Ascent Into Madness

[laZardo†]

((The following literally took all afternoon and night to write, but I suspect it is still very majorly flawed. I effectively failed my Sociology test - which I will take in less than 8 hours - out of my obsession with this. I'm sorry. Please help me find solace by pointing out flaws in the logic through PMs, and hopefully I won't have to rewrite the whole damn thing. ;~;))

PaCAS Headquarters, Denton, New Jersey
1930 hrs. EDT
Nicole Carter-Madison was dressed to do business. Her face showed she meant business. And today, she felt perfectly ready for the business at hand, especially the recent fruits of the business, as she prepared to conlude another good day of business. As she strolled back into the main meeting room of the office area lodged into the 5th floor of the building, a faithful aide - a housewife from the PTA of a nearby school - rushed to her, eagerly bearing good news.

"Mrs. Madison, the new ad is gonna come on in a few moments!"
"Excellent," she said in a tone that could rival Trump's. The ad had actually been in production since the last year, and would be Nicole's first appearance on television apart from her famous press conferences. As always, her son would make an appearance in a dramatization of a role that was all too natural to him. She couldn't tell if the fear Damien had in front of those actor-bullies was real or not, but what mattered was that it was believable. Either way, she could count on him to come home to her loving embrace every day, no matter how late. As soon as she'd finish watching the ad with her company, she'd rush home and have dinner ready before her son came back from his day trip to the President Francis Museum of Art.

There was a large yet plain TV on a stand at the end of the meeting room where people would often give their presentations, and Nicole and some of her co-workers gathered around it. Another one of her aides switched the TV on with a remote.

But there was no PaCAS advertisement. Not even some other advertisement or even regular programming. Only the figure of a motionless male body on a bed in some hotel room. There were two bags beside him, one of them with an unreadable symbol on its side.

"That's...what the!?" the aide exclaimed.

Emblazoned on one corner of the screen were the initials SOTF, as professionally lettered as that of a major network.

"SOTF? I thought that show ended last year!" Nicole was taken by as much surprise as the others in the room. She started to wonder what pathetic school (or schools) that filthy terrorist had managed to get his grubby hands on. "Maybe you have the wrong channel! Switch it!"

The aide switched the channel. Another youth, this time a very pale-skinned male wandering across some shopping mall. One of his bags was different, but the other was the same kind of daypack with a number on it. And there was still that same SOTF logo in the corner.

"Change it again!" Nicole was getting frustrated, and the aide responded by channel surfing. More kids sprawled across the ground in different locations. More "numbered" bags. And the same SOTF logo. Then suddenly...

"Hang on! Stop!"
"Huh? But it's all the same?"
"Leave it there!" Nicole commanded, her voice taking on that same stern tone she used with Damien in her little sermons.

Nicole was particularly transfixed on the channel that was PAX in normal broadcasting hours. Unlike the other channels, that were filming in daylight, this one was filming in darkness. Any and all shapes were shown on screen as arrangements of different streaks of green.

The body on screen was recognizably male, but it was more petite than most of of the other males and even some of the females. It had skin almost as pale as that man in the shopping mall earlier. This body also had long, jet-black hair. If one looked really closely, one could see the outlines of a school uniform.

"Omigoodness...DAMIEN?"

=====

Unknown Location
Day 1 - Time Unknown

B06 - Carter-Madison, D - HR: 87/108

Damien's entire vision was pitch black. The sound of running water could be heard right beside him. It stank like hell, from the variety of who-knew-what that was dumped into the sewers in the who-knew-how-long before he woke up. He could feel his body pressed against cold concrete.

Damien Carter-Madison was not dreaming.

He jolted up into a sitting position, gasping for air. That gasp turned quickly into a hacking cough, as noxious fumes from the sewage penetrated into his lungs. It took a few seconds before he adjusted himself into small, cautious breaths. But even that was hard to do when one realized that one was all alone in the darkness, sitting on hard cement, next to a river of putrid sewage.

