Page 128 of The Hero Within
A handful of guards came through the door, splaying out before him with baton-like stunners in their hands. They all wore flak vests and riot masks, with plastic shields guarding their faces. Four of them. As if he couldn't put them all down if he wanted to.
"Hands behind your head, L-234."
L-234. He bore the fucking barcode on his wrist, and that was all they'd called him in the interim. Johnny Colton had ceased to exist the second they brought their electric-stunners down on him in that hallway three weeks ago.
Reluctantly, he lifted his hands and clasped the back of his shaved head. One of the guards moved closer, lowering his stunner as he approached with the warg-proof cuffs they used with a heavy hand. Another guard lifted his gun and pointed it directly at Johnny. Clearly they hadn't appreciated what had happened three days ago, when his temper finally snapped.
Likewise.
His ribs had finally stopped aching. Wargs healed fast, but the enforcers treated them like animals. Any assault on their guards earned a heavy-handed retaliation, and they hadn't stopped kicking him until he lost consciousness. They didn't speak to him unless it involved ordering him around. They'd stripped his name from him, started trying to break him to their will.
It was nowhere near as bad as what Cane had done to him, but fear curdled his gut whenever he found himself alone.
Because he'd broken once. He'd bent, and he knew it.
And maybe they couldn't get to him, but maybe... maybe they could.
I would rather die than become someone's pawn again.
"Hands behind your back, L-234."
Perhaps it would be easier to go out this way, with a clean bullet to the chest? His lungs started to squeeze, and he couldn't get a full breath at the thought.
Eden. Think of Eden. You can survive this. You can escape.
She's not the type of woman to leave you behind.
But who'd come back for a man like him?
The cuffs snapped into place as he slowly consented, the dull burn of fear flushing through him. He'd told her how he felt about her, but everything had happened so quickly. Eden would come for him; he knew her too well to doubt that. But there'd be other people around her, trying to talk her out of it. A whole Confederacy between the pair of them.
And if her brother, Adam, had anything to say about it, Johnny would probably find himself rotting here. Adam might have forgiven him for what happened all those years ago, and there'd even been a hint of camaraderie between them when they parted ways, but they weren't friends, and if he had a single clue Johnny had put his hands on Adam's sister....
Face it, you don't have a single friend in the world.
The radio buzzed on one of the guards’ hips. "Is the prisoner secured?"
The man lifted it. "Yes, sir."
"Make sure he's cleaned up. Give him the works. Then bring him topside."
"Sir."
Johnny's eyes narrowed as the guard lowered the radio. This was new. They spent most of their time either brutalizing him or throwing him in a cell with one of their pet alphas to see if the warg could bring him to heel.
He'd enjoyed turning every single alpha they'd tried to use against him. So far nobody had worked out how he'd managed to do it, though they'd taken blood tests and were quite excited about the slight differences in his DNA and nanoparticles.
Apparently, a lot of records had been lost during the Darkening. Black River Testing Facility, way out there in the Wastelands, had been a black site according to the records he'd flipped through when he'd been poking around out there. It was possible Project: Warg had been so far off the books that when the Confederacy formed post-Darkening, they weren't aware of it.
All their research had been on alpha and beta strain wargs they'd captured from the Wastelands to form their new lupine unit.
He was their first omega.
"This way," the one in charge said, and the guard behind him prodded him forward.
And Johnny was just curious enough to obey.
The shower cells were stark and empty. Just a row of showerheads, with drains set in the concrete floors. Uncuffing him only long enough to strip him down, they gestured him under the shower.
