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_As they drag me to my feet

I was filled with incoherence

Theories of conspiracy

The whole world wants my disappearance

I'll go fighting nail and teeth

You've never seen such perseverance

Gonna make you scared of me

Cause haemoglobin is the key_

- Placebo, "Haemoglobin"

Hexus woke, he wished he hadn't.

His head felt like it had an axe embedded in it, the pain was so great that it was several minutes before he could gather himself and look at his surroundings, so he just fervently prayed to father rat for divine intervention, nothing fancy, just two asprin and a glass of water would be salvation enough right now.

Unsuprisingly, nothing happened.

He was in a 10' x 20' windowless room of unpainted concrete, there was a chair, a toilet, a sink with a polished-steel mirror and a wooden bunk, currently not in use; whoever had left him in here had clearly found it too much effort and simply dumped him on the floor. He dragged himself into a sitting position and tentatively reached behind the back of his head. His hand recoiled in horror at what he felt and he scrabled over to the sink mirror...

It was true! The bastards had shaved his head! Five years worth of carefully cared-for ash blonde dredlocks gone because of some needledick prison regulation, fuckers.

Hexus sighed woefully and surveyed himself in the mirror, checking for any leisions or infected wounds that he hadn't been able to regenerate. At nearly 40 he still looked only 25 or so, the unnatural vitality of his werebeast nature would preserve his youthfulness for centuries, providing he lived that long, it was something to do with their advanced rate of cellular regeneration, or so he had read in a biology journal once. It wasn't hard to tell a were in a crowd if you knew what you were looking for, Hexus had the characteristic thin features and bright, wide eyes that were so common among the rats, werewolves tended toward excess body-hair and square jaws, the tigers frequently had two-tone or highlighted hair without ever going near hair-colouring and so on. Even if you had a human mind and a human body some things sort of...leaked over.

A gleam in the mirror alerted him to the band around his neck and he lifted his chin to get a better look. Damn, it was an inch wide, perfectly smooth (likely welded on) and made of Mondanite; a Nano-Alchemical alloy of silver and cold iron that inhibited both shifting and magic, they weren't going to make escaping easy.

The sound of a key being turned in the lock of his cell door made him start, the door (more of a reinforced iron bulkhead, designed to keep even the strongest weres locked up in case the mondanite collar got undone) swung open, the light from outside silhouetting the massive form of the werewolf jailer who strode wordlessly up to Hexus and after catching the struggling rat by the collar proceeded to suckerpunch him in the stomach. As Hexus doubled over, coughing desperately to try and re-fill his brutalised lungs, the jailer deftly cuffed his hands and hauled the length of chain they were bisected by through an iron ring affixed to the ceiling, apparently put there for the express purpose. He reeled in the chain until Hexus was pulled a few inches off the ground, dangling by his wrists.

Hexus was in agony, the wolf bastard had known just how much force to use and not only did he cough himself hoarse but had to go through the ordeal of feeling the microfractures in his ribs regenerate, regeneration helped keep you alive but damn it stinged.

"Wha's goin' on?" he managed to get out in beween coughs.

"Visitor from the courts," said the wolf, a sadistic twang clearly evident in his voice "come to deliver the verdict."

"What? I didn't even get a trial!" Hexus yelped, his tone almost degenerating into rodent squeaks, common in times of stress.

"With the ammount of evidence you left behind the high breeds decided it was easy enough to conduct the trial in your absence." replied the wolf, smugly.

Their brief conversation was broken by the sound of footsteps, Hexus prided himself on being able to tell allot about someone by as little as the way they talked or walked, he listened intently;

Careful...Measured...Precise...

Another figure appeared from around the corner and entered the room. He was in his early thirties, reed-thin but handsome in a gaunt sort of way, he wore an immaculate pinstripe suit and had his ebony-black hair slicked back to his skull, a pair of wireframe glasses sat halfway down his nose where he peered over them haughtily and he carried a file dossier under one arm.

From his scent Hexus could tell he was human but there was still something strange about it...something which made his hacles rise, it was like the guy had death himself camped out in his shirt pocket.

With deliberate slowness he pulled the chair over so that it faced Hexus and sat legs crossed with the dossier resting on his lap. The click from the catches on the file opening broke the silence for just a second, the atmosphere was oppressive, even the wolf-jailer looked unnerved. The suited man removed a piece of nanopaper and tapped it with a digi-stylus.

"David Moorecroft, former special services operative, demolitions and sabotage division, callsign 'Hexus'?" he said in the clear, clipped tone of the disspassionate bereaucrat, leaving Hex...no, David, unprepared for the memories that simple sentance brought flooding back.

"Well? That is your name, is it not?"

