After an hour or so, Quinn returns from their ‘conditioning’ session. They immediately collapse onto the floor, tears spilling from their eyes.

  ‘No matter how many times they do it, it’s still the same pain I had on the first,’ they cry out, clutching their arms to their chest.

  ‘Holy shit–’ I back away from them.

  What the hell did they do to Quinn? Is this what they’re going to do to me?

  The intercom blasts over the room. The same thing that happened when Quinn was called.

  ‘All inmates with the last names N through Z, report to the cafeteria for sorting!’

  Quinn slowly looks up at me, and nods.

  I pause, nodding back at them, before heading out.

  Wait. Where the hell is the cafeteria?

  Three more inmates come out in front of me. They seem to know what they’re doing and where they’re going. I should follow them.

  I get behind one boy, and start to walk. He’s going obnoxiously slow. I roll my eyes, although I can’t judge him. I look down at his legs. Nothing seems to be out of the ordinary, so why the hell is he walking so slow!? I inhale sharply; I need to calm down. I’m not going to let this slow walker ruin my day, well, my day has already been ruined. By being kidnapped and put into this hellhole, where I’m apparently about to get tortured.

  An eternity passes by, but my little herd has finally exited the left hallway. I think I know where to go from here. I dodge the few others around me, and make my way to the front.

  I see why people are going so slow now.

  In the cafeteria, four tough looking guys stand in a line formation, arms crossed. I accidentally bump face first into a woman in the front with another clipboard.

  ‘Ooh–watch where you’re going, you insect,’ she rolls her eyes. I step back, hands raising in a placating gesture.

  ‘Last name?’ The woman asks me.

  ‘Nemoto,’ I respond quickly.

  ‘Group one,’ she points to the man all the way to the left, ‘go with him.’

  I nod, and scurry out of her way. There’s a bit of a line behind me, and I feel as if I’d get beaten if I stood around any longer.

  ‘I haven’t seen your face before,’ the man states simply. I tense, mind flashing back to Kyle.

  ‘Mhm. I’m new,’ my voice goes up the octave. My hands begin to shake, and I instinctively take a step back from him.

  He pauses, then just nods.

  ‘Alright.’

  That’s the end of it. No comments, no flirting, none of it. I’m pleasantly surprised.

  Everyone is sorted into their groups with efficiency. I’m the only one in this group, it seems. It’s going to be lonely.

  The man moves to grab me, and I flinch. Hard.

  ‘Woah–okay,’ his hand hovers above my arm, yet he doesn’t touch it.

  ‘Just follow me.’

  I obey exactly what he says.

  He leads me to a room that’s at the end of the right hallway. He swings the door open.

  In the middle of this room, lies a single chair with countless wires attached. I glance above the chair to see a rope, just hanging on a pole that’s attached to the back.

  ‘Since this is your first time, this is the easiest training,’ he guides me to the chair, and gestures for me to sit.

  The second my ass is in that chair, he takes the rope and starts wrapping it around my body.

  Once he’s finished, the rope is fastened to a metal carabiner and he steps back.

  ‘Alright. I don’t normally tell people this, but you’re going to be administered various shocks throughout the treatment, and get progressively worse overtime,’ he explains while getting behind a plastic wall at the side of the room.

  I wriggle to try and get myself comfortable, but the ropes just dig into my limbs like a vice.

  The man presses a button behind the wall, and the ropes tighten.

  Three…

  Two…

  One.

  A tiny, miniscule shock shoots me all over. It may be tiny, but being so widespread, my body seizes up.

  Another, with that same countdown.

  Ouch. It’s slowly getting more painful, just like he said.

  The ropes seem to be getting even tighter. I can feel the angry red marks being branded into my skin already. I’m property of this chair, its mere pet.

  Three…

  Two…

  One.

  Another shock, that completely incapacitates my legs. I couldn’t move them before, but it’s like the signal to that part of my body was completely cut off. I can’t move them even if I tried.

  I start to panic. My breathing shallows, and my heart starts its triathlon.

  ‘Please, sto–’

  Another shock, this time without the countdown.

  My jaw clenches onto my tongue. A raw scream leaves my lips as my tongue is chomped down on.

