Page 82 of Sin Like the Devil

Before I can clamber off him and deal with our mess, Raine tries to grab my arm. He narrowly misses and swears, seizing a handful of my t-shirt instead.

“Rip.” The note of vulnerability in his voice is unmistakable. “I don’t care if we’re friends or whatever you want to call it, but don’t shut me out like everyone else.”

“You don’t need me, Raine.”

“I do. You make me feel less alone.”

Any signs of his swagger and confidence are non-existent. Deep down, Raine is petrified of being left alone in his own head. He’ll pop, snort or cling to anything that offers a reprieve from the loneliness.

But I can’t be his life raft.

Not when I’m drowning too.

CHAPTER 14

XANDER

N/A – BRING ME THE HORIZON

Bright, clinical lights sear my eyeballs. The screech of incessant white noise rages on, hour after hour, never once offering a reprieve. The pain in my skull has dulled to a low ache. I wonder, distantly, if my brain has finally liquified.

Cold water submersion didn’t work. Beatings didn’t work. Psychological torture didn’t work. Isolation didn’t work. Now the clinicians have resorted to over-stimulation on all fronts. It’s impossible to rest with the ceaseless light and sound in the cell.

They want us to break.

Bend.

Reform.

It’s rare that I see Lennox now. At first, we were held side by side. As if seeing the other in pain would somehow ignite the process. When that failed, they soon split us apart, each assigned to our own personal cell in the Z wing.

I’ve seen others. Ghosts. Skeletal and pale-skinned, their eyes stripped of all human awareness. That’s the whole point. They don’t want traumatised patients; they want mindless machines. The Z wing’s true purpose is to create exactly that.

Vessels for the rich. Malleable and capable of inflicting whatever force is required to further their buyer’s aims. Murder. Extortion. Torture. Anything deemed too dirty for the spotless hands of the powerful one percent.

But power isn’t free.

Not in this world.

After months of wondering why the corporation that owns six private institutes across the country would risk everything by engaging in such horrific abuse, I understand. These aren’t treatment facilities. That’s just a cover story.

They’re factories.

Manufacturers of machines.

We were always bought and paid for. The moment we signed ourselves over to the rehabilitative program, accepting a three-year sentence to avoid something worse, our souls were marked for exploitation.

Not everyone is admitted to the Z wing. Hell, most patients don’t know it exists. Evil always lurks in the periphery. Formless and invisible until the secrets finally break open and the truth comes spilling out.

Will we live long enough to see that day?

I took this sentence with the same nonchalance I had while embezzling disgusting sums of money from the rich and stupid all from behind a computer screen. Child’s play. I didn’t even want their cash.

I just wanted to make them hurt for the entertainment value.

Own their cash, and I owned them.

The lawyers thought they were doing me a favour when they rolled out my so-called ‘traumatic childhood’ and personality disorder diagnosis to argue against decades of jail time. They offered up Priory Lane like some goddamn wonderland.

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