Thomas woke on the cold rubber mat, the chill seeping deep into his bones. His head ached, a dull, rhythmic throb, as his body tried to make sense of things. His eyes flickered open, but the blackness remained absolute. A primal panic, cold and sharp, seized him. He tried to sit up, but his head connected with a series of heavy steel bars. A cage. The word echoed in the void of his mind. He scrambled to his knees, the movement clumsy and restricted. Something heavy shifted on his neck; he reached up and felt the cold, unyielding band of a metal collar locked around it. His hand went, absentmindedly, to scratch a phantom itch on his balls, only to find a hard, unyielding metal cage locked around his cock and balls. A wave of nausea and shame washed over him, so potent it made his teeth ache. He gripped the bars of his prison, his knuckles white. He rattled the door, the metal shrieking, but the heavy padlock held firm. He tried to shout, to scream, but no real sound came out, only a hoarse, pathetic gasp. He muttered to himself, "What... where..." but no words would form, his vocal cords as broken as his memory.

A little light was starting to appear through a dusty window high on the cellar wall, a weak, grey smudge that did little to penetrate the gloom. He shook the bars some more, a desperate, useless gesture. He was thirsty, his throat a desert, but he looked at the large water bottle strapped to the cage's outside wall, its metal feed tube facing inside, and he didn't trust it. He didn't trust anything. As the daylight slowly tried to break through the grime on the window, a spotlight above him suddenly blazed to life, its beam pinning him and his cage in a brilliant, sterile-white circle. At the exact same moment, a clear, resonant bell rang out, a single, perfect chime that seemed to vibrate through his very bones.

His body reacted before his mind could process it. An invisible force, a conditioned reflex he was utterly unaware of, seized control. He moved with unnerving, automatic precision, his muscles obeying a command not his own. His knees pressed into the rubber floor, his forehead lowered to touch the ground between his hands, his head touching the mat, his body moving on autopilot, reacting to whispered words in the back of his mind, instructions that couldn't be denied. He was kneeling, prostrate, a ritual offering on the altar of the spotlight. He tried to look up when he heard a noise like a lock being turned, then the click of heels on the wooden steps. He tried to look, but he couldn't move; a command locked his neck muscles in place. The footsteps grew closer, louder, and then stopped just outside his field of vision. A shadow fell across the light. A voice sounded like music to his ears; he knew it, but from where? His confused mind still couldn't work out how he'd got there, and he was confused about who he was. "Good morning, Tommy," a woman's voice said. The name, "Tommy," felt both alien and vaguely familiar. He squeezed his eyes shut, a single tear of pure terror tracing a path through the grime on his face as a hand holding a key moved toward the lock of the cage.