into my cell as my stomach ached. The First would visit over those three days. Talking at me as he ate a massive plate of fresh meat a few feet from my cell. I had a feeling he knew that wouldn’t be enough to break me, he was just enjoying himself.

On the fourth day, five men came to my cell. I stayed perfectly still as they dragged me out, waiting for them to get close and make a mistake, but they were careful. They kept their hands away from my mouth, covered my eyes immediately, and beat me to keep me disoriented. I was hauled across the building and felt myself slammed onto a table. Each of my limbs was removed from restraints individually, then slapped into thick metal cuffs on the table. Once that was done, my clothes were cut off and cold water was thrown on me. I was grateful, I’d been forced to sit in my filth for days at this point, and that was the closest thing I’d had to a bath in a long time. Besides which, the black cloak I’d taken from the Bunker in Ren territory had been shredded, and the rest of my clothes were no better after the last few months.

A few more buckets of water were thrown on me. The cold was a shock, but I managed to catch some in my mouth to soothe my dry throat. I heard a light whistle start up on the other side of the room, and the sounds of a tray being moved slowly over to me. I had flashbacks to my experience with Jantai. I decided to strain against the restraints, putting all my strength into it as I did so, but they didn’t budge. Unlike the last few times I’d been restrained, this time they didn’t underestimate my strength.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. No need for that. This is only an introduction, and we haven’t even started yet.”

It was a woman’s voice. High pitched, and friendly. I heard the tray move closer to me.

“We won’t get to the really exciting stuff until I can determine exactly what your healing threshold is. Mary seems to believe it’s at the high end and…” she paused, and I felt a number of uncomfortable pokes and prods, “I’m inclined to think she’s correct, but we still need to determine exactly where on the high end you are.”

I heard something get lifted from the tray, and I was cut so suddenly and swiftly across the chest, that I didn’t even realize what she had done until a second after it was over. I gritted my teeth, feeling it begin to knit together almost immediately after.

“Hmmm, interesting. That quick even after being starved… Now, let’s see how you handle burns.”

…

By the end of her testing I was dragged by three brutes back to my cell. They waited until I’d had a number of tendons in my hands, feet, legs, and arms severed in quick succession so that they didn’t need to worry about restraining me. The torturer had been…excited by my healing ability, and had done everything she could to test its limits short of severing fingers and toes to see if they would fully regenerate. That’s what she was going to start with on the next day.

After I was tossed into my cell they turned a hose on me, rinsing off my blood and cleaning out the cell at the same time. I’d managed to keep silent during the entirety of the torture, but for some reason the hosing off infuriated me. I screamed at them and ran at the bars, shaking them impotently until they were done.

When they left me alone I just stood there. I felt hot, even after all the cold water that had been blasted at me. The heat I felt inside myself was out of balance again, even though I was in a high radiation deadzone, it still felt overwhelming, and the red tinge to my sight and rage I felt at being caged added on to it. I started to hear a strange sound, and for a moment I thought it was more water coming from somewhere, but I realized it was much closer than that. The room was filling with steam and I looked at where the water was pooled at my feet and saw that it was bubbling. The steam had come from the water on me evaporating. The heat I was experiencing wasn’t just in my head, it was tangible.

It started to fade, but I held on to it, focusing on the feeling of the heat, the energy of it, feeling it leak out of my skin. I closed my eyes, and tried to focus. I took deep breaths, trying to see if I could make the heat come to me, rather than leak out. With effort, I felt the heat start to grow with the conscious effort I was making, then suddenly it began to build faster, without me asking it to. I opened my eyes and saw a slight glow in the cell. Looking down at my hands, I realized it was coming from my skin, pulsing with my heartbeat. I let out a breath and changed the flow to leaking from me again, letting the heat leak from my skin. The light went away, and I felt myself finally starting to cool off after more than a week of feeling like I might combust. I realized, thinking back, that when I’d come down from fighting the maddened deadmen in the mists, I’d noticed a number of them were covered in burns. I hadn’t had time to analyze that at the time, but I realized now that they had to have been from me.

I reached out and grabbed the bars of my cell again. I focused, drawing the heat in to myself, and this time, rather than letting it leak out from all over I tried to direct it, tried to move it through my palms. I felt it build, and build, the heat increasing until my hands were burning from the heat even as it flowed from them. I pushed it hotter, and that’s when the metal started to glow, and bend. I pushed, and the bars started to give way, but not enough. They were too thick, even with my strength and new ability. The name ‘energy dispersal’ made a lot more sense now.

I sighed and sat down against the wall. It wasn’t enough for the thick bars of my cell, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t work on thinner metal. The manacles and chains I’d so recently been bound with for instance. It would be risky, but not any more than trying to escape from a belowground cell with only one entrance and exit. Besides that, even if it didn’t go how I was planning, I could still almost certainly guarantee a free hand and a few seconds, which would be at least enough to buy a bit of satisfaction.

I stood back up and stretched, finally able to fully extend my body after days of being restrained was very appreciated. At the same time, I let the heat flow out of me until it was in balance with the radiation I seemed to be absorbing passively. In spite of my hunger and recent torture, I found myself in better spirits than I had been in some time.

I had a path forward, and a way out. I worked out a loose plan in my head. I didn’t want it to be point by point, as there was too much that I didn’t know and I’d certainly need to improvise at points, but there were a few key factors I needed to manage no matter what. I’d need to escape my restraints, find my gear, ensure I couldn’t be tracked again, and get back to the explosives I’d stored. I’d need firepower to kill the first, and I wasn’t certain he could be killed by anything else I had access to. I wasn’t sure he was the fighter I was, but whether he was or not wouldn't matter if I managed to get the drop on him with bombs.

I still hadn’t heard anything about what I’d done in the weapons factory in the west, which meant that either the former slaves had made a run for it, were too afraid to do anything after all, or were moving carefully, doing what they could to maximize their chances. I hoped that it was the last option, but they owed me nothing, and I knew I couldn’t rely on whatever distraction they might cause, particularly as deep as I was in a deadzone.

I stretched out one last time and started taking deep slow breaths. I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to sleep again once things started back up. I needed to take my rest where I could get it.