I woke up bandaged and quite sore in a hospital bed. The walls were white and moldy, the paint slowly peeling, the window frames covered in rust. Despite having woken up in too many places like this in recent years, I didn't recognize this one.
I was handcuffed to the stretcher, wearing a thin gown, and the sheets covering me were old and stiff. I looked around and saw an officer sitting in the corner, looking at his phone.
He looked up and saw me.
"Don't worry," he said. "You're safe in here."
"Am I in jail?" I asked because it was the only place I could think of. I had heard of several political prisoners being locked up even though their trials hadn't even started yet, and I was sure that they would do the same thing to me.
"Yes, but we're here to help you." In front of him was a small table and a tray. He picked up the tray, stood up, and came over to me. The tray had a glass of water and a sandwich on it. He offered them to me.
While it was true I had no reason to trust that officer, I hadn't eaten or drunk anything since the day I fought Dark, and I didn't know how long that had been. Besides, the smell of the lightly toasted bread made me incredibly hungry.
I took the tray and ate desperately.
"Don't worry about anything here, just relax. Nobody's gonna do anything to you here. But over there, in your cell, the inmates are gonna beat the shit outta you. You're the one who got most of them in there, and we just can't protect you from all of them.
I finished my sandwich and drank my glass of water.
I was still hungry and thirsty.
"That's how a lot of inmates have died," the officer continued. I already suspected the officer's true intentions, but I let him continue. "Actually, there are some guys out there who want to rape you with a broomstick. But if you give us some money, we can give you special protection. We can only protect a few people, and wouldn't it be niche if you're one of them?"
I remained silent.
"It would only cost $1,000."
At first, I didn't respond to his offer. Honestly, I was sure the cost would be much higher, but I still couldn't help feeling disgusted with myself for even considering it.
But I couldn't use magic and I was still quite hurt from the beating Tantrum had given me.
So I accepted. I had no other choice.
"That's great, Boss," the officer said and he took off my handcuffs. "Let me go get the doctor so he can give you something for the pain and change your bandages and all that. Would you like another sandwich?"
I sighed and nodded.
The officer left and, after a few minutes, returned with another sandwich and another glass of water.
"Hey, Boss," the officer said me while I ate. "It's just that the doctor already wants to discharge you. But with $5,000 I think we can convince him to leave you here a little longer. What do you think?"
I remained silent. The fact that they had only charged me $1,000 for protection was too good to be true.
I had no choice but to nod, even though I was aware that I didn't have much money saved up, simply because, contrary to what everyone thought, my salary as a Hero wasn't that different from that of any police officer. I couldn't buy protection forever.
I could probably buy a month or two.
I wished that was enough time for me to heal my wounds.
Very early the next day, the officer returned with another sandwich and another glass of water.
"Hey, boss," he said. "It's just that the warden wants to throw you in a cell already because he says you've been here too long. But I think $10,000 will calm him down. What do you think?"
"I don't have that much," I said while I was eating my sandwich, but the officer immediately snatched it away.
"Well, to your cell then," he said, pulling me up from the stretcher by my arm. "Let's see if they don't kill you there."
"But I already paid you for protection," I told him, and he immediately hit me on the back of the head.
"Don't you lie, you piece of shit!" he shouted. "We don't accept bribes here; we have never negotiated with criminals like you."
I got up slowly, and he shoved me out of the infirmary. Outside were other officers who, as soon as they saw me come out, shook their heads in disappointment, as if they already knew I had refused to continue paying the bribes.
"The gown is only for the sick and wounded," one of them said, even though I was still covered in bandages, and they all came up to me to take it off.
I did not resist.
I was stripped naked, and they handcuffed my arms and legs and pushed me forward. We walked through several corridors and soon entered the main one, where all the cells were.
The whistles, jeers, and threats appeared immediately.
"Look: he's so cold."
"Put him in here."
"My new bitch's here."
"You're gonna fucking die."
"Hero, save me, hahaha."
The officers opened a cell where there were already about ten inmates and they shoved me inside. They closed the cell door, removed my handcuffs, and left.
The inmates stared at me with anger and fear. One of them glanced at a corner of the cell where a prison uniform lay on the floor. That was probably mine.
