Loki's Pain

Chapter Twenty-eight- Fear, Pain, and a Fever

The Bot lay still on the bed, an entirely new sensation coursing thru him that he was utterly unequipped to handle. His mind had been modeled after Thanos, in his early formation he had even believed he was Thanos, and Thanos feared nothing. So the bot had never been taught how to cope with it. There were no equations, no codes built in, to tell him how to respond to fear. He doubted his creator would have ever even conceived of the notion that he would ever need to. The bot trembled subtly on the cot.

He could also feel. The sensors that Stark had built in were actually hypersensitive, allowing him to feel any direct contact, and with ten times the acuteness of the average human body. The sensors were so acute that the barest of breezes against his outer casing left his mind reeling from the pleasure. He had never been able to feel things directly before, sensation had always been filtered thru Ash's perceptions, so any sensation at all was almost painful in it's newness. When he remembered that Stark had said his pain receptors would be even more acute, he became a terrified mess.

Being left alone and forgotten on the bed in the aftermath of the ritual was both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, he wasn't being tortured, but on the other was the knowledge that he would be soon enough. Not knowing when, or how, he would be tortured was a nightmare. Being helpless, and forced to sit and wait for his tormentors to return, also taught him just how bad it had been to have been programmed with an inventive and creative mind.

The worst part, for him, was knowing that he really didn't have much to tell them. He didn't know any juicy details of Thanos' plans, had no knowledge of Maw's projects, and hadn't been part of any scouting missions or troop movements. He was created simply as a means of torture, to weaken the minds of those they had captured, and to puppet them into returning if they ever managed to escape. He was even faulty, since he hadn't been fully incorporated into Ash's mind before he'd been rescued, otherwise he could have used Ash's full abilities and teleported himself right back to Thanos as had been intended.

He knew that information wouldn't be enough, so he'd be tortured even more harshly before they would be satisfied that he wasn't hiding anything. He wiggled the short stubs where limbs had previously been attached, seeing what he could do with them. He wasn't able to move them much, but he noticed that he had been able to rock himself a bit. After that he figured out how to flex his waist and managed to scoot towards the edge of the bed, but paused when he heard Stark and Strange walk past. When he was sure that they were gone again he flexed once more, only questioning whether the idea had really been wise when he slid off of the edge.

Landing on the ground with a massive clash of metal on cement, he screamed. Every pain receptor he had lit up like a christmas tree from hell. There were no words in the world to describe how utterly agonizing it was. It was a half hour before the pain eased and his cognitive functions returned to normal.

When they did, he found he had been moved to an entirely different room. It was dark, and the stubs of his missing limbs had been fitted to chains that suspended him in the middle of a metal ring. Looking down the Bot realized that the ring would be able to spin in any direction they might want. He struggled uselessly against his bonds, some innate instinct flaring to life before dying an almost instant death, leaving him to hang still once more when he realized he couldn't escape.

The Bot hung there for hours before a light finally flicked on and Stark wandered into the room. The breeze from the doors movement brushed across the Bot's chest and made him shiver in pleasure even as he feared what was to come next.

"You can make this easy on yourself, you know, and just tell us what you know now....skip the torture...?" Stark offered magnanimously.

"I-I'd be happy to. Falling from the table was more than enough to activate my self-preservation instinct... unfortunately, I don't really know anything of value. I'm just a torture and control bot. I'm used to weaken the minds of prisoners and eventually become a safety control in the event of escape.... I'm also faulty since I wasn't fully installed when you got your guy back...." He spilled quickly, even knowing it probably wouldn't help his situation, looking at the expression on Stark's face, he knew that Stark wasn't convinced.