Page 114 of Broken Obsession

The Black Hart paused and then, without turning back, said emotionlessly, “That’s not for me to decide.”

Chapter 26:

“This is an improved formula,” Father said, stabbing the needle into the vial to fill it with an off-white fluid. “The burn will be minimal, and your heart will cease beating in under fifteen seconds.”

“Mother won’t be pleased,” Ares noted, resting back on the medical table, the thin white pants and t-shirt he was allowed to wear doing nothing to prevent the chill from licking against his skin. Lab seventeen had specific temperatures it had to remain in at all costs to keep several drugs from expiring early.

Having spent all his life on Usurn, he was used to the cold, so it didn’t bother him to the same extremes that lab fourteen or lab twelve did.

“We’ve agreed to split the experimentation between you and Balthazar. Ideally, we’ll disprove her theory that pain is the deciding factor that pushes you into a different dimension.”

Father didn’t like that Mother always wanted to hurt them.

He was a hypocrite.

“Remember what you need to focus on this time?” Father asked as he brought the needle over, the tip hovering above Ares’ arm as he waited for a satisfactory response.

In the corner, Mindy, Father’s assistant, typed away on the keyboard in front of the large computer holo-screen, the clicks making Ares’ skin prickle as irritation set in. He hated everything about these people. Their cavalier reactions in the face of what was no doubt breaking a dozen Intergalactic Conference Rights laws. Their obsession with the afterlife.

The stupid cherry-flavored gum Mindy was always chewing, as though this was a classroom at some second-rate university and not the prestigious Major Research Institute.

Like, if she was hellbent to take part in conducting near-death experiments on virtual children, she could at least act the part of a serious scientist for five seconds.

“You want me to try and return to the last location,” Ares dutifully said. Yesterday, when they did this dance three times—the max amount of times you could safely kill and bring a person back, according toresearch—he’d entered a plane of existence where everything was a varying shade of the color blue.

He’d of course stood out like a sore thumb and had spent most of his time there being chased by the locals, beings with six arms and two heads.

“The goal is to see if that’s at all possible, or if reality shifts depending on the timeline our current branch is on. Perhaps different cracks appear at different intervals. If we can prove whether or not this is the case, we’ll be one step closer to devising a way to utilize these cracks.”

Father wanted an escape from his reality but was too much of a coward to go the route most people went when they were scared and depressed and hopeless. He wanted an easy out. A means to jump from one existence to another.

Basically, he wanted to be a god.

But he would never be a god, and even if he could be, it wouldn’t change anything for him.

Ares knew that better than anyone, because technically he was a god, and what good had that done him? If anything, it’d only made things worse. The second Mother had learned that past lives were potentially also branches that could be manipulated and accessed, she’d shifted her focus.

Bal had spent the last six months forced to relive a past neither of them had ever wanted to return to. Mother was convinced she’d proven Father’s theory in the process, since she could send her son to the same branch, but Father argued the past and the present weren’t the same.

Ares was forced to concur.

In the past, his mother was Light.

In the present, his only parent was Father, and he was worse than the God of Foreboding.

“Let’s begin. Mindy, start the clock on my say so.” Father inserted the needle into Ares’ arm and pushed the plunger.

There may have been minimal burn, as promised, but Ares had secretly stopped feeling the piercing of needles years ago. Staring up at the harsh overhead white light, he counted down from ten and waited for the drug to begin taking effect. His muscles locked up, and his chest seized. He felt himself jolt against the restraints binding his arms, legs, and torso to the table, and then finally his vision blurred and went out entirely.

There was a massive pressure from all sides, a tearing sensation as his consciousness was ripped from his physical body, and then Ares was elsewhere.

He found himself lying in a field of blue poppies, a full moon glowing above him, joined by an unrecognizable constellation of stars. Long blades of grass tickled against hisbare arms, and when he inhaled, a sweet scent filled his lungs, making him lightheaded.

Then something strange happened. He felt himself twitch between his thighs, his cock lengthening to full mast, bulge pressing against his pants. Ares only had enough time to lift his head and stare down at himself before his cock sprang free, rosy tip already leaking.

This…had never happened before.

Had it happened…at all?