For a reason.
Hekeptme alive.
And now I’ll make him pay.
Frenzied, I stomp at them, and one of them blasts at my feet.
BANG!
I narrowly avoid the bullet.
The other one shoots right beside me, and the bullet ricochets into the wall.
They’re not aiming right, which tells me they’re inexperienced … or scared.
“No, no,” one of them yells. “Don’t get close!”
Suddenly, one of them steps forward and pushes a button in his hands.
The pain is instant, visceral, like literal lightning entering my skin. But when I touch my neck, there is no collar, nothing.
How? Why?
“Don’t you fucking move an inch, or I swear to God, I’ll turn it up to the max,” the guard says.
I groan in pain, suffering on the floor in agony, scratching at the back of my neck.
Something is in there, electrocuting me slowly.
And not just any kind of electrocution.
The worst, torturous pain I could ever imagine jabs me on all sides of my body.
I’ve felt pain before. But never this kind.
“Stop.”
His voice makes me look up even though it feels like my eyes almost bulge out of my skull from the sheer amount of pain.
But then it all stops.
The agony doesn’t immediately leave my body, and the memory is as vivid as it was before my near-death experience. But one thing I know for sure … the one in control is still the man I so violently hate.
“So you’re awake,” my owner muses, and he steps forward, looking down at me with disdain. “And already so brutal. You killed another one of my guards.” He walks to the guard and kicks him, but the man doesn’t move anymore. I made sure of that.
My owner makes a tsk sound. “What a waste. After all that effort I went through to keep you alive.”
When I’ve regained enough strength, I push myself up from the floor, and the guard holding the button immediately tenses.
But my owner holds up a hand.
“No need. He will listen.” He goes to his knees. “Won’t you, Beast?”
“Give me one good reason,” I say through gritted teeth, my voice sounding more like an animal than a human being. “I would ratherdiethan obey you.”
“But not in an excruciating manner, I suppose?” he muses, smiling like the devil. “I asked my technicians to upgrade the device. Give it a little edge over the old one. It hurts more, don’t you think?”
I don’t respond, and when I try to get up, all the muscles in my body refuse to listen. I cough, and some blood spills out onto the floor.