Rise the Renegade (Rork Sollix Book 1) by George Donnelly Page A

to shove a finger under it but the pain increased. He gripped the device with the tips of all ten fingers and pulled. Still it grew tighter.
    “No!” Rork stepped backwards, tripped and fell into Devi. Devi’s head thudded into the cinder block wall.
    Guards approached Rork from all sides, black sticks at the ready.
    Rork struggled to draw breath. The edges of his vision darkened. He reached out for something to pull himself up with but there was nothing.
    “Get up, prisoner!” the short guard yelled. The others beat him with their sticks.
    Pain exploded in his gut, groin, knees and chest but only distantly.
    The guards hauled him up and the short one wrapped his hands around Rork’s neck, around the device.
    Why are they killing me?
    The device loosened and Rork sucked in a deep breath, his eyes wide. He coughed and breathed again. The guards peeled away but two remained. They dragged him by his arms. His legs, useless, trailed behind him.
    Metal groaned and Rork passed into a narrow, darkened hallway filled with vertical bars on both sides. Cracked and dirty, the concrete floors flowed under him like a stream.
    They stopped. A cell door screeched open to his right and they tossed him in. He put his hand out to stop his fall. The door screeched again and the guard locked it.
    Rork stood up, dusted himself off and examined his lone cellmate. The man sat cross-legged on the cold concrete, his eyes closed, facing toward the door. His ragged, cinnamon skin and bushy aluminum-colored beard gave the appearance of aged youth. Yellow flowers, arranged chaotically, encircled him and on the wall behind him a luminescent orange sunrise gave off dimmed hope.
    The hallway lights came on, burning bright.
    Rork turned away and covered his eyes. The neck ring pulsed hot. It tightened.
    “Do not look into the light that is too bright for you,” the old man said. He giggled like a toddler with a new pet.
    A dull headache took root in Rork’s temples and that electric charge stirred in him. He coughed. He needed those meds. “What?”
    The old man smiled and bobbed his head from side to side like an Alzheimers patient. “You have looked too brightly into the lights, big lights, and now they burn you. Is that not right?”
    Does he know me?
    Behind him, thin metal rattled with a watery echo. Rork turned. A white, plastic cart floated by, rounded white lights on the bottom of it casting a pure light in sharp diagonals around him. A guard walked behind it.
    “Eat purely and your being shall be pure,” the old man said. “But eat this crap and it really wears you down, man.” He giggled.
    Rork looked down at the floor. Two dented and scarred metal bowls sat on the uneven floor. There was something in them. Foamy and gray, something twig-like stuck out of each one. He locked eyes with the old man. “Don’t tell me that’s supposed to be food?”
    “What is and what is not — this is a question only the observer can decide for himself. Please bring one bowl to me, Captain Rork.”
    Rork went to one knee to pick up the bowls and carried them over to the old man. They were ice cold, fresh out of refrigeration. He handed one bowl over and smelled the other. It gave off a thick farm odor, a vomit-worthy haze of cut grass, cow manure and pesticides. He returned his to the door.
    “Are they going to issue me some clothes?” Rork asked.
    The old man held the bowl up to his mouth with one hand and clipped his nose shut with the other. He poured the noxious stew down his throat in one swift move.
    The lights clicked off and a metal door screeched, then slammed closed. The echo bounced around before silence returned.
    “How do you know my name?”
    The old man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and shuddered, then burped. He gestured for Rork to return his bowl and Rork complied.
    “The spirit requires not of material comforts but the body requires sustenance.”
    “I don’t speak in riddles, old man.”
    The old man giggled.