Cindrac - Mikayla Lane Page 0,2

and collars. He wasn’t sure which was worse, being their killing machine or having to live with the monsters who committed such terrible acts against the slave classes.

Cindrac turned away from the gleaming, bright buildings, shops, and the happy elites and their minions strolling the sidewalks. Instead, he directed his thoughts more inward and used the forbidden practice of meditation to calm his nerves.

When the shuttle pulled up to the re-genetics building, Cin got out and headed inside without hesitation, hoping with each step that it would be his last in this world.

The guards at the entrance scanned his chips before Cindrac got close and allowed him to walk in the front door. He’d gone only a few steps before half a dozen guards flanked him and herded him into an elevator. Cin had no desire to fight the death sentence before him but knew the guards didn’t know that and were only doing as ordered.

For the first time in his miserable, hopeless existence, Cindrac was happy but refused to let it show, just in case the sadistic elites took it from him like they had everything else. Instead, he marched to his death with no expression on his face, revealing none of his thoughts.

Cindrac had learned long ago that emotion, of any kind, wasn’t approved by the overlords for the slave classes unless it amused them. Like everyone else bred into this nightmarish and evil world, Cin swallowed his every thought and feeling and walked into the lab.

He wasn’t surprised when he saw the trembling woman already strapped into a chair with dozens of tubes and electrodes attached to various parts of her body. Cindrac knew this was the woman forced to participate in this experiment alongside him.

Her name was Loquan, and she appeared to be terrified of what was going to happen. Cin felt sorry for the poor woman and wished he could tell her how lucky she was to be here. Still, Cin hoped she wouldn’t suffer too much before death blissfully took her.

Without being asked, Cin sat in the chair beside the scared woman and kept his eyes trained straight ahead while the techs strapped him down. Cin’s commanding officer briefed him this morning on what would happen, and he waited patiently for the peace of death.

The commander also fed Cin a pack of lies about being free and allowed to mate and have a family if the procedure was a success. Cin knew better and didn’t want to live in the new hell the elite had planned for him if he survived.

Even if this experiment worked by some sick twist of fate, it would sentence Cindrac and Loquan to a life of more experimentation until it finally killed them. The elite would never allow them to live if they were indeed powerful in any way.

Employing a little meditation trick he’d learned from a banned book he found on the battlefield, Cindrac remained unmoving while a swarm of doctors, scientists, and technologists poked and prodded him.

By the time they finished, Cin had a dozen more chips injected into his body and brain, and an IV was in his left arm. The techs had covered his head and chest in a web of electrodes, and a blood pressure cuff intermittently tightened and released on his arm.

Cindrac ignored the lab staff's excited chatter and the whimpering of the woman beside him. He begged for death in his mind until the exact moment the nanites were injected and began to flood his body, and his thoughts scattered.

Hand clenching reflexively, Cin made a fist and tried to stop the uncontrollable trembling in his left arm after the injection of nanites. Next, Cin gritted his teeth to keep from crying out over what felt like a swarm of ants crawling through his entire body, leaving a trail of fire and then ice in their wake.

Loquan wasn’t lucky enough to control herself and repeatedly screamed until a doctor brutally slapped and then gagged her. The indignity in the face of what the lab staff was doing to Loquan only made Cin more determined to remain in control of himself, if possible.

The feeling of ants crawling through his body only intensified as the nanites reached each of the computer chips in Cin’s body. He didn’t need to hear the techs calling out where the nanites had spread because he felt every horrible second of it.

Next, Cin felt the tearing of his skin as his muscles expanded, and still, he swallowed his pain and