Anger of a Dreamer

Chapter Three

I woke up cold and aching.

Pain pulsed through my body in dull, throbbing waves, each breath sharp like a knife in my ribs. My head pounded, my vision blurred, and I thought I was still in the arena for a moment.

But no.

I was back in my prison.

The same four walls. The same stale air.

Except now—there were chains.

Four of them. Thick, dark metal wrapped around my wrists and ankles, stretching taut to the walls. Not steel. Not titanium. Something else.

I pulled against them—nothing.

Tried again—still nothing.

No creaking. No bending. But… something strange.

The more I strained, the more the chains shimmered, pulsing, shifting like liquid metal. Almost as if they were… multiplying, absorbing.

I stopped struggling, breathing heavily. Was it kinetic energy? Some kind of reactive metal? A weapon meant to drain my strength or knock me out if I pushed too hard?

I didn't know.

But I hated it.

I clenched my fists, my jaw tightening. They were testing me again—pushing, prodding, measuring what made me tick.

I was sick of it.

Sick of the cold.

Sick of the pain.

Sick of being nothing but their experiment.

Seeing that no matter how hard I tried, the chains wouldn't budge, I let out a slow breath and closed my eyes. For now, I would wait.

I tried to remember home. The place I came from.

In my mind, I saw it—a two-story house, painted in colors that stood out from the others around it. Not the same dull shades as the neighbors. Bright. Different. In front of the house, two small trees stood—one looking like it would last a hundred years, the other barely clinging to life.

The dying one was mine.

I planted it in the wrong place, where the soil was dry, where water couldn't reach, where the sun scorched it with no shade to protect it. I always felt bad for that tree like I had set it up to fail.

I walked around to the backyard. A small empty field stretched behind the house, with a tiny garden in the far corner where my parents grew their plants. In the center of the yard stood an apple tree.

[This is a nice house.]

I turned sharply.

Standing next to me was a woman with long orange hair and yellow skin.

My muscles tensed. "Who are you? How did you get in my mind?"

[I am De'Mar,] she said calmly. [The Martian they took cells from. The ones they shaped into a liver and put inside you. They did the same to your liver—they put it in me.]

A cold sensation crawled up my spine. "Okay… but how are you here?"

[A piece of me is inside you,] she answered simply. [Our minds are linked because of it. I am surprised, though. I thought you would be more afraid.]

I scoffed. "I just fought a monster that tried to eat me. I don't think much can scare me now."

[Ah, yes,] De'Mar mused. [I saw that battle through your eyes.]

My brows furrowed. "How come I didn't notice?"

[I have been using telepathy for 60 Earth years,] she said, a hint of amusement in her voice. [I am much better at it than you, who only awakened this ability a few months ago. I mean, you can't even search into other people's minds yet.]

There was a quiet silence between us. Neither of us spoke, as if words would shatter whatever fragile connection we had formed.

I turned away and walked toward the house. My house.

I knew it better than my own hands. Every detail was etched into my memory like scars.

The narrow hallway where I used to race my siblings.

The staircase creaked on the third step, no matter how carefully you stepped.

The kitchen where the scent of my mother's cooking always lingered.

The bathroom with the cracked mirror I always meant to fix.

The bedrooms, each one filled with its own stories—my sister's walls covered in posters, my brother's floor always a mess, my parents' room feeling impossibly large when I was younger.

And then there was my room.

I let my fingers trail over the walls, remembering how I used to lay awake at night, staring at the ceiling, dreaming of something bigger. Something beyond this house. I never thought I'd get what I wished for—not like this.

Slowly, without a word, the world around me began to shift.

The colors bled away, melting into a deep, rich red. The walls dissolved, the floors crumbling into fine grains beneath my feet. Red sand.

I blinked.

The house was gone.

Looking around, I saw what I could only describe as a Martian dwelling. It was built into the terrain, its shape organic and flowing, like it had been grown rather than built.

Behind me, De'Mar stepped forward, now moving with certainty. This was her world.

She moved quickly, her bare feet barely disturbing the sand beneath her. She checked every room, every corner, every passageway as if confirming something. I followed silently, watching her closely.

When she was satisfied, she left the dwelling and stepped out onto what I now realized was a Martian street.

The structures here were smooth and rounded, blending into the red landscape like they belonged. The sky above was a muted shade of burnt orange, casting a hazy glow over everything. But what caught my attention the most wasn't the buildings or the sky—it was the people.

They moved gracefully, their bodies slightly elongated, their skin in varying shades of green, red, and white. But what stood out the most were their hands.

Their hands glowed.

I stared as they walked by, their fingers tracing patterns in the air, leaving behind faint trails of energy. Some were deep in conversation, their movements fluid and synchronized, as if speaking without words. Others seemed to be practicing something, their eyes narrowed in focus.

I turned to De'Mar. "What are they doing?"

She barely glanced at me before answering.

[Magic,] she said simply.

Then, suddenly—a shock.

A searing, electric jolt ripped through me, snapping me out of the vision like a thread being violently severed. The Martian world, the red sand, the glowing hands—all of it shattered like glass, crumbling into nothing.

My eyes flew open.

I was back in the real world.

Breathing heavily, I looked down at myself. The chains.

They were the source of the shock. As I struggled, I noticed something else—they had changed.

Before, they had simply bound me, cold and unyielding. But now? They had grown. They slithered over my body like living vines, coiling tighter, reacting to my movements. They weren't just chains anymore. They were something else. Something alive.

