Page 51 of Freak Camp
“Yeah, the freak isn’t too used to being on a leash.”Victor unclipped him, and Tobias didn’t move.
Crusher barked a laugh.“Well, he’s gonna get used to it now.”
The hunter moved closer, walking around Tobias.“This is Baby Freak?”
“Yep,” Victor said.“He’s been here a long time, he’s very well-trained.Ain’t ya, freak?Have a seat.”
Tobias moved stiffly, but without pause, sitting on the rusty metal folding chair.His mind wasn’t quite blank enough not to notice the brown stains on the seat nor recognize they weren’t rust.
Victor propped his ass on the corner of the table, leaning over Tobias.“Hands up on the table.”
They felt like someone else’s hands, not his at all, but he had no choice but to obey.He told them to move, and the numb, foreign hands came to rest on the table.
“No.”Crusher thumped his club down in the middle of the table, next to a set of metal cuffs bolted there.“Here.”
Tobias swallowed, then stretched his arms farther out, placing his wrists in the cuffs.Crusher snapped the bolts into place, then leaned over, setting his club under Tobias’s chin to tilt his face up.“My, my,” he whispered.“I thought I’d never see this day.”
Victor rolled out a set of knives—all different types, including silver, iron, bronze, and something that looked like black glass—tucked neatly into a cloth, onto the table.He plucked one out, twirling it once before setting it to Tobias’s cheek, just under his eye, and trailed it down across his lips, to under his chin.
“So, Baby Freak.Exactly what kind of monster are you?”
Tobias’s heart rate jumped to a thunderous pace, but he fought to have no reaction, fought to give Victor nothing that he could latch onto, no reaction that would guide the knife.He fought to think of everything—his eyes, his nose, his lips—as unimportant, so that maybe Victor would pass them over, would just ...stop.
Tobias focused hard enough that the room went gray, that his heart seemed distant and unimportant, that even the guard’s words and questions became distant and unimportant.This is a good place, he thought.I might save something for Jake if I can just.Stay.Here.
It was a good place, the safest place he could be.And when the screaming started, he barely recognized it as his own.
PART TWO
Chapter Seven
Winter 1997–1998
One year later
When the gate between Special Research and Intensive Containment swung open and a new shipment of monsters stumbled into the yard, dazed and blinking, Tobias was blindingly, selfishly grateful.Fresh meat, unmarked by the abuse and hardships of Freak Camp, always pulled the guards’ attention away from their favorite targets, at least for a while.
