Chapter 22 : The Fracture Protocol.
Chapter 22 : The Fracture Protocol.
Velma held him close, her arms wrapped tight around his small frame, as if she could protect him from everything that had happened, and everything that was still coming. For a moment, everything was still. Then came the sound.
Clang. Clang. Clang. It was an announcement.
The noise echoed through the corridor outside the cages, as they watched soldiers marching past, banging on rusted buckets with sticks of iron. It was the signal. Feeding time.
But it wasn't hope that spread across the cages—it was tension.
Each bucket was followed by a thin tray of dry, dark bread—black, almost burnt-looking, and barely the size of a child's palm. If a cage had twelve people, they threw in eight pieces. If there were twenty, they gave fifteen. For thirty, twenty. Always less. Never enough.
This wasn't a mistake. Oliver knew that much. From what he remembered from the future, the slave training had already began. But none was aware.
This was how they started breaking people.
At first, hunger brought anger. Anger brought fighting. Fighting bred mistrust. And soon, those who had once huddled together in fear would begin seeing each other as rivals, not comrades.
Unity? That was the first thing they wanted to kill.
From the moment they were captured, they'd been treated like livestock. But now, now the real process began—where people turned on each other for a slice of stale bread. Where the so-called strongest rose, not with pride, but with a target on their back.