Tell me about Jack Keagan

Prologue

The pain was excruciating. Like having her body pulled in all different directions at once while lava was being poured down the tears it caused. Burning her from the inside out. Her voice had reduced to silent screaming, her face flush and wet with involuntary tears. This did nothing for the man in the room, still speaking over her with a calm yet demanding monotony. To her there was nothing but the pain that existed in that moment, but to him it was just the start of something wonderful.

"Control yourself! Stupid girl!" He hissed, leaning down closer to her. She clenched her jaw as he put his hand around her neck, trying to control her thrashing head. How dare she be so defiant? He was only halfway through activating her, and her fighting was making it a challenge of his patience. Five more words. He continued to speak while grasping her throat, treating her cries of pain as mere inconsideration to his divine work for the greatest cause.

Desert. Morning. Nineteen. Aurora.

She kept squirming under his grip, her wrists bleeding from the metal handcuffs slashing into them with every movement. She fought to block out the sound of his voice from invading her, thrashing and attempting to vocalise. If he won, she would lose control. She would be reduced to nothing but a weapon to be used and then thrown back in her cell like dirty laundry or into the freezer. It was beginning, invading like a disease. She knew it was coming, and she knew it was close. It was a feeling she was sickeningly familiar with.

Goodnight.

She seized, and all tension in her dissipated. She became languid for a moment, as if composing herself. The room fell silent as he watched her, studying every miniscule movement. The releasing of muscles, slackening of tension. Her posture straightened and she sat up, facing him with empty eyes and a blank expression, exactly as he had expected. She was, once again, a clean slate. The man squatted down in front of her, forcing eye contact. He spoke with no indication of the atrocities he had committed or had planned for the nineteen-year-old girl handcuffed to the chair.

"Good morning, daughter."

At this, the girl swallowed to clear her throat of the remnants of her screams, keeping her jaw set in place as she started emptily ahead.

"Ready to comply."