  A piece of it flies off, right onto the floor. Blood spills everywhere, soaking the ropes and my paper clothes.

  The shocks stop immediately, and the man steps out of his little plastic sanctuary.

  ‘Woah woah woah–’ he steps closer to me and unties the ropes. He rips a piece of my shirt and presses it to the bleeding hole in my mouth.

  ‘None of the blood has gotten into your airways… good…’ he mutters to himself, carefully holding the piece up to my tongue.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  He rips another piece off for reinforcement, since the blood is already soaking through, staining the piece maroon. The man fishes the phone from his pocket and calls someone. My ears start to ring, so much so that I can’t make out what they’re saying.

  In the blink of an eye, more men and a few women burst through the door and take over.

  They treat my wound in a hurry.

  ‘Usually we wouldn’t care this much, but this could be fatal if not treated immediately,’ the man elaborates on all of the fuss.

  A woman replaces the disgusting fabric with some genuine gauze, and holds it there for what seems like an eternity. Another man has a tube with him, that he instructed me to spit my blood into.

  This is taking a millennia and a half.

  ‘Wow. The bleeding only stopped in eight minutes…’ the woman holding the gauze to my wound mutters under her breath. She carefully removes the gauze, and grabs a needle and some sort of thread.

  I have no time to protest before a tiny stabbing pain shoots through my tongue. One hundred times over. Is she sewing my wound shut?

  I cry out, and she smacks my chest in retaliation.

  ‘Shush. This will only take a minute,’ she grumbles, before tying off the string.

  ‘You definitely won’t be able to speak properly after this is healed, but I think that’s for the best.’

  The rest of the people in this room make their way out just as quickly as they had entered.

  The only person that remains with me in the room is the somewhat nice guard-ish man.

  ‘Are you ready to continue?’ He asks.

  Excuse me?

  I look at him with the best “are you serious” face that I can muster, and try to muster out the word “no”. I can’t talk right. This is awful, and it hurts like hell. I shut my mouth, and frantically shake my head.

  ‘Too bad, sorry,’ he lifts me into his arms with little to no effort, and starts tying me up again.

  I keep shaking my head, eyes wide. I flail as much as I can, yet he catches my arms and wraps them to the chair. You’re kidding.

  I literally just got part of my tongue cut off. The others had apparently forgotten to grab the other piece of my tongue, because it’s just laying on the damn floor! Like it belongs there! I want to scoff, but even just breathing out of my mouth feels like the pits of hell are trapped in my lips.

  When did he get behind the plastic again? Ugh.

  The ropes tighten again. I forgot to look at my arms, to see the marks that this damned thing most definitely is leaving on me.

  Three…

  Two…

  One.

  I can’t help but scream this time. I can see the electricity dancing on my skin. The little ballerinas jab their pointe shoes into every little nerve ending that they can get to. Tears sting my eyes, and my stomach bubbles. I don’t know just how much more of this I can take.

  ‘Three more, and you can have a five minute break,’ the man calls out from behind his plastic. That goddamn plastic, keeping him safe from this sort of harm. I hope that once he’s dead, there’s a special place for him in hell where he can feel this exact pain, this agony, for himself.

  Three more shocks, all with that same countdown before it.

  That voice is starting to get annoying. I hated AI before, but this is fueling the fire, with gasoline.

  ‘Alright, that’s enough for now. I’m not going to untie you, but you can rest for now,’ he announces.

  There’s no way I can handle more than this. This is my limit. I need to tell him.

  All that spills from my lips are incoherent sounds, and the pain is like fire, like a thousand hornets all stung the same place.

  ‘What’s wrong? You can’t do this anymore?’ he seems genuine enough, until he follows that up, ‘too bad.’

  My eyes relax into a death stare. I swear, once I’m out of these ropes I’ll kill him. I don’t know how, since I bet my bones have been reduced to puddles of marrow, but I’ll find a way.

  ?

  Thirty more minutes of those gruesome shocks, and I finally was able to leave. I look down at my arms and legs, both covered in electric burn marks. They’re exactly where the rope staked its claim on me.

