Jared did not like collars. He did not like the concept of restraining something. To make it impossible to do something that should have been easy before. To tether something or somebody down for an indefinite amount of time. The idea of it was able to make him vomit if he thought about it for long enough.

His stomach was gurgling, forcing him to swallow hard lest he would once again have the opportunity to test his well-digested dinner. Yet… while his eyes may have been a bit shaky, never truly looking at his work for too long, his fingers were as steady as they could be. No matter how much he disliked it, he was still being as precise as possible.

The collar wasn't just a collar, after all. It wasn't made of simple fabric or metal, and it certainly wasn't something that he was putting on the criminal for aesthetic reasons. No… the collar was one of the more advanced pieces of technology in the entire station. It was the reason that justice could still be enacted on those who had chosen the easy way to gain strength, just like he did those many years back.

The old man was in a wheelchair now. Jared had done his best to make it look comfortable, but he could never be too sure, not being the one who was going to sit in that thing for the next many weeks. Which was good. The now-middle aged man could remember back in the day where he was forced into such a hideous thing for months on end.

Jared rubbed his left thigh just thinking about the experience. God, it had hurt back then. He could still remember the feeling of the fractures developing in the span of a second or two. It was likely one of the most painful things that he had ever experienced. He still thanked his brain for allowing him to blackout during that. Jared wasn't sure if he could have handled so much feedback at that time.

Back then, before that damned accident, things had been so clear cut for him. While the two others refused to believe him, Jared was one hell of a hunk back then. His muscles could be seen miles away, their glory able to enamour everybody who dared to look at them.

That’s what the man thought of it, at least. There was no shame in one’s own work, and Jared had taken that life lesson to the maximum. He had been going for the power-lifting goals, ready to reach the top of the board. A few had even reached out to him in those days, ready to sponsor an aspiring young man. Jared couldn't help but smile thinking about it. His life had been on a good path of self-determination. He had broken his body down and built it up thousands of times, each new iteration of him being stronger than the one before.

But therein lies the problem. A body could be broken and rebuilt, yes, but there was a point where the damage could never be healed again. Muscles could get micro-tears and survive. That was one of the main points of building oneself up. But… When a femur got too much pressure on it, the bone began to grow cracks and only held itself together at a few rare points, it was obvious that it was all over.

Everything could heal, but not to the point where it could ever be used again. How old was he at that time? Twenty? Twenty-one? Jared couldn't fully remember. His mind had not been in the game at that time of his life. After having been told to never lift anything over fifty kilograms, the mental health of the man had not been the best.

He had tried to heal. He had tried every procedure, every diet, every doctor in the entire country, and there wasn't a single one who could let him get back to the level that he so wished to reach back to. His life had been a process of pushing his own boundaries, of making sure that he was constantly improving at everything he could with his body. He had pushed away socialisation, money, education, and everything else that could have stopped that. His life was about making him grow. And that had been lost.

Jared would have likely put himself in a hole and vowed to never get out, but money had been a problem after that point. His lifestyle had been an expensive one, and he had not let go of it at that point. So when he hadn't had any special income, funds had run low very quickly.

Becoming a police officer had not… been his first choice. Jared had actually gotten into the postal service at first, being a delivery man for packages deemed too important for any automatic processing. The job had been fine enough. Money had come into his pocket, and that had been all that was needed.

But he was still empty. A shell of a mind that did not feel anything special. He didn't like it. There was no passion. There wasn't any determination. If Jared had been fired, he wouldn't have questioned it. He would have just found another job without another word, no real attachment having been formed.

Though… maybe Jared shouldn't have been too angry about that position. It was where he learned about the augmentation offers, after all. News spread quickly, but the postal workers were always the first to listen to them. The man got newspapers several hours before anybody else, and that information could be used for anything.

So when Jared skimmed a possible recruitment offer for officers, with the incentive of being able to choose a specific kind of augmentation, he had been on the phone within the minute. Strength, speed, utility, and so many others had been offered, but Jared had only read the first. Strength was what he had desired.

It was that phone call that had actually gotten him fired from his job. It was either due to bringing a luxury item with him to work or just because he wasn't doing a job at all, but Jared had not cared about the specifics at all. He had just been happy about being able to start the training within the week.

What had those years been like? They were great. Jared might not have been at the forefront of the educational theory, but he had determination at his side. He had done everything he could, learned every piece of information he could get his hands on. Sure, he could hardly remember a quarter of the information he had memorized back then, but it had been one of the best times of his life. The passion had been reignited.

While he had not gotten out on top, he had still been one of the top students. He had excelled at tactics, going so far as to get a commendation of his work for it. Other subjects might have been lacking in quality, but his strong points carried him through to the finish line. Because of that, after four years of hard work, he was finally allowed the enhancement that would carry him through the next part of his life.

