I was in such bad shape that I had to be carried back to the dressing room, or the room that passed for a dressing room anyway. The ring announcer and the other guy I met earlier carried me inside the room and set me down on a plastic chair. Then the ring announcer pulled a small bottle out of his tuxedo that turned out to be a Health Potion, which he had to help me drink, holding it to my mouth as I sipped on it.

“You fought well, kid,” the announcer said. “The crowd loved it. That finish sure was bloody.”

“Just how the crowd likes it,” the other guy said with a sly smile. “You can go now, Terry. I’ll look after Kade here, make sure he gets what he needs.”

“Sure thing,” Terry said. “Good luck in the rest of the Trial. Hope you kill that Drifter fuck. He deserves it.”

“Thanks,” I managed to say, slowly coming around as the Health Potion did its job.

After Terry left, the other guy lit up a cigarette and handed it to me. “There you go. You seem like you need it.”

“I do.” Accepting the lit cigarette, I took a drag and coughed. “Shit.”

“Yeah, maybe down the rest of that potion before you go filling your lungs with smoke. You took quite a beating out there. I’ll be honest, I didn’t think you were gonna make it. It was quite the comeback.”

“It wasn’t hard to get inside my own head,” I said, after I drank more of the Health Potion, glad to be feeling its restorative effects at last. I could actually feel my broken ribs knitting back together, which made it easier to breathe. “I was fighting myself after all.”

“Yeah, sorry I couldn’t give you a heads up or anything. It’s not allowed.”

“Says who?”

“Says the fucks who put me here in the first place. I was just like you once, a contestant.”

“Yeah, seems like everyone was at some point.”

“Repurposement, you know.”

I wasn’t sure if ‘repurposement’ was even a word, but it seemed apt. “Guess that’s what I have to look forward to then. Ending up in some pocket dimension or whatever this is, playing the role of NPC.”

The guy, whose name I still didn’t know, shrugged. He was a smallish man with olive skin and dark hair, dressed in an old leather jacket and dark jeans. The way he spoke and acted, he kinda reminded me of a wise guy, like a gangster from one of those mafia movies like Goodfellas or Donnie Brasco. “It’s not all bad. It’s better than being dead, I suppose.”

“Is it though?” I asked, staring up at him, my vision clearing at last.

“I mean, you get to go on living. You just have to play the same role over and over.”

“And what about when there’s no one like me doing the Trial? What do you do then?”

“You make the most of what you got here. It’s a small world, but you get used to it.”

Going from his face, I doubted that was true. He probably spent his entire existence in this roadhouse, playing the role of fight organizer or whatever his role was. Fuck that.

“I’m Tommy, by the way,” he said, sticking out his hand. I shook it. “Tommy Malone. Why don’t you get dressed and then meet me at the bar and I’ll buy you a drink.”

Tommy left the room and I finally stood up after finishing the Health Potion. At least I could move now without feeling like I was being stabbed all over.

Taking off the black shorts, which were drenched in sweat and blood, I stood naked in front of the grimy mirror. “Jesus,” I whispered, shaking my head at the multitude of bruises all over me, some of which were fading thanks to the potion. But I still looked like I’d been hit by a truck and then kicked around by an angry gorilla.

When I looked at myself, I kept seeing the other Kade, my doppelgänger. I remembered the sheer anguish in his eyes when I’d hit him with all that stuff about my mother, which was all true, by the way. It was the first time I’d ever it spoken out loud. Neither my dad or my sister knew anything about it. And if my mother had asked the same of them, I didn’t know about that either. For all I knew, my dad and sister had carried the same guilt as me. Though I can’t say I felt any better for having got it out of my system. Things like that don’t just magically disappear when you talk about them out loud, not even when you destroy the embodiment of that shame and guilt, as I did in the cage. There was no destroying it. The best I could do was to shove it back inside the locked room in my mind.

Turning away from my reflection, I gathered up my still damp clothes and put them on. They felt horrible against my skin because they were still wet. When I made it out of this Trial, I vowed to upgrade my SC to include a shower and also a washer-dryer. Just because I was in Hell, that didn’t mean I had to smell like it as well.

* * *

Tommy was waiting for me at the bar. As I slid onto the stool next to him, he passed me a glass of whiskey that I quickly downed in one.

“I guess you needed that,” Tommy said, smiling. He picked up the bottle beside him and refilled both our glasses, then lifted his. “To victory.”

“To victory,” I said, chinking his glass. “And to finishing this Trial and getting the hell outta here.” Tommy lost his smile and turned away. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

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“Eh, it’s okay,” he said, waving me off. “Forget it.”

“Is there no way you can get out of here?”

“Not really. Not unless the Bureau decide to move you somewhere else, which almost never happens.”

“The Bureau?”

“The Repurposement Bureau. They handle moving everybody around. The logistics, anyway. Infernova usually makes the decisions on where they want people to go. Those bastards design all the levels. They designed this Trial you’re in now.”

“And I’m guessing Infernova answers to the Overseers?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Infernova is the biggest corporation in the galaxy. They have fingers in every pie.”

“What about the government?”

“The government?” Tommy shook his head as if that was a joke. “The government in this galaxy is a lot like the ones back on Earth—the politicians are just puppets for the money men, and the money men are just puppets for the Overseers. It’s the Overseers who run everything at the end of the day. This is all them, and it always will be.”

“Does no one ever challenge them?” I asked, lowering my voice slightly, aware that this whole conversation was being recorded.

Tommy had the same awareness, seemingly. “You wanna be careful what you say there, Kade. People have disappeared for less.”

