I never told Mama about my treatment. I knew that sad smile that she always had on her face would get even sadder if she knew that they had hurt me. It did not seem to matter. The week after my treatment, I could see tears in Mama’s eyes when she looked at me. I tried to hide the bandage on my hand behind my back, but it was as if she already knew before we started talking.

  She did not seem to want to talk about it either, but she kept telling me that she was so sorry that she could not take us away from this. Carlos was so smart, he knew exactly what to say to make Mama feel better.

  “Mom, it is not your fault. You are doing everything you can to keep us safe. Domingo and the Falcons are to blame for everything. We just need to remember that.”

  I told Mama that I felt the same. The bad men were the reason that all these bad things were happening to us. Even though they tried to blame Mama, it was always the bad men doing the bad things. I told her that the baddest man of them all was the Doc. I never wanted to see him ever again.

  I might not have wanted to see Doc again any time soon, but it did not matter what I wanted because less than a month after my first treatment. They came for me again.

  I was still trying to run and hide every time the scary door opened, but even when I ran into the bathroom, the big man followed me. It was one of the men who would bring the food some days, but that did not make it any less scary when he just followed me without saying a word.

  Carlos saw what was happening and chased after us. He tried a different strategy than he did last time. He jumped in front of him and shouted. “Take me instead. I have not had a treatment yet; it is only fair that I get the next one.”

  The big man did not even stop; he just stepped around Carlos and grabbed my arm. He started dragging me towards the long hallway. Carlos tried to help me by grabbing my other arm and pulling me back. I shouted in pain because it hurt my bad shoulder. Carlos let go when I shouted and tried to hit the big man like last time, but even though he punched him hard in the tummy, the big man barely noticed and just kicked Carlos aside like he was nothing.

  I saw Carlos getting up and chasing after us as the door closed to the Doc’s room. The man strapped me down to the bed once again. I tried to fight to get away the whole time, but it did not matter; he was just too strong.

  I could hear Carlos banging and shouting behind the door until the man finally left. He grabbed Carlos as he tried to slip by him and dragged him out the door. My brother only had the time to shout one thing to me before the door closed. “Jaun, I am here, I will always be here. No matter what he does to you, I will be here with you.”

  I was shaking in bed as Doc came over to me. He had his big tray of tools like he had last time. “I always find it interesting when I have to do more than one treatment on a child. It is not uncommon at all. I feel like there are those women who are fighters, and then there are those who are compliant.”

  I did not know what he meant when he talked about women. “I am not a girl, I am a boy, I don’t want to fight. Please let me go. Please don’t hurt me.”

  I did not want a girl to be hurt instead of me, but I really did want to be hurt again. Maybe if he knew I was a boy, he would let me go. He did not even seem to notice I had said anything. He just seemed to be talking to himself; he was just looking at me while he did it.

  “I do so much love it when there is a fighter who is not turned compliant with one treatment. It is so fantastic when I get to see the fear of knowing what is going to happen next.”

  He seemed to notice I was watching him for the first time. His smile grew as he looked me in the eyes. “Oh, just like that. I guess if we want to start, we need to get the procedures out of the way. Child, please say your name and your mother’s name into the camera, as you did last time.”

  I remember that the pain started after I said my name last time, so I decided not to say my name this time at all. If I did that, maybe Doc could not hurt me.

  In the end, he got me to say it; I was wrong about him not being able to hurt me until I said my name. He made it clear to me that the pain he caused before I said my name was optional, but the pain after I said it was required.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  This was not the last time I had to get a treatment. I had to go into Doc’s room five more times before the bad one. I feel like I became two different people. Every time I went into the Doc’s room for a treatment, I could feel myself getting farther and farther away from myself. He might have been peeling off my skin or breaking my bones, but there was something else he was separating from me. By the time I had been on his table for the 7th time, it felt like I was not even in the same room. I was watching from outside. I could see and feel the things happening to me, but it was not really me; it was just my body. I was somewhere different. I was floating in the emptiness outside of myself, watching as everything happened.

