His world was pain. All of his body ached; his head throbbed worse than any other moment in his life of debauchery, violence, and experimentation. His neck was particularly sore, probably from when that bitch snapped it. Panic overrode pain as his eyes snapped open and he tried to get out, quickly falling off a bed onto painful metal grates. The pain prevented any further action for a while.
Eventually, the pain subsided enough so that he could open his eyes long enough to see his surroundings. They were painfully familiar.
"Well Bugger."
He was back in his hermetically sealed cell. It seemed the large glass panels were repaired, the water thankfully gone, but this was clearly the same bloody room in which that bitch had tortured and imprisoned him. Well, admittedly it could be worse. He could be dead. For some reason the bitch had simply taken him prisoner again. Maybe there was still hope for the two of them?
He pushed those thoughts out of the way. There would be time to think of her later. Right now, he needed to get his bearing, figure out what the situation was so he could take control of it. First he extracted his face from the grates on the floor, slowly pushing himself up into a more dignified sitting position on the bed making his face the very picture of calm. She had not taken any of his wardrobe and he remained in his full posh and gentlemanly outfit. On closer inspection, his suit if anything looked ironed and his shoes polished, a curious thing for his lovely to do, given the circumstances. Said lovely was nowhere to be seen. In fact the observation room on the other side of the glass was completely deserted. He was alone.
Well, only more time to prepare for the upcoming performance. After another ten minutes the pain had completely subsided. In fact he felt better than ever.
"Well, I guess it's time to inspect the accommodations. Oh, and hello to whoever's listening in. Now, let's see, same utterly spartan corner toilet, same featureless walls. Same low quality bed. Same floor grates, though I must say the lack of water is a huge improvement, and I must give my approval to the cleaning staff – not a trace of mother's blood to be seen. I'm glad my lovely Jones has finally at least learned the value of good staff and a clean living quarters, god knows she can't maintain one on her own. Ah, and finally the centerpiece of the room, this big, solid door, the only thing standing between me and my justly deserved freedom."
To punctuate his remark he slammed the offending door with his fist. To his great shock, leaving him speechless for many seconds, the door gave way under the smack and ever so slowly slung open.
"And it appears I may have spoken too soon. And, what do you know, on further inspection someone has forgotten to lock the second door as well. I must say this makes a much easier escape than last time, not that I'm complaining of course, but dearie you really should make sure to lock up before leaving the house."
And so he calmly strolled down the hallway marked "exit" by a prominent glowing exist sign, reached the end of the hallway, put his hands on the bars, pushed, and felt nothing give. It wasn't even as if the door was locked, it was like there was a cement wall in front of him that someone had simply stuck a door in front of. Nothing about the door budged even an inch, no matter what he tried.
He then tried each of the eight doors off the hallway. Each went to a room filled with an assortment of junk: spare sheets, extra pairs of cloths, many in his favorite color, a washing machine, stacked cans of food, a bare bones kitchen, piles of papers, an impressive looking array of electronic gizmos. Nothing that looked like an exit. He tried the ceiling and once again found it to feel like a solid block of concrete. He tried to find an air vent, only much to his concern finding nothing of the sort. After what felt like hours of methodical searching he had to conclude that there was no way out: that his cell had only been a room in a slightly larger prison.
"Ok, very funny little Jonese. What game are you playing? And don't give me the silent treatment, I know your listening. Is this your idea of 'justice' you wannabe hero? I see all the things you left here, looks like enough for someone to live a long, withering life. Is that it? Did you think I haven't suffered enough, figured you'd trap me like a rat and watch me scurry around my cage until I dropped dead? Is that your idea of being a hero, of justice, or are you just doing this to have a bit of fun at my expense?"
With no answer forthcoming he sat down at the "command table" facing his old "cell". It was more or less as he remembered it: computer to the right, large red pain button to the left, microphone in the center. Though, below the microphone was a device he didn't remember from before: a long brick of a control panel with three joysticks, three corresponding red switches, and six corresponding dials, two for each joystick. The sets of dials, switches, and joysticks were labeled "Taylor Viewer 1" "Taylor Viewer 2" and "Taylor Viewer 3" respectively.
"Well, what do we have here? Let's see what present our dear Jessica has left us."
At that he flicked a red switch, and immediately one of the large glass planes that gave a view into his cell came to life, showing crystal clear a rundown looking school hallway. The view was incredibly lifelike, and he had to get out of his seat and touch it to make sure it was indeed a projection on the glass and not some sort of portal, though it still played tricks with his mind when he looked at it.
"What are you up to Jessica, and how the hell did you get something like this?"
He returned to the control brick and turned on the other "Taylor Viewers" filling all three of the large panes of glass with slightly different views of the same hallway, all seemingly focused on one particular locker. Testing the joysticks showed that they gave him control of where each viewer was looking, to a degree. While he could rotate around, up and down, and zoom in and out, they all remained focused on one particular locker. Testing out the first dial, he found out that it gave a series of different modes to the viewers, the normal one, one that seemed to be some sort of night vision, a couple which he had no clue to the specifics, and a thermal one, which netted an interesting discovery: from within the locker was coming a rather large heat source. Zooming one of the views in and through the locker wall then switching to night vision showed the source. Some girl who looked to be in quite dire condition was apparently trapped in it, covered in some quite disgusting filth, which utterly distracted from any good qualities the girl might have had under it. The crying and sobbing was not helping her at all.
