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A few days had passed since the discovery of my psionic index. I couldn't shake off the fear that, sooner or later, someone would come for me to force me into the Ghost program and turn me into a weapon for the Terran Dominion.
I often felt a pressure in my stomach that left me breathless. Every time I got nervous, I ended up reading my parents' minds without meaning to. That was how I discovered that my father knew the program far too well: when he had been a confederate officer, he had come across internal documents, and the conditions were inhuman. Mental reconditioning, surgeries without general anesthesia, torture used as training… the kind of things that destroy a person from the inside out.
Saying I had panic attacks was an understatement. I lived in constant terror, thinking the doctor had talked and that they would show up at any moment to take me away.
But days went by and my fears slowly calmed. Everything seemed quiet. My father looked serious, determined, using endless political favors and every connection he had to save me from that fate.
Until the calm collapsed.
A foreign power had arrived in the sector. A force coming from Earth itself, claiming the colonies in the name of their State. They had attacked multiple systems, putting the Terran Dominion against the ropes.
In a matter of days, all planets entered a state of war, diverting reconstruction resources toward military production. I was terribly worried because, reading my father's mind, I discovered what he avoided saying out loud: the Dominion was losing on all fronts. The United Earth Directorate gained ground nonstop.
Even though we were far from the conflict zone, it was only a matter of time before the war reached us.
While I continued with my studies in administration, politics and etiquette, my father ordered me to leave school and report to his office immediately.
I walked in expecting another evacuation. But when I saw my mother crying and shaking her head, I felt my stomach drop.
'He is our only son…' was the only thing I heard from her thoughts as she sobbed and kept shaking her head.
I didn't even need to read my father's mind. A figure standing there froze my blood.
"Hendrik," my father said, trying to sound firm, but I could see him suffering, cursing himself inside as he spoke. "I've used every favor I had with my friend Mengsk to get you a place in the Ghost program. I managed to get them to… to spare you the implants… and not wipe your memory. You'll be different from the rest. I know I'll see you again," he said, almost breaking.
"Well said, Governor. In this war we need everyone to push out the invaders. Your son will be the hand that can turn the tide once his training is complete," said the figure, dressed in leather, staring at me with an interest that made my stomach twist.
I felt like I couldn't breathe. "No… father, please… no…" I said, voice breaking. My stomach hurt so badly I thought my legs would give out. "Anything but that… I'm begging you… you said you could do something…"
"I'm sorry, son…" my father replied with difficulty. "But the war forces us to make hard decisions."
"Come on, kid. No time to waste. Your power is too great to leave uncontrolled," the stranger said.
I turned to run, but my body froze in place.
"Don't make this harder than it has to be," the man said as he walked around me and stood in front of me. His eyes glowed with an intense blue tone.
Suddenly I could move again, but he already had me by the arm. I tried to break free with all my strength. In a desperate act, I elbowed him in the balls, hoping it would give me a chance to escape. But he just took it without reacting.
"Ha, ha, ha… come on, kid, I've had worse in training. Stop resisting," he said as the glow in his eyes intensified.
Everything started spinning. My vision shook and I could barely keep it focused on him.
'Well, well, this kid has psychic resistance…' I managed to hear from his mind without trying.
And then, suddenly, everything went black.
When I regained consciousness, the first thing I noticed was that I had shackles on my arms and legs, and that I was strapped to a chair with several belts. I tried to move, but the shackles seemed to be made of some kind of magnetic or locking system impossible to break. No matter how much strength I used, I couldn't move them even a millimeter.
I spent so much time immobilized that I started to panic. I had lost all sense of time since waking up. I tried to focus, trying to detect any mind nearby, even a distant thought. But I felt nothing.
In my desperation, I tried to mimic what the man who knocked me out had done. I tried to use my powers to move or force the shackles, concentrating so hard my eyelids trembled. I poured every grain of mental energy I had into trying to separate them.
On what must have been my tenth attempt, something finally happened: I managed to move the shackles barely a centimeter.
That tiny movement gave me strength. I kept trying over and over for hours. Little by little, I tasted metal in my mouth and felt my nose start bleeding. The pain in my head was unbearable, like someone drilling into my skull, but each attempt separated the shackles a little more.
I was out of breath. Dizzy. But after what felt like an eternity and an effort that left me shaking, I managed to separate them completely.
My head pounded brutally, and I could barely breathe. Even so, the shackles on my legs were still on.
I tried to see if I could do something about them, but as soon as I brought my arms close to each other, the shackle mechanism reactivated. The devices closed tightly again, locking me in place.
"FUCK..." I screamed, feeling the void swallow me inside as I realized all my previous effort had been for nothing.
"You've got potential… but apparently no brain… which is strange, they usually come together," I heard through a speaker. I recognized the voice: it was the guy who had kidnapped me. "Anyway, we're almost there."
Silence swallowed the room again.
The doors opened after a stretch of time I couldn't measure. Four men in heavy armor with rifles approached. They removed the shackles from my feet and escorted me without giving me the slightest chance to do anything but walk.
