Memories (Part 2)

'Back here again' Victor thought as he looked around, after the boy's death he was kicked out of the memory. The whole experience felt real, as though he was there himself. He felt the pain, the agony and the joy the boy felt. But the one thing that was stuck in Victor's mind was the death of the boy. He had not experienced death before, everyone in his family was either healthy or were already dead.

Most people say that death is sad and heartbreaking. When one loses someone they had known well, it leaves an empty void in their lives. Or when you see the death of a person, it gives you a sense of dread, a glimpse into your future. But Victor didn't feel any of that. Instead, he felt… confused.

When the boy had smashed the other child to death, he had felt nothing. When the boy died, he had felt nothing. Empty. Was it because he didn't know these people? It should at least have given him some form of emotion. Or was it his experience in this endless void making him detached from the world. There's only one way to find out.

Victor opens up the second memory out of the three, this time it's from a female's perspective. A girl who worked in a gang. Her life started much differently than the boy from the last one; she was born not in a hospital but in a bedroom filled with women who were most likely relatives. Seeing the smile on their faces as they found the girl to look healthy made Victor happy for them. Happiness was infectious after all.

Soon a party started celebrating the birth of a girl to the house, people from the neighborhood celebrated with the family in the middle of the streets. Singing, dancing and laughing made the celebrations ever so fun. Drinks were shared, jokes were made, and joy was spread. It felt like the birth of a child was a wonderful thing for the neighborhood.

Victor looked around the area as the celebrations went on, the city looked dark and grim. The only light sources illuminating the streets were the dim streetlamps that barely emitted light. Overhead were towering skyscrapers casting their shadows over the neighborhood. Though the roads were dark, the people used fire as a way to light up the street. If the boy's residential skyscraper was where the wealthy lived, this neighborhood was the poor district, a place forgotten by society.

But this neighborhood has its upsides; the people are much friendlier than those in the residential skyscrapers. Everyone seemed to know each other and cared for one another as though they were all family. Plus there was no noise pollution from the never-ending flow of flying cars. Living here didn't seem all so bad at a glance.

Soon the memories moved on to when the girl was five years old, here Victor found out that she had an elder sister, four years older than her. Her sister seemed to be what's called an outlaw, she goes into the city and mingles with gangsters, living life the way she thinks it should be. And the girl seemed awe-struck by her sister's way of living. The girl wanted to be exactly like her sister, every time her sister got back she would ask endless questions about how her day it's like and how could she be like her.

To Victor's surprise instead of being cold to the girl, the sister was a kind and patient. She talked to the girl about all kinds of stories until the girl fell asleep. What a good sister, Victor thought.

Though the girl admired her sister's rebellious nature, their parents seemed to despise it. Arguments often happen, and it almost if not always ended up with the sister being sent out of the house as the parents only see the sister being a bad influence on the girl.

Fast forward another three years and the girl is now eight years old, old enough in the eyes of the sister who is now twelve to follow her into the city. The trip was exciting as they walked through alleyways and through packed city streets towards an abandoned warehouse ready to be torn down.

In the warehouse were a few other teenagers who the sister knew, soon they got to know the girl and accepted her into their gang. It was a small time city gang, not like an organized crime organization. What they did was hang out and do petty crimes like pick-pocketing, shoplifting, and drawing graffiti around the city's alleyways. In a way, they were just a group of teenagers trying to have their fun. But society will still catch up to them.

Soon the girl was 12 years old and was a relatively mature person for her age. She could find food for herself by stealing from the local bakery, she slept in the city's many alleyways and managed to evade police by sliding through the busy city streets. But she felt like she could do more. She had left her sister's gang, not because she hated her sister or the gang. But to pursue bigger dreams. She had joined a criminal organization called "Spades".

Their crimes ranged from scamming victims of their money to robbing them. The girl's role in the organization was to lure in unsuspecting victims. She would act like a lost little girl asking for help to bring her home. Sometimes it was kind people trying to help her and sometimes it was people with bad intentions. Though it didn't matter to the girl as she brought people to help her into the alleyway saying that her family was poor before her other members would ambush the unsuspecting victim and start looting.

It was routine for her now as she became more skilled in her acting. But trouble soon came when the "Spades" sent a message to all the members including the girl to report at a junkyard site unarmed. When all of them arrived, they were jumped by police and soon all of them were captured.

They were sent to a military base outside the city was their new prison and were tasked with cleaning the base. But seeing how the girl was only twelve, she was placed into a cell until they figured out what to do with her. The girl now had the same fate as the boy Victor saw before. She was fed regularly throughout her time there before being escorted with a black bag over her head onto a surgical chair where she a mask with a tube connected was placed on her mouth, and when she breathed in, she could smell fruits before falling into a dead sleep.

An ambitious girl who tried to be something ended up turning the wrong way in life. It left a bad taste in Victor's mouth as he saw the same type of death the boy had before. He didn't feel sadness, nor he didn't feel dread. He felt disgusted by how quickly these two kids who were close to his age before had died just because they overdid it. It felt like there were invisible lines you cannot see, but once you cross that line, it's the end.