What the hell am I doing here!? The last thing I saw...that show on TV. That clip. Then those people rounding up the students...those people on TV. One of them 'ravaging' that woman...I've seen that clip before too...then the soldiers administering that gas...that show was...

His hands lunged for his neck. There was some kind of plastic brace wrapping snugly around it, as if it were custom fit for him.
B06 - Carter-Madison, D - HR: 110/131

No...NO!

Damien's hands darted for the ground. One of them landed with a whump on some sort of fabric. The other one quickly followed, and together they searched up, down and around it before they found the latch for what should be the main pocket.

My last earthly possessions...

As he threw the bag open, Damien  already knew there would be food, basic survival things, and of course, his assigned weapon. After feeling around cases, packets, and some books, he managed to find the rounded contours of what appeared to be a large disk. Taking it by its topmost edges, he yanked it out of the daypack with some force - albeit plenty for his capacity. Once this disk was out, his hands found the handle of this "weapon," which now felt like some kind of shield, since its edges were quite soft rather than sharp like some sort of circular blade. A shield was not a weapon, and Damien was most unpleasantly surprised.

Damien opened his mouth to speak. "You've gotta be SHITTING ME." Unfortunately, he wasn't the one speaking, and his free hand quickly clasped over his mouth.

That voice was familiar. And not in a good way.

The fluctuating yellow circle of a flashlight's reflection rounded a bend in the sewer that seemed about 50 feet away. It seemed to swing to and from its source, a bright twinkle. It found its way across the floor in front of him, stopping briefly on the two bags in front of him. Damien didn't know there were two - the other being his very own school backpack - until the light was upon it, but by then he was already standing straight, scooting backwards on the cement. His shield was held by his side, as he hoped to fade into the darkness and away from the flashlight.

His efforts to slink back into the darkness were futile, as the flashlight finally found his face. Like there really was any other direction for it to go.

"Damien!?"

FUCK.

B06 - Carter-Madison, D - HR: 124/149

"Damien? Is that you!?" The twinkle of the flashlight's bulb grew ominously closer. Damien didn't respond. He didn't have to...

...as he suddenly felt his sweater vest gripped by the hand of Darth Vader, and his own hand grasping the handle of the "shield" as hard as he could. But in recognizing that voice he was filled with even more dread as to the source of the voice, as it rotated the flashlight it was holding to illuminate his face, from that famously scary bottom angle. His fears were confirmed...
"M-m...MARVIN!?"
"Ho-ohly shit, if it isn't the Dame!" The bright yellow light probably obscured Marvin's real facial color, which was very likely red, because he was certainly furious. Furious enough to push the smaller boy back toward a nearby grating. "How the hell did you get us into this mess!?"
"I don't kno-" Damien's plead was viciously interrupted by a sock to the gut. His hand suddenly loosed its grip from the shield, and he could hear it clank onto the ground before rolling into the water with a faint splash.

"You're LYING. It's probably your mother's fault."

Mom!?

Tears were already starting to well up in Damien's eyes. Marvin's extra anger was flawlessly translated into extra force. "I swear, she had nothing to d-" Another punch, this time a little higher up in the solar plexus. He'd be hitting key points more accurately if he weren't wielding the flashlight in one hand, but to Damien, it hurt all the same.
"LIAR! You squealed on her about the party!"
"I...*sob*...didn't say any-"
"SHUT IT. I bet she even hired those Survivor people to bring us to this god-forsaken hellhole just so she can use us BOTH for her own ends!"

Survivor...this isn't Survivor, Marvin...this is...

"My mom wouldn't do that!" came Damien's panicked, almost whiny reply. It didn't faze Marvin in the least.

"How many times do I have to tell you..."
Knee to the gut. "You're..."
Hook to the chest. "FUCKING..."
Foot to the gut, pushing him back toward the grating. "LYING!"

B06 - Carter-Madison, D - HR: 155/176

"Ugh...God..." Damien choked out whatever reply he could. The rest of his choking was done by Marvin as he wrapped his hands tightly around Damien's neck, dangerously close to the brace.
"If this...thing...around my neck goes off, you're going with me!"

