Chapter 2

Only this time, for once, he took out a phone, and I recognized it as the phone they had confiscated when I came in.

“The time is almost up, and you’ve finally become as obedient as a dog. Ms. Mitchell said you can have a call with her. She’s coming to pick you up soon!”

The call connected quickly, and Lydia’s voice came from the other end, cold and without the slightest emotion.

“Ethan Carter, after being tempered for so long, are you looking forward to going home?”

I cried with joy and knelt on the floor. “Yes, yes, I am. If you tell me to go home, I’ll go home, and if you tell me to go east, I’ll never go west...”

“I can finally escape this place!”

Lydia seemed very satisfied with my answer and hung up the phone.

However, after learning that I was about to leave, the demons seemed not to have had enough fun, so they rubbed their hands together and said they wanted to send me off properly.

They stripped me naked and hung me upside down at the entrance of the lab.

Every employee’s check-in ritual was to use a whip covered in salt and chili to lash me hard once.

Whoever left the deepest mark could even get an extra bonus.

They used scalpels to draw one bloody picture after another on my back and body, and their excuse was that creation had no borders and no bottom line.

When I passed out from the pain, they woke me with electric shocks and then repeated those tortures all over again.

I had completely become their toy for entertainment.

On the day Lydia came to pick me up, they dressed me in the clothes I had worn when I first arrived and wrapped my wounds in thick gauze so the blood would not soak through.

After an entire year, I saw the sun again.

I staggered out the door.

Lydia appeared before my eyes in full formal dress, leaning casually against the car and smoking, and when she saw me come out, her face suddenly turned cold.

“It’s been a year, Ethan Carter. Have you learned to behave this time?”

When I heard those words, I reflexively dropped to my knees and hurriedly kowtowed as I begged for mercy. “I know I was wrong. I shouldn’t have disobeyed you or offended Mr. Blackwood. I’ll never dare do it again. From now on, I’ll listen to everything you say.”

I was afraid, afraid that she would send me back here again and make me suffer this inhuman torture once more.

A trace of surprise flashed across her face, and then a smile appeared as she nodded in satisfaction. “Not bad. Looks like this year was quite effective. You’re obedient now.”

“If you can keep this up, that would be good. If you disobey again, I’ll send you back here.”

When I heard that, I kowtowed even harder, and I even broke the skin on my forehead, which began bleeding as blood ran down my face, making me look utterly miserable.

A trace of disgust flashed across Lydia’s face. “Enough. Get up. Don’t you find the ground dirty?”

I truly did not think the ground was dirty, because in the lab, they often poured dark black medicine into my mouth and dumped cultured bacteria and all kinds of viruses straight down my throat.

They even forced freshly dead lab mice into my mouth and made me swallow them.

Just thinking about those things made me retch uncontrollably.

Unable to hold it back, I vomited in front of Lydia, and yellow-green bile mixed with streaks of blood appeared before her.

After eating those things, my stomach cramped every day.

Now my body was like a container filled with poison, and once it erupted, there would be no cure.

Feeling helpless and ashamed, I sat by the window and kept my distance from her.

I was afraid the stench on my body would dirty her.

Her expression softened. “What’s wrong? Does your stomach hurt?”