Pr = Cpt. Ratchet

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Chapter 1

Part 1

If one day, someone told you that being inside a barrel is fun, he is lying like an old housewife, or he has never been confined inside one. What bothers me the most is that I’ve been here for hours, without eating or drinking.

I just wanted to take a look at the black market with my friends, while we waited for our parents to come and pick us up. I never expected that touching a book would bind it to me. I mean, seriously? One moment I was reading some random books to see if one of them was good when one of these books glowed. In the next moment, I was being surrounded by a bunch of burly men, who were glaring at me with dead eyes as if I had killed their mothers.

Seeing this, I tried to run away from there. But I was too slow and ended being kicked in the chest, while my friends were captured immediately. The guards of the dark market seemed to be in a hurry for some reason, so they asked us who was the one who had made the contract with the book. My friends, with all their love, exclaimed desperately that I was the only one who had touched it.

I’ll definitely make them pay for this! I swear!

Anyway, at least I was able to hide in a barrel when one of my friends stepped on a guard’s foot and I escaped in the midst of the confusion. The barrel is old and it smells like a latrine that hasn’t been cleaned in months. It’s the worst place I could have chosen to hide. But the merchants and the guards seemed to be avoiding it because of its smell, so it didn’t look like a bad idea at that time. From a tiny hole in one of the barrel’s side, I could see a guard throwing up after smelling the thick odor radiating from the barrel. The guards seemed to have increased as the hours passed. So the book must have been something important or they would have only made me pay the double it costs and I’d be free. Now that I think about it, I’ve been holding the book all this time. What? If I’ll risk my life for something I don’t even know his worth, at least I’ll get something from it.

I can hear some voices at my right. One voice belongs to a man who seems to be protesting. But his protest is being ignored by someone who seems to be losing his patience.

- You can’t take him like that… He’s mine!

-Now he belongs to the Empire.

- I’ve wasted too much time raising him, at least I deserve some kind of compensation.

- You don’t have to worry, we will reward you handsomely later. Now, stop wasting my time!

Wait, that’s my Father’s voice!

But it doesn’t seem like the situation is going in the direction I would like it to go. My father is too cheap, I bet that he will accept whatever they give in exchange for me.

Suddenly, I can feel the barrel where I was hiding being lifted. Two men, dressed in a Two men dressed in black suit and protected by a heavy bulletproof vest, open the top of the barrel and grab me. There’s nothing I can attempt while they’re carrying me. I’m too weak and hungry to try something.

- He’s a strong boy, be careful with him – The one who warned the others is the only one dressed in a black tuxedo, but he is so fat that the tuxedo looks like a pig that was trapped into a net before pooping and its odor is killing the flies around him.

I don’t like how this guy is lecherously looking at me.

- I don’t taste that good sir, I swear it – I’m (fucking) afraid - and I’m hardworking, I should be useful for something you need to do.

I try to appeal to him with my most horrible face possible. But he didn’t react at all, nothing! The suffocated pig just ordered his guards to take me with his lecherous eyes.

I’m going to be fine, right? It’ll be like that story where a hero comes to save me after some torture, right?

I don’t know what is going to be of me from today onwards. They injected me something in my left arm. At least they know how to inject properly. I feel heavy and sleepy, as if I were a baby crying for his mommy to be fed. Which reminds me, I haven’t eaten all the day!

Those guys could have given me a burrito or something. Seriously! If it weren’t for the guys who are dragging me, I would have run to that stand where they were selling exotic fruit.

I feel really drowsy. That stuff they injected me must have been a strong one. It must have been a muscle relaxant to cause my well trained muscles to be as lax as they are right now.

I can see my lazy father afar from me, talking with some office man about the reward while I’ve been carried. Hopefully, they will bring me to a place with better reception than my home, I want to play some games. There’s an armored vehicle, like the one used by the Empire’s soldiers to attack the villages. It has a thick window with two soldiers in the top of it and that huge plasma cannon. Am I that important to them? According to this vehicle’s importance, the answer should be clear. Once I was brought inside it, I could see another 15 children, So I wasn’t the only one who pissed the guards off.