Chapter 2
Enslak
The guards dragged me through the tunnel.
My feet, were they still feet, scraped against stone. Everything hurt. Everything always hurt, but this was different. Fresh. The kind of pain that came from torn things, broken things, things that would heal wrong if they healed at all.
Blood dripped from somewhere. Mine, probably.
Mine? The creature's? Both, probably. The smell was thick in my nose, copper and rot and something else, something chemical that the beast had bled when I finally tore its throat out.
Or had I crushed its skull?
The memories were already slipping away like water through claws.
Claws.
I had claws now. When had that happened?
The guards threw me forward and I hit the cell floor hard enough to drive the air from my lungs. The door clanged shut behind me, metal on metal, final.
Always final.
I lay there for a moment, or maybe longer since time was strange, trying to remember how to breathe. My chest expanded. Contracted. Expanded again.
Good. Still working.
The creature hadn't crushed my ribs after all, though it had tried. I remembered that part vividly, the weight of it, the decay-smell of its breath, the wet sound it made when it died.
Had I won?
Must have. I was here. It wasn't.
Did it matter?
The cell door opened again and I didn't bother looking up. I knew what came next. Always the same. The Negita's footsteps, light, quick, irritated, crossed the stone floor toward me.
"Up," Zarlak said. His voice was high and nasal, the translator making it sound even more grating. "Filthy beast. Up."
I pushed myself to my hands and knees. The movement sent fresh waves of pain through my body. Something in my shoulder wasn't right, dislocated maybe, or broken.
Hard to tell anymore.
Pain was just there, background noise, like the drip of water somewhere in the walls or the distant sounds of the city above.
Then water hit me like claws raking across my flesh.
Cold. So cold it burned. The hose's pressure was brutal, stripping away the blood and gore and bits of the creature stuck to my skin, to my scales, to the patches of fur that grew in places fur shouldn't grow.
I closed my eyes against the spray, but it didn't help.
Water found its way into my nose, my mouth, my ears.
"Turn around," Zarlak snapped.
I turned.
Slowly. My body didn't want to obey, but it did anyway, muscle memory, or maybe just memory, the kind that lived in the body instead of the mind.
The mind was unreliable.
The mind forgot things. Important things.
Like what?
The water stopped. I stood there dripping, shivering even though I shouldn't be cold. My body temperature ran hot now, another modification, another improvement.
That's what they called it.
Improvement.
"Eat," Zarlak said, and I heard the wet slap of something hitting the floor.
I looked down. Gray slop, protein paste mixed with nutrients and whatever else they thought I needed to keep fighting. It smelled like nothing. Tasted like less.
But I was hungry, always hungry, so I dropped to my knees and ate.
No bowl. No utensils. Just my hands scooping the paste into my mouth, swallowing without chewing because there was nothing to chew.
Easier this way. Faster. More efficient.
More animal.
The thought drifted through my mind like smoke. I was eating like an animal, off the floor, while the Negita watched with disgust plain on his face. Outside, the guards laughed and placed bets on how long I'd last in the next fight.
I paused, paste halfway to my mouth, and searched for the anger, for the part of me that should care, that should rage against this treatment, that should remember being something else.
Something more.
But that part was distant now. Buried.
Maybe gone entirely.
Maybe they were right.
Maybe I wasn't much different from the creatures I fought in the pit. I killed. I ate. I slept. I killed again. That was the cycle. That was everything.
What else could there be?
Family.
The word appeared in my mind like a ghost. Faint. Barely there.
I had family once? People who looked like me, who spoke a language I used to know, who—
The memory evaporated before I could grasp it.
I finished eating and sat back on my heels, staring at the emptiness ahead.
The cell was small. Stone walls. Stone floor.
Stone ceiling. A drain in one corner where the water from the hose and my piss went.
A sleeping platform, just a slab of metal bolted to the wall.
No windows. No light except what leaked in from the corridor when they opened the door.
This was my world.
This was everything.
My hand moved without conscious thought, fingers finding the collar around my neck. The metal was cold against my pelt, one of the few places I still had pelt instead of scales or fur or the rough, grafted patches where they'd spliced in DNA from other species.
The qhoma collar.
I knew its name. Knew what it did. Knew it was coded to my DNA, that any flesh other than mine touching it would trigger the detonation. The explosion would be instant, painless, final.
Sometimes I thought about testing it. Seeing if the stories were true.
But I never quite worked up the nerve. Survival instinct. Or just habit.
I traced the seam where the collar locked.
Smooth. Seamless. Permanent.
It would never come off.
The certainty settled over me like a weight. Not heavy. Not crushing. Just there. A fact, like the stone walls or the pain in my shoulder or the way my claws clicked against the floor when I moved.
I would die in this cell.
Eventually, when I got too slow or too damaged, or when they got bored of watching me fight, they'd trigger the collar, or pit me against something I couldn't kill, or just stop feeding me.
It didn't matter how. The end was the same.
I waited for the fear. For the despair.
For something.
Nothing came.
Just acceptance. Quiet and complete. This was my life. This was my death. There was nothing else. Nothing before—or if there was, I couldn't remember it clearly enough for it to matter. Nothing after except the explosion or the darkness or whatever came when things stopped.
I lay down on the sleeping platform, my body curling automatically into a position that protected my vital organs. Another habit. Another instinct that refused to die.
Sleep was dangerous here. The guards sometimes came while I slept, dragging me to the medical bay for more modifications, more improvements, more ways to make me better at killing.
But I was tired.
So tired. The kind of tired that lived in bones and blood and the spaces between thoughts.
My eyes closed.
Somewhere in the darkness behind them, something stirred.
A memory? A dream? I couldn't tell anymore.
There was light—gold and warm and familiar.
There were voices speaking a language that felt like home, even though I couldn't understand the words.
There were faces I should know, names I should remember.
There was a feeling. Something that wasn't pain or hunger or the dull acceptance of my fate.
What was it called?
Hope?
No. That wasn't right. Hope was for beings who had futures. Hope was for beings who could still be saved.
I was neither of those things.
The feeling faded, slipping back into the darkness where all the lost things went. My breathing slowed. My body relaxed despite the pain. Sleep pulled at me with heavy hands.
Tomorrow there would be another fight. Another creature. Another chance to die or to kill.
It didn't matter which.
I touched the collar one more time, my fingers finding the cold metal in the dark.
Still there. Still locked. Still waiting.
Always waiting.
My hand fell away, and I let the darkness take me.