"Yes." David replied, almost in a whisper "Yes, that's my...my name." He'd wanted to forget that name, desperately wanted to, as if burying the name could help bury the person that held it and the things that person did, that he did, with it.

"Yes, well, we really should keep a closer eye on you ex-special services veterans, it seems like your kind develops...how shall I say...unpatriotic leanings, with disturbing regularity."

That was enough, the smart-ass remark snapped David out of his reverie, "Your Kind", no little pussy white collar had the right to talk about his regiment like that! The collar may have suppressed his shift to hybrid but the rage was still there, that little piece inside of him, the beast that would kill anything that angered it and gnaw on their bones whilst dancing among the ruins of their empire, the rat within, emissary of doom and harbinger of plague.

"FUCK YOU, PENCILDICK!" he snarled, moments before the jailer drove his tonfa into his ribs, winding him again but doing nothing to stifle his growing rage. The old 'Hexus' reasserted himself, a mask made out of hate and an inferiority complex as long as his arm.

"Mind your tongue, rat!" the wolf growled. He drew back for another strike but the human placed a hand on his arm to stay him.

"That is quite sufficient, he needs to be conscious for this."

The wolf-jailer reluctantly lowered and sheathed his tonfa but kept one meaty hand on its side-handle anyway. Hexus just spat a glob of blood-laden phlegm on the floor, even that was an effort but at least the rage was still there, still burning. That felt good at the very least, as long as he had his anger the bastards couldn't touch him, not inside where it mattered. It was something they'd taught him in the service; hate can shield you, keep you sane, as long as you had it then no-one could break you. Not with all the pain or dumb little mindfuck-tricks in the world.

"Assaulting a police officer, carrying a concealed arcane weapon, sedition, resisting arrest, deception with intent to cause harm...that little bit of jargon refers to the incident with the truck, by the way." Said the suit, reading from the sheet of nanopaper.

"Thanks." Said Hexus.

"Think nothing of it, anyway, moving on; Damage to public property, Manufacturing low-yield explosives without a licence and inciting a riot. My my, we have been a bad boy..."

"Riot? What riot?" asked Hexus, secretly hoping that at least he managed to make some mark with his efforts.

"Your little stunt with the accresia-com tower, it seems your...literature...really struck a chord with the proletariat, lower acressia has been under martial law for the past 9 hours." the human replied, barely the slightest twinge of interest in his voice, he was a hard one to read.

"Oh, a good one then?" said Hexus, his voice so greasy with smug sarcasm you could build an oil refinery on the syntax.

Inside he was doing cartewheels, he didn't expect such a reaction in his wildest dreams.

The suited man scowled at him, the corners of his mouth turning up in a sneer of disgust.

"Good," thought Hexus "He's practiced at this but still not unreadable, and I can provoke him."

"In any case, a verdict has been reached. You are to be inducted into the pentient legions, your prior training and obvious skill has made us reluctant to simply execute you, your pentient conditioning commences tommorow with a course of neural patterning." Said the human, pushing his glasses up with one finger.

"What!?" snarled Hexus in disbelief "No fucking way! I'll die before I become some little mind-frigged toy soldier for you bastards to play with."

"Then you will die, either way you cease to become a problem for the state and that's all that matters."

The man placed the pieces of nanopaper back into their file in preperation to leave. Hexus tensed, his whole body preparing itself. His anger had now reached fever-pitch, the threat of mental and physical violation as a pentient legionnaire had boiled his blood and the beast within chittered impatiently, keening for violence.

"Frankly, I think they were too lenient, i'd have had you flayed and special consideration for previous service be damned." he said as he rose to his feet.

Perfect, that was just what He needed.

With knotted but fury-driven muscles Hexus hauled himself bodily up the chains and with a single fluid motion wrapped his legs around the humans head and snapped his neck with a contemptuous shift of his hips. He fell to the floor with a satisfyingly tortured crunching sound and a look of abject confusion on his face.

The wolf jailer went wide-eyed with horror, scarecely able to believe what was happening, his mouth opened and closed soundlessly a few times before his voice came booming out;

"Medic! Quickly!"

Hexus watched in grim amusement, reveling in a mind-state of pure malice refered to among his breed as "Riding the Ruiner", as jailers and med-techs tore around like chickens, setting the still-twitching mans head in a neck-brace, administering anasthetics and stabiliser compounds, calling for a stretcher.

He laughed, beginning as a stifled giggle but quickly growing into an insane cackle. He was doomed, there was no real chance of escape, but he roared with laughter at having been able to deal a penultimate 'fuck you' even on the eve of his destruction.

The medics left, carrying the human on a stretcher, not dead but paralysed, a broken neck wasn't the death-sentance it used to be before the invention of Thaumtech, nanite surgery and restorative magics might undo some, maybe even most, of the damage with time but he'd never be completely the same. The human side of him regretted that, the rat side said "Good, fuck him." and right now the rat was in charge.

