Chapter 4 : Torments (end)

When 3109 was only a few dozen feet away from him, the guard stared successively at the kid then the water-filled cauldron to his left, his pensive expression and his unconscious gesture of slowly stroking his beard both showed that he was hesitating to do something specific, 'No. It would be a disservice to him.' He eventually concluded after a brief consideration, his eyes fixed on the collar of 3109.

It wasn't until 3109 stopped in front of him that the guard remembered that he had a job to do; he grabbed the handle of the ladle that was sticking out of the cauldron with his left hand, filled the ladle, then held it out to 3109 without a word.

3109 placed his dirty hands on the edges of the ladle to steady it so he wouldn't spill water when he would drink and his strategy paid off because every drop of water ended up in his mouth.

Having finished the contents of the ladle, 3109 dropped the edges of it and was about to get to work, but before he could move, the guard called out to him, "Uh, hold on a moment." The guard commanded him with a complicated expression on his face while putting his right hand on 3109 right shoulder...

After a few seconds of hesitation during which the guard stared awkwardly at 3109 and the latter became more and more nervous because he didn't understand why he was taken to task, the guard let go of his shoulder, "Don't pay attention to what I just said and go to work." The guard finally ordered 3109, having definitely given up the idea of giving 3109 more water to compensate for the fact that he didn't eat.

3109 found the guard's behavior odd, but he didn't give it much thought, he put this episode in the back of his mind and headed down the hallway just behind the guard.

***

The hallway 3109 was walking down was quite unusual compared to the ones he had been in so far, firstly, the ceiling was slightly higher than the others, secondly, it was twice as wide as the others, lastly, the ambient temperature was warmer here than anywhere else, not so much that 3109 could tell he wasn't cold anymore, but not far from it.

After some time, 3109 saw on his left 2 large blue containers reaching the height of his neck and placed one next to the other...

As a matter of routine, he knew that the container on the right contained gloves and the one on the left contained pickaxes, so without even trying to look inside, he plunged his hands into the right container, pulled out a thick brown left hand glove and then two more left hand gloves before finally coming across a right hand glove.

3109 put on his gloves, which were by the way, way too big for him, then like for the right container, he plunged his hands into the left one, but this time looking for a pickaxe head.

No sooner had he started rummaging that he felt a metallic object at the end of his gloves...

Coming to the logical conclusion that it was a pickaxe head, 3109 grabbed it with both hands and pulled it towards him with all the strength he could muster.

3109 managed to get the pickaxe out of the container relatively easily, however, as he held it with both arms outstretched above his head, he felt an excruciating pain run through not only his arms but also the rest of his body and especially his heart...

It was intense, unbearable, as if he had just been struck by lightning, he who never flinched when it came to enduring nasty wounds couldn't help but scream at the top of his lungs now, "AAAAAHHHHHH!" He cried out as tears were streaming down his cheeks, barely wiping away the grime on their path.

Gradually, 3109 lost the strength in his arms and when he finally passed out, it was hard to tell if it was the pain that made him faint or the fact that the head of the pickaxe had hit the top of his skull when he involuntarly dropped it.

---

20 hours later

---

3109 blinked several times, slowly raised his head with a groan, and after a few seconds during which his eyes and his brain needed to adjust to the obscurity he noticed that he was back in his cell.

When the numbness passed, 3109 winced in pain, it was the last thing he felt before passing out and it was no different when he woke up, on top of that, it wasn't even the wound covered of dried blood on his head that hurt the most but his back strangely.

Belly facing the ground, it took 3109 a moment between his headache and the pain he felt on the entire surface of his back to gather the courage to try to straighten up to sit cross-legged, and when he finally managed to do it he decided to evaluate the extent of the damage on his back because he didn't understand why he was hurt there.

No sooner had 3109 put his fingertips on his back that he understood what happened...

Where he was touching, the fabric of his uniform was hanging on by a few threads and his skin was lacerated and smeared with dried blood just like the wound on his head, this meant that he hadn't been carried from the mine to his cell but had been dragged on the ground between the two locations.

Now that he had determined what happened to him when he was unconscious, 3109 sought to find out how long he had been unconscious to determine when his next meal would be, and the fact that the other prisoners were sleeping soundly around him provided him with a rather precise estimation...

From what he saw, 3109 could say that it was obvious that the workday came to an end a while ago, and, essentially, that meant that he had missed the evening meal and would continue to starve until the next one, if he didn't get robbed again at that time.

This realization plunged 3109 into an even greater despair than earlier, however, realizing that he was still pointlessly using his brain for survival even in this more than ever hopeless situation, 3109's despair turned into a mad rage...

Hungrier than he had ever been, more wounded than he had ever been, 3109 had enough and he ultimately decided that surviving was no longer worth the effort...

It was settled, as soon as the guard would show himself to wake up the prisoners, 3109 would spit on his face or something, even though he knew that an act like this would trigger an execution protocol in his collar.

Maybe it was the fact that he had been unconscious for a long time or the excitement he was experiencing because of the feeling that he had nothing to lose anymore but 3109 wasn't sleepy, therefore, he dragged himself with his sore arms to the entrance of the cell, zigzagging between the prisoners and sat there with his head resting on his knees...

His resolute gaze was fixed on the hallway behind the bars of the cell; he was going to wait patiently for the guard to arrive while reflecting further on what he could do to him before his inevitable death.

---

1 hour later

<04:11 a.m>

---

After a wait that was a thousand times longer from the perspective of 3109 than it actually was, the latter heard the sound of footsteps...

Immediately he realized that something wasn't right because those footsteps sounded way heavier than usual, as if they didn't belong to the guard.

3109 raised his head and narrowed his eyes, each time it was the same guard who would come to wake up the prisoners, every single times without fail, the fact that this time of all it seemed that it wasn't him had the knack to make 3109 nervous.

A few seconds later and 3109 saw a figure looming on the horizon, a figure so singular that at the sight of it he widened his eyes as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing since it was the figure of a colossus so large that the orbs in the hallway didn't have enough range to illuminate what was above his shoulders...

3109 didn't know how to process what he was looking at and the fact that he had the deep conviction that the eyes of the colossus were on him even through he wasn't supposed to be visible because of the darkness that was prevailing in the cell made him feel a fear of a magnitude he had never experienced, as if he was seeing the embodiment death approaching him little by little, that he knew it was coming for him and that he knew he couldn't escape it.