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The others had broken quickly.
They always did. It was not a matter of cruelty, because cruelty was an inefficient emotional expenditure that produced no useful data. It was a matter of mechanics. The human mind had thresholds. Pressure applied correctly, consistently, without mercy and without pause, would find every crack and widen it until there was nothing left but fragments. Kenjaku had done this for centuries. He was very good at it.
You had taken longer.
Not because you were stronger. You weren't. Your body had the same limitations as any other, the same pain receptors, the same fear responses, the same desperate, animal need for safety and control. He had measured all of it. Catalogued it. Watched your cortisol spike and your pulse race and your pupils dilate in exactly the patterns he expected.
But there was something else. Something he had not encountered before, or not recently, or not in a way that had held his attention past the initial observation.
Kenjaku wanted to find the bottom of it.
___
The sensory deprivation chamber was of his own design.
Not the typical tank, because that was too clinical, too predictable. A room. Small, windowless, walls lined with sound-dampening foam. The temperature was regulated to match skin temperature exactly, so that you could not feel the air. The light, when there was light, was diffuse and directionless, impossible to locate.
He kept you there for three days.
Not continuously, because that would have been inefficient. Kenjaku removed you at intervals, for hydration, for observation, for administration of compounds. He spoke to you during these intervals. Asked questions. Recorded your responses.
Your voice, by the second day, had lost its initial inhibitions. By the third, you answered without being asked twice.
He noted it.
___
The drug regimen was precise.
Kenjaku had designed it over weeks, titrating dosages against your physiological responses with the meticulous care of someone who had centuries of experience and the patience to use it. The base was a modified benzodiazepine. Not midazolam, as he noted it was too short-acting, too amnesic. Not diazepam either, too long, too sedating. He had synthesized his own. One which produced cognitive fog without respiratory depression.
It was administered intravenously, the onset taking ninety seconds. He watched your pupils constrict, watched the tension in your jaw release, watched your shoulders drop in increments as the drug bound to its targets and the world softened around you.
"The benzodiazepine will reduce your inhibition threshold," he explained, writing something on his clipboard. "You'll remain conscious. You'll remain aware. But the connection between awareness and resistance will be... compromised."
He added a second compound. Low-dose ketamine. Not enough for dissociation, not enough for the emergence phenomena, but exactly enough to uncouple fear from memory formation. Enough that what you experienced would not feel like experience at all.
"Ketamine at sub-dissociative doses produces a phenomenon called 'psychological detachment,'" he said. By now, you had noticed that he talked to himself a lot when he was in the laboratory. "You'll feel as though you're watching yourself from outside your body. That is normal for the compound."
Kenjaku inserted the line. Depressed the plunger.
Your eyes remained open. Your breathing remained steady. But your gaze shifted, now unfocused, not from sedation, but from the spatial dislocation of a brain no longer certain where its borders ended.
He checked your vitals. Heart rate elevated, but within acceptable parameters. Blood pressure stable. Pupils mid-range, responsive.
"Good," he said.
He added dexmedetomidine. A highly selective agonist, producing anxiolysis without amnesia. The synergy with the benzodiazepine was more-than-additive, creating a state of quiet wakefulness. Awake but not alert. Present but not engaged.
"Alpha-2 agonism suppresses the sympathetic nervous system," he said, still more to himself than to you. "Your fight-or-flight response will be blunted. You'll find it difficult to experience urgency, even in situations that would normally provoke it."
Kenjaku capped the syringe and set it aside. Observed.
"You're responding well," he said. "Better than I expected. The combination typically produces more pronounced bradycardia, but your baseline is... resilient."
He noted it.
___
The breaking point came gradually.
Kenjaku knew it was coming. He had been tracking your metrics for weeks, watching resistance slowly decline, fear replacing with something that seemed to be, from a certain angle, acceptance. Though the moment itself was unexpected.
He had asked you a question. A simple one. About your childhood, or your preferences, or something equally mundane. You answered. Then you looked at him, and asked a question back.
He stared at you for a long moment.
He noted it.
___
"You're my favorite," Kenjaku told you, weeks later.
You were on the table, the restraints loose, having been loose for some time. You did not test them. You laid still.
"I've had thousands of subjects. Centuries of them. I've never had a favorite."
