[316] EMBRACE
“I’ve decided what to do with you.”
The voice of Jasper Redgrave snaps Jackson Cade out of a restless sleep, his body drawn to its limits by the tendrils of the Embrace of Pain.
Redgrave himself materializes from the darkness, his sadistic pleasure palpable as he looks at his latest exhibit.
“The perfect Exhibit. Your bones stained with the blood below you, contorted into the shape of the Little Eagle you are. Suspended from the ceiling, watching over the Riggs family.”
He pauses, making sure Cade’s gaze finds his.
“Doing nothing.”
The room echoes with his cold, cruel laughter, each word a calculated strike intended to shatter Jackson Cade’s spirit.
But Perseus’s spirit will not be shattered today.
“And you call yourself an artist?” He spits, his words dripping with defiance. “You hide behind Grimskull’s machine. Anyone else, you just kill them. But me? You don’t have the balls.”
In a flash, Redgrave’s amusement curdles into anger.
Scary quick, the Artist closes the distance between them.
SLAP!
Another!
Another.
Each blow he lands on Cade sends shockwaves through the Embrace of Pain.
With each strike, the mechanical monstrosity groans, its grip on Jackson weakening incrementally.
For Jackson Cade, the pain is exquisite, a white-hot torrent of agony tearing through him.
But today, he doesn’t just endure the pain.
He welcomes it, feeds on it, letting it fuel his will to escape.
He embraces it.
The Embrace of Pain shudders and whines, the mechanisms overloading until they can no longer hold him.
BOOM!
With a final roar of defiance, the apparatus sends out a shockwave of energy, knocking the enraged Jasper Redgrave backwards in a gust of smoke.
The Artist leaps up, grimacing at the sound echoing through the chamber like the death knell of a behemoth.
But that’s not why he grimaces.
Jackson Cade now lays on the floor beside the pool of blood, the taste of freedom mingling with the metallic tang of his own blood.
He pushes himself to his feet, swaying slightly. His eyes lock onto Redgrave’s, a spark of determination igniting within their depths.
Cade spits his blood into the pool.
“Let’s make some art, motherfucker!”
Cade launches himself at Redgrave.
Cut.