Chapter 1 – This World Shall Know Pain
Blue POV.
Someone once told me that a dream is where a wish and fear meet.
When the wish and the fear are the same, we call the dream a nightmare.
I was now living one such nightmare.
I won the graduation contest. I was crowned the champion of Project Merciless. And yet, I lost everything I had.
I lost my only friend — my sister from another mother — and a part of myself in that contest.
I lost the only person to have ever loved me. I lost my soul, or whatever little of it I had left in me.
I had such high hopes for the competition. I was trying to learn my lesson for once. To be smart and do what I needed to survive.
To be free.
To be free along with Violet, even if that meant turning into a state assassin.
And I gained it at her expense. My freedom in return for her blood. My survival at the cost of her life.
Except that I don’t want it anymore. I don’t want to walk out of this prison. I want to stay here and take everyone down with me.
The Supremo has just issued a kill order for me. I am now a wanted inmate with a bounty on my head, with no home and no country. But for now, I am free.
Every day on the run is your whole life. And there’s hope and excitement in the new.
Except that I wasn’t running. I was staying put in the prison that was known as “Mummy’s Cradle." The same place where Violet died, and a part of me died along with her.
The same place that made me realize the true meaning of the term, ‘pain’.
I have named it ‘Fort Blue’.
Fort Blue isn’t a path to a better place. This is all I’ve got coming. There’s no redemption for the likes of me. No silver lining.
I don’t get to feel any better.
This is my punishment. To suffer. To withstand pain.
Punishment is pain. Pain is punishment.
The first few days after Violet’s death, I watched all the human guards lay down their weapons, one by one, offering a truce. They said they were seeking peace and quiet, and a life of no bloodshed.
I didn’t ask them to surrender. They just didn’t feel the need to either join me or fight me. Mummy was gone. The facility was under lockdown. It was the end of the road for them.
All they sought was amnesty. And I had no reason to deny it to them. Not because they deserved it, but only because it made me feel human again.
I’d had my share of bloodshed forced on me. And I wasn’t going to stain my soul by spilling more human blood.
Mummy’s Cradle used to feel excruciatingly suffocating. Fort Blue feels exhilaratingly free. A place where I could start afresh. And dream again.
I responded to that with all my heart.
An hour after Mummy died, I was put on the operating table. Under anesthesia. My orders to the staff were clear: that my human limbs be removed and replaced with titanium ones, and my spinal cord be fitted with an electronic nervous system.
But my eyes were to be left untouched, as well as my brain and my heart. I needed them to remind me of my identity, of who I was at my core.
A flesh-and-blood creature.
I also ordered each of my pals to accomplish a set of specific tasks.
“Indigo, you’ll keep an eye on the doctors. Make sure they don’t mess up the surgery. Green, you’ll monitor the scientists and ensure the data is uploaded in real time. Flawlessly. Yellow, you are in charge of security from this moment onward. Your eyes should be glued to the surveillance cameras and the weapons stockpile.”
They all nodded happily and went about their respective tasks.
“What am I supposed to do?” Orange stepped forward. “You left me out.”
“You’re going to be my most trusted lieutenant,” I smiled at her reassuringly. “I want you to find out how the lockdown was initiated remotely, and why the power grid didn’t shut down.”
My brain was firing in all directions even before I went under the knife. It didn’t escape my notice that we still had electricity, even with a total lockdown in place.
I was put to sleep under a heavy dose of anesthetics. And by the time I woke up, I was an entirely different person.
***
The first thing I noticed immediately after waking up was how alert I felt. I wasn’t feeling drowsy or numb or groggy. I was asleep one moment, and wide awake the next, as if someone had flipped a switch to bring about a metamorphosis.
My eyes popped open, and I sat up ramrod straight on the operating table.
And suddenly, everyone turned around to face me.
I could see the look of awe and disbelief in their eyes, as if I was some sort of miracle. Or a freak. Their jaws had dropped, and their activities had come to an abrupt halt.
That’s when it dawned on me.
My arms. They were not there anymore!
They had been replaced with two shiny, slender, sleek titanium limbs, light as a feather, but metallic in composition.
I started moving those arms, and gasped at their weird shape and appearance.
“This is the first time we have got a human fitted with titanium limbs,” one of the scientists stepped forward to explain. “All cyborgs created till date have polyester skin and aluminum bones. You are the first to have got titanium instead of polyester and steel. Congrats!”
A doctor chipped in. “You are also the first female to have transformed into a cyborg. Please let us know how you feel.”
I stared at my legs. They were titanium too, knee down. So were my fingers and toes.
I rolled my metal fingers tightly into my palm, and raised a closed fist.
“I feel fucking fantastic!” I blurted out in ecstasy.
“Great!” the doctor remarked. “Take things easy the first couple of days. Don’t exert yourself. We will help you follow the steps to adapt to your new organs. The process starts tomorrow.”
“You will also remain under close observation for a week,” the scientist said. “We need to review how your new nervous system functions. You are the first in history to have an electronic neuralink connected to your old human brain.”
I smiled and asked for a mirror.
Indigo arrived with a small hand-held mirror. And I couldn’t recognize my reflection anymore.
Gone was my wild, disheveled hair that had lumps in places. Instead, I saw a sheet of jet black lustrous hair falling straight over my shoulders like a curtain.
But there was something strange about my eyes that caught my attention. They remained human as before. But there was a weird glow in them.
A red glow!
“Why are my eyes red?” I groaned.
“It’s the electronic nervous system,” the doctor replied. “The new nerve fibers in your eyes are all electrodes, and they give off this red glow. But unlike other cyborgs, yours will appear less red because you still retain your original eyes.”
I remembered how red and scary Mummy’s eyes looked. And those of the cyborg guards who had accompanied the Supremo on graduation day.
“Orange and Yellow will be here any minute,” Indigo said excitedly. “They have something interesting to share with you.”
I smiled. But I wasn’t thinking about them anymore.
I was only fixated on my reflection in the mirror, and the immense possibilities my new cyborg abilities could bring to my life.
Life’s like a crowded lifeboat. First, you throw out your pride to stay afloat. Then you dump your self-respect and your independence. And finally, you start throwing people out — friends, everyone you used to know — and it’s still not enough.
The boat is still sinking. And you’re going down with it.
That’s me.
I’ll never get out of that boat.
Everyone in this world — every human alive — is trying to run away from something. But not me. Because it doesn’t work.
You can be free of anything but yourself.
But you could still make amends. Set things in motion. Shake things up. Correct past wrongs.
And cause pain to those who wronged you.
“This world shall know pain!" I muttered under my breath. “Those who do not understand true pain can never understand true peace.”
