Chapter 14: No Choice.

----------------

William Shakespeare: "Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once."

----------------

Because he had stopped eating, she didn’t need to hit him. But when she saw him actually try to attack her, her eyes glinted sharply, and she brought down the Baton heavily on his outstretched arm.

"Bang! Crack!" rang out in the room.

The baton struck his wrist and cracked it with a single hit. As soon as the pain of the injury struck his mind, the fierce look in his eyes disappeared and was replaced by terror.

"Ahhhhhh," he screamed as he jerked his arm away from her.

Mixed in with the terror was immense disbelief. He couldn’t believe that he had tried to attack her.

For a while, the fact that he thought it was a good idea to attack Tessa overwhelmed the feeling of pain from his arm. The pain was urgent, but the logical process behind his motivation for attacking her was more important.

"What was I thinking?" he asked himself as he cradled his broken arm.

"You were too far gone," Tessa replied.

Then she shook her head and said, "It makes me wonder how you managed to survive at all. Your mind looks nowhere strong enough to contend with that worm. At this rate, you will lose your mind very quickly."

Against his better judgment, Alex said, "Can I not do this?"

"Thwack," came the sound of a baton striking flesh.

"Ahhhhhhh!" he screamed again because she had struck his injured arm.

By this point, he didn’t want to be around her and the meat anymore. So he moved his chair away and stood up to distance himself from her and the food on the table.

But just as he rose from his seat, a hand, as big as his head, grabbed his head and forced him back into his seat before pushing him forward. The red-skinned Big Boss didn’t stop until the corpse was right in his face.

After they were done putting him back in his place, the red Big Boss said, "Running away from your problems is not good, little man. You have to face it and overcome it, especially now that the challenge is in a controlled environment.’

As for Tessa, she curled her lips and said with mockery, "Your Will is weak. I said it before and I am saying it again."

Her words stung him, carving grooves of painful cuts into his pride. The insult was especially potent because he didn’t have the strength to refute her, and he didn’t think she was wrong.

He could still remember how easily he had succumbed to the pleasure of eating. Everything had felt right, and he didn’t question it once, even though he knew at the back of his mind that what he was doing was wrong.

He even found ways to justify it and was clear-headed when he did it. So how could he deny her claims now? He could only hang his head low while his heart burned with anger.

Some of the anger was directed at the worm. Part of it was directed at Tessa for making them eat human flesh when they could have eaten other kinds of meat. But most of the anger, about 70% of it, was directed inwards at himself.

So as not to discourage him too much, she said, "I will answer your question. But let this be the last time you ask a question when no one permitted you to ask."

When he heard her words, he raised his head to look at her. He knew that he shouldn’t raise his hopes for a way out, but he couldn’t help being hopeful.

"To answer your question, no, you have to do this," Tessa was saying.

"You have to undergo the training until I’m satisfied that you won’t lose control the next time you eat. If you don’t pass this test, you will never be allowed to leave the compound."

"That means you won’t be able to return to your house for your things or to see your sister," she said as she glanced at Robert.

Robert perked up when he heard that. But she didn’t continue the topic. Instead, she looked away and continued to say to Alex, "This is not as bad as you make it look."

"This is training meant to teach you control. It isn’t to push you over the edge, and I’ll try my best to keep you from losing control."

"Yes, there is a high risk of losing control. And yes, it is very difficult to learn restraint. But these are challenges that you have to face and overcome, if only for the fact that I’ve made it a must."

"Don’t try looking for the easy way out. The easy way out won’t work forever when dealing with the gluttony worm. Nothing good comes easily, so you have to learn to stand your ground right from the start and you have to eat human flesh now to become familiar with it or you will easily lose control around humans."

Then she asked a rhetorical question, saying, "Do you remember what I said before I stuffed that worm into your mouth?"

"I said that if you become an Apostle, you will have to follow the orders of your superiors with no questions asked. I said that if I ask you to risk your life, you will do so as soon as I ask of it."

"I haven’t asked you to give me your life, so what are you balking at?" she asked, her voice stern and her eyes staring straight into his eyes.

"I also said that if you disagree with me or are unwilling to do whatever it takes to survive, excel, and achieve greatness, then give up. Then I said if you’re not willing to put everything on the line so that your life can shine like a flame in the dark, if only briefly, then allow yourself to die."

"That moment was a crossroads, which it seems you survived by luck. We’re at another crossroads now. Will you rely on luck to get you through it, or will you fight?" she asked with a deep voice that resonated in his head.