Forastero's Redemption

[Ryummel]

Rhodes was a gargantuan facility, although Jack had only reached to check the upper surface of the dry-dock shipyards where the gladiator-like matches took place. Normally the prisoners taken by the Corsairs across the Omegas or even brave enough Cretans dared to participate in such event, the former who believe they would earn their freedom, and the latter simply to satisfy their bloodlust and watching how the corpses of their opponents floated away, stuck inside a damaged space-suit. Of course Jack wouldn't be any exception as the foreigner he was.

“Come on!” Jack was repeatedly hit on the back of his neck, not thinking letting any complain out as it would only consume the few energies he had left. The food was indeed a luxury, and he had to earn the daily ration himself, most of times by spending four hours being continuosly smacked as he was taught in the hand-to-hand combat the hard way. The street gangs he had been living among during his childhood and the brawls he used to engage in back then were absolutely nothing compared to fight a Corsair or anybody else with a better idea than him about the matter. There was a huge difference, though: ‘Sairs were taught to kill, not to merely defend themselves, as Jack did back then.

Bruises and blood spots under his skin became a common sight. The firsts days he wasn’t able to get up from the mattress, the ‘only’ furniture in the cell he had been thrown into. However, he quickly understood that any signal of surrender would mean no food, and starving wasn’t precisely what Jack wanted to suffer in that hostile and unknown place. It didn’t matter anymore how long it would take Machete to beat him in combat until Jack was luckily able to release a punch straight onto the Corsair’s cheek, just to meet a slap followed by a “Try better tomorrow, gringo.”

None of the Corsairs could exactly say how Jack always managed to gather strength to carry on with the “training”, but their curiosity didn’t go beyond that as they actually enjoyed having a punching bag which offered them a challenge sometimes. Aside from the seed of hatred silently growing inside him, Jack was becoming stronger as days passed in that hellhole, perhaps not physically, but mentally.

“Not yet.” He often mumbled to himself.

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