I ran at Viktor, getting a kick out of his loud whimper as I approached, and punched the mirror above his head, shattering the glass, which rained down on his head.
“Yeah? No power? Neither did I when I was forced to take guard cock up my ass!”
I stilled as those words slipped out of my mouth, and cold shivers skittered down my spine. I had no idea that what the guards did was wrong. In fact, I’d never thought anything that happened in the Gulag was wrong. It was life. It was what happened day in and day out. Why did I suddenly know it was wrong? Why was something inside me suddenly telling me I’d been raped?
Fuck! I’m feeling too much lately, unable to block it all out. I have to keep it blocked out. I need to kill. To fight. To get my revenge.
My head throbbed, a sharp pain pierced my skull, and a familiar scene abruptly played in my mind. It was of the very first guard that I met, the first one who fucked me, beat me, trained me. It wasn’t of his rape or his baseball bat that he beat me with; it was being pushed down the stairs to the Gulag basement to show me my future, to show me two young boys in a cage, one slicing open the stomach of the other.
“Welcome to hell, boy.”
I closed my eyes, heart pounding, temples throbbing, and tried to cling to the memory.
My eyes snapped open and I stumbled back in shock. That was me… That boy was me. I’d been taken from somewhere. My home? I couldn’t remember, but I did remember that I’d been knocked out and tied up. We traveled for what seemed like days. Then I woke up in a cell, and I was immediately forced down to the basement.
I saw spots in front of my eyes, and then I felt a hand slap my cheek.
“Raze. Snap out of it, son. Raze!”
Blinking furiously, my vision cleared, and Viktor stood in front of me, his face… concerned? Worried?
I wanted to push him off me, but I still couldn’t move. I was paralyzed.Viktor sat up and stared at me. Holding out his palms, he said, “Raze, listen to me. I’ve seen it with hundreds of fighters who’ve left the gulags, or any of the other underground prison death match rings the mafiyas have. They’re everywhere, son. Hundreds of fucked-up kids like you, only knowing how to kill, not feel. They pumped you full of so much shit and tortured you for years, they conditioned you to not remember anything but the need to kill. You’ve blocked out your past to cope with what they made you do. Then, when you get out and the drugs leave you, triggers fuck with your mind, you start getting memories and remembering things from your past. And you can’t handle it.”
My eyebrows pulled down, but my legs and arms still wouldn’t move. Viktor cleared his throat and moved forward, lifting his hand slowly, finally placing it on my shoulder.
“Just let the memories in. Don’t fight them. Don’t push yourself to remember. If something’s familiar, let it play out. Best way or you’ll end up killing yourself.”
A feeling of dread settled in my stomach. “I don’t know if I want to remember. I came here for one thing and one thing only: revenge. I didn’t come here for memories.” I dropped my head, staring at the tattooed tallies of my kills, my number 818, and said, “What if I don’t like who I was…? What if it sends me over the edge?”
Viktor slumped to his ass and ran his hand down his face. “Isn’t it better than the cold monster you became in the Gulag? That you are in The Dungeon’s cage? And after you kill Durov, what then? Where do you go then? Another death match ring? There’s hundreds over the country. You could keep killing, making money until you’re slaughtered…” Viktor took a deep breath. “Or you could live, son. You could live… get back your life.”
I shook my head. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I only ever had one goal: kill Durov.
“I can help you to defeat Durov, but you need to help yourself, to remember your past. Right now you’re an animal, a machine that can only kill. But you were more, you are more than that.”
My eyes were trained on the ground as my head felt numb, too numb to think, but then a question from Viktor’s mouth tore right through that haze.
“Why Durov, Raze? Why Durov?”
My chest tightened and my hands began to shake as a broken memory pushed through to my mind.
Three boys. Three boys by the falls. On a family vacation. Two of them best friends. The third had a knife. The third stabbed one of the others… Then… then what?
Energy filled my limbs again as I grew frustrated with the memory not showing me what I needed to know. Why Durov? Who were the boys? Who was stabbed? Was I there? Was I one of the boys?