Furnace 3 - Death Sentence by Alexander Gordon Smith Page A

everything, what good was a name? Why did you need a word to identify you when you could define yourself with strength? I shook my head again.
    ‘Good, good,’ the warden said. ‘You got there in the end. It’s a positive sign. The ones who fight the most take more work, but when you fall you fall hard. How are your arms?’
    They hurt , I wanted to say, although my mouth refused to shape the words and instead they spilled out as one long, low groan.
    ‘They look strong,’ the warden went on. ‘They’re healing already. You know, an operation like that would kill the healthiest adult, even if he were an athlete, or a soldier. Even if he had been pumped full of nectar. Human genetics truly is a miracle. If you could only see what you were becoming.’
    I knew what I was becoming. Stronger, faster, better. I didn’t need to see it when I could feel it in every fibre, in every burning nerve.
    ‘One more procedure,’ came the voice, all smoke and steel. ‘The most difficult but the most rewarding.One more operation and the transformation will be complete. Then we’ll give you a little test to see how far you’ve come.’
    I watched his legs turn and move towards the curtain, but he paused before leaving.
    ‘And to make sure there’s no going back.’

INTRUDERS
    I waited for that final procedure with murder on my mind.
    Strapped upright in my metal coffin, the screams and wheezes of the infirmary around me, all I could think about was breaking free of my chains and unleashing my new-found strength. Nobody would be safe because I was the predator and they were my prey. Blood would spill, and it would not be mine.
    Whenever I had the energy I would test my muscles, feeling the power that lay in the swollen flesh. I didn’t know what they had done to me – whether it was my own body which had grown, sprouting coiled tendons of steel under the skin, or whether somebody else’s tissue had been grafted to mine. It didn’t matter. All I knew was that I now possessed a raw might that could tear the world to pieces if it wanted.
    A picture floated into my head of a boy – the same boy I sometimes saw in my dreams. He was pale, his arms and legs like twigs, his ribs showing even through his prison overalls. A distant part of me, buried deepbeneath a lake of poison, knew that somehow I had once been this boy. But the only emotion this knowledge produced was nausea.
    How could I have ever let myself be so weak? So pathetic? The scrawny ghost that pleaded silently in my head was not fit for life. He did not deserve it. That’s why he had died, so that I could be born. The child was gone, his name was gone. All that existed was me, the beast that had grown from his corpse.
    I let the growled laughter come, hearing the deep pulses reverberate from the stone like thunder. Nobody would ever disrespect me again. Nobody would ever bully me, or lift a finger against me.
    Distant words distracted me from my fantasies and I let my heavy head swing round. Sobs and choked cries were heard frequently in the infirmary, but words were rare. Especially hissed, urgent commands like these. I listened out for the clack of the warden’s shoes, the breath of a wheezer, but other than the wavelike symphony of whispers rising and falling there was nothing.
    ‘… hurry …’ I made out, the sound of metal scraping against metal. ‘Come on … Cut the other one.’
    There was a scuffling sound, the slap of leather on stone, then the patter of footsteps. I felt my heartbeat quicken, the nectar coming to life in my veins. I gripped the chains that held me, tried to force them from their steel casings. I didn’t know what was going on out there, all I knew was that I wanted to be part of it. The metal squealed in protest but held tight.
    ‘Where are the others?’ one of the voices said.
    ‘There’s no time!’
    ‘Just find them …’
    More footsteps over panicked breaths, then the sound of curtains being pulled back. The noises grew