CHAPTER FIVE: SHADOW OF THE GLASS ROOM
781 Words
They stared at me like I came back wrong.
Like I left as a slave and returned as something that shouldn’t exist.
Maybe they were right.
The crawlspace hadn’t changed.
Still hot. Still tight. Still stinking of oil, rot, and fear.
But I had.
Korril said nothing the first day.
Neither did Kida.
She only watched me while pretending not to, eyes twitching toward the new scars on my arms.
I sat in the corner of the cell and let my body heal.
Three ribs cracked. Muscles torn from training. Nerve damage from the last collar surge.
But my mind—my mind had never been sharper.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the glass room.
Saw blood on my palms.
Heard the voice of Commander Yeshik Drahl whispering like acid:
“You’re not a slave. You’re something else.”
They stopped pairing me with the others for shifts.
Too dangerous, they said.
I worked alone. Dragged crates through sulfur corridors. Cleaned broken machinery the size of ships. Hauled tech fragments with blades still humming.
The guards no longer shocked me.
They watched.
Some whispered.
Others… stepped aside when I passed.
On the fourth night back, I found Shal Vox in the shadows near the burn duct.
He was drawing again—strange symbols etched into rusted steel.
I crouched beside him.
“What are those?” I asked.
He didn’t look up.
“Maps.”
“To what?”
“Freedom. Or fire. Sometimes they’re the same.”
I stared at the marks—curved lines, dots in rows, spirals that seemed to pulse under the dim light.
“You’ve changed,” he said after a while.
“They changed me,” I replied.
“No. They just scraped off the surface.”
That night, the guards dragged a boy from his cell—new, barely old enough to understand why his hands bled.
They lined him up in the center of the feeding pit.
He had stolen a ration chip.
It was Rilka this time.
She descended the platform slow, her legs hissing with every step, her whip slithering behind her like it had a mind of its own.
“Thieves rot the foundation,” she said.
“But rot can be cured.”
“With flame.”
The boy didn’t scream when she struck.
Not at first.
The third lash changed that.
His skin split in ribbons.
Everyone looked away.
Except me.
I stepped forward.
The whip paused midair.
Every eye in the pit turned.
Rilka’s head tilted slowly, like a spider deciding whether to strike.
“Back to play hero?” she hissed. “You always were fond of corpses.”
I didn’t speak.
Just raised my hand.
Pointed to the boy.
Then to myself.
“Him for me.”
Gasps echoed through the pit. No one ever offered themselves up.
Rilka’s mandibles clicked.
“Why?”
“Because he still believes in mercy,” I said.
“And I don’t.”
She laughed.
A sound like metal tearing flesh.
“Very well.”
She raised her whip.
I didn’t flinch.
The first strike hit my back like a thunderbolt.
The hooks bit deep. Flesh tore.
I stayed standing.
She struck again.
And again.
Blood ran down my legs. My knees shook.
But I didn’t fall.
I looked her in the eyes.
She raised it once more—
But a voice rang out from above.
“Enough.”
Commander Drahl stood on the upper platform, surrounded by shadows.
“He’s mine now.”
Rilka froze.
Then stepped back.
I collapsed, not from pain—just to spite her.
The boy crawled to me, sobbing.
I pushed him away.
“Don’t thank me,” I said.
“Just remember what she felt like.”
Word spread through the pits fast.
Vorrak had taken the whip.
And survived.
No one laughed anymore when I passed.
Some nodded.
Others just whispered.
Korril approached me that night as I lay against the wall, back still bleeding.
He crouched, slow.
“You don’t want to be a symbol,” he said.
“I want to burn this place,” I replied.
“Then stop acting like a martyr and start thinking like a monster.”
The next day, Kida slid me a jagged shard.
Homemade blade. Sharpened against the floor for weeks.
“You’re going to need this,” she said.
“For what?”
“For whatever comes next.”
Later that week, the alarms screamed.
A shipment of Dominion tech had been sabotaged.
Half a transport exploded mid-dock.
No one claimed it.
But in the crawlspace…
We started looking at the guards differently.
Not like gods.
But targets.
- Writer