And who was this doctor they saw last, the doctor with a large grin on his face as he wore the mask on the children? How black-hearted can one man be? But thinking of the matter was a waste, for now, he still had one more memory left. It was the memory of a gladiator.

The boy was sold by his parents to fight in the arena for other people's pleasure at a young age of 5. He and his single father had been poor for the first portion of his life, living off change when they begged on the streets. Being a young child made the father and son duo collect more money than the other beggars as they drew in more pity, and this made the others feel envious.

Soon their jealousy became too much; they weren't able to get a child like his father did as they didn't have the looks nor the money to get a girl. Instead, they resorted to more barbaric means. In the night they followed the boy and his father back to their little tent in an alley and attacked them.

They grouped up and pummeled the boy's father onto the ground and started kicking him constantly while the boy looked on in fear. Kicks after kicks made as his father scream in pain, but the beggars didn't care. Why would they care? His father had been earning more than them for so long just because he had a little boy with him. That was unfair to them, getting beaten up isn't so different from starving every night, so it was a reasonable punishment.

Soon they grew hungry after their workout and took everything the boy's father had and left. They had thought of beating the boy up as well, but they tried to act like they still had hearts even though they never had any. With his father bruised and bleeding the boy tried to find anything he could to cover his father's injuries. He found a bit of the tent still left and covered his father hoping that he would wake up soon.

But the man who woke up the next day was different from the father he knew the night before; this one had a cold look to him. Soon the father dragged the boy to an underground arena where he sold the boy. Seeing this made Victor stop the memory to reflect.

'Sold his son for his own gain…' Victor thought as he remembered his father's face when he went into the cryotube. He couldn't even see a sense of sadness when he looked at him, and it was the same as the father of the boy. Did his father do the same to him? He couldn't even stomach the idea. The disgust he felt now was different from the confusion he had when he entered the cryotube. He wanted answers, but there was no way Victor could get any answers in his current state so after calming himself down he continued to look at the boy's memories.

When the boy was sold to the arena, he wasn't immediately placed in a match, that would have been a waste of such a precious commodity according to the arena master. Instead, the arena master trained the boy in basic lessons to keep his survivability high, and it was easier to educate a child from a young age as they were quick to learn. Their little young brains were like sponges to information. The arena master trained the boy physically and mentally. First, he fed the boy proper meals to get the boy's body weight up as he wasn't eating well before. Next, he made the boy do daily strength and agility exercises training his body faster and stronger.

Then they moved on the reaction training; the arena master would spar with the boy without pulling his punching teaching the boy to avoid hits, this would go on for another four years until the boy became nine. At this point, the arena master had thought of the boy as his own son. Unlike the other fighters that come and go, the boy was something of his own creation.

Soon in the eyes of the arena master, the boy was ready. He had given everything he had to make the boy successful, and he will be successful! The boy's future was bright, and that cannot be denied! Now in the caged arena, the first fight was beginning, and the crowd cheered on — the boy who had been trained by the arena master to versus a boy the same age who was a born street thug looking for some extra money. But as the fight started things became grim, reality began to surface.

The boy was beaten, badly. He did as he was told to attack the opponent head-on at the start, he was larger than the street thug after all. But as he threw the first punch, a right hook, he missed. Dread settled in afterward as he knew where the thug had gone. The thug had ducked under the punch and with the boy putting significant force into it, the thug had enough time to strike before the boy could recover.

A big punch to the stomach and an uppercut to the chin followed the boy's failed attempt at an opener; the thug had successfully made use of the boy's opening to strike. The boy teared up as he tried to hold in the pain. He was wobbling by this point; he wasn't strong enough to handle such a sharp blow to his body and chin so early on. Seeing that the boy was showing weakness the thug smiled, it looked like an easy knockout.

The thug was ruthless, constantly punching and kicking the boy into the cage. The boy held his guard up as he suffered the endless torrent of strikes and with the pain burning his arms and body he couldn't keep his guard up any longer. The boy lowers his guard and gets knocked out by a straight punch to the jaw. The winner was the thug, who had more experience in fighting than the boy.

It was not the boy's fault, he did not choose to fight an opponent who was more experienced than him, but it didn't matter as his fate was sealed. With no say on the matter, the arena master sold him away. The boy he invested in was a waste; maybe the next one will be better.

And like the other two, the boy found himself in a cell getting regular meals until they figured out what to do with him. He gets escorted out of his cell with a black bag on, gets seated on a surgical chair where a doctor places a mask connected to a tube on his mouth and as the boy breaths in; he could smell fruits before falling into a deep sleep.

And again another death. Were all these memories trying to teach him something? Did they mean anything at all? Why were these memories in his head and why did they end they all end in the same way? These answers would not be answered by anyone, but by Victor himself as he carries them on his back.

And finally, a door of light stood in front of Victor. His way out of the endless void, where time doesn't exist nor does he. Victor, with joy filling his empty heart walks towards the light and into life.

The boy on the bed opens his eyes to the world, feeling a headache and a sore body. He lifted his body to a sitting position, and as he looked in front of him, he saw the man who keeps reappearing in his memories — the doctor.

The doctor seeing the boy is awake smiles with a big grin as he spoke to the metal band around his right wrist.

"Could you call the captain up to Ward 5. This is an urgent matter."