Conflict: Breaking Bond Season 1, #4

By C.K. KANE

My brother. My keeper.

 

I think this is where it all turns for me.

How I know I'm broken.

The moment I realise they've broken me.

 

Three weeks into teen jail, and the Regime just keeps throwing its sh*t.

 

It doesn't matter how much Cal keeps his head down, or conforms, or does what he's told. The new addition to the Centre shows him he has no chance in here.

 

The obstacles are stacked too high and they just keep coming.

 

From the General. The guards. The other inmates.

 

Getting beaten up twice in two days must be a Regime record, right?

 

Cal's fighting to remember who he is. What he's fighting for. Why he fights at all.

 

He needs to switch tack, and fast.

 

It's time for the biggest decision of his life.

 

Episode 4 in Breaking Bond. Episodes publishing regularly throughout 2023; check author page for preorder dates.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Unlocked Books
• Release date: Feb 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215219270

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

I can’t move. I’m rooted to the carpet.

In front of the General’s desk, my older brother Logan smirks.

‘Kane. Move.’

Like I said before, Pavlovian. My feet move instantly at the General’s bark, and that makes my brother smirk some more.

I reach the desk. Logan grabs my shoulder and twists me to face him.

‘Military uniform suits you, little brother,’ he smirks. He sounds like all the cats with all the cream; he’s practically purring. ‘And what a haircut.’

‘We don’t allow long hair here,’ the General says, once more stating the fucking obvious.

‘So I see,’ Logan says. ‘Good. He was an embarrassment. But now—’

He stares like I’m a horse for sale. I wrench my shoulder from his fingers. I clench my fists.

He laughs.

‘Nah. You can’t be doing that, Cal. Not any more. You’re in custody now. To learn good things, I hear – why you’ve been placed in Howell rather than the Centre in SE2—’

I couldn’t give a fuck any more about why I’m not in the Centre local to Lincoln. I face Logan again, stepping back so I can’t be tempted to smack him in the face.

‘Kane, Sergeant Kane is our newest staff member’ – as per, the General states the obvious yet again – ‘and I expect you to treat him as such. Understood?’

There are many things I could say to that.

You mean stay out of his way like the rest of your sadist staff?

You mean I have to actually obey what this asshole orders?

Most of all:

Do you know he’s a psycho?

But I say nothing at all.

‘Understood?’ the General snaps.

I think this is where it all turns for me.

How I know I’m broken.

The moment I realise they’ve broken me.

It wasn’t those interminable minutes on that post my first day in GenPop. It’s right here, right now, facing my brother in the General’s office.

Because I want to say fuck you. Or – I want to stay silent. I want – more than anything since arriving here – not to humiliate myself like this in front of my asshole brother.

But the General’s already moving from behind his desk. He’s already reaching for the handle of the cat. And so, I manage to speak.

‘Yes, General.’

Logan hoots.

‘Wow. You’ve really done a number on my little bro, General—’

‘Not enough,’ the General says. His hand hovers over the cat.

I stare ahead, fighting for stillness. Fighting for silence.

It’s one of the worst moments of my life.

Somehow I get out of the office. Only, of course, after the General raps out Dismissed and I have to say Yes, General, which makes my brother hoot some more.

I close the door and lean against it, breathing hard.

I get maybe three seconds before bootsteps turn into the corridor.

Collins.

When I had to report to him my first day of GenPop about our Regiment’s pair of missing trainers, I thought he was almost worse than the General.

I was right.

The Regiment Three head sees me every day, unlike the General who apart from morning drill is almost