  I don’t know how I’m supposed to communicate anymore. Ugh. It was already bad enough being brought in here to be tortured for a while, until some gene that I might not even have is activated, but now I can’t talk to anyone. I can’t make allies, I can’t cuss out Kyle. Goddamnit.

  My escort walks me to the cafeteria, where a lot of the people were sitting at various, scattered tables, all with the same meal. Looks to be some sort of mystery meat, an apple that’s on its last breath, and a slice of bread. I glance around one more time, just to see if there’s a line that I have to get into.

  Sure enough, there’s a small line to the right, where the ladies behind the counter practically throw the trays at them. Based on the fact that I’m here with everyone else, it’s probably around dinner time. While I’m in the line, I scan the cafeteria once more for two things: a clock, and Quinn.

  I find Quinn first: they’re in the corner, sitting alone and nibbling on their slice of bread, gray eyes dimmed into a fog instead of a thunderstorm.

  The clock is in the other corner, barely visible. I have to squint to see it. The time reads 5:36. It is around dinner time, after all.

  My tray gets shoved into my hands before I have time to think, and I’m ushered off into the open space.

  I power-walk to sit with Quinn, and flop down. I quickly realize I just used the last bit of my remaining energy. My torso suddenly becomes one of those car dealership inflatables, and I flop right onto the table.

  ‘You really are weak,’ Quinn mutters, although not in a disrespectful way. I think they mean it as an objective observation.

  They take my hand, which had unceremoniously destroyed their meat, and removes it from the scene, before closing their eyes.

  My body is suddenly filled with a ton of energy, enough to conquer the world, even. I jolt upward, like a cat that’s learned to walk on two legs. I start to inhale my food, regardless of how dry it is. If I wanted dry, I’d just eat Xia’s cooking.

  Xia…

  Oh how I miss them. Even if I’ve been away from my home for a few days, those were probably some of the best few weeks of my life, even if I was worked to the bone and beaten up by a punching bag.

  I look down at my hands, then back at Quinn. I want to ask them how the hell they did that.

  ‘Why can’t you speak?’ they tilt their head to the side.

  I stick out my tongue, or, what’s left of it, and their eyes darken significantly.

  ‘Oh.’

  I nod, eyes darkening to match theirs.

  Quinn finishes off their food, and starts to look around the room. They rise from the table, off on a mission.

  I simply tap my feet, waiting for them to return.

  Once the adrenaline wears off, the pain of my tongue from eating all that is simply too much to bear. Tears sting my eyes, and I let them fall. There’s no point in holding them in, not anymore. If I’m going to be in this kind of pain for a long time, there is no way they expect me to look strong.

  Quinn eventually returns with a few scrap pieces of paper, and a tiny pencil. They offer it to me.

  ‘For speaking, since I feel that you seem to like that,’ they slide it over to me.

  I cock my head ever so slightly, touched by the thought. How did they know? I can’t tell. What I will say, though, is that Quinn is one hundred percent right.

  I scribble my thoughts down on the paper.

  ‘Thank you so much.’

  They simply nod in response. The intercom blares again.

  ‘Last call to use the bathroom before curfew! Last call!’

  I rise, and from the looks of it, I’m the only one who needs to use the restroom.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ I write on the paper before making my way to the back of the cafeteria, where the hallway continues on.

  There’s only two doors back here, one with female, and one with male.

  Of course, I open the one with the female on it.

  I step inside, only to be yanked into the first stall.

  My mouth is covered immediately by a hand.

  ‘Shhhhh…’ the other hand to this person makes itself comfortable on my hip, ‘don’t say anything, let me have this.’

  I recognize that voice, and it haunts me. A shudder runs through my body, as I resist the urge to scream.

  The hand on my hip starts to wander, hooking in the waistband of my pants.

  I shake my head frantically, small sounds of horror and betrayal leaving my lips. How could I have been so stupid!? With someone like him around, why didn’t I ask Quinn to come with me!?

  I start to cry uncontrollably. The hand on my mouth moves once he realizes I’m not talking.

  ‘So you’re deciding to be a good girl, hm? Makes it easier on me,’ he shrugs, his other hand coming to grope my chest.

  This can’t be happening.

  No. No no no no no.