The heavy metal door creaks open.

Without a word, figures in lab coats entered. No faces. No hesitation. Just efficiency. They moved quickly, pressing something on the wall, and the chains tightened even more. I felt another pulse of energy ripple through them, not quite painful this time, but a warning. A reminder.

Then, the pod.

The same pod they used last time.

I was lifted, restrained, and locked inside. I knew what came next. The arena.

I closed my eyes, exhaling slowly as the pod lurched forward, transported through the cold, sterile corridors. They had learned everything they could from cutting me open. Now? Now, they wanted something else.

They wanted entertainment.

I felt the pod come to a stop. A hiss of pressurized air. The doors unlatched.

The arena awaited.

Stepping out, my feet touched the cracked, sand-covered ground. The air was thick with the scent of metal and blood. The walls loomed high above me, lined with darkened windows. Observers. Scientists. Investors. Sadists.

But my attention wasn't on them.

It was on my opponent.

I froze.

The thing standing across from me was wrong.

Its body was massive, towering over me by at least five times—maybe more. Its limbs were thick, unnaturally proportioned, rippling with muscle that looked more grown than developed. But its head…

Its head was a circle.

Not a sphere. Not a normal shape. A perfect, two-dimensional circle, floating where its head should be.

It was flat.

And yet, somehow, I could feel it looking at me.

My stomach twisted.

I had no idea what this thing was.

But I was about to find out.

FIVE YEARS LATER

Time had lost meaning.

I stopped counting the days a long time ago. Maybe a year in? Maybe two? Now, it was just a fight. Experiment. Survive. Repeat.

I had been altered—again.

The bastards gave me a second heart and an artificial sub-brain built from my genetic material. It sat deep behind my lungs, nestled in a space where it wouldn't interfere with my actual brain. I read their reports, scanning through their twisted logic, trying to understand why.

They wanted to see if my body would reject it.

It didn't.

Instead, my main brain recognized it as something useful, a way to offload minor functions. Now, the new brain controlled smaller, instinctual processes such as reathing, blinking, and muscle tension, freeing up my mind for more complex thoughts.

They had no idea what they had just given me.

I wasn't just surviving anymore. I was evolving.

De'Mar and I talked a lot.

She was the only person I could speak to without fear of being overheard. Our minds were linked—had been from the start. We had been experimented on, altered, and thrown into hell together. That bond? It was unbreakable.

At some point—I don't even know when anymore—we did what she called the Martian equivalent of a kiss.

It wasn't like a human kiss. Not even close.

It was... deeper. More than physical. More than emotional. It was like two souls pressing against each other, intertwining.

And in Martian culture? That meant we were married.

It wasn't official. There were no vows, no rituals, no celebration. Just two lost souls, clinging to each other in the darkness.

But there was a downside.

Our bond meant I could see what she saw. And if I focused, I could even feel what she felt.

And what I felt from her? It wasn't good.

Unlike me, she wasn't being experimented on. Not in the way I was.

They didn't inject her with enhancements. They didn't stitch on new limbs or pump her full of chemicals. They harvested her.

She was a shapeshifter—able to alter herself down to the cellular level. That meant they didn't need to experiment. They just took pieces of her.

Over.

And over.

And over again.

I had tried to escape.

Twenty times.

Each attempt ended the same way—failure. And every time, they punished me for it.

The only reason I wasn't dead yet was because they had discovered something new about me.

I had reactive adaptation.

Every time I was injured—every time I was on the brink of death—I got stronger. Faster. More resistant. Every wound forced my body to evolve.

So, after every escape attempt, they beat me within an inch of my life. But every time they did, they had to hit harder. Cut deeper. Find newer, stronger weapons.

And still, I survived.

Still, I fought.

And I was their most popular fighter.

Not because I won. Not because I was strong. But because I fought things that had no place in an arena.

Creatures that shouldn't exist.

Monsters engineered in labs, created for the sole purpose of testing my limits.

I was their entertainment.

Their experiment.

Their greatest investment.

But they had no idea how close I was to breaking free.

-

A few days ago, they made me fight someone different.

Not a monster.

A prisoner.

She had been here for about a year, I think, but she was the first conscious being they had thrown against me. The first person I had to fight wasn't just another experiment, another mindless creature made in their labs.

She had red hair. Orange skin.

But when we fought, her hair ignited like a living flame.

That's when I realized who she was.

Starfire.

The Psions, the sadistic creatures that ran this hellhole, were shocked. Not because she was strong—they already knew that. But because, for the first time, someone survived a match against me.

She was the only one I refused to kill.

And because of that, they kept forcing us to fight.

Every time, I won. But every time, I refused to finish her off. And every time they threw a monster at me, it died by my hands.

Even when I lost limbs in the process.

Didn't matter. They always made sure I was repaired.

New limbs, regrown or reattached. Couldn't have their best fighter in anything less than peak condition, after all.

But today?

Today was different.

A voice blared through the facility, sharp and panicked.

WARNING. WARNING. ESCAPE ATTEMPT IN PROGRESS. TAMARANEAN SUBJECT 01 HAS BREACHED CONTAINMENT. TERMINATION IS NOW A TOP PRIORITY.

My hands clenched into fists.

Today is the day I end them.

Every last one of these bastards.

Every twisted scientist. Every guard. Every monster that ever put their hands on me—or her.

Today is the day I burn this place to the ground.