Chapter 1
Breathing
I feel like some psychotic kid's play thing. For as long as I can remember, I've been their damn prisoner, or "test subject" as they prefer. I prefer prisoner. They prod around at my intestines. They force me to do physical exercise until I black out. They have this shock-collar around my neck that shocks me to a point where I can't breathe when I do something wrong. And they lock me in my "room" whenever they're not using me. It can't necessarily be considered that though. It's a cramped room lacking in color with an excessively bright light, a bleach white bed, table, chair, and empty bookshelf. Once a week they fill it with history books about the Greek gods. So lame.
I don't remember a life before coming here. When I asked, they told me my dad sold me to them because he didn't have the money to support himself, let alone himself and the unexpected daughter my unknown mom dumped on him. He didn't really have any other choice. If he put me into an orphanage, he would've starved to death. If he had kept me, we both would have. He still doesn't have a lot of money, but he's alive. Sometimes they let him visit me, but I can't see him. I can only listen to his rough but warm and caring voice over the intercom in my "room", promising he'll get me out soon and take me away.
But to do that, dad needs money, which he doesn't have. He needs double what they gave him for me when I was a baby to get me back. He's getting closer, but it'll still take a few years, because once he has the money to buy my freedom, he still needs money for food.
One of the guards, or "scientists", knocks on my door, interrupting my thoughts.
"Yes?" I ask.
"Physicals," he replies simply.
I bite back a groan and nodded. Groaning will only get me shocked, and then I'll have to do it anyways, but it'll be twice as fierce as it was planned. He handed me a hair tie and I pulled my wavy, shoulder-length hair back out of my face, revealing my grey eyes. He nods and leads me to the track.
The track is outside, in a large yard with a ton of equipment, an easy place to make an escape right? Wrong. There's a chain-link face that barricades the large field from the dense forest beyond. It looks like an easy obstacle to overcome, but you don't realize it until you decide to try and climb over it and get electrocuted by what feels like Death itself. I tried to climb it once. I was shocked by the fence once and by my accursed collar multiple times.
This prison knows no kindness. Only pain. Pain and games of torment.
In this place, the only freedom I have, is breathing.