"Rise and shine magots...feeding time for y'all...and then off to work !!”

Scrambling up from the floor, half awake, I manage to avoid the guard's boot by pure reflex. Get kicked awake enough times and that'll happen. Eyes down, feet moving. Falling in line with the other slaves, I find safety in assimilation. I ignore the pain from all my half-healed cuts and bruises. The line moves quickly, and when it's my turn, I take my bowl of tasteless brown slop and my hard biscuits and scurry away. This is my life now. Or it has been for the last two weeks.

My name is Zhang Sanfeng, and I'm a slave. I wasn't always a slave. I just woke up two weeks ago with the worst hangover I've ever had, listening to someone drone on about my good traits. I used to be a surgeon. I lived in Beijing. I had a family, friends. I can remember that much. Now, I can't remember what any of them looked like. But I remember having them. I remember their existence. It's like waking from a nice dream. You remember the dream and know you enjoyed it, but you try to think about the specifics, and nothing is there. The more you struggle to remember, the more it slips away, until all that's left is a sense of loss and the memory of a memory.

Which, in this instance, is made all the worse by the fact that my reality is utter hell.

I am a twelve-year-old slave. I was older before, but here, in this body, I'm twelve. Or at least that's what the slaver who sold me claimed. ' Unnamed, Twelve years old, good health, all teeth present, light brown eyes, dark hair', the sum total of my selling features. There are no other memories from this body. All I can remember is being sold, and then a short trip up to the pen, where I now reside.

I finish my breakfast and run to the water barrel. Yes, a water barrel! A communal water barrel. I need to be quick else the water gets pretty gross, or worse, emptied. I dip my bowl in and drink it down quickly, before reaching in for a second bowl. I catch the back of a hand with my face.

“Water is for workers, brat", a burly slave kicks me away so he can get water. No one helps me. No one even reaches for water until he is done drinking. Straight from the barrel, at that. I get up, ignoring the stinging in my face. Even slaves have a hierarchy, and I'm close to the bottom. No one wants to be at the bottom. If I'm not the youngest slave here, I'm definitely the scrawniest. So all I can do is roll with the punches. So far, I'd have to say, I'm not great at it.

I lay my head down on the dirt floor of the shack. Another exhausting day has gone by. Another beating, this time for not getting out of the guard's way quick enough. I don't think I have all my teeth anymore. I don't think I can go on like this. I need to escape. I need to be free.

I wipe my face, tears stinging the cuts on my hands. Crying won't help. I need to get through this. I'll escape while everyone is working in the mines. Or I can wake up early and run for it. They don't chain us up and the fence is made of wood. How hard can it be to pry a few boards loose? I can do this. I can come up with a plan. Everyone thinks I'm twelve. I have the benefit of experience. I can escape. I'm a Reincarnator.

I repeat everything I know about myself. I used to live in an apartment. I had a career. I had a family. I had friends. I don't belong here. I repeat it to myself, like a mantra, trying to hold onto who I was.

My name is Zhang Sanfeng. And I will not be a slave forever!!!

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A hard boot to the ribs wakes me.

“We got some talking to do”, seems the guard wants to give a speech. “Some of you aren't happy about being here. Now, why is that?”

No one answered.

“You've got a roof over your heads, and food in your bellies, and some honest work to do. And still, some of you aren't happy. You spit on our generosity.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“You all are bought and paid for by the Cranston Trading Group. That makes y'all property. They have put me in charge of all of you. I take care of you. I feed you. I make sure you have a place to sleep. And. This. Is How. You Repay. ME?!”

I stand there. Head down. I hear movement. I look up and gasp in horror.

Being held up by some of the guards are three slaves. I don't recognize them, but their own mothers wouldn't be able to either. Their faces are a purple and red mass of bumps, bruises, and blood.

“These properties tried to escape. They pried out some fence boards and tried to run for it.” the guard turns to one of the escapees. “Now when a property goes missing, someone needs to be held responsible. That'd be me.” He punches the first slave in the groin, eliciting a collective wince from all of us. The escapee tried to make some noise, but no sound came out. He would have collapsed if he wasn't being held up. “That means, you escaping, is the same as. Stealing. From. My. Pocket.” Each word is punctuated with a strike.

I try to stop watching. To stop listening. Zone it out. But I can't. I watch as the escapees get beaten, one at a time. I watch as fists sink into their flesh. I hear them wheezing, their attempts to beg, their bones breaking, and their screams of pain. He rants while he beats them, the other guards laugh and egg him on while we watch silently in horror. And through it all, all I can think is 'thank God that isn't me'.

They send us off to work without breakfast. Even if they didn't, I don't think I could keep it down. I need to postpone my plans for escaping. Just fill the basket, and unload the basket. Fill the basket, unload the basket. It's all I can do. Don't stand out. Don't get caught.

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Mining is really very different here from what I imagined. No dark caves or rail carts, just a hole in the ground and baskets. They don't even use pickaxes, just a big hammer. I think we're mining iron, but honestly, I have no idea. They smash the big rocks into smaller rocks, I pick them up and put them in my basket.

If you aren't badly injured, you keep working. If you get sick or badly injured, then you might as well be dead. The guards have no mercy in them. They bring in new slaves every few days. I guess it's cheaper to buy new slaves than to take care of current ones. I keep doing my work, day after day. What choice do I have? It's work or death and I'm not ready to die.

Every day is the same type of hell as the last. Until it isn't. I wake up one day with a big problem. I seem to have gotten sick. Coughing. Fluid in my lungs I think. I can feel it sloshing around. Not good. I should've seen this coming. I haven't bathed since I got here and the communal water barrel isn't helping either. Plus everyone defecates like 10 meters from where we sleep and eat.

I need to get up and go about my day. I can't let them take me away because that way lies death. I have to power through this. I make it to the mines. Good start. I lean down to pick up a rock, and for some reason, the ground rises up and slaps me in the face. Not good. No matter how much I turn, it just keeps sticking to me, unwilling to get out of my face. I wonder if I will wake up in my apartment back on Earth as darkness takes over me.

I wake up and my face is still in the dirt. Right now, I'm being crushed. I can barely move. It's dark, I can't see anything and it reeks. I struggle forward on my belly. I'm moving centimetres at a time. It takes a long time, but I finally get out from under the weight. I may have passed out once or twice on the way, but it doesn't matter. I made it out. I pass out again from exhaustion.

The sun is up when I wake. I look at my surroundings and immediately regret my decision to rest here. I'm in a ditch full of dead slaves. They threw me in a mass grave. From the looks of it, they didn't all die at the same time either. This is probably every slave that has died here since I arrived.

Stumbling away from the ditch, I half-crawl and half-walk as quickly as I can and dry heave for a bit. I don't have any food or water in my stomach, so nothing to throw up. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. Then it strikes me.

Holy shit!!!!!

They threw me into a ditch.

A ditch with a bunch of dead bodies.

They think I'm dead.

I can just walk away. No one is going to look for me, not for a dead boy. Any direction away from the mountain is fine. Doesn't matter where I go, as long as it's away from here.

What seems like an eternity later, I hear water. I follow the sound to a stream. I clean my body as best I can before I take a drink. It's the most delicious water I've ever had. I drink my fill and lean back coughing. My lungs are burning, legs aching, but all in all, things are looking up.

I need to be smart about this. What next? Downstream is away from the mountains, and into a forest. People like to live close to water, right? I grab a piece of bamboo to use as a walking stick and move out. Need to get away from the mines. One foot in front of the other. I survived. I'm almost free. I can do anything I want now. I just need to survive.