Feral For Her Freedom
FOURTEEN

Steam wafted up from the meal placed before me. I simply stared at it wondering what Myrin’s game was. For the past week he had left me alone. I hadn’t seen him once since that night and since then I’d been delivered three meals a day.

At first, I had not hesitated to eat the food but by the third time in the same day, I had grown wary of this oddity. There was nothing wrong with the food. It wasn’t drugged or poisoned so I ate what I was offered.

My strength was returning which Myrin had to know, but he hadn’t chained me or drugged me at all. The door was locked, and the window had a set of iron bars across it.

There was nothing I could use as a weapon. All of my meals were served on paper plates without utensils and there was not even a nail holding up the painting. I had checked and been sorely disappointed to replace a plastic clasp that was glued to the wall. There was no comb and no razor, the bathroom was empty save for a bar of soap. The mirror wasn’t glass either. It was merely a thin sheet of flexible metal that gave me a vague distorted reflection of myself.

I was still too weak to enter my pure state, I had tried on numerous occasions only to have a dreadful migraine as a reward.

Baths had become my favorite pastime.

I would shut off all the lights and just soak in the water, a damp rag over my eyes. I filled the bath with bubbles and salts to soothe my aching and battered body and dozed. I had spent many hours in the bath, in the darkness and emptiness.

I had half a mind to start another bath after I was finished eating the ham and cheese sandwich with a handful of potato chips that was my lunch.

I ate slowly as it gave me something to do other than sleep and stare out the window. Once I was finished, I tossed the paper plate in the small wastebasket and strolled through the already open French doors. Going through the motions I filled the tub, dropping in a handful of lavender bath salt and squirting what was left of the bubbles into the hot stream of water that came tumbling from the faucet. I clicked the power button on the jacuzzi and climbed in. I moaned happily as the jets pounded into my tight muscles, the pressure loosening them in a painfully pleasurable way.

Pulling the red washcloth from the lip of the tub, I dunked it in the water before wringing it out and placing it over my eyes. I leaned back and listen to the whirring of the jets, ready to fall asleep to the rhythm as I had numerous times previously.

I gasped at the feeling of something sharp pushing past the skin of my neck and into the main vein there. My eyes shot open and I thrashed around in the bath, ripping the cloth from my eyes. I was violently shoved under the water, my head smashing on the ceramic tub.

I kicked, sending water and bubbles flying as water forced its way into my throat.

I could see Myrin above me through the foggy and rippling water. He was easily pinning me to the bottom of the tub with one hand. In his other was an empty syringe.

With renewed vigor, I surged my way towards the surface only to be yanked up, the muscles of his arm flexing as he pulled me from the tub and tossed me onto the tiled floor.

I sputtered, coughing water out of my lungs, wheezing as I tried to fill them with air. My hair hung in my face in snarled strands, water dripping from the ends.

My hands curled and uncurled on their own, the blue veins popping prominently. The mercury burned its way through my body, flooding me with the familiar sense of pain. I tried to push the feeling away, having finally become accustomed to living without it.

He grabbed my leg and pulled me from the bathroom. I was dragged behind him, my spine digging into the lip from the tiled bathroom into the hardwood floored bedroom.

My wet skin squeaked against the floor as he hauled me forward, letting me go once I was on the rug. He crouched down, pinching a piece of my wet hair between his fingers. “You didn’t think I was done with you, did you?” he asked, peering into my eyes that were filling with uncontrolled tears.

They weren’t normal tears. They had been affected by the mercury and felt like acid dripping into my eyes.

“No, no, no,” he cooed, his thumb tracing my lips that were open in a silent gasp. “I need you at your full health.” He pinched my jaw to keep it open when I attempted to bite down on his fingers. “What good would my research and results be on a weak pathetic female?” He smirked, pinning my tongue to the bottom of my mouth with his thumb. “I plan on using this against some rivals of mine and I need to be sure it can take them down.”

I groaned in response, small cries falling from my lips at the pain that made my skin feel as though it was melting from my bones.

“Ahh, so you can guess what I need it for.” Myrin didn’t sound surprised.

On the other hand, I was fuming on the inside. Was this what I would become? A casualty in the war between Ones for the title of Paramount in their useless efforts to become Ultimate? Knowing that I was being used as a lab rat to test poisons and serums so that Myrin could have a weapon, an advantage that could give him the title Paramount, made me more infuriated than knowing the torture I was enduring was solely for his own amusement.

We hadn’t even had a Paramount to overrule the council in nearly five generations. Earning the title Paramount in and of itself was a huge accomplishment, but just a milestone in what it took to become the Ultimate.