“But there are rebels out there, right? People who fight against the system. I’ve heard them. They sent a broadcast—”

“I’l stop you right there.” Tommy’s face turned serious. “You wanna talk about that, find someone else to talk to about it. I’m not your man.” Finishing his drink, he went to get up to leave.

“Hey,” I said. “I’m sorry. I was just being curious.”

“Curiosity in this place comes with dire consequences. You’d do well to remember that.” He went to walk away, then paused. “You think being stuck here is bad? You don’t know nothing. There are far, far worse places than this, and you’ll find that out if you keep poking the bear. Just a friendly warning.”

“Or maybe that’s just what they want you to think,” I said. “They’re using fear to keep you down, to keep you in your place.”

Tommy stared into my eyes for a second, and I saw the fear I was talking about in them. “Yeah, well, it’s working. It was nice meeting you, Kade. Good luck with the Trials. You’re gonna need it.”

He walked away then, leaving me alone at the bar.

Seems like no one is keen on rocking the boat here, I thought, pouring myself another drink, enjoying the mild buzz I was getting from the whiskey.

In a way, I couldn’t blame Tommy for not wanting to upset the alien overlords. The Overseers and their enforcers wielded the kind of power that made the worst dictators in human history look like playground bullies. They had mastered the one thing that gave them absolute control—the human soul. Not in some religious sense, but as a quantifiable form of energy that could be harvested, transferred, and manipulated at will.

I gripped my glass tighter, watching the amber liquid swirl. The truth about our existence was almost too much to bear. The Zyrathi—our creators, our masters, our tormentors—had engineered the perfect energy source. They hadn’t just discovered immortal souls—they’d fucking designed them. Created an entire species whose consciousness could be extracted, preserved, and recycled indefinitely.

Humans were just living batteries, endlessly regenerating power cells that the Zyrathi could tap into whenever they needed.

We’re just fucking Energizer Bunnies that go on and on and on…

And the real kicker? They could transfer these souls into any vessel they wanted. A new body, a machine, even a simple data core—it didn’t matter. The consciousness remained intact, aware, and most importantly, generating energy.

The implications were staggering. Torture didn’t end with death anymore. Pain had no finish line. The Overseers could simply reload you into a fresh body and start over. It was the ultimate system of renewable energy, wrapped in an ironclad method of control.

I took another drink, letting the liquor burn away some of the bitterness. The worst part was knowing that humans weren’t even unique in this cosmic farce. The Zyrathi had seeded their soul-batteries throughout the galaxy, creating various species that all shared the same fundamental design. We were just one branch of their vast energy farm, all of us engineered to power their empire.

Sometimes I wondered if humans back on Earth would do the same thing if they had the technology. The thought made me sick, but I couldn’t deny the possibility. After all, we were the children of the Zyrathi, created in their image. Maybe that same capacity for ruthless efficiency was buried somewhere in our genetic code, waiting for the right moment to emerge.

Tommy was right to keep his head down. In a universe where your soul was an eternal power source, defiance came with a special kind of price tag—one that could be paid over and over again, for as long as the Overseers wanted to collect.

But does that mean we shouldn’t try and break free from our chains?

I swirled the drink in my glass, watching the light catch the liquid. The thought had been nagging at me ever since I learned the truth about our existence. Sure, the odds were stacked against us. The Zyrathi had powers beyond our comprehension, technology that might as well have been magic, and most importantly, they had eternity on their side. They could wait out any rebellion, crush any resistance, and simply reload their victims for another round of torture if they felt like it.

But there was something they couldn’t control, something that even their advanced technology couldn’t quite stamp out—the human spirit. Or whatever you wanted to call it. That spark of defiance that made people stand up against impossible odds, that made them fight even when they knew they couldn’t win.

Maybe that was our real inheritance from the Zyrathi—not just the eternal souls they engineered, but the audacity to challenge the natural order. After all, hadn’t they done exactly that when they figured out how to create eternal consciousness? They’d looked at the laws of the universe and decided they didn’t like them, so they changed them.

I poured myself another drink, smiling grimly at the irony. Here we were, their creations, thinking about doing the same thing to them. Looking at the rules they’d set up and wondering how to break them.

The problem with eternal torment as a deterrent was that it could backfire. Push someone far enough, hurt them badly enough, and eventually they might decide that an eternity of suffering was worth it if they could just land one good punch first. Hell, maybe that’s what the Overseers were really afraid of—not that we’d succeed in overthrowing them, but that we’d try hard enough to make their victory costly.

And there was always the chance, however small, that we might actually win. The Zyrathi might have created us, but that didn’t mean they understood everything about us. Like any parent, they might have passed on traits they didn’t fully comprehend, capabilities they hadn’t anticipated. Maybe somewhere in our engineered souls there was a flaw in their design, a weakness we could exploit.

Or maybe I was just drunk enough to think stupid thoughts. But then again, wasn’t that how all revolutions started? With someone drunk enough, crazy enough, or desperate enough to think the unthinkable?

I downed the rest of my drink and stood up. Tommy could keep his head down if he wanted. Me? I was starting to think that an eternity of torment might be preferable to an eternity of servitude. At least if you were being tortured, you knew you’d stood for something.

Besides, I thought with a grim smile, what’s the worst they could do? Kill me?

I almost laughed at that. Death had lost its sting when we learned it was just a temporary inconvenience. Maybe that was their biggest mistake—creating an enemy that couldn’t die, that could learn from each failure, that had literally forever to figure out how to beat them.

The real question wasn’t whether we should rebel. The question was what did we have to lose by trying?