"Hm, I'm not being held by my dear Jessica am I? The Jessica I know, bless her little hero heart, would never stand for this. Which leads to the quite concerning question of who is holding me?"
The final dial turned out to be a volume controller, which confirmed that the girl was shouting and crying, as he had seen, though her voice had already gone quite horse, so it looked like she'd been at this for a good while. Some experimentation showed that each viewer acted as a separate microphone and could hear the girl sobbing and trying to scream. The overlapping and slightly different pitches annoyed his ears, so he turned off all but one. With nothing else to play with he decided to try and contact the poor little thing on the viewer. The microphone seemed a good place to start. He pressed the big red "speak" button.
"Hello, Hello, can you hear me?"
The girl stopped. "Yes I can hear you." After a moment's pause, she started getting hysterical again. "Thank god some came please, get me out get me out!" That wouldn't do at all.
"Now calm down lady, nothing good comes from panicking." She was immediately soothed by his words.
"That's a good girl, now, what's your name?"
"Taylor Herbert."
"Where are you Miss Herbert?"
"Locked in a locker."
"Well, of course, even I can see that silly, think bigger: building, city, country, that kind of thing. I want the big picture."
"Well, I'm trapped in my locker at Winslow High in Brockton Bay. We're a city north of New York in the United States."
"Well, I can't say I've heard of it before. Any particular reason why you're locked in a locker?"
"My old friend Emma and her friends Sophia and Madison locked me in. For some reason they've decided to make my life hell, though I never thought they do something this big."
"Ah, seems I've been paired with a beat on weakling, how dull. Well, since I can't seem to go anywhere without you, could you please get yourself out of the locker? I want to have a look around, and my scan of the area suggests no one else is going to be available to free you anytime soon."
"But, how? I've already tried for so long, and I'm so tired and so scared and so-"
"Now now lady, you're definitely not getting out with that attitude. I've looked at the door and you've made some dents on the very thin metal. You just need to punch it harder."
"ok I'll do that" and at that she started to punch the locker door. He gave some tips on how to throw a better punch, places to hit, and encouragement to hit harder and harder. Eventually she managed to deform the locker enough get out, clutching her now bleeding punching hand close to her chest.
"Now lady, was that really so bad?"
"Yes, that was very painful." She responded in a hoarse voice.
"Pff. You and that attitude. You should try to look at the positive side more often. At least you're free now, right? And speak up, I can barely hear you. "
"I'm not sure."
"What do you mean little girl?"
"Well, I'm out of the locker, but I have this vague suspicion that you might be mastering me, though I don't quite know why."
"Well. That's a strange phrase. Why did you decide to change 'master' into a verb?"
"It's one of the 12 parahuman power categories of the PRT. Master is the category for those who wield some sort of influence over people. It seemed to fit, though I'm not sure why I think you're mastering me. This is so confusing, I just want to go home and make myself clean."
"Well girl, this is all news to me, and I think you'll have to elaborate a bit. Though now that we're out of the locker, I realize I didn't actually have any destination in mind either, and I'm sure you're probably not going to do much useful school work in your state. Let's walk home and you can answer some of my questions on the way there. Well, get going."
And so they did. Taylor walking the street covered in filth, clutching a broken arm and talking to herself in a whispering, raspy voice. He found it quite annoying how he needed to keep turning up the volume so he could her bloody girl as her voice continued to give out.
Still, he was able to learn many useful things on the walk, about the PRT, about Brocton Bay, and soon determined that he wasn't, as they say, "in Kansas anymore", a reference he was surprised the girl got, considering the radically different world she seemed to live in. He also found out more about this strange arrangement he found himself in. It seemed only the girl could hear him, and that he could only control her. This changed everything, and he would have to radically re-think how he operated.
By the time they reached her house, the sun had begun to set, and he couldn't think of any new questions, and the thing could barely talk anyways. He would need some time to digest what the girl had said and go over the notes he had started.
"This is home. Do you have any more questions mister … "
"Kilgrave. The names Kilgrave darling. And no, you've done more than enough for today. Go in, take a nice bath, and go to sleep. We have much to do, and we need you rested and presentable for whatever comes tomorrow. Just remember not to tell anyone about me, ok? Good night girl, it's been a long day for me too and I need my beauty sleep as well, though in all honesty you probably need it more than I do given your…you. Toodles."
At that, a satisfied kilgrave turned off the viewers, stretched, and went to find a comfortable spot to lie down and think about the day's events. At which point he remembered where "his" bed was. While it technically wasn't any more of a prison than whatever he was in, the cell still felt too confining. Thus, with a great deal of awkward effort, he managed to move his bed out of the cell and into a more proper room. The only reason he should now ever have to enter his cell would be to use the toilet. That inconvenience solved, he settled down for a nice time of thinking, eventually drifting off to a relaxing night sleep that comes from a productive day.