Abdus was awoken by the noise of clashing metal. It wasn't an explosive burst of sound but a soft, continuous jingle, almost like a rhythm playing off-key. The tired man's eyelids were pried open, fraction by fraction, with every repeat of the same rhythm. It culminated into a frustrated sigh from Abdus, forcing his legs off the desk as he drew his tired eyes towards the source of his troubles.
The racket came from one of the cells. Abdus could guess it wasn't the one with the grey figure lying within.
Subjek had finally moved elsewhere, but it wasn't much of an improvement.
Somehow, the bandaged man managed to reach his legs outside the cell and locked his feet against the iron bars. He hooked his knees against the upper part of the cell as the rest of his body dangled below within the cell. Using the force of his torso, he did sit-ups, rattling the bars against the gate and the chains with every set he did. There were neither huffs nor wheezes coming from the bandaged man. He simply joined his hands behind his head and went about his business.
The racket didn't wake the old lady, which Abdus felt a tad bit envious of.
The tired man glanced back towards Subjek again. The bandaged man had rid himself from his overcoat and his shirt and his boots, throwing it over his sack, which still sat where Abdus last left it. The bandaged man still had his tattered trousers and his rope belt with the journal he fetched last night still tucked within his hips. Each garment he had, whether worn or discarded, were all stained with every manner of wasteland smut and grime one could possibly accumulate.
That wasn’t what caught Abdus’s attention, however.
There were two things that rang the tired man’s bells that sent him into a rejuvenating mood.
Abdus saw Subjek’s skin tone. He’d seen burnt injuries and spots gained under prolonged exposure under the scorching sun. This, however, was nothing like it. What the bandaged man had seemed hereditary, but Abdus couldn’t imagine a natural birth that would result in such an extreme condition. The tired man couldn’t tell if Subjek was light-skinned or dark-skinned. If he was of the former, he had patches of the latter littered across his body. It was as if he had dried mud cultivating upon his flesh, printing themselves beneath his bare skin. He knew the wasteland would blow some oddities to Sampah, but this was one that demanded his attention.
Though Subjek's skin was but a mild concern to the next thing Abdus noticed about him.
The bandaged man didn't have a chest.
Wedged in the cavity between Subjek's ribs was instead, a panel the size of a palm, embedded beneath his skin, stuffed within his flesh. It had a plastic white body encompassing a fuzzing green screen on one side and a dirt-caked knob on another. The former showed a raging graph running across its display, simulating the beats of a drumming heart. Surrounding the panel was a vascular mass of flesh dominating his pectorals. Fat, grotesque veins pulsed throughout its sides and edges, creeping their reaches towards the bandaged man's shoulders and abdomen.
It was a comedic sentiment before, but the sight before Abdus had bred a hunch in him that the body before him might not be human at all.
Subjek did another set, this time throwing his head higher than before. He grabbed onto the cell's bars, sliding his feet down to the floor before relinquishing his grip. He stood on the spot where he dropped, his hands resting on his sides, sweat permeated across his torso and limbs, dripping off his fingertips and down to his pants. The graph on his chest began to calm down, descending to the rate of a regular heartbeat.
As Subjek stood inert, Abdus was able to catch a clear look at his figure. The bandaged man bordered on being malnourished. What he held under his skin couldn't be considered muscles, but rather bits of hardened flesh stretched across his skeleton to its greatest extent. This was the first time Abdus had seen concave abs. The ridges of skin between Subjek's flesh weren't pushed outwards by pressure but pulled inwards from his near-hollow structure, dragging irregular shadows across his already discoloured body. From what the tired man could see, Subjek was pushing his body to reach a proverbial height when it's already standing on its absolute peak.
It was the first time Abdus ever considered someone's physique to be cruel.
After remaining still for a few minutes, the bandaged man sat down on the floor, crossing his legs on the exact spot he spent the last time sharing at Abdus from.
The bandaged man reached towards his rope belt, pulling out the tattered book and placing it on the floor. He opened it up.
The cover hid a hollow compartment carved out from the blank pages, just big enough to stack two rifle clips atop one another. There was something hidden within it. It wasn't until Subjek pulled the thing out when Abdus could get a good look at it.
It was a small, cylindrical object, similar to that of a capsule, only that it's too big to swallow but small enough for one to grip it with their fingers meeting one another from both ends. One end of the capsule was covered with a black cap, with a metallic stud sticking out from the top. The rest of the body was wrapped in a pale, fading yellow. A thin red ring circled across it as bold foreign words were printed above it. The words sat between a pair of arrows, short and sharp, pointing towards the black cap. Two symbols sat on both ends of the capsule, one sitting on the black cap with the other on the yellow body; the former was a small white plus sign in a circle and the latter vice versa, both in symbol and colour.
Abdus didn't know what it was but he didn't like the look of it.
He reached towards his drawer and grabbed the keys, "Hey, put that down."
The tired man's voice reached Subjek and the bandaged man paused to look up to him, his hands still holding the carved book and the capsule.