He was preparing an injection. The compound was new, designed to enhance neural plasticity, to make the brain more receptive to imprinting. A nootropic scaffolded onto a cholinergic agonist, combined with an amphetamine derivative to increase dopamine transmission. Conditioned place preference.
He had synthesized it for you only.
"This will feel strange," he said. "You may experience disorientation, memory displacement, a sense of unreality. The cholinergic agonist will heighten sensory input. Colors may seem brighter, sounds sharper. The amphetamine will produce a low-grade euphoria. The combination is designed to associate my presence with positive reinforcement. Pavlovian, essentially, but more efficient."
Kenjaku inserted the needle into the IV port. Depressed the plunger slowly, because going too fast would cause a catecholamine surge. He watched your face as the fluid entered your bloodstream.
Your eyes fluttered. Your lips parted. A small sound escaped your throat, not of pain, not of pleasure, but of something in-between. Your pupils dilated. The amphetamine.
"There we go," he said. "Good."
He set the syringe aside. Pulled his stool closer and sat down.
"You're going to forget, eventually, what you were before. Who you were. It won’t entirely be the drugs. It’ll be time. Isolation. Natural erosion of identity in the absence of external reinforcement. The benzodiazepine only contributes, long-term use affects memory consolidation, and the ketamine, too, impairs synaptic plasticity. New memories form poorly. Old ones fragment."
He folded his hands in his lap.
"I don't want you to forget everything. That would defeat the purpose. I want you to remember enough to know what you've lost."
Kenjaku reached out. His fingers brushed your forehead, checking temperature, or something else.
"The dexmedetomidine will continue to suppress your sympathetic response. You won't feel fear the way you used to. You won't feel the need to escape, even if the door were open."
He withdrew his hand.
"You're more useful to me calm. And you're more comfortable, too. I've read that constant high cortisol states are unpleasant for subjects."
He stood. Adjusted your blanket.
"Rest. Tomorrow, we begin the next phase."
The lock turned after he exited.
___
The next phase was not worse, and it was not better either. It was simply more.
More compounds. More precise titrations. More hours in the white room with the monitors and the clipboard and his soft, patient voice asking questions you no longer remembered how to refuse answering.
He changed you. Not all at once, because gradual was more effective than instant. Small concessions. Tiny surrenders. The inch you gave today became the mile you gave tomorrow, and by the time you realized what was happening, you had already forgotten what resistance felt like.
He didn't keep you in a cage. Cages were for specimens, and you were no longer a specimen. You were his favorite. Favorites got blankets. Favorites got the good restraints, the padded ones that didn't leave bruises. Favorites got comfort.
You were compliant now, like something that had been taken apart and put back together in a shape that fit neatly inside his palm. Kenjaku liked that. He liked the way you looked at him, not with fear, not with hatred, not with emptiness, but with a certain softness. Something he could misinterpret as trust.
He knew it wasn't trust. He knew it was the drugs, the isolation, the systematic dismantling of everything you had been before him. He knew that if he stopped, if he let you go, you would run and never look back.
Therefore, he could not stop.
___
"You're doing well," he said one evening.
Your head was in his lap, his fingers were in your hair. He had seen somewhere that this contact was supposed to be calming. Tactile stimulation, oxytocin release, something about the parasympathetic nervous system. He had not believed it until he tried it with you.
Your eyes were closed. Your breathing was slow and even. The amphetamine had worn off hours ago. The benzodiazepine was at a steady state. The dexmedetomidine hummed quietly in the background, keeping your sympathetic nervous system in that same state of stasis.
He continued the motion. Slow. Rhythmic.
"We have a long time, you and I. Centuries, perhaps. This body is not my first. It will not be my last. But you..."
He paused. Looked down at your face. The vulnerability of your closed eyes, the small parting of your lips.
"You are not replaceable."
Kenjaku said it quietly.
"I've had thousands of subjects. I will have thousands more. But I will not have another you."
His hand stilled in your hair.
"That is not a threat."
He resumed the motion.
The room was quiet except for the monitors’ hum and the IV line drip, delivering benzodiazepine, dexmedetomidine, and a touch of something new he was testing, some cannabinoid derivative with unusual binding properties. Your body absorbed it. Your brain responded.
Kenjaku would not let you go. You would not ask to leave.
It was, he thought, the closest thing to contentment he had felt in centuries.