Part One
Super College: Want it or Not
Chapter one
Prologue - Kaden
Thedanksmellofthe rotting building mixed with the cries of the kids around me had become so routine I barely noticed it.
Briggs, the hulking man in charge of keeping us compliant, had just left, and my nose was bleeding. He didn’t usually hit me in the face, the clients didn’t like it when our faces were messed up, but the drugs they used on us didn’t seem to work on me.
Besides, the men who came into my room weren’t looking for kids. I was too big. The men who came into my room wanted to hurt me. That’s what they got off on.
So, instead of using drugs, Briggs used his fists. No one cared much any longer where he hit me.
I crawled into the corner—the same corner I occupied most of the time. We’d been here longer than any other place we’d stopped at. I’d heard them say something about local law enforcement being friendly.
That was their way of saying they were clients—or at least some of them were. It was no surprise. Cops, judges, politicians, wealthy and poor who liked to… to use kids.
The door opened, and I cringed. I didn’t mind the beatings as much as I minded the clients. It was too soon for Briggs to beat me again, so I started to prepare myself mentally for the inevitable.
To my relief, Briggs stepped in. But to my horror, in front of him was a young girl, maybe five or six years old. It was hard to tell since the shadows in this room were so heavy. The only light came from the small window that faced away from the sun.
“You’ll stay here,” Briggs said, pushing her inside. She fell to the floor crying silent tears. She wasn’t new here. The new ones screamed.
Without acknowledging me, Briggs left, slamming the door behind him.
I scooted closer to her and asked her name. She didn’t reply, just lay on the floor crying those silent tears. Finally, I moved back and leaned against the wall. Strangely, it felt good to have company even if she didn’t talk.
I figured if she were here, her fate wasn’t good. Only one kid had been put with me in all the time I’d been in use, as Briggs put it. It was when I’d first arrived. I was eleven. The guard, the one before Briggs, called him the trainer. He was probably seventeen or eighteen, and when the drugs didn’t work on me, they used the boy to prepare me, as they’d put it. He’d beaten me daily as well as subjecting me to other, more horrible things.
I’d lost count of the days and years I’d been here, but I guessed I was somewhere around the same age as the trainer had been. I assumed they thought I’d do the same to this girl.
They were wrong. I had fought them since I first arrived. I’d fought, and even though I’d mostly lost, I’d won a few times. I swore as I looked at the dark bundle in front of me that I’d win this time too.
Briggs starved us for two days. No food or water. The girl didn’t move for a full day. She just lay in a heap and cried. Finally, sometime while I’d slept, she’d gotten up and curled into a ball opposite me.
We didn’t speak.
Briggs came back at the end of the second night. I could smell food outside the door, but I’d been hungry before, and this was a regular tactic of theirs. Starvation often broke the other kids, causing them to do what our captors wanted.
Briggs told me what I had to do to get the food. As soon as he gave me the gruesome directions, the girl whimpered.
“No!” I said, waiting for the inevitable.
I didn’t have to wait long. He grabbed me, flinging me across the room. “You’ll do it, or I’ll kill you.”
“No!”
Briggs stood staring at me. “Then, I’ll kill her.”
Something snapped inside me. Something different. A feeling I’d never experienced before.
I was not going to let him kill her.
I stood up, blocking Briggs’s path to the girl.
He laughed mercilessly. “So, the prat wishes to be a hero then?” he said.