We arrived at an enormous area. There were long rows of children and teenagers who looked happy, ignorant, and all of them stared at me. I had shackles on, my clothes were soaked in blood from my nosebleed, and I had a headache so strong it felt like my skull was pulsing.
"This is the best of the batch?" asked a scientist with an optical implant replacing one of his eyes.
"Yes. He's your problem now. He almost broke the shackles, so you'll need to figure out how to control him," said one of the marines, pushing me with his rifle.
"Take him in for now," the scientist said, and I followed him.
My heart was beating so fast I could feel the pulse in my ears. I walked through white, spotless corridors filled with glass rooms where metallic noises and medical murmurs echoed.
They made me enter a chamber. A teenager was coming out of a machine that covered his eyes and immobilized him completely. He looked lost, empty. They were dragging him out as if no one was left inside him.
With my migraine, I couldn't even try to read minds; the pain worsened every time I attempted it.
"Alright, next," the scientist said once they removed the boy.
"We have orders not to wipe his memory," another one said, checking a tablet.
"What? Who's the idiot who approved not wiping his memory? Then… what? A neural reconditioning device? That leaves them without social skills. Between the surgeries and the training, if he keeps his memories we could end up with a time bomb on our hands," the scientist complained.
"The… emperor," answered the other.
"…I didn't say anything," the scientist murmured, pale. "Proceed with the next step."
So they had wiped the boy's mind. I watched him as they dragged him to another room. And then my own hell began: they treated me like a lab rabbit.
They injected me with all kinds of things: drug cocktails designed to accelerate my physical growth, increase my muscle mass, and, according to them, "make my psionic powers more malleable." I felt the enormous needles piercing me everywhere. The doctors looked frustrated: they were used to patients so fragile they didn't even resist, but in my case they had to restrain me with shackles and tie me to a chair.
It didn't take long before they moved me to the butcher's table.
The chemical cocktail dulled the pain… but only a little. Just enough to keep me from dying of shock.
"So, what am I installing?" a voice asked as they held me down against the table and I heard the clatter of surgical tools.
"We're authorized for very little. We only need to install the emotional inhibitors: anger, fear, empathy. The Adrenal Control Implant. The Pain Inhibitor Nodes. The Cortical Node Enhancer… and nothing else," one of the doctors said.
"Wait, they didn't give him a memory wipe?" the surgeon asked.
"No," said the second doctor.
"And no Behavioral Restraints?… Do you realize he's going to be a ticking time bomb? If he keeps his trauma memories he could snap, and nothing will control him," said the surgeon as the machines began to move.
"Orders from above. Complain if you want," the second one replied.
"Sure. I don't want to wake up dead in a dumpster," the surgeon muttered.
Then they began. I felt the first cut open my back. Then my spine. Then my neck. I felt them open my skull. It was such pure, absolute pain that I don't know how I didn't pass out. I screamed until my voice gave out.
"Careful, we might have a cardiac arrest here," one of the doctors said.
I felt a brutal hit to the chest.
"Stable," the surgeon said. The table rotated and I ended up looking directly at the doctors.
Dozens of robotic blades descended toward me.
"If… I survive… this… I'll kill you…" I said between clenched teeth.
They ignored me, but I reached their thoughts. I latched onto them like they were my only weapon.
"I'm going to kill your two daughters right in front of you," I said, staring at him while my eyelids trembled.
I turned my head toward the other. "And I'll make your dear mother suffer a lot more."
The doctors froze, staring at each other for several seconds.
"Shit…" the second one murmured.
"Let's finish this operation fast," the surgeon ordered, swallowing hard.
"And I'm going to kill those bastards I called parents."
The operation lasted several minutes that felt like hours. I clenched my teeth so hard I thought they would break while watching the machines move my organs and add technological components inside me. I even felt them remove part of my heart to replace it with something artificial.
Finally, the torment ended.
Almost immediately they pulled me off the surgery table and forced me to walk on my own. I barely managed a few steps before one of the doctors injected me with another chemical mix that made my blood burn like they had lit a fire inside me.
Guided by one of the marines guarding the facility, they took me to a room full of bunks. But it was completely empty. Just me.
I let myself fall on one of the beds, though my back burned like I had hot coals embedded in it. The pain, however, faded little by little, draining from my body with an almost unnatural speed.
Within minutes, nothing hurt anymore.
"Must be those pain inhibitors…" I murmured, looking at my arms.
I moved my fingers, flexed my neck… nothing hurt.
I lay down and closed my eyes. Exhaustion fell over me, and I fell asleep almost instantly.
As sleep overtook me, I made myself a promise.
I was going to survive this. No matter what.
And when I did, I would take revenge on all of them. The doctors. The bastard who kidnapped me. And above all, my parents.
I wouldn't rest until I killed them with my own hands.
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If there are spelling mistakes, please let me know.
Leave a comment; support is always appreciated.
I remind you to leave your ideas or what you would like to see.
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