“Don’t you fucking dare breathe a word to that doc,” Tyko says, dragging me roughly. “He doesn’t know what you are, and he wouldn’t give a fuck about you if he did. After today, you’re going to be locked down so fucking hard you’re not going to be able to move a goddamn muscle without my permission.”
We swear at one another all the way back to the cell, where he keeps his word. My hands are shackled to the bench seat. My feet are shackled to the floor. And then I’m left, sitting there, still tasting blood, cursing my stupid and utterly ill-fated escape attempt.
“You caused quite a disturbance today.”
I look up to see that the Head is standing outside my barred cage. She looks pissed. As usual. I don’t know if the woman is even capable of smiling. I reckon she might have been engineered to look and act like a robot. Maybe she thinks it is intimidating to go around with a face like a brick wall.
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself quiet. I know better than to curse at the Head. She really doesn’t like it. And she’s a lot crueler than Tyko. He just hits me. She comes up with much more creative consequences.
“I seem to have to keep reminding you that I didn’t need to pull you out of the program you were in,” she says. “I’m trying to give you a chance here, but you’re making that increasingly difficult.”
I say nothing. Chance? I’ve never been given a chance. I was born without one. I was made to be a disposable warrior. I was never loved. I might as well have been a plant in a pot for all anyone involved with me ever cared.
“Maybe you shouldn’t.”
I tend to be honest. Bald truth comes naturally to me. Lying is for people who know how society works, who think they can manipulate others. That’s not my forte. I know how to curse and to kill and not much else.
Her lips thin as she presses them together.
“What is it going to take to get through to you, Electra?”
A good spanking. The thought drifts through my mind, in the doctor’s voice. It makes me smirk slightly. There’s nothing that can get through to me. I was born broken. Made that way on purpose. This bitch knows that as well as I do.
Tyko reappears. I thought he was off licking his wounds, hiding from the woman who makes every guy in this place shit themselves. He hasn’t come back empty handed. He has a syringe in one of his dirty mitts, and a mask in the other.
“Excuse me, ma’am.” He steps past the Head and enters the cage with me. I can’t move, but I can see fear in his eyes. It makes me want to burst out laughing. Here I am, damn near half his size, chained up like an animal, and he’s showing undeniable signs of being absolute shit-scared of me.
The mask is one designed to go over my mouth to stop me from biting, or talking. I’ve had it applied before, and I hate it. Tyko slaps it on over my lips, pulls the rubber ties up over the back of my head and secures them tightly.
The idiot has chained me down in a way that makes it impossible for him to get to his preferred injection site, so he has to unshackle me from the wall and the floor. I still have cuffs on, and my feet still have a length of chain between them, but now he can sit next to me and bend me over his lap.
My pants come down enough to expose my left cheek. The Head is watching as Tyko slips the needle into my buttock and pushes the plunger down, filling me with the drugs they think keep me stable, but in truth only make me quiet. I can rage without lifting a finger thanks to them.
For a second, the position reminds me of what the doctor threatened me with. He said he’d spank me. I snort into my mask gag as Tyko pushes me off his thighs and back into position. He’s just made a huge fucking mistake. Before he can shackle me down again, I kick out. His head is low because he was just bending down to hook my feet into the floor ring again. I catch him with both feet and send him sprawling, and then the chain becomes not a shackle for me, but a weapon against him. I jump after him, my legs going either side of his head, the heavy chain pressing against his windpipe. Fuck this guy. Fuck them all. I twist my body, turning the chain around his neck, wrapping it around as I roll on the floor like a gator with its prey in a death grip. He starts to make a gurgling sound as he’s deprived of oxygen. This might actually kill him. I don’t care.