My cell was quiet. Dark. I - had been hanging here for some time, again. I'd given up on ever actually keeping track of time - all I had to count by was my heartbeats,, the rise and fall of my chest as I breathed in, and breathed out. They were the only things that happened with any kind of regularity. Everything else came and went on its own schedule, its own time, and completely at random. Of course, that was the way my ‘hosts’ preferred it. If I knew any kind of rhythm, then that would have given me some measure of comfort in the life they had painstakingly created for me. And they couldn't have that, not yet. Not when I still held out against their attempts to condition me into their perfect little soldier.

This cell, for example. It wasn't like there was much in it. I had a little bed, anchored to the wall to prevent me from getting it free somehow. The bed itself was little - barely five feet long. When I laid on it - which was an infrequent occurrence in the first place - I always ended up with my feet hanging off the end into the air. Which didn't hurt - but it was uncomfortable and unpleasant. To make it worse - the ‘bed’ was little more that sheets stretched across a metal frame, not even a shred of padding.

You know if you accepted one of us, breaking out of this place would be so easy. It was a deep voice, sounding almost like rocks falling against each other. I closed my eyes - fairly unnecessary in the darkness. I took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. I didn’t remember the name this one had given when he showed up - replacing the soft sound of flowers rustling together that had once spoken to me with his deeper, darker voice.

“I suppose. But why would I? There’s nothing for me out there.” A drunken, alcoholic father who had spent every dime he and my mother had saved up. A life of being a thief, to try to feed his addiction. I was ignoring the fact that by now, I was old enough not to be ‘indentured’ to him anymore. Hell, I didn’t even know if I was. I had lost track of time in this hell - the experiments, the training, the lengths of time in this cell, it was all done at random, so I never knew what was coming next.

The rocky voice in my head let out a loud growl, and then a snort, and left. It was always a bit odd when one of them left - like there was a hollowness suddenly, a realization that something that should have been there wasn’t, like poking your tongue in a spot where a tooth should have been, but wasn’t. I ignored it, like I always did. Until, that is, my star reached out to me in the darkness.

’Ron are you there?’ Her voice was soft, breaking through the silence. She sounded nervous, more so than usual. She normally had a more positive tone to her voice. Even in the recent years where she had became more and more docile. Almost as though she was slipping. I didn't know her circumstances, or where she was. She kept quiet on that. But I knew it was not an ideal home life - if she was even real, and not just another voice in my head like the rest. Still - she talked to me, and her voice was the one I was most familiar with. I smiled in the darkness of my cell - a smile that soon faded.

I'm here little star. What's up? She hadn't sounded nervous in a long time.

’I am scared. I think...I did something I should not have. I heard them talking. I’ve done bad. Real bad. I do not comprehend what I have done wrong.’

Talk me through it my star. I'm sure whatever it was couldn't have been all that bad. There had been a few times where she had ‘done something bad’ and been afraid afterwards. I wondered, absently, if it was some kind of projection of my own fears, of my own succumbing to the training that they were trying to force onto me here. It would tie in with the fact that she, the voice that kept me sane, was getting more submissive - after years in this hell, they were slowly wearing down my resistance. Indoctrinating me, I suppose.

’I...I picked up something that I heard drop. It felt like a coin and I got this image and I said that the man his wife was sleeping with gave it to her and she gave it to him. Why is that bad?’ My eyes went wide st her rather odd message. Wait - she was saying that - it took me a moment or two to process it. The man who had dropped the button was a cuckold. That - ah.

Because - because it hurts him, to know that his wife was with someone else. He probably didn't know, and is angry at you for it. Damn. I didn't remember the last time I had seen a cheating spouse. I suppose, thinking about my father had made me think about couples again. Damn - I couldn’t even remember a happy time to escape to, instead I pulled up fucking cuckolding. Disgusting. My inner thoughts were disrupted abruptly when Esther shouted in my head.

’They are coming! Oh… I - what, no get off me! What is that sound? What is -’ Her words were cut short and a violent and aching scream echoed in the corners of my mind. My eyes snapped open wide, ignoring the darkness around me. Because her scream - it wasn’t just in my head.

It was in my ears. Echoing down a corridor. My star was real. And trapped in this hell with me. That hollow sensation vanished, a gust of wind swirling around me as I tilted my head back, straining at the manacles that held me down. Damn it, damn it she needed me - she was REAL and she needed me! The fuckers - they knew I was stronger than I once had been, and they had gotten reinforced iron manacles, meant to handle my strength. NO! LET ME GO!

Use me, you fool!