Renascent: Starborn Blood: A Novella by Strife E L

Author:Strife, E L
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

Marci

14

KATCHI’S TITANS drag me out of my cell and up the steps by my boots. They don’t like touching me.

I’m deposited over a large metal grate in a room filled with computers, tanks, and screens.

“You’re going to be the test subject for my new system.” Katchi grins. “I’ve built myself a new lab here over the years and done all sorts of little projects from Live Cerithymite Reclamations to very messy splay removals.”

A mechanical centipede crawls out of the ceiling. I scramble away from it, knowing it’s programmed to capture subjects, but I’m too slow and weak.

Tines grab me around the back of my head, then latch around my neck, down my back, and tuck around my thighs. The centipede lifts me until I am suspended in the air before Katchi.

He claps, and his face stretches with sadistic excitement. “There’s my girl.”

"I'm not yours." I don't struggle. There's no point in wasting what little energy I have. Half a protein bar will keep me alive, but it isn't enough to fight. My muscles quiver, and my stomach is cold and empty. Even if I was starving, I wouldn't have eaten the piss-covered bread.

Katchi collects a voltstick from a nearby workbench and spins it in his palm like it’s a bottle of Butter Drop he’s looking forward to enjoying. He walks to me, reaches inside my suit, and depresses the button for quick release.

The Noctus Ops Star Devil’s suit crumbles. The centipede adjusts its grip on me as the suit falls in pieces to the floor. A droid leaves a nearby wall and sweeps up the fragments, filling its debris chamber in one pass.

Katchi shifts closer, draws his knife, and cuts open my jumpsuit near my hip.

His knife blade bites flesh. Pangs pelt my brain. I strain to keep quiet and avoid giving him any sign I’m hurting. He’ll only make it hurt more. Astrals get a rush out of hurting us, especially Katchi. His soldiers committed suicide more than most of the rest of us.

He jabs the voltstick into my hip and lights it up. Electric jolts make my body shudder and my leg smoke. Katchi knows just where to hit me to break me.

My leg shuts down and weighs heavily on my body.

Katchi burns my wrist next, then my side. Each time he wields the voltstick, another part of me goes offline. I watch the parts blink offline in my vision.

I am a tangle of dead mech and flesh with a storm of confused Cerithymite running through my veins.

His pinched face nears mine. His skin is covered in a peppering of welding slag burns that stop near his eyes in the shape of a set of goggles. A scar runs down his jaw. And his neck bears the slender digital tracework of a highly augmented Astral.

The platform beneath his feet rises. He seems to command the space with his mind, and I wonder what on earth he could possibly want to improve by using me. “I don’t see anything better about me than you.

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