Was I simply put on this planet to serve this very purpose? Did Daedra think nothing of giving me this destiny, this pain so that a war would break out and there may be a chance a second Ultimate could emerge?

“Can you move Beastie?” he asked me, taking a step back to observe me. A whine spilled from my lips in reply. From his pocket, the male pulled out a small knife, placing it just beyond my reach. “Grab the knife Beastie, snatch it and it’s yours.”

With every ounce of strength I possessed I tried to reach for that knife but I was immobile, not moving except for the violent contractions that had taken over my body due to the mercury.

“Hmm,” Myrin seemed to be taking mental notes giving me one last glance over before turning on his heel and leaving.

And so it began. Every day just when the effects of my last dosage began to fade, he would be there with a new variation of his mercury. He would take notes, jotting down my symptoms and reactions.

Some were more painful than others, some allowed me to move, others did not. Some I could speak but could not hear, some made me feel as though I was frozen in ice, others burning alive. The only thing they had in common was the unbearable torture they put me through.

I was still fed three meals a day. I was still allowed to take baths, but my body belonged solely for Myrin’s experimentation purposes. I was able to eat, sleep, and bathe because he allowed it, because he wanted me to be healthy.

I noticed changes in my appearance every day. My hair grew whiter, my eyes now a vibrant silver with slashes of white flecked through the iris. The mercury was scarring me in a new way, a scar I could not hide.

I looked up from my reflection in the mirror, sensing movement behind me. By the time my brain registered what I was seeing, Myrin was already flying at me, the syringe plunging into the base of my neck.

I collapsed onto the sink, my legs giving out. I didn’t know if the mercury had something to do with my automatic response. It seemed unlikely its affects could take place in less than a second so perhaps it was merely my body’s way of conceding, knowing what was coming next.

Yet another game Myrin played was surprise attack. Whenever my back was turned, if I merely blinked, lost my focus for one second, he was there, sending me into a panic attack before stabbing me with his needles.

The male stood above me watching me for a second to see if there would be an unusual reaction on my part. When the symptoms yielded that same results, he simply pushed my body over with his foot, the toe of his shoe jabbing into my ribs. Rolling up his sleeves he washed out the syringe, placing it on the white granite of the sink top.

Crossing his arms, he leaned against the sink, his hip supporting his upright position. “Well at least this one isn’t making you bleed from your eyes, nose, mouth and ears,” he murmured to himself.

His words brought me back to the awful experience of yesterday. His mercury serum that day had been far worse than any of the others. A light pink fluid had begun to leak from everywhere. At first, I hadn’t known what it was and neither had Myrin. It didn’t even smell like blood, but the taste of it was unmistakable.

The mercury was affecting my bloodstream, changing its flow and color from coursing through the same veins my blood did. My heart beat slower now, less than ten times a minute. I found myself holding my breath for long increments without even knowing I wasn’t breathing until I had to gasp for air.

A sharp sting shot through my head, dissuading me from thinking too much. I had begun to think of the mercury injections like a living organism. It was like it had a mind of its own. It knew what its purpose was, what it was supposed to make me feel. It would not allow me to think of anything other than the agony it provided me. It demanded all my attention, my focus to be centered around it.

Suddenly the pain evaporated. One second it was at full intensity in the next it had simply disappeared.

Myrin immediately noticed the change. He was by my side in a second, muttering incoherent thoughts to himself. I couldn’t even bring myself to try and understand what he was talking about. I was too consumed with my own thoughts, trying to figure out what just happened.

All it took was another second before my stomach jumped to my throat and I was retching up a silver metallic substance. A glimmer of hope shot through me and just for a moment I thought somehow my body had finally grown used to the mercury and was now rejecting it. However, the next time I vomited; it wasn’t silver that came up but black. After that more and more black liquid spilled from my mouth, staining my lips and hands.

Myrin cursed as he pulled another syringe from his pocket, uncapping it. “Shit! Fuck!” he continued to repeat as he injected me with it.

I stayed on my hands and knees for the large part of a minute until I got my breathing under control and my puking subsided.

Myrin continued to swear, his words now directed at me as if this was somehow my fault. I was too shocked to focus on anything other than the fact that I just nearly died. That feeling that had enclosed my heart was one I’d never before felt. Like a light was just at the end of the tunnel, a reprieve from the pain that was almost over. But then I’d been sucked back into my body, forced to remember what was happening and what I had been reduced too.

Within a fraction of a second, each of these thoughts and emotions came and went.

Then I blacked out.