A FRACTURE IN THE CONSCIOUSNESS ✓

TYLER

{trigger warning: gore, torture, starvation, dehydration, sensory deprivation, vomiting blood, broken bones, murder}

Tyler bullshitted his way to freedom. Sort of.

In exchange for a blind explanation of Brendon's lack of sexual and mental development along with a fact that he pulled out of his ass that his amygdala being wild and unable to process when something is good or not to do, Tyler was allowed to roam the room. With supervision of course.

After his speech, Brendon cleared the room of torture devices. Before that, Tyler was knocked out after he injected him with thirteen different types of unfatal poisons.

Tyler could barely walk; he was exhausted and half above, his skin hanging off his skeleton. Brendon untied him and Tyler immediately collapsed on the ground, sleeping for what felt like days but couldn't have been more than a handful of hours.

Spencer Smith, the same Officer that had been with him and Josh in the warehouse, watched over him, never getting close enough to touch. Tyler wanted to rip his throat out, but he hardly had the energy to speak, much less attack a healthy grown man who was at least six years older than him.

Around what he assumed to be the third week of explaining, answering questions, enduring torture, the routine changed. Tyler saw him installing cameras in the corners of the room when Brendon thought he was out of it. Recording his 'progress,' possibly, though Tyler wasn't making any. If anything, he was getting better at fighting through the pain, ignoring the ache and it of healing wounds to blurt out facts and answer mathematical equations or puzzles in his head.

Brendon began to chain him to the wall instead of tying him to the chair. That was the best thing to come out of their compromise. Tyler sat on the compacted dirt floor just below the window. From there, he could hear birds and the rustling of trees.

It couldn't be a house unless this was an added room that had access to the outside. He thought he could hear rushing water too, but he couldn't be sure. Tyler had begun to hear and see things too.

"You're improving," Brendon said with pride one day, standing at the foldable table lined with an assortment of syringes and knives. "I calculated your IQ to be 169 before we started the experiments, and now it's up to 182. Impressive. The highest jump I've seen so far. It seems a diverse amount of excitatory stimulus was exactly what you needed."

"Does that mean you'll let me go?" Tyler asked, blood running down his chin from the pressure of the metal weights Brendon had sat on his chest and left there for hours. He was sure he had a couple of broken ribs, maybe even something worse.

"Why would you want to leave? We're on the verge of a scientific breakthrough."

"I- I didn't mean I want to leave." Tyler learned that part of Brendon's psychosis was believing his patients were willing, and his defiance was going to get him nowhere. "What I meant was, neurological pathways in the Brian's are opened with new experiences, just like these experiments are opening new pathways in my mind. But those pathways are essentially useless if not used. Maybe we could go outside, take a walk, get some food."

Brendon made a hm sound, wiping blood from the weights. "Perhaps you're right. I'll talk to Spencer, see if it's clear for us to move."

"My team isn't looking anymore. It's been too long, they don't care enough to keep the search up."

That wasn't true. Tyler knew they would keep looking, and he knew that they wouldn't stop until they found him, especially if Brendon wasn't lying and Josh was actually dead. But Brendon didn't know that, and as long as they found Spencer first, he wouldn't.