Specimen(48)

I’ve been hit with electrical charges before as part of training, but it’s nothing like this. I can hear and feel a slow, deliberate throbbing as the impulses hit. Every hit goes right to my head. I feel no burns on my body—I could have forced myself to ignore those. Whatever is happening now is all in my head, focusing on the right temporal lobe where my primary implant is located.

“Sten, status! Sten!”

I can hear her words in my head, but I can’t respond. The next jolt drops me to my knees, and I am completely surrounded by the gloved hands. For a moment, the impulses stop. I grab through the net’s webbing for the nearest person and slam the heel of my hand into his nose, sending bone into his brain. He drops as I feel another intense shock through my head.

They’re all over me. Between pulses, I swing and kick. I know I kill several of them, but for every one that drops, two more take his place. I feel myself being lifted into the air.

“Sten!” Riley’s voice is muffled, full of static.

“Give it up, Superman.”

I wrench my shoulders back and forth as I’m strapped to a flat platform—a stretcher of some sort—still wrapped in the net. My vision is failing, but I feel someone unwrapping the net around my legs and trying to strap me to the platform, I kick out at those trying to hold my legs, but I can’t seem to make contact with them.

I’m completely immobilized. The electric impulses stop, but I’m left feeling disoriented. My thoughts are disjointed and confused. There’s only one thing I know for sure—I’ve been captured.

Riley’s voice is no longer in my head. I’ve never had so many people around me at once, and I feel more alone than ever.





Chapter 13


I can’t move.

I’m naked and restrained on a thick, flat wooden platform. My arms and legs are extended outward, almost as if I were being crucified. Metal clamps keep my arms, legs, and torso restricted, and there’s also a strap around my forehead. My hands are splayed out with shards of metal between each finger, immobilizing them as well. Circular pieces have been inserted into my eye sockets, forcing my eyes to remain open, staring up into a blinding light.

“How many specimens survived the transformation?”

“Where is the medical facility located?”

“How many officers are involved in the project?”

“What do you know about monorail technology?”

I know the answers to some of their questions but not most of them. Either way, I remain silent. I can’t identify any of my captors by sight with the light shining on me, but I can identify four voices, all men.

Water is splashed in my face. It’s salty and burns my eyes, but the pain is easy enough to shake off. Someone slaps me across the face. Another slaps me on my balls. I have no idea how many times they’ve done that. Normally, my primary implant would make it easy to calculate, but I have no desire to do so. My head hasn’t worked right since they threw the net over me.

“Time to up the ante, boys.” There’s a slight accent in the man’s voice, but I can’t identify it. He’s the one giving most of the instructions.

I feel a hand on my thigh and a slight prick, like a needle. It’s not puncturing my skin though. Someone is just holding it there.

“Ready?”

“Go for it.”

A sharp thwack hits my ears at the same time the slight prick in my thigh turns into a deep puncture. I grit my teeth against the pain radiating from the middle of my leg. I feel the same slight pressure on my other thigh, and I realize they’re hammering nails into my muscles.

Both thighs, both calves, and my biceps are all pierced. The crucifixion image strengthens. I wait for them to start hammering in more nails, but they stop. I can feel tugging around the area where I’m impaled and the scrape of metal on metal.

“Light him up.”

My muscles go stiff as electricity is pumped through the nails and into my body. I can’t stop myself from screaming. The net had incapacitated me—messed with my implants until I couldn’t function—but this is nothing but pure agony.

I scream again as another shock is delivered.

More questions. More screaming.

Questions.

Screaming.

Everything is blurry. I sense the light still in my eyes, but I can’t actually see anymore. My arms and legs pulse with pain. I can smell my own charred flesh where they’ve burned me with the shocks. My lips are dry, cracked, and probably bleeding. I’ve been beaten unconscious several times, but the reprieve never lasts. The shocks revive me, and it starts all over again.

One of the voices—the leader of this merry band of torturers, as far as I can tell—speaks into my ear.