Chapter Text
1
He couldn’t feel his hands, and yet somehow that paled in comparison to everything else he was facing. The past few weeks—hell, months —had been a drugged out, pain-filled blur. Disinterested doctors, muffled voices, and various monitor blips and beeps filled the cotton space of his consciousness. He thought he’d never hear anything other than the noise of the factory. Knox was fairly certain he wasn’t meant to be alive right now. He still wasn’t sure if this was a post-death hallucination or not, and he also wasn’t sure if he even wanted to be breathing. At some point, somebody moved him from the bed and into a car. He was being driven somewhere, and somebody was trying to talk to him.
“To pay off your medical costs, the foreman has sold you. You’ll be auctioned to a bidder and will be their property until such time as your value has ‘paid off’ the debt. ”
Sold.
He had to smile. Old bastard said he’d never sell Knox. Could barely turn a profit (if he had at all) with the untrained wildness Knox cradled and kept. He savored it, the core of it, and let his mouth run. What could they do? Hurt him? Rape him? If they were focused on him, they were too busy to notice and punish the kids sneaking away food, sneaking lockpicks, running away. It was… easier to not think about himself.
The auction pens were lit by flickering fluorescents. He was pulled down a narrow, battered corridor. The plaster on the walls was flaking off, and his shoulders scraped in some places. It was suffocating. It smelt like piss and fear, two smells he was used to in the barracks. Knox was roughly shoved into a cell and left alone. The drugs were slowly fading from his system, and the pain was returning. He didn’t mind. He was used to it. Knox shifted his attention to his hands, which… he still couldn’t feel. His vision had improved, and he looked down in the dim fluorescent…
Burned.
He fell against the back wall and… he couldn’t feel that either. He reached back; they hadn’t given him a shirt and…
The first noise he’d made in months was a gasp, horrified, and then a choked sound as he swallowed the urge to panic cry. Oh god. Oh god . His back was gone. His fingers traced deep divots of scarred, hardened flesh. He couldn’t feel the touch of his own hand on his back, but now that he knew how much was gone... The whip scars wouldn’t be missed; they might’ve even been burned away. His arms weren’t as bad, but still pockmarked with burns and cut scars. Why—
Why did they spend the money to save him? Didn’t make sense as a cost. Was it some weird form of revenge? Did the foreman want to see him break or… finally do something to justify buying him off the police in the first place? Maybe to avoid bein’ sued or whistleblown? Whatever the reason was, Knox’s gut twisted in hunger and fear.
Who would buy him? Who would buy him now ?
The kind of people who would buy a slave as damaged as he now was… he’d be lucky if he was bought as a farm hand. At least, there was a good chance he wouldn’t be bought for pleasure. They’d have his records; they could see his scars... He’d be of no use there. He tried flexing his hands and winced with pain. He couldn’t even crook his fingers. Useless . He curled up more, trying to keep his shaky breathing steady.
Sold, enslaved, and still able to work still meant he was alive, still meant that one day he would be able to be free, legally or not.
Useless, unable to work, unattractive…
He wasn’t sure what happened to those slaves, and he was pretty sure he didn’t want to find out. Knox thought back to his record, and all the marks on there. When he was 13, first on his own, he’d been stupid. Caught shoplifting, running away, they knew he could pick locks, and that he was a slippery bastard. At 16, he almost did get away. Two strikes. They made sure he couldn’t run after that, so now when he walked, he favored his right leg, where their knives went a little too deep.
No matter what they did to him in the factory, he kept his head down and worked on getting others out of there, or at least keeping them going. The other kids had to learn the best way to fix a mill without getting a hand mutilated, how to avoid the foreman when he was drunk, how to pick locks, read, write. Then… they caught him setting fire to the ownership papers of the whole second shift. Those papers were burned, they said, so he had to as well. They were going to kill him in front of everyone. But the fire spread.
As fucked up as the system was, Knox vaguely remembered that they couldn’t hold a public lynching or—rather, burning—like that. Had they gone through the proper channels, Knox probably would’ve been killed anyway, but… he wondered what was worse. To be seen as useless and die unknown, or to have died in the fire like a martyr. They hadn’t broken him, but this… this might.
He had his name and his rage, but Knox wasn’t sure if the shattering unknown and his burned body could get through it. He had to try at least.
Time wasn’t real in the cells. One meal a day at whatever time the faceless workers felt like it, barely any water, and the only indication of time was when they shut off the lights. Pain kept him in his corner, sleeping most of the time. Once, auction-house staff came in to take a look at him, roughly getting him to his feet.
“Tsk. Not much to work with here. Put it down for a quarter off, and we’ll put it up tomorrow morning. We’re not going to break even, but we might as well try to get some kickback.” Knox grimaced and ended up on the floor again as a heavy backhand sent him down.
“Actually, make it half. Pity that person who bites, but I don’t want to pay for disposal. If it ain’t bought in three days though, call ‘em.” Knox was smart enough to stay down. When they left, he pushed himself up to a sitting position. What was he doing? He didn’t want to die. He’d survived being set on fire, being put down after that seemed like such a… defeat, spitting in the face of all his resistance up until this point. Still though, there was nothing he could do. He looked at the wall he now leaned against, the worn concrete pockmarked and crumbling in places. He pressed a nail against the rock, scratching down, and noticed that he left a small mark.
Knox continued scratching through the night, agonizingly carving the letters of his name, scratch by scratch. At least, if the worst came… there was some mark that he’d lived. That he’d been here. He wondered if anyone else in here was doing the same. At least he had a name.