=====

1833 hrs EST
It was, in fact, Nicole making all the pained screams for mercy Damien didn't. She was almost hysterical as she watched her son helplessly getting beaten to a bloody pulp at the hands of an aggressor whose identity she could only tell by the voice.

"WHAT'RE YOU DOING!? STOP THAT! STOP!"

She lunged for the TV but was quickly restrained by two of her assistants. Her glasses fell to the floor and cracked. Her hair was disheveled, and her makeup was starting to run from the tears in her eyes.

Lord...what did I ever do to deserve this?!

=====

What did I ever do to deserve this!?
B06 - Carter-Madison, D - HR: 82/99

Whatever Damien did, it certainly didn't have to end up with him looking like he really was Marvin's punching bag, slumped against the grating of some sewer in the middle of God-knows-where. And he really was staring into the light. Marvin's flashlight, that is.

Marvin stooped down and pulled out a small, oddly-shaped object from his own bag. As it entered the beam of the flashlight, Damien made it out to be...a baby's pacifier!?
"Here. Apparently, this was supposed to be my weapon." he said frustratingly, though sick humor was certainly evident. Marvin gently nudged the pacifier into Damien's mouth before pulling out another item from his daypack - a baby care manual. Whoever was running this show - Nicole, Danya, or someone else - was certainly intent on rubbing in this sick joke. He tossed it in front of Damien, just out of his reach - if Damien still had the strength (though more willpower) to reach for it.

B06 - Carter-Madison, D - HR: 66/78

"It's a nice read, Damey. Haven't read it myself, but you'd probably be able to understand it." Marvin said with a smirk only sensed by Marvin himself, as he turned the flashlight away and walked back toward Damien's bags. The now-incapacitated boy could only watch as Marvin rummaged through Damien's daypack first, greedily snatching up certain items and sticking them in his own bag.

He thought he heard Marvin say..."Oh yeah, no weapon." Whatever Marvin expected to find was probably downstream, hundreds of feet away. Empty solace for Damien at the most.

Looks like it's just me and my fists for now.

Another quick search with his flashlight of the wall around Marvin revealed several metal rungs on the wall, incrementally placed to lead up toward the ceiling. And a method of escape.

Damien could just see the slowly rising corona of the flashlight as Marvin climbed the improvised ladder. The corona came to a halt a few feet up.

"Ah...perfect."

Damien could hear the sound of metal scraping against concrete, and grunts of struggle from Marvin as he pushed the manhole cover up and open, causing sunlight to blaze through the opening. This was followed by Marvin bracing and glaring against the bright light and a jubilant gasp of (relatively) fresh air, as Marvin poked his head above ground. Of course, Marvin knew he was on that show, so his poke was really a quick scan of his surroundings. He concealed himself again by moving a rung down.

"Today is the first day of the end of your life, Damien! Enjoy it!" Marvin laughed as he made the decision to head up the manhole and onto surface streets.

My friends are somewhere on this island...I'm going to find them if it's the last thing I do.

((Marvin continued in Do Not Disturb))

"No...I don't want to die...God..." the boy's whimpering was growing softer, more...pathetic.

B06 - Carter-Madison, D - HR: 44/61

I don't want to die...I can't die...

The boy was unconsciously sucking on Marvin's pacifier, his eyes glazing over in an overly innocent, childlike stare, which would definitely look more awkward on camera were he not in too much pain to curl into a fetal position.

I AM going to die...

=====

1836 hrs EST

Nicole was hyperventilating, sweating like mad. She had to fall back onto one of the seats provided at the office. But she watched on. Watched as her son was suffering such a painful - nay, humiliating - fate in front of what would probably be a worldwide audience of millions. Who knew what it meant to her and her organization...her mission?

But humiliating as it was, the concern of the staff members gathered around her was plenty more than fake.

Maybe it was because the game was real, and maybe their own kids might be in the game already. Maybe their kids were already dead or dying in as humiliating a fashion as Nicole's pride and joy was.

=====

At least they weren't the ones actually doing the dying. The pain would still have been quite bearable had there been any chance of escape or release, which Damien didn't seem to have the slightest chance of doing at the moment.

