Ready for Market (Razvan, Reggie, Alicia, Trent, et al)
When the door opened again, Razvan had been dozing on the floor of his cage. He sound woke up, loud and definitive. He opened his eyes to see several people swarm into the container, dressed all in black. They were shouting directions at each other, but he was so completely out of it, it was hard to pick out any one thing.
Then a man was staring in at him, and shouting something. Razvan blinked and squinted at the man, "whaa?"
"Remove your clothes," the man demanded, his voice offering no argument. Razvan, of course, was going to argue anyway.
"Fuckoff, mate," Razvan muttered, but then the man in front of him pulled out a long, thin mental object and Razvan recognised it as a cattle prod.
"Take your fucking clothes off, or else," the voice said. Behind him Razvan heard a heavy thud and he turned to see one of the humans hit the floor right outside Trent's cage. Clearly Trent was still strong enough to soulsuck and had ripped the man's soul right out of him. He was rewarded by no less than three cattle prods being shoved into his cage, and the howl of anguish he let out caused Razvan to shut his eyes so he didn't have to see it. Dear god, these people were arseholes.
"It's a six hundred pound suit!" Razvan protested, but he did as he was asked, peeling the thing off.
"And now it smells like armpits and piss" the man said, reaching out to grab the discarded clothes and dropping them unceremoniously in a rubbish bin. "Now kneel against the back wall and put your arms behind you, outside the bars. And don't fuck around, or you'll get what your friend over there got."
Every single bit of him protested inside, but he did as he was asked. He remembered what it felt like to have electricity arcing through him, and god- he wanted to do all he could to avoid ever feeling that again. He kneeled by the back of the cage and stuck his hands through the bars. They were handcuffed behind him, essentially locking him in place there against the wall of the cage, naked and weak.
And then, when his fellow prisoners had been locked in place as well, the men swarmed out again. "Fuck," Razvan hissed, weakly. "Reg. What- What are they doing now?" Why were all of them chained up?
"They're going to move us," Reggie explained. "But first they- They're going to hose us down. It's awful. Just go as limp as you can, and don't let the water hit you in the face."
Razvan honestly didn't know what to say to that. They were going to be hosed down?! Like animals? Why the fuck wasn't Peter Kemp here yet?