He hung there in the dark for some time without any way to tell how long, werecells were not equipped with windows as a matter of course. Eventually the bulkhead again swung open and a trio of wolves filed in and surrounded him in the darkness, he noted with grim anticipation that each carried a thin iron rod, much like those used to reinforce concrete, and looked in a mood to make use of them.

And use them they did.

With their own claws they tore the clothes from him, the first stroke fell accross his back and forced a sharp cry from him, not the stifled and defiant snarls of before but genuine expressions of pain. Again and again the iron lashes fell, first raising bruises, then blood and always cries of pain and humiliation. Soon the sensations faded into a homogenous whole and washed over him in undulating waves of red and black, the pain was almost trancendently exquisite. Hexus had no idea how long the beating lasted, though from the furious panting of his captors when he emerged from the stupifying reverie of agony he guessed that they had simply continued until they were too tired to go on, their weapons were of iron, after all, not silver; they didn't have to concern themselves with him dying.

There was a rustling of chains and the tension on his wrists relaxed suddenly, causing him to fall limply to the floor like a puppet with cut strings. He tried to pull himself upright but there were just too many dislocted joints, too many broken bones, too much bruised muscle and not nearly enough blood. Even were-vitality had its limits and for him, that limit was long passed.

He felt a weight presence above him, one of the jailers was leaning over his prostrate form on all fours, on the verge of shifting to hybrid judging my the muskiness of his scent and the heat of his body, Hexus thought idly. In the darkness he couldn't see his captors face but by the warm breath on his he knew it was near.

"No idea how bad a move you made there, boy." The wolf said in a gruff whisper.

"The guy you just put in the physio' ward was the lover of the Riastradh Engineering corporations CEO, he practically owns neu accresia."

Riastradh? His mind raced, suddenly cutting through the fog of ache and weriness, That's a werespider-owned company. Well that explained the scent, the Arachnids were The ultimate predators, even other weres feared them. It explained the mans appearance too, the Arachnids were notoriously obsessive-compulsive and would not tolerate untidiness in one of their mates, even a strong bond of love would soon be overpowered by their nature and would result in eventual hatred and abuse if their Mate couldn't meet their standards. It was another one of those things that leaked over from the animal self.

"Now the Riastradh corporations boss has decided to take a personal interest in your punishment, but before that we've been given orders to make sure you remember this night."

The wolf reached between the legs of the quivering wererat, the stoic mask of 'Hexus' now shredded, and ripped away his lone item of clothing. He struggled futilely against the massive form, who he realised must now be in full hybrid form as attested by his camphor-smoke and musk scent mixed with the warm, salt-spice tang of sex pheremones. A single massive hand pushed down on his chest until he stopped struggling and then he felt the tip of the wolfs shaft allong the inside of his leg. His half-broken body was manhandled into position and without warning the wolf drove his full length deep inside him. He let out a tiny breathless yelp but could muster no more. The wolf was lost in his primal nature and cared little for the mewls and cries of the tiny prey-beast before him as he took his pleasure, panting and snarling with unsupressed enjoyment, the scent of pain mingled with blood only aroused him more.

The wererat formerly named David was forced to submit by the sheer physical might of the wolf, the rage was almost gone now and the ruiner had been beaten away, just a bright ember where once was an inferno. He partitioned his mind and squirreled it away in a place where it wouldn't go out. Let them have the rest of him, he decided, let them break and bruise him, bend him to their wills and torment his memories, but that seed of rage would still live locked tight in his heart, waiting.

With a deep, baying howl the wolf climaxed and fell forward upon the rat as he relaxed, slicking him with droplets of pheremone-laden sweat. He bit hs lip to stifle another cry as the wolf withdrew his massive member from him, his passage was tortured and aching.

Then one of the others stepped forward.

With what strength was left in him he dragged himself away from them on hands and knees but to no avail, a hand big enough to encapsulate most of this calf grabbed him and pulled him back contemptuously while the wolves chortled like hyenas in the darkness.

In time they all had their turn at him, their ministrations so harsh that by the time they had all finished he had still barely regenerated any further than from the beating.

They left him there, lying foetal in a pool of his blood and their fluids. The full realisation of the ordeal came slowly, shock and tauma slowing its inevitable advance but when it did the humiliation and outrage provided ample fuel for the embers. In the corners of his mind the Ruiner chittered his promises of vengance.

The ember swelled and grew hotter and stronger, consuming lesser parts of his mind to feed itself and his heart burned with it until at last he could stand no more and howled his frustration into the night as a wordless roar, the primal scream.

"Can't break me that easy, fuckers" whispered Hexus, smiling faintly in the dark.