B06 - Carter-Madison, D - HR: 25/42

The beacon of light was the last thing Damien saw as his eyes slowly shut. And all was black...again... For a few seconds.

A small patch of light appeared in his direction of vision. It was a dot, but light nonetheless. It started growing until it was the size of the opening of the manhole in the 'ceiling' of wherever the hell he was.

The light...it can't be...no...

Then the light started doing something different. Suddenly it was as if the entire sewer was lighting up like someone had switched on the sun somewhere in his vicinity, and it was slowly flaring up. He could see the textures of the stone, the rungs of the ladder, the rippling motions of the pungent water merely inches away. Then those were slowly consumed by the light's amoebic motions.

His other senses also seemed to be following suit. The sound of the running sewage was slowly fading out, as was its smell and whatever bad taste had managed to seep into his mouth. His body started to grow numb, but not relaxed numb or numb from too much pain. More like numb like he was never hurt to begin with.

Before he knew it, Damien was sitting on the "ground" in a world of absolute blank white space. The ground was as hard as the concrete, and he was still propped up by something, but it didn't feel like the parted iron bars of a sewer grating.

"Shit. And here I was thinking you'd last longer than he would." came a voice. It was a voice he'd heard so many times before. One that seemed to appear just after he'd had a real panic attack.
"Huh...what the..." Damien looked at his hands, and quickly frisked himself. He seemed to be perfectly fine. Even his hair was perfectly gelled into place, just as it was when he woke up this morning. If it was still the same day.
"You're fine, take it easy."
"Where the hell am I?! What the hell just happened?"
"You got your ass kicked, just like you always did." Damien blinked and looked up at the source of the voice.

A black silhouette - almost like a shadow - sitting on a revolving office chair, had appeared in front of him in the blink of an eye. The only "white-space" parts of the shadowman were what appeared to be the undershirt of a business suit, and a cigar.

"And who the hell are you?!" Damien was as curious as he was afraid.
The shadowman leaned forward on his chair, removing the cigar from his mouth and holding it exquisitely between two rather thick-boned fingers.
"Look, you're not really dead, even if this was one of the more vicious beatings in your life. Hell, you're just passed out. But you have done a good job at trying to will yourself dead. And it almost worked, too."
"I was...going to die!"
"You were, if you wanted to. Seriously, you've already been through worse. Remember that party?"
Damien did, but didn't want to.
"That's okay, we're here now, and it's time to make things right."
"Make things right!? I'm already de-"
"I said, you're not dead yet. So... here's how it's gonna work. You're gonna wake up. And then you'll know what to do next. If you don't, well...you can figure that out."
"This is fucked up!"
"Damien. Don't talk like that to your dad." the figure smiled.
Damien's breath had definitely been pulled from his lungs, his jaw almost hanging open. "My...dad?"

Damien could hear a tidal wave rushing toward him. But there was nothing to see, just the sound. The shadowman and his chair suddenly started to move backward, as if on a platform. Slowly at first, and quickly accelerating. Damien reached out, but only noticed his cheshire smile as the shadowman warped back into a point, and faded. The sound now indicated that the wave was very nearly upon him, and it was deafening. Damien covered his ears and braced, but his hands couldn't block out the sound.

Then it suddenly stopped like someone switched off a recorder.

*Ding*

"HWAAAAAAAAAGH!"
B06 - Carter-Madison, D - HR: 179/203
It was pitch black, save for the sunlight streaming through the manhole onto a small round slice of concrete a few meters a few feet in front and several feet above him. It stank like hell, from the variety of who-knew-what that was dumped into the sewers in the who-knew-how-long before he woke up.

"Shit...oh...shit..." Damien was crying, his sobs broken by his frequent gasps for breath, which were hampered even further by the sensation that the collar around his neck was constricting his airflow. And sometimes his coughing violently from all the noxious fumes that permeated through this hellhole and into his nosehole. It took take precious minutes before he could restrict his breathing. But even that was hard to do when one realized that one was all alone in the darkness, sitting on hard cement, propped up by hard iron, next to a river of putrid sewage. Even harder when your body was hurt and aching in those critical parts (though being in relatively early puberty had spared him a painful blow to that most critical of parts.)

