Chapter 4

He pressed down on the clicker, but the 'Welcome to Titan' image on the screen didn't change. A freak, sitting two tables to my left, burst into manic laughter. It sounded like an impulse he couldn't help, a self-defense mechanism. He had jungle green eyes, a fairly muscular build, his whole top row of teeth was faded gold, and his hair was long, black, and curly. On his forehead was a nonliving tattoo of a spider web. I knew what that tattoo symbolized. He was Unisexual, commonplace in District 3, where all the nightclubs never closed. The area was nicknamed 'Supernova' due to the bright clothes that everyone wore there.

On any given night, you could stumble into an orgy with ease. Most of their crime spawned from drug trafficking, party animals who needed drugs to keep it up, down, left or right. Grey quickly unsheathed his cattle prod. The freak laughed harder, even when the Umbrages near him pushed him to the floor. I saw tears escaping the sides of his eyes, and white gathering in the corners of his mouth, but he couldn't stop. A metal combat boot, worn by the closest Umbrage, swiftly clashed into the freak's groin. Zed winced and ground his teeth at the sight of it. They held him up, with his knees bent on the floor. Grey walked towards him, cattle prod poking forward.

"Lost it already, huh? Most people go mad the first year, looks like we got an Early Bird!"

The freak kept laughing, and a small vein throbbed on Grey's forehead. He twisted the knob in the cattle prod.

"What's your name, fancy boy?"

Instead of responding with his name, the freak spits into Grey's face. It grazed his lips, sliding down the side of his cheek. An Umbrage quickly took out his service weapon, but Grey halted him with an open palm.

"I'll give you something to spit on, keep laughing!"

Grey shoved the cattle prod into the inmate's mouth. I saw the freak's eyes nearly bulge out the sockets when Grey pushed the prod even further, farther than I thought possible. By the time he was done, only the handle was shown, and that's when Grey pressed the button.

The mixture of the shock to his body and the prod protruding from his throat created a guttural sound of violence. Within the convulsions, small squirts of vomit and blood freed itself onto Grey's hand, only making him more furious. He yanked the cattle prod out and threw it to the floor with such force that it smashed into pieces, small sparks fizzled out. The room fell silent. Even the Umbrages were frozen. In that eerie silence, a flash of life entered the freak, and he coughed. We were all shocked that he was alive. Grey looked down at his sullied uniform and the pool of bodily fluids near his feet.

"Not laughing now, are we? You want to be a fancy boy, huh, experimenting with all types of sexual deviants. Parading it in here with that ink blot on your disgusting forehead. You want to be a freak, then EAT IT! Slurp your filthy remains off the floor. And if one drop is left, Lucas here is going to shoot you in the head."

The freak's laughter turned to sobs, which is what it indeed was in the first place. I turned my head when he bent forward and stuck out his tongue. While my eyes were closed, I heard a loud BANG. Lucas pulled the trigger early, a Cheshire cat smirk across his face. The remains of the freak's head were inside the pool of his fluids. Grey let out a small laugh of his own. I got the feeling him, and Lucas played this game before. That he was molding Lucas into a mute version of himself. Grey unearthed the clicker from his pocket, he pressed it again, and the image changed.

"This is what Titan looks like to you."

The archaic illustration of Titan resembled an old map, drawn on flattened parchment paper. There were three mountains in a triangular shape on the map. The tallest was the top peak of the triangle, with a long flat base at the end near the border, separating it from the Lowlands. Along with a crude representation of a compass in the bottom right of the map. Whatever funds Titan received from the Citadel didn't go into the orientation.

"There are no cells, no bars, you have free range to roam as you please within the boundaries of Titan. Each mountain has a certain number of manmade caves for you to slither into should the weather turn bad, and believe me, the sky is unpredictable. That tall mountain, you see here. (Pointing to the tallest mountain at the top of the triangle) is called Ronin, with Wren to its left, and Hornet to its right," Grey said speedily, the result of one too many orientations.

Lucas snapped his fingers, and the janitorial crew rushed in. Adorned in spotty white linen shirts and pants, a horrendous brown belt circling the loops at their waist. Three of them peered down at the disgusting puddle of what was left of the freak. One of them, dark-skinned, short haircut, a seedy thin mustache crawling above his lip, no older than twenty-eight, pointed to his two subordinates.

"Bucket and mop, better bring some bleach too," he ordered, stroking his stubble chin, rubbing a phantom beard.

The two subordinates exited hastily, and he turned his gaze to me. I captured his eyes intensely, reading the details of his face, noticing a missing patch in his eyebrow. Thin lines of saliva broke when his lips parted, pointing to me.

"I seen you somewhere before."

I broke eye contact immediately, placing my focus on the projector screen, hoping he was referring to someone else. Bravely, he walked in my direction, entranced, like he saw a mystical creature. Zed took notice of the exchange of stares and held the information in his head. He could see the confusion in me. A strong arm shot across the dark-skinned janitor's chest, blocking him from getting close in the room, closer to me.