I think you will like this one a bit better... but still trauma heavy...
@Lili Shakespeare, Provider of Caffiene (FF, FAR, BLC, ASC) (are you providing bats caffiene?!? How can you???)
@Bats the ✨Sleep Deprived✨ FF Doctor (BLC, EDS)
Janner’s eyes opened wearily. CLANG!!! CLANG!!! The bell rang right in his ear.
He shoved it away with a groan as the little boy beside him—barefoot, grimy, no older than five—chanted in a annoying, singsong voice, “Next shift, up tools! Up tools! Next shift!”
Janner sat up. His back ached. His neck burned. He washed his face in the trough of gray water—not that it did anything. Then he choked down the slop they called gruel. Warm-ish. Lumpy. Sour.
His stomach turned. But there was no choice. He followed the lines of hollow-eyed children to the work floor.
It was his first day. And he already knew one thing: He had to escape this place.
The clang of metal on metal echoed through the massive chamber. Smoke curled in the rafters. Everywhere, motion—machines grinding, belts spinning, boys and girls bending and lifting and pulling. Eyes down. Mouths shut.
They weren’t children here. They were tools.
He waited for his moment.
Left—clear. Right—clear. The Managers weren’t looking.
He bolted.
Boots slapping the floor, he darted between crates and barrels. The factory blurred as he flew past screeching gears and steaming pipes. He was fast—faster than they’d expect.
Not a third of the way to the door, a shout rang out. One Manager was on him. Then another. And another.
They came down like thwaps on a garden. Small, wiry, vicious. Offered warm bunks and bread in exchange for obedience and brutality.
He pushed harder. The door was so close.
But then— Something to the left. A flicker of blue.
He stumbled. Just for a moment.
It was enough.
The Managers tackled him, driving him to the floor with bone-jarring force. Fists and boots rained down. One struck his side—then his gut—then his face.
“Stupid tool,” someone spat.
A final kick to the head, and the world spun away into darkness.
Silence.
Janner woke to a darkness so thick it felt alive.
The air was close and sour- like breath trapped in a box.
He lay on a rough wooden board, unmoving at first. His limbs ached, his face throbbed, and his mouth tasted like iron and dust. He tried to sit up—THUNK.
Pain exploded in his forehead as he smacked into something solid above.
He scrambled then, panic clawing up his throat. His hands scraped at the sides, the top, the bottom—Wood. Everywhere. No space to sit. Barely space to move.
He was trapped.
Buried alive?
Had they shoved him in a coffin?
He gasped, heart thudding. He kicked and flailed, but the walls didn’t budge. The board beneath him creaked but held firm.
This had to be a punishment.
For running.
For hoping.
Janner had always hated small spaces.
But this was worse.
This was silence like a stone.
Darkness that pressed against his eyes.
He screamed.
Loud and raw and furious.
Again and again.
No one came.
Eventually the screams gave way to choked sobs, then whimpers, then nothing at all. Just the thud of his heartbeat and the rasp of his breath.
He closed his eyes, though it made no difference.
And then—like a pinprick of light through thick fog—he remembered.
The blue.
Eyes.
Eyes as blue as the sky, bright as hope, piercing through the soot and smoke of the factory.
Sara Cobbler.
She’d been there.
She’d seen him. She had to have.
Was she a prisoner too? A tool? A Manager?
No... never that. Not Sara.
The memory steadied him somehow. Even in the box. Even in the dark.
If she was alive—if she was near—Then maybe…
He blinked as color flooded his vision and a soft music seemed to well from the earth.
It was a vision, carried by Leeli's music.
He could see her, wrapped in furs, unaware of his presence. She was playing her whistleharp as she leaned on Rebekah's shoulder. Rebekah sang a plaintive pensive tune as she gazed into the distance. Podo stomped past, and then the vision dissipated.
Hours later, the lid creaked open, and Mobrik looked in with a sneer. "I heard you screaming, you know. You sounded like a baby." Then he walked off with a condescending wave of his hand to follow.
They walked into the carriage room, and Janner saw Mobrik's fruit stash.
"Care for a fruit?" Janner suggested lightly. "Won't take but a sec, and then you can munch as you listen to the Overseer berate me!"
Mobrik paused, and then assented in agreement.
When he was near enough, however, Janner grabbed a melon off the top and looked at it hungrily.
Mobrik yelped in dismay "Drop it! DRop it I say, tool!"
Drop it he did.
Right on the edge of the basket.
Fruit dumped everywhere.
"My fruit!!!" Mobrik yelped, scurrying after stray apples and plumyums. "You'll have bruised them! This was a bad idea," he turned, hands full, "I never should have let you near my fruit."
What he didn't know was there now were four apples in Janner's pockets.
ADVICE APPRECIATED!!! LIKE, TELL ME ONE THING WHAT YOU DIDN'T LIKE ABOUT IT!!!
**steals Lili's caffeine* She definitely doesn't provide it! ANYWAYS! GREAT CHAPTER! I LOOOOVEEEE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND NOW I NEED MORE! THE ONE THING I DIDN'T LIKE: THERE"S NO MORE~
Bats doesn’t get caffeine from me. She lost that when she substituted it for sleep…