Ganta Igarashi.

Wrongