A/N: Sort of a little Halloweeny thing I've been working on in a pitiful attempt to get out of writer's block... Inspiration came from Disturbed's new single entitled "Asylum", hence the title of the fanfiction. Incorporated a little symbolism in there... yeah... If you'd like, I'd appreciate an R&R, but quite frankly, you don't have to. Just trying to improve...

Happy Halloween!

asylum.

Cerise eyes slid across the steel above in an almost blind manner, irises merely a phantom of their previous lustrous condition. Their owner lay pinned to the frigid operating table beneath him as a frog to a dissection plate slick with embalming fluids. Fur matted with blood and sweat and quills a tangled mass of dull crimson streaked across fathomless ebony, the creature resembled more of a wild animal than the intelligent being he truly was.

And they treated him as such. An animal… a brute. Worth no more than the data stripped from his mangled body parts, organs so tattered by blade and bullet that they remained nameless.

They had not lied when they promised they would cause him pain. Much pain. And it had only been a few days… or had it? He lost count of the moments once again, breath and mind hitching as yet another knife rooted itself directly in between two ribs. A piggish snort followed by a series of sinister, yet high-pitched giggles raked into the hedgehog's ears from just beyond the barrier between dark and light created by the intensity of the violent overhead bulb.

Unlike his previous encounters with scientists, these were not after his brain, his genetic composition, or anything of the like. No, these were on the hunt for something with more muscle, more depth.

The heart. Something any animal with a circulatory system possesses. Something composed of a series of chambers. In him, four, just like the humans employing his very substance for finger paint upon the walls of their laboratory. Something the brain can live without for up to four minutes. Something unnecessary.

He didn't understand it. Everyone else wanted something that made sense to acquire. Something they could manipulate within him to turn him away from his friends. Something they could remove from his body and replicate; and in turn, build thousands in his likeness, armies to stun the world to silence. Something…

"Hold still!" He'd been writhing again, a crime punishable by the infliction of further agony.

"Fucking animal." Their voices were glacial, icy razors that tore across the surface of his skin, made him bleed.

He hardly made a sound as they dragged the knife upward towards his sternum, finally ceasing when they lodged the blade firmly into the bone. Keeping his eyes fixated on the ceiling, he refused to look downward towards the knife, knowing good and well the sight would be more than sickening. He had already succumbed to such a mistake earlier in his captivity and, scarred, knew much better than to repeat it.

Exposed abdominal cavity, intestines not-so-artfully half-spilled out over the dull metal tray, stomach hanging suspended in the partially empty crater, slabs of his skin removed and spotted with tendrils of connective tissue that still clung haplessly, blood dripdripdripping off the table and pooling in a sick little puddle on the dirty floor.

The ceiling was his best friend. He laughed hoarsely at its oh-so-amusing distractions that it so mercifully provided to divert his attention from his body. Thanks to it, he was numb from the diaphragm down.

"God, that thing is fucking weird…"

"Why the hell's it laughing?"

"Damn thing's gone fucking insane."

His laughter dissolved into blubbering, hysterical cries as they began to saw into his chest cavity with crude tools meant for slicing flesh rather than bone, their blades becoming jammed over and over again until finally, his sternum was cracked open like an egg shell. And at last, he felt. Blood flooded into his mouth, coating his teeth a fine crimson, the taste a bitter sensation on his tongue. It reminded him of pain. Wasn't that the word for it?

As if they'd poured propane into his channels and set them ablaze, searing agony quickly plunged into his veins, ripping him from the inside out. They had found his heart. And he had found his voice.

His screams shredded his throat to pieces, the quiet to pieces. Everything was in pieces.

"P-p-p-please…! PLEASE, NO! G-G-God, STOP IT! M-m-make it s-s-STOP!" They could understand him perfectly; his language was their own. However, they stared down at him in pure antipathy, as if his pleas were the incomprehensible screams of a dying animal. One of the whitecoats lowered a hand towards him, into him with an air of finality, having heard enough of the hedgehog's desperate cries. Pressure…

They didn't fear him. He was the Ultimate Lifeform, designed specifically as a weapon, a savior… a deadly combination of both with chaos manipulation and super-speed on his side. They should fear him. He promised he'd make them suffer. The roles were so cruelly reversed, though… He'd gone soft. She'd made him go soft…

"MARIA! PLEASE, G-G-GOD, NO!" Hadn't that always been what he'd wanted, though? To reunite with Maria at last? She was the only human who had ever shown him compassion. And he'd felt her… die.

The strain in his chest perfectly mirrored the paroxysm of that fateful night over fifty years before. Like someone had his thick hand wrapped around his heart, squeezing it until he was choking. And he lay there and suffocated until, finally, once the pain became far too much to handle, disconnection.

Four minutes.

Shadow stared up in horror, his heart hanging above him, dead. No longer connected to the electrical impulses his brain sent to save it, it was a mere glob of cardiac muscle with now-useless sets of arteries and veins dangling limply from their entrance locations within those four chambers. Blood immediately rushed up his esophagus, cutting off screams and reducing them to pathetic blubbering. He would not be heard.

Satisfied with their find, the scientists merely tossed his heart on a metal tray and strode out of the room, the metal door closing behind them with an echoing bang.

His empty chest heaved in agony, body writhing pointlessly in one final attempt at becoming free from the bonds, to no avail. The game of the asylum was over. It had won.

Reset.

Cerise eyes slid across the steel above in an almost blind manner…

Wait, hadn't he been here before? No, that couldn't be possible.

Shadow opened his mouth and screamed bloody murder as the scientists ripped his heart from his body, severed arteries spewing blood across all four titanium walls.

Reset.

Cerise eyes slid across the steel above...

You see, Shadow resembles Prometheus... as the champion of mankind, he was punished to eternal suffering. However, rather than having his liver devoured daily by eagles, he merely had his heart torn from his chest... over and over and over... Shadow didn't quite realize that stealing fire from Zeus, or immortality from GUN, would lead to such a horrifying punishment.

Reset.

Cerise eyes slid...

"Is th-this the end?"

"...not quite." The man simply smiled as he simply reached into Shadow's chest and plucked the heart from between his lungs as if it were a ripe apple.

Reset.

Cerise...

All he knew was red. All his world was composed of was red. A big fat wet slab of red.

Reset.

And the nightmare of life for Shadow the Hedgehog began once again.