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[inkvisions]

He had a real name once.

He doesn't remember it, nor does that fact bother him at all. He is patient 6. Life is simple that way. He doesn't have a home or family. If he did he would wonder what had happened to them. But he doesn't, so he must never have truly had them to begin with. He lives in a place that isn't home, where people tell him what to do and where to go. They used to give him pills. He didn't like that. When they realized that didn't work they used needles. He liked that even less. They got rid of him after that. The new people don't give him anything. He doesn't care. They tell him to draw, so he does. He would have anyway. Sometimes they try to make him see what they want him to see, but he can't. They get angry and it hurts him. But they give up, they always do, and he goes back to drawing. It's the only thing he truly knows.

----

Viren Crane was abandoned as a child. His mother took him to a hospital when he was little more than two to be treated for a mysterious seizure disorder. She left him there overnight and never returned. Her given address and phone number were false, and there was no next of kin or emergency contact available. All attempts to find her after that point proved useless, she'd left the city entirely. The hospital turned the boy over to an orphanage who in turn had him sent to a mental hospital. He was disturbed, they said. He couldn't communicate properly, would talk about things that had never happened, and had conversations with voices only he could hear. The only thing that kept him focused was drawing, and even then his pictures were often shocking and morbid. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed. He was only six years old, but already the doctors saw him as a hopeless case. He would be institutionalized for life.

Their diagnosis was wrong.

His name became a matter of record only. He didn't answer to it, or anything else, unless he had to and eventually the orderlies began referring to him by his room number. After three years, he believed that 6 actually was his name, and couldn't understand why people told him otherwise. Countless attempts at finding the right combination of medication to fix him had failed. He was sick and tired of it, and would often protest by not speaking for weeks at a time or going on hunger strikes. His only joy came from drawing. They would not allow him any pens, so he used his fingers. At first they gave him paints, but he didn't use the colors too much. Black spoke to him more than most any color ever could. So eventually they switched him to ink, since it was cheaper.

--

The voices are real, he knows they are even when people say he's crazy. They whisper about the future. But they don't know as much as the visions do. He has visions in his sleep sometimes, where he can see things that will be as clearly as if he was already there. When they come during the day, it's harder. All that information, sights and smells and minute details, comes crashing into his mind all at once. It blocks out the 'real' world. Often he comes back from these waking dreams to find himself staring at pictures he doesn't remember drawing. In the place with white walls and many doors, he used to often wake from them to find himself restrained by the big men with a needle in his arm. But the new people don't do that as much. They like his drawings.

--

Someone with his ability can not go unnoticed for long. One day he threw a fit, screaming about how a bad thing was going to happen. Though he made little sense, those orderlies present still remember his panicked screams. 'Terrible thing.' 'Hurt.' 'Break.' 'Can't keep in. Can't keep out.' 'No more sharp, they don't work. The sharp things don't work.' He was restrained, drugged, and tied to his bed for his own protection. That night, the patient in the room across the hall from his broke down his door. He managed to cause quite a bit of collateral damage before he was subdued. One of the rooms broken into was the boy's, and in cleaning up the mess orderlies found a series of eerily detailed drawings depicting the event and what led up to it. The man was moved to a more secure facility, and the patient of room 6 came to the attention of a certain organization.

Transferring him was easy. The facility he had been staying with didn't know what to do with him and there was no family to question the sudden transfer. He was taken off all medications and tested. Over the next few weeks, his predictions were proven to be accurate time and time again. However, when he was forced to focus on a certain person or event he would sometimes fall into seizures. He was deemed useful enough to keep but not a priority.

They marked him with the only name he would answer to, the number 6 tattooed in black ink across his back. This was so that he could always be easily identified and sent back just in case he was ever lost. Though the procedure was not entirely necessary due to his unusual appearance. He has light mocha skin made ashy by reoccurring anemia, dark brown hair that is nearly un-tamable, one silver eye and one gold eye, and is very short and skinny for his age.

His speech is choppy and awkward, the result of autism which, when combined with his ability, lead to the mistaken diagnosis of schizophrenia. He had a hard time relating to other people and does not trust easily. There is only one thing in the world he considers 'his'. It is a mysterious old key that he wears on a chain around his neck. No one can be certain where or even when he found it, let alone what it unlocks. A silver tag with contact information has also been placed on the chain just in case he were to go missing.