There were quite a several agreements to get the enhancements. Jared had to sign legal documents that stated he would work ón the force for a minimum of a decade, that he wouldn't use the enhancements for illegal actions that would put the force in a bad light, and that he had to undergo a study to make sure everything was working fine.

Jared hadn't cared one bit about what he had to agree to. He would have said yes to indentured servitude as long as he got those enhancements. Which he did get, with the agreements not hurting him in any real way. The last part of being studied only meant that he had to get a health check-up every year. He even got free dental from it, so there was hardly anything to complain about. Not that he really used that last one but whatever.

The adjustment period was a hard one. The process of the enhancement involved him being in a coma for a few days, where the doctors could work their magic on him. Jared had no real idea about what was done to him during those days, but he knew that he wasn't allowed to know the slightest detail. But… he knew what came after that.

Even now, Jared couldn't help but smile at the thought. When he first woke up, he had accidentally destroyed the alarm. The piece of metal had crumpled between his fingers, the man not knowing how to handle his strength. Oh, how he had laughed at that time, finally able to gain the strength he had always dreamed about. The doctors had actually put him under again, thinking that something had gone wrong. That had taken a while to explain.

And it had taken even longer to get used to his strength. Yes, crushing metal with only his fingers was indeed a very nice thing to be able to do, but it wasn't like Jared always wanted to do that. He had been forbidden to touch another person, for the fear that he would accidentally destroy their bones. Which was a good idea overall. Jared had always thought that a firm handshake was the greatest thing to do when introducing oneself. If he did that back then, the man doubted there would have been much chance of ever putting the bone back together.

By the end, Jared had mastered the art of squeezing rubber balls. Mostly because that was the only real thing he had been able to touch during his stay there. Day in and day out, he would be asked to put a specific amount of pressure on those round balls. By the end, he didn't need to even think about it, his body doing it all automatically. And that was exactly what they had wanted.

He had been sent into active duty not long after that. Jared had not said any specific place he had wanted to be sent to and had therefore been delegated to one of the border towns, the very same one that he was into the current day. It had apparently been one of the worst places to be if promotions were the expectation of employment, but Jared couldn't have cared less about that. He was allowed to be strong. That was all he really needed at the start.

With his goals achieved, and the strength he sought for so long gained, Jared had started on other things in life. With his new job and new peers, he did his best to be the greatest co-worker there could have ever been. He accepted any request, helped anybody who needed it, and tried his best to talk politely to anybody. He gained friends. And while not everybody liked him, nobody really disliked him. He was just the person that people knew they could ask for help.

And he liked them! They were his comrades. They were the ones who helped him get through the day, and he was the one who did the same to them. They all helped each other. It was great. When the idea of the automations got sent out, debts began to get into the picture, and so many were forced to say goodbye to positions they had had for decades.

Jared tightened the collar a bit too much at that thought but quickly loosened it back up, not wanting to be the reason another old man died. Because… that hadn't been the first time he had seen one with a collar on.

While the automations might have replaced them all, there was a time where it wasn't so. There was a time where everybody on the force was as human as anybody could be.

It was where Jared got to see some of the worst sides of humanity. Or maybe it wasn't the worst of the worst. Like many other times, Jared could have cared less if it was. He just knew that what he had seen would likely be some of the most depraved acts of inhuman treatment.

With them being a border time, it was obvious that illegal activities would be seen in some fashion or another. Being so close to an easy escape, many saw an opportunity to perform their acts out in the wilderness, but still being within the curfew of the city police.

It was drugged most of the time. Things to swallow, things to smoke, and things to inject could all be found hidden out there in the small houses. It wasn't surprising when sightings came in again.

Only… what had been found in that little house wasn't drugs. There was hardly anything that could be consumed at all, even if there needed to be.

Instead, there were chains. There were collars. It was all bolted to the walls, sometimes bolted to the flesh. It was a sight that Jared would never forget stepping into. He had been the one who destroyed the door after all. He had been the first one to see it all. He had been the first one to lose his composure.

His hands were shaking. It was a good thing that the collar had been put on correctly already, lest the man would have had to ask his boss for help. That would have been embarrassing.

Everything was set up, however. With a twist, the gear meant to keep the man unconscious was deactivated. Jared put it outside the cell quickly, before swiftly making sure that the collar was working as intended. While the old man had not yet woken up, he had to make sure it was still working properly.

“Movement inhibitors… check. Neural inhibitors… check. Torture mechanisms… deactivated. Fitting… perfectly done,” Jared murmured, checking everything a few times over. The pain was not something that anybody with a collar deserved.

He would make sure nobody would ever feel it. There was not a single person who needed to feel such inhumane treatment, no matter how much they had done. Jared had seen what happened to such people.