  The first time this happened to me, I was still close by, so I could feel it almost as much as if I was still in my body. Each time, I got farther away. It felt like the strings holding me to my body could only stretch so far. As I got further and further away, fewer and fewer strings connected us. The fewer strings connecting us, the less I could feel of what they were feeling.

  I still did not like the treatments. They still hurt, and sometimes they would leave me with an injury that made it hard to move, like the time Doc broke all the bones in my foot. I did not react with the same fear that I had in the beginning, though. In the beginning, I did everything I could to not get treatments, but it did not matter what I did; they would just happen. I sometimes worried that if I kept seeing the Doc, he would pull me so far away that the very last string holding me to myself would snap, and I would just float away into the emptiness. How would I ever be able to find myself again if I had nothing to pull me back to myself?

  Doc did not like how I stopped reacting as much to the treatments. He would get angry and kept trying to make them worse just so I would give him the reaction that he wanted. So I did, I screamed and yelled, I cried with pain and fear. I did not feel these things as much, but I knew if I showed it to Doc, we would be done sooner.

  I tried to tell Carlos about how I had a superpower now. The pain did not hurt me as much anymore because I was farther away, but he just thought I was trying to make him feel better about not being able to protect me from the thugs who tormented us. I was spending more and more time just sitting or lying in the sleeping room. Carlos started using his fighting skills to acquire clothes for our spot, and it slowly became softer and warmer.

  Carlos thought there was something wrong with me. He kept telling me he was worried about me because I just seemed tired or quiet most of the time. Sometimes my superpower scared Carlos because he would try to talk to me, and I would be too far away to respond. I would notice him and respond when I could, but he told me sometimes I just sat there looking off into the distance. He was still trying his best to help me, the only way that he could think of, though.

  I was not even afraid anymore when the other kids threatened to hurt me. It was not like they could do anything worse than Doc. Carlos was even more fierce in protecting me from the threats he could deal with, though. He was actually pulled off Mateo by the thugs when Mateo attacked me for taking the last tortilla.

  While Marge did not call someone in from outside to break up fights very often, if there was a risk that one of the kids might be killed or seriously hurt, she would get one of them involved. After each of those extra violent fights would hear the same lecture: “You are here for a reason after all, and if you died because of a fight, you can no longer serve that purpose.”

  I did not know how long I had lived here, but it felt like time stood still, yet it moved so fast when you tried to think back. The number of kids in Time Out grew slowly at first, until an influx of kids arrived. I did not pay as close of attention to the kids in Time Out after I got my superpower. I knew they were there, but I did not learn all of their names.

  I would still listen when I remembered to, though. I learned from the quiet discussion behind the wall that they were trying to ramp up the Falcons' income so that more than just Domingo could get the Infinity System. While he did get his system, he thought it the gang needed more people to go to infinity. He wanted all his lieutenants to get the system as well. If every leader in the Falcon’s was superhuman, it would really push the gang into greatness. This is why he was scaling up the “trade of favors”, as everyone seemed to call it. The kids who were joining us were collateral for this.

  By the time we reached capacity, we had 30 kids in Time Out. We no longer had trouble with being cold while we slept, because the sleeping room was so full that we were almost shoulder to shoulder lying on the ground.

  Once we reached capacity, it seemed like groups formed around the strongest kids. Carlos had six kids who seemed to follow him around wherever he went.

  Boss had an even bigger group for a while until he was taken. It did not matter what was happening in Time Out; when the Thugs of Falcon came in from Marge’s door, everyone had to do what they wanted you to do. Boss might have had the most power in Time Out, but when they had told him he had to come with them, there was no argument.

  As he walked behind the thug sent to get him, I felt like I could see him shrink before my eyes. He was no longer the Boss of this place, commanding respect and obedience from anyone he spoke to; he became a child, following and an adult, as they took him somewhere he had no control over.

  That image of him following a man, his face showing a bit of fear but mostly excitement at what was next, followed me for a while. It gave me a sense of perspective that I had been slowly losing while trapped here. This is not anywhere; we are in a prison, separated from the rest of the world.

  Time just kept moving forward, and I was on the sidelines.