Page 8 of Enslak

The mind was unreliable.

The mind forgot things. Important things.

Like what?

The water stopped. I stood there dripping, shivering even though I shouldn't be cold. My body temperature ran hot now, another modification, another improvement.

That's what they called it.

Improvement.

"Eat," Zarlak said, and I heard the wet slap of something hitting the floor.

I looked down. Gray slop, protein paste mixed with nutrients and whatever else they thought I needed to keep fighting. It smelled like nothing. Tasted like less.

But I was hungry, always hungry, so I dropped to my knees and ate.

No bowl. No utensils. Just my hands scooping the paste into my mouth, swallowing without chewing because there was nothing to chew.

Easier this way. Faster. More efficient.

More animal.

The thought drifted through my mind like smoke. I was eating like an animal, off the floor, while the Negita watched with disgust plain on his face. Outside, the guards laughed and placed bets on how long I'd last in the next fight.

I paused, paste halfway to my mouth, and searched for the anger, for the part of me that should care, that should rage against this treatment, that should remember being something else.

Something more.

But that part was distant now. Buried.

Maybe gone entirely.

Maybe they were right.

Maybe I wasn't much different from the creatures I fought in the pit. I killed. I ate. I slept. I killed again. That was the cycle. That was everything.

What else could there be?

Family.

The word appeared in my mind like a ghost. Faint. Barely there.

I had family once? People who looked like me, who spoke a language I used to know, who—

The memory evaporated before I could grasp it.

I finished eating and sat back on my heels, staring at the emptiness ahead. The cell was small. Stone walls. Stone floor. Stone ceiling. A drain in one corner where the water from the hose and my piss went. A sleeping platform, just a slab of metal bolted to the wall. No windows. No light except what leaked in from the corridor when they opened the door.

This was my world.

This was everything.

My hand moved without conscious thought, fingers finding the collar around my neck. The metal was cold against my pelt, one of the few places I still had pelt instead of scales or fur or the rough, grafted patches where they'd spliced in DNA from other species.

The qhoma collar.

I knew its name. Knew what it did. Knew it was coded to my DNA, that any flesh other than mine touching it would trigger the detonation. The explosion would be instant, painless, final.