Truth Stealers (Thief's Signal: Book 1)

29

Jag wasn't in a white room anymore. Everything was black and covered in shadows.

And then he was in his parents' home again, as a little boy, playing with their chess set. He was only four years old, and didn't understand the rules, so he was just flicking the pieces into each other. His dad looked at him with a raised eyebrow and he laughed innocently, and soon his dad was chuckling with him, ruffling his hair.

This time Jag was eight. He was walking past Meta Mechanics Developmental with his mum.

"I want to work there when I'm older," he said seriously.

"Why?" his mother asked back.

"I want to make cool things so that I can give them to you and dad to use."

"Oh," his mum laughed, "I know that wherever you end up working, you'll be making cool things no matter what."

And then the memories blacked out. Jag opened his eyes. No. No, no, no, no. How?

The white box trapped Jag once more. The prison of pain.

"Hello Jag," Drigs was standing with his back to him. "I hear you work for the Preachers. Is this true?"

Jag didn't reply.

Drigs turned round with a knife in his hand that reflected the sharp gleam in his eyes. "Because that might make things a little complicated for us. Twenty years ago, your parents were working for the Regime as two of our engineers. But as I understand it, your mum found out she was pregnant that year. And she didn't want to raise a child with the Regime, to send you to the conditioning units to grow up and learn. She wanted to bring you up herself. So then your parents fled from us, went to the other side of Charted Space, to be brought up in this little colony. They thought that we would never find them, or even dare to venture into a Caste controlled region. And for twenty years, we couldn't. At least, my former colleagues couldn't. But after they were disposed of and replaced, finally it was my turn to be appointed the mission. And now here we are, Jag Blakeman."

He still wasn't grasping the situation. There was no way that his parents had been working for them. But then, they had never really talked about their old jobs. Could it be possible?

"Where are my parents?" Jag demanded.

"Why, I was hoping you would ask that very question."

Drigs pressed a button on his pad, and one of the walls of the box opened up, revealing another box exactly the same on the other side. And both parents inside.

"Dad! Mum!"

"They can't hear you. A glass wall separates the two boxes. But don't worry. You'll still be able to watch each other."

A metal arm descended from the roof of the parents' box, equipped with various sharp implements designed especially to inflict pain.

"Here are the rules-"

The memory blanked out again. But Jag knew exactly what happened next. Long hours of torture, pain and suffering. It was too much. Jag's mind couldn't handle it, and so he disassociated himself. Jag lost himself that day, and so Drigs had capitalised on the empty space inside, and created the new identity for him: Nimio.

Nimio would be his slave, be his agent inside of the Preachers' facility, and complete his mission for him.

The only fault in Drigs' plan was that Jag had come back.

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