From the Ashes

19

Tony awakes to being grabbed by both arms and pulled off of the ground.

Before he has a chance to protest the sudden actions of the two burly guards on either side of him, one of them pushes the syringe in his hand into his neck, causing everything to instantaneously become dark around him, rendering him unconscious.

Minutes, or hours later, or even days later, Tony can't be sure which, he wakes up in a different place than before.

His eyes wander the room, taking in the strange location. The room is bright like his cell, but instead of grey cement, the walls are white and the floors are too. The room gives him the feeling of a hospital. There is nothing else in the room apart from the metal door straight across from him in the somewhat small room.

Tony is laying at a 45-degree angle in a metal bed that resembles the door ahead. Brown leather straps encase all of his limbs, including his neck, keeping him firmly pinned down. His feet are pushing against a metal bar, and it is the only thing keeping him upright, and probably from snapping his neck.

He jerks his arms and legs with one hard push, but the restraints are too strong and don't budge a bit. He thrashes his head, attempting to get at least the neck one to pop off—but he has no luck.

Tony closes his eyes tightly and clenches his fists. He imagines his power building, the energy of the Phoenix coming to the surface without fully shifting into the bird. His dark eyes change and now they shine a bright blue. And with one powerful jerk of his entire body, Tony bursts free from the straps and topples forward, onto the ground.

He quickly scrambles up and then pauses.

The sound of many swift footsteps fills Tony's ears. He stumbles back at the noise and groans in pain, holding his head in his hands as an attempt to subdue the feeling of a sledgehammer pounding against his skull.

What the hell, he thinks. The sound of the steps get louder and louder as whoever is outside his room comes closer.

Tony steps back but ends up tripping over his own foot, sending back to the ground again. "Agh!" He yells and pushes his hands hard against his skull. The pain intensifies with every second.

The metal door in front of the boy, lying hopelessly on the ground, opens, and guards file into the room. Two of the guards pull Tony up to his feet and drag him back to the metal bed. The other two guards in the blindingly-white room approach the teenage boy, who is writhing in pain against the steel frame.

Tony's body shakes and his eyes move around lazily as he tries to watch what the guards are doing.

They hold up new restraints and replace the ones he had broken. They shove the new straps onto his arms and legs, each time causing a new excruciating pain to ripple through his body.

This time, he screams from the burns forming against his skin. "You bastards," he grunts, sweat now dripping down his face.

The new straps have silver on the underside. And that must have been why his head was hurting so badly, the walls and floor must have silver in them somehow, creating an amplifier of pain for someone supernatural in the small space he's trapped in.

As quickly as the guards appeared, they are gone.

The closing of the metal door causes some mental relaxation for Tony, but not much, considering every part of his body is still surging with sharp, aching pain. The pain is equivalent to that of a needle stabbing every one of his bones in every place at the same time. At least, that's what Tony thinks it might be equivalent to, he hopes to never have to experience that either.