It was this infernal deluge on all of his senses that quickly reminded him that he wasn't dreaming now. He didn't even need to pinch himself.

Look.

Damien Carter-Madison - as the world knew him - was still very much alive, and still very disheveled, just not kicking. Yet.

If you had...one shot...

Still down in the sewers of who-knew-where, though Marvin had somehow made the mistake of leaving open the manhole that he had been fortunate enough to find. His shield, was, through some twist of fate, floating stationary on the water within his reach, blocked by a grating it just wouldn't fit through. He could tell roughly where it was from the outline traced by the little glints of light that managed to go through. But his top priority was getting out. He knew his scream and subsequent fits of hacking could've been heard throughout the entire sewer system, and being under the spotlight of the open manhole would easily give him away.

...or one opportunity...

Still almost completely emptyhanded. He brought the daypack and his school backpack under the manhole's spotlight. A quick inspection of his daypack underneath the seat revealed that Marvin had taken the food, map and compass, flashlight, and first-aid kit. That drained plenty of sand from Damien's timer. As for the larger-than-normal backpack he'd brought with him on that fateful trip, it too had been stripped (though there wasn't much to remove for a day trip), leaving it a withered shell of its once plump, inconspicuous selfe. The only things left in it were a dull blue Corona notebook (his mother's favorite brand, and an import from the homeland!) and a ballpoint pen. An old adage suddenly became a joke in its twisted irony.

to seize everything you ever wanted...

Still normal albeit sore in more places on his body than he could possibly count, but even if he was lucky enough to find someone's first aid kit, not even the passage of time would make him like-new again. At least not before it was too late.

in one moment...

Still relatively sane, though not necessarily in control of his own destiny.

...would you capture it?

Still wondering who the hell that guy was. Chances were - he believed - that man wasn't his father. His mother's description of that guy's voice wasn't nearly as accurate.

Or just let it slip?

And still clueless as to what to do. He already knew full well the rules of the game whose first 'season' he practically watched from beginning to end. That was clear. He knew that in the short period of time before he was likely to be discovered by someone likely to seize upon his condition, he would have to retrieve his shield, move his notebook and pen into the daypack (which would only make it negligibly heavier), and leave his old backpack, before making the strenuous climb out. The shadowman clearly didn't give him any idea as to what to do after that. Marvin and probably everyone he knew from Gilroy were out there, thirsting for his blood (though maybe Marvin didn't actually lose his bloodlust.)

As he started climbing up the ladder after what seemed like ages (despite being no more than 3 minutes, tops!), one slow, tenuous rung at a time, he realized that the one thing he definitely knew about his future was that certainly would not get another chance at life.

"Today is the first day of the end of your life, Damien! Enjoy it!"

Damien shielded his eyes against the bright light, trying to mind-block the burden of his wounds as well as that added by the daypack, which, thankfully, wasn't as big as. This light led to the world of the living, and there would be more pain to follow. He didn't know much of that would be his own.

I will, Marvin. I will.

=====
1850 hrs. EST

Nicole would've seen her son limp away from the battle, if she hadn't passed out when he did.

=====

Lose yourself in the music/The moment/You own it/
You better never let it go
You only get one shot/do not miss your chance to blow
this opportunity comes/once in a lifetime/you better...

B06 - Carter-Madison, D - Status: ALIVE
B49 - Hendrick, M - Status: ALIVE

((Damien continued in Well, Isn't This Fucking Great?!))

((1. Before you ask, No, Danya is not really Damien's dead father. Damien's father, while actually dead, is not - in turn - the figure talking to him. Exactly what the nature of the entity is will be revealed in due time though a few could probably make educated guesses.
2. I've split Damien's Heart Rate is split into systolic and diastolic ranges, just for effect. Exactly how big the gap is supposed to be between systolic and diastolic, I can't be bothered to look up.
3. Happy Fucking Halloweeeeeen!))