Without taking my eyes off the inmates, I approached that corner and picked it up. It was the typical one-piece prison uniform with the legend "Sanit Money State Prison" on the back, but it was also covered in obscene words and drawings and had a hole in the back, just below the hip.
More than one inmate in my cell chuckled quietly.
It was that or stay naked, so without saying a word, I put on my uniform and remained in that corner. The other inmates didn't dare say or do anything to me. I wasn't in any condition to fight, but apparently they didn't know that.
That's how I spent my first day in prison, hiding all my weaknesses.
In the early morning, several officers entered my cell and took me out by force. As always, I offered no resistance. They took me to a very small room, identical to the one where I was first tortured, and tied my hands and feet to a chair. They turned on a radio at full volume and shone a lamp in my face.
I just closed my eyes and waited for the punch they were about to give me.
And that's what they did. It was so strong it almost knocked me out of my chair.
"Where is Dark?" one of them asked me.
"I don't know," I replied, and they hit me again.
"Don't play dumb, you piece of shit. You've always found him," another officer yelled at me, and it was true: on numerous occasions, my team and I located Dark in his many hideouts, but we only managed to do so because those were missions that lasted weeks or even months. We had to interrogate so many of his men and conduct raids in so many different places just to find the slightest clue to his whereabouts.
Furthermore, Dark's aura was always powerful, so even though he tried hard to hide it, he couldn't do it completely. If we were within 50 meters of each other, we could feel his aura, and I'm sure he could feel ours because he almost always came out and confronted us.
"If my team doesn't have the slightest clue of his whereabouts, it's probably because he's not in Saint Money anymore, and if he's not here then I have no idea where he could be; he'd never left before," I replied honestly, but I still received another blow to the face.
"And how do we know you're not lying to us, you bastard? I think you did make a deal with him, you fucking terrorist piece of shit."
"Yeah, you didn't do a shit that day. And it's because of things like that that people call us lazy."
"Hey, Herobert, aren't you hungry?" one of them asked me out of nowhere, and I didn't know whether to answer him or not.
Even so, that officer left the room and soon returned with a tray containing a sandwich and a glass of water.
The last thing I had eaten was that sandwich they gave me in the infirmary, and that had been almost a day ago.
I was quite hungry and thirsty at that moment, but I also knew that they weren't going to feed me unless I bribed them.
"Don't you want it?" the officer held the sandwich just inches from my face while the others chuckled.
He then hit me in the face.
"I'm asking you, asshole. You want it or not?"
"Yes," I answered. "I want it."
He punched me in the face again and took a bite of the sandwich. The others laughed.
"If you want it, you have to pay first, baby," he told me. "Nothing's free. Or you gonna pay us the $10,000 now?"
"I don't have that money," I told them, and all of them gave me a beating. I ended up lying on the floor, still tied to the chair.
One of the officers offered me a glass of water.
"Do you want it?" he asked me.
"Yes," I replied, even knowing that he wasn't going to give it to me.
He then took a step back and spilled it on the floor. The others laughed.
"Well, there you go, you fuck," he told me, and they all left. I was lying on the ground, badly injured.
Time passed and, although I was exhausted, the light and the loud music prevented me from falling asleep.
Several cockroaches gathered around the puddle of water and drank. I slowly crawled toward it. When they saw me, they scattered in all directions, and when I arrived, I tried to lick the water from the ground, but it had already dried up, and I only got dirt all over my tongue.
To make the most of my enforced vigil, I tried to unleash a little magic, but it was impossible. No matter how much I concentrated, how hard I tried, I simply couldn't do it while I had Bephelometh's collar around my neck. But I kept trying anyway. After a long time, driven by desperation and stress, I began to scream, struggle, and even cry with all my might until I lost my voice.
I don't know if hours or whole days passed, since there were no windows in that room.
Or maybe it was just a moment. It's hard to say.
The music, besides being loud, was monotonous. I tried to distinguish one song from another to perceive the passage of time through them, but it was practically just noise.
The only consolation I had in that situation was that at least they hadn't left me in complete silence.
Had I done it, I would have gone mad a while ago.