Chapter 153 - An ELECTRICAL COMMUNICATION Story
"How pathetic. How does it feel to have what you've been doing to others done back to you?"
In the darkness, he hears a familiar voice. A woman's voice with a tone as if mocking him.
"You've abandoned so many people who begged for help until now, haven't you? You even shot your own mother in the leg just so you could escape, leaving her behind with the baby."
That did happen, he thought vaguely. When was that...? It should have been only a few months ago, yet it felt like many years in the past.
"Always, always you had nothing but excuses, thinking only of yourself. You prioritized yourself and cut everyone else off. Without even considering what would happen to those you discarded."
He probably couldn't use the excuse "It couldn't be helped" anymore. Even if he said it, the situation wouldn't improve at all; rather, he understood deep down that such excuses only drove him further into a corner.
"Now, it's your turn."
The boy woke up to a stinging pain in his cheek.
Within a vision blurred by grease, he was dazzled by an intense light. Just as he instinctively looked down, cold water was suddenly splashed over him.
"Hey, look over here."
Along with a low male voice, his head was suddenly grabbed and forced to look straight ahead. He seemed to be sitting in a chair; the boy tried to stand up to resist, but for some reason, his body wouldn't move. He felt the sensation of something cold touching his wrists and ankles. Apparently, he was tied to the chair with handcuffs or wire.
"I told you to look over here."
Finally, his vision returned to normal. Directly in front of the boy, a man in his 40s whose hair was starting to thin on top was likewise sitting in a chair. Unlike the boy, however, the man was not restrained. He sat arrogantly with his legs crossed, leaning back.
While his head was being held down, the boy moved only his eyes to scan the surroundings. Next to the man sitting in the front chair stood a young man holding an empty bucket and wearing a holster with a handgun on his belt. Apparently, he was the one who had splashed the water. He couldn't see the face of the person holding his head down because they were standing behind him, but judging by the strength, it was likely a man.
The place he was in now seemed to be something like a warehouse. A bare concrete floor, and the exposed steel frames of the pillars. A bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling illuminated the boy and the others.
Why was he in a place like this? Who were the people in front of him?
It was then that the boy finally remembered the events before he lost consciousness. The apartment attacked by The Brotherhood, the enemies who had dulled their sense of pain with drugs and charged recklessly. And although he had successfully escaped the apartment, his memory ended at the point where he was punched by Sato.
Abruptly, the pain in his shot leg returned. The swelling in his sprained ankle had subsided, but the spot where the bullet had grazed him still throbbed with intense pain.
The fact that he hadn't been eaten and killed by the infected while unconscious after being punched by Sato meant he had been captured by The Brotherhood. He could tell at a glance that the men in front of him were members of The Brotherhood by the black cloth they wore around their arms or necks. Above all, the gazes filled with hostility piercing the boy clearly showed they were people from The Brotherhood, the enemy they had been fighting all this time.
The worst has happened, the boy thought. Abandoned by Sato as a hindrance, he had been caught by the very people he least wanted to be caught by. It might have been much better to have been eaten to death by the infected while unconscious.
As if seeing through the boy's thoughts, the middle-aged balding man in front of him spoke.
"How pathetic."
"Well, thanks for that. Thanks for washing my face."
The moment he spoke that sarcasm, he was punched in the face by the man with the bucket. For a moment, his consciousness blacked out, and stars flickered behind his eyelids. He almost lost consciousness again but somehow endured. Fortunately, he managed to avoid losing teeth or having his nose crushed.
"Why are we keeping this brat alive! Let's just kill him already!"
The youth who had just punched the boy shouted, his face turning red with anger. The middle-aged man answered lazily.
"Well, I want to kill him too, but the Leader said not to. Plus, he said he wants to use him in the Colosseum, so inflicting serious injuries is also forbidden. For now, our job is to interrogate this piece of shit brat and pull information out of him."
For the time being, it seemed he wouldn't be killed. That "Leader" must be the head of this Brotherhood. The boy couldn't understand why the leader of The Brotherhood was keeping him alive. From The Brotherhood's perspective, the boy should be a hated enemy who had killed many of their comrades.
