Nightmare County (Reader x Seed brothers)

Chapter 16: Thrive Through The Pain

Hungry, tired, and heating up. You felt all these emotions crash down onto you as you sat in the cage. You were just lying on the ground, the dirt being the only cooling thing for you. You haven't had a real conversation since that conversation with Jacob. At this point you were left in this cage for 7 days not even given food or water. Your stomach grumbled and your throat was begging for anything. On the first day when you were stuck here without water you just forced yourself to salivate to at least hydrate your tongue now you couldn't even salivate. Today was a hot day too so you were feeling the heat of the sun despite being in the shade of the cage.

Footsteps started to approach the cage yet you stayed staring at the ceiling assuming it was just a guard walking around to check on them. You then hears a light clink like something had hit your cage. Her head quickly turned to the sound, seeing Angelica slip some food through the metal bars. You eyed the food then looked at Angelica before spotting Jacob walking closer from behind to Angelica. You mustered all your strength to stand up walking to the bowl before sitting yourself back down groaning loudly from how much pain your body was feeling.

"That's a surprising reaction." Jacob says a little shocked to see how tame you were going to the food he had given you. You looked at him before your attention went back to the food. Your stomach was growling for you to just eat it already but you mentally protested not wanting to touch it with your hands that were covered in dirt. The food didn't even look appealing to you.

It seems your brain still had some sense of manners and humanity as it told you to find some kind of way to make your hands at least a little cleaner then it currently was. You looked at your hands before looking around you, all that surrounded you was dirt and this bowl filled with food. Anyway of getting clean water? Seems that's not the case and if they did give you clean water you would be smart and not use it all on your hands. You looked at your clothes. It was semi clean, you used your shirt to wipe some dirt off your hands before eating it.

"Not reverting to your primal senses?" Jacob tests, "This is the first meal you had for days you must be hungry. Most would kill to have that meal." You continued to eat while listening to his words. "Yet here you are still worrying about if you get dirt in it if you get some kind of germs in your mouth. Why is that?" You shrug, not really knowing what to respond with.

"I don't know..." You finally reply. "I guess I'm just... my brain, it doesn't..." You stop talking. Apparently those seven days really took a toll. "I don't know..."

"Interesting, truly." Jacob says, stroking his beard. "Even your friend here had started acting more animalistic when I did this to her." You tense up knowing that fact. You slowly look up at Angelica before looking at Jacob and his stupid grin he had on his face. He knew he had gotten you with that. You said nothing other than going back to eating.

"Even someone as caring as her would turn savage when not given food." Jacob says, "Yet here you are eating like you had been eating for a while, I know you haven't. You really do learn new things about people when given multiple people to experiment on."

"So why are you doing this?" You say switching the topic, not really wanting to linger on the fact that your friend had to go through this.

"Why? Well to find out who is worthy to be a soldier for Eden's Gate." Jacob says, You nod, you didn't understand how this was but you would nod anyway. "After you eat and drink water you will be going through some training." You somewhat suspected that, then he would starve you once more, you guessed.

"I see." You say not really knowing what else to say you finished the bowl and Angelica brought out a bottle of water. She reached her empty hand out to you. You looked at her confused before realizing that she wanted the bowl back. You hand her the bowl and Angelica hands you the bottle of water almost like a trade off. You twist the cap off and gulp the whole bottle in one sitting. Angelica holds out her hand again and you hand her the bottle.