"That," Abdus raised an index finger towards the cell, "Down."
Subjek stared at the tired man for a moment.
Then he promptly ignored him, dropping the journal in his hand and reaching for the knob on the panel in his chest.
Abdus threw himself off his chair, rushing towards the cell as he clasped his hand over his baton.
Subjek reached towards the side of the knob in his chest. It flung to the side off a hinge, revealing itself to be a hatch. Sitting behind it was another capsule, similar to the one in his hands.
Abdus jammed the key onto the lock binding the chains to the cell door. The metal rattled with rage as the tired man twisted his wrist in haste.
Subjek reached towards the capsule and tugged it out. A pressurised hiss exploded from the fresh, emptied cavity in his panel, blowing a jet of steam out into the open air. A metallic scent rushed into the air in waves. The screen beside it flickered to static for a split second before dying out right after. The bandaged man lurched forward, his shoulder jolting upwards as if his joints had been snapped by a shock. His arms lost energy in an instant and crashed towards the dust-caked ground, bringing the two capsules with him.
Abdus tugged against the chains, pulling one end with all his might as the rings slithered from its choking grip over the cell’s iron bars. Loud, metal sounds erupted in a cacophony as the tired man wrangled his arms unlocking the gate.
Subjek kept his gaze straight as he relinquished his grip on the old capsule he’d fetched from his chest, letting it roll away from his hand. He threw his empty hand onto the other, where he still held the capsule from the carved journal. An ethereal weight hung over the bandaged man’s neck. His body was slumping over the floor, inch by inch. His shoulders sagged, just a nerve away from detaching from his torso. His strength was drained out of his body in deluges, his energy siphoned away from the very air he breathed. Still, his hand held onto the capsule. His fingers shivered as he turned the capsule around, shifting the black cap to face upwards. With the combined, waning brawn from his hands, he lifted the capsule towards the cavity on the panel of his chest.
Abdus undid all the chains, casting it to the side as he crashed the gate open. He made a mad sprint inwards, throwing his baton out of his belt. He threw his shoulder frontwards and swung the baton on a mad arc towards the bandaged man.
Subjek gripped the capsule tight and threw his body towards the ground, holding both hands tight into his chest.
Abdus missed his baton by inches, slamming the body against the iron bars in a ringing blast.
Subjek had ducked downwards, huddling his bulging, grotesque body into a man-shaped ball. An imploding hiss burst out from within his cocoon of mismatched flesh, like pressurized air being forced into a compact space.
Abdus didn’t like that noise at all. He drew his baton back and slammed it down towards the floor.
An abrupt resurgence of life exploded across Subjek’s body. He flung his arms outwards from his chest and threw himself backwards, tossing his body in a roll. The bandaged man flung himself a great distance away from Abdus just before the thick, hollow stick could get halfway near his body.
Abdus barely caught up, stopping the momentum of his baton right before it hit the ground. He drew his glare to the side, glancing at the bandaged man as he kept his viewports staring directly at him. The tired man looked down to Subjek’s chest. The cavity in his chest was now filled as the knob-shaped cover of the hatch swung and oscillated from its hinges. The screen beside it was flashing a brighter light than before with the graph pulsing fast and frequent.
As for Subjek himself, he landed on his two feet. He stood with one foot to the front and the other to the back. He raised his shoulders, shielding his chin in between. Both his hands held fists as they raised to the side of his goggles, with the knuckles touching his wrapped head.
Behind him, the old lady slept away, still silent and oblivious to her surroundings.
Abdus stared for a moment before drawing the baton up, swinging it upright as his habitual training began to take over his body.
“So,” he took a deep huff of a breath, “You want to pla-”
A deep knock erupted from behind the reinforced, double iron doors. One knock was all that it amounted to, but it was enough to catch both the tired man and the bandaged man’s attention. They shot their gazes towards the door, each ridden of the other’s presence at the moment.
Abdus came through first. He took the opportunity and shoved his feet to the side, kicking Subjek's discarded capsule through the iron bars and out of the cell. By the time the bandaged man noticed the tired man had already rushed out of the cell, taking Subjek's sack with him. He left no more than the bandaged man's clothes and the carved journal on the floor. He cast the sack out of the cell, far from Subjek's reach.
Subjek relaxed his posture and released his fists. He made a stroll towards the front of the cell, closing the hatch on his chest as he returned to the same spot he'd stood and sat since last night. He kept his line of sight straight on Abdus throughout the way as the tired man fetched the chains from the ground and locked the gate tight.
Abdus gave him a vicious glare as he worked the lock.
Subjek was as expressionless as he'd always been.
Another knock came from the reinforced double iron doors, this time louder than before.
Abdus gave the chains two more tugs for security before heading towards the doors, "Coming!"
He threw the keys onto the desk, reached towards the viewport on the double doors and slid it open.
The tired man was rendered speechless for a moment.
A few seconds later, he mustered out, "B-Boss?"