Also, the word "Colosseum" stuck in his mind. He had heard it somewhere, but he couldn't recall the meaning of the word. He regretted that he should have studied a bit more.
"Now, let's talk. I have a mountain of things I want to ask you. Where did you come from, and why were you attacking us? Where are your comrades, and what about the supplies? And why were you unconscious in a place like that?"
"Didn't they teach you in elementary school to ask one question at a time?"
Immediately after he talked back again, there was a crackling sound, and an electric current literally ran through the boy's entire body. Stars flickered in his vision again. His body went numb, his muscles convulsed, and he couldn't breathe. A burning, intense pain ran through his whole body.
"Answer the questions quietly. Or else, it's this."
Finally, the intense pain subsided, and as the middle-aged man in front of him said that, the man who had been holding the boy down thrust a stun gun in front of the boy's eyes. When he pressed the switch, a pale blue spark ran between the electrodes along with a crackling sound.
Apparently, he was being tortured with a stun gun. The boy, who could finally breathe properly again, thought he should just answer their questions for now. After tasting that intense pain, he wanted to avoid being hit by the stun gun again.
Besides, even if he stubbornly refused to answer their questions here, it wasn't as if the situation would improve. Abandoned by Sato, he was all alone. In a situation where he no longer had comrades, there were no secrets he had to protect.
From then on, the boy continued to answer what he was asked. From his name and where he originally lived to when he came to this town. He wondered what use it was to know that now, but he didn't care anymore.
In exchange, the boy also tried to draw information from The Brotherhood. However, they didn't answer the boy's questions at all. When he interrupted the men's questions, they pressed the stun gun against him without hesitation, so the boy had no choice but to remain silent.
But even so, he could imagine to some extent where this was.
It was likely The Brotherhood's base in the warehouse district near the coast. The sound of the wind could be heard constantly from the broken windows visible overhead, and there was a slight scent of the tide drifting in. Moreover, the place where he was currently confined was, by all appearances, a room in a warehouse. Since The Brotherhood's base was in the warehouse district, it must be somewhere there.
"Where's your comrade? There was another one, wasn't there? Where did he go?"
"I don't know."
Immediately after, he was hit by the stun gun's current again. Once more, intense pain ran through his whole body, and he convulsed. After being hit by the high-voltage current for about five seconds, the same question was asked again.
"Speak. You let him escape, didn't you?"
"That's why I'm saying I don't know... Hey, wait..."
In vain of the boy's plea, he was hit by the current for the umpteenth time that day. This time, he was hit by the high-voltage current for nearly ten seconds. Just as he thought he couldn't breathe and his heart might stop, the man finally took his finger off the stun gun's switch.
"Hmph... It seems it's true."
"I've been saying that from the start."
"Well, it's only natural you were left behind; there's no value in a person who can't fight. It's a wonder your partner didn't kill you on the spot."
"There's no value in a person who can't fight." Those words succinctly expressed The Brotherhood's values.
The Brotherhood was a group of people who could fight, gathered together to survive. Everyone held a weapon and could fight the infected.
However, weak existences like the elderly, the sick, and women and children were nothing but valueless humans to them. People who could only survive by being protected by someone else were existences that merely wasted manpower and resources. Special skills... engineers who could make things like gun suppressors might be different, but people who had no skills and could only live as consumers had no value here.
And the boy had also been injured in the battle with The Brotherhood and could no longer move satisfactorily. Once that happened, it was only natural for Sato to consider abandoning the boy. If he were protecting and fleeing with the slow-moving boy, he would eventually be caught, and the boy's existence was not essential for Sato's survival.
Sato was a person with the combat ability and survival skills to survive well enough on his own. The reason he had been with the boy until now was that the boy could fight to some extent and seemed useful. There was no value in a boy who could no longer fight; it was easier to move light by leaving him behind. That's why he had knocked the boy down and used him as a sacrifice to stall The Brotherhood.
"That's right... I have no value..."
While hearing the voices of The Brotherhood men laughing, the boy muttered so.
I look forward to your opinions and impressions.