Page 2 of Forbidden Bonds
It never does.
In the silence, my thoughts return, as they often do, to how I ended up here, a prisoner of the Uncorrupted, my omega gift—if one can call it that—turned into a tool.
Did an insider betray me? Or was the attack on the transport ship ferrying me from Chimera to Tolis merely the luck of the draw?
I have asked myself those questions too many times. I wasn’t the only omega taken that day, and many more omegas have been taken since then.
Ten years is a long time to live with your enemy. But this is my life now. There is no escaping the Uncorrupted. There is no exit plan that does not involve death. And—as I’ve learned along the way, from those times when I have rebelled, and punishments have ensued—I still want to live, even here, even in this dreadful half-life filled with pain and misery.
The monitors bleep intermittently.
Jenda remains hunched over her stats. Jord is just a data set to her. His thoughts, feelings, and emotional welfare are reduced to numbers on a screen, fed into algorithms that care only about his remaining usefulness in the war.
Am I assimilated? I don’t believe I am. But I also accept that not everyone here is bad, just as not everyone in the Empire is good. Many ordinary people came over to the Uncorrupted, non-dynamics who left the Empire seeking a better life, hoping to escape the bottom of the caste system.
Life is not better here for them, that much I can tell. There is merely a different kind of prejudice, except here it exists within a culture rife with corruption.
Living so close to the Uncorrupted’s military leadership as I do, I’ve touched minds engaged in the study of warcraft, strategy and subterfuge across the ages. The endless flood of information that churns through my mind every day provides me with a unique perspective on humanity; a thousand snapshots intoour nature—the centuries of battle between the Empire and the Uncorrupted, dynamics, and non-dynamics.
The rise and fall of civilizations.
Stability. Anarchy.
Power. Ruin.
Change is coming, the balance is poised to tip, though which way is anybody’s guess. Both sides deploy propaganda, spinning tales to keep their populations complacent, and obedient to the games played by their leaders. For a long time, the Uncorrupted were the underdogs.
But are they still?
Jenda rises from her console and heads over to check the alpha’s vitals. Satisfied, she nods to me. “Come with me.”
I fall into step beside her as we exit the lab and enter the corridor beyond.
“I’ve been given leave to begin testing you again,” she says.
I fight to school my features, to hide the panic that slams into me. Testing. Such an innocuous word and woefully inadequate to encapsulate the torture delivered under this woman’s direction. Not only have I personally experienced her experiments, but I’ve also had to sit through many more tests performed on others, reading their minds as they suffered.
Jenda’s feeling especially cruel at the moment, and lashing out due to her own recent failure. She is not well-liked, but shewasrespected… until a high-profile omega escaped under her watch.
As we come to a stop before the door to General Cohen’s office, her soulless eyes rest on me, assessing me.
Cohen is my master, the one from whom Jenda borrows me. Though only when he allows it, when it fits with his own agenda.
I wonder if he has even agreed to the testing. Did she say it just to frighten me? Is she bluffing? Or maybe it’s not so much bluffing as an unwavering belief that she will get what she wants. Unfortunately for her, her recent failure has left a mark against her, and Cohen is a powerful man.
Jenda smirks at me. I know that look, and my heart skips a beat, rattling the mental vigilance I use to keep out of her mind. She enjoys pain, meting it out both in her intimate life and in the name of research. Images slam into me, bringing bile to my throat.
For the most part, I can choose to read someone’s thoughts. But intense emotions, or proximity—especially if it involves touch—can allow thoughts and feelings to bleed through without my consent. Jenda makes a game out of it. She loves nothing more than to see terror on my face as her hideous intentions spill over to me.
And she’s making it clear that her planned tests will deliver me into a fresh round of suffering.
“How did such an uninspiring wrapper give birth to such a mind?” Her eyes trail down my body.
No need to read her mind to see how very little she thinks of my ‘wrapper’.
Plain.
Unremarkable.
