A dim, sterile but poorly maintained room with flickering fluorescent lights marked itself as Elias' new home. The atmosphere was filled with overpowering antiseptic and dried blood. Wolfsbane infused metal restraints bit into Elias' wrists and ankles, holding him steady against a rusted examination table. The walls of the room were cracked and peeling, their once white paint stained with dried blood or dark streaks of something that one can't really identify. A rhythmic drip of water echoed from a leaking pipe overhead, and faint chatter of different hunters going around different rooms checking on captured supernatural, the only sound asides from Elias' ragged breathing.
Pain, coursed through his body, merciless and unrelenting. His muscles ached like they've been overstretched to their limit and his veins burned from the continuous sting of the wolfsbane. He's never been vulnerable or scared but, in that moment, he felt every fear in the world amplified. His vision blurred, the dim light casting eerie shadows along the walls.
A voice came out through an unseen intercom.
"Subject 217 has regained consciousness."
He groaned as he tried to move, each turn allowed the wolfsbane seep further into his bloodstream. Whoever chained him up knew what they were doing and if he wasn't the one on the table, he might appreciate the engineering. He was no longer in his territory, no longer free. He was a captive, the sense of suffering dawned on him.
It came rushing back- Elizzabeth Andrews. Of course, he was warned by his pack not to befriend the daughter of a notorious hunter, but he refused thinking she was different, and the consequences couldn't get any worse than it already is or so he thought.
His expression changed from pain to rage and all he was thinking of was revenge that is if he managed to survive the horrors of what was going to happen to him. He looked around trying to figure where he was, but he couldn't decipher it. Simon Andrews hid the location of the Iron Asylums a secret after declaring it a toxic level zone to the general public but in secret it's his laboratory of doom for nonhumans.
Footsteps echoed down the hallway, measured and intentional. Elias turned to the door waiting to see who was going to enter. His eyes darted to the only bar window in the room watching as a group of figures walked past holding a clipboard. Their coats were pristine white, but he could tell that they are more than ordinary scientists. Hunters. Butchers.
The door flung open, and Simon Andrews stepped in an immaculately tailored suit looking different from the man who ambushed him with his betrayer daughter. His face, sharp and graced with years of experience, his blue eyes like his daughter's stared right into Elias' green eyes void of pity.
"My daughter tells me you heal quickly. Quite extraordinary if you ask me." Simon remarked, taking of his black Italian suit hanging it on a nearby coat hanger. "But the thing is, we expected that. You're a naturally occurring werewolf. Which means you weren't turned into one unlike most freaks I've encountered and that is what's so interesting about you." He glanced at Elias, looking at him as if he was just a specimen.
Elias sneered "Is that why you took me? To be your lab rat." His voice hoarse, but defiant.
Simon ignored him, concentrating on inserting his hands into a pair of surgical gloves. "The fact that you are naturally born a werewolf is an abomination. And that is a threat to the balance we've maintained in Silver Brook for generations. This institution, if you will call it that, exists to correct that abomination." He ended, fixing a nose cover over his face.
Elias pulled against his restraints, embracing the pain "You think you can break me?"
Simon grabbed a scalpel, leaned closer, lowering his voice "No, but we can learn from you." And pried at Elias' eyes, blood pooling at his gloves as he removed his eyeball from its socket.
Elias screamed in agony, howling out for help but his cries wasn't loud enough to leave the Iron Asylum.
They came for him in droves. Needles plunging into his veins, restraint tightened as they tested his limits. Electrocution became a daily routine and there was nothing he could do to fight out of the agony of torture. Silver and wolfsbane pierced his skin, scarring him open only to vanish and to be reopened again in an unending cycle.
Days blurred together between pain and interrogation. The hunters wanted answers, they wanted to understand his genome as to how he became a shape shifting predator and prey. Through it all Elias endured the pain never speaking only screaming when it became too much to bear.
He wasn't the only one. Rarely, when he wasn't tortured, through the thin walls of his prison, he heard the shouts of others. Beaten but not broken, trapped and tortured endlessly just like him. Three weeks in the Iron Asylum, a low voice came up in the darkness, tired but alive.
"They're never letting us out of here, are they?"
"Nope, but I know i will get out one day and when I do there will be hell to pay." Elias exhaled weakly, his mind focused on when he escapes. The Iron Asylum was a tomb, a funeral parlour for people like him but he was planning not to rot in it.
Not for long.