The mercenaries rescued me and implanted a nanoprototype, S-Nova, capable of redirecting blood through nanotubes. My skin was reinforced with nanobarriers in an attempt to preserve a body that could no longer sustain its own survival.
It was my only chance. If my body rejected the nanites, I would die. If I survived, however, I would become a nanoweapon. The pain was unbearable, the fevers constant. My body burned as it struggled to endure the transformations imposed on my existence.
I fought. Fought hard. And survived.
Two lunations later, they took me to meet him.
Him. The Patriarch. The genius behind all the nanotechnology on the illegal market and the cocreator of the most peculiar weapons. He looked at me and smiled.
And in that instant, I knew I would never belong to myself again. I had lost my freedom in exchange for life. In the end, I had merely traded one extreme for another. Left one world to enter another, believing I had escaped the chains imprisoning me, when, in truth, I had only changed collars.
And deep down, perhaps I had liked it. I belonged to him now. And for the first time, I felt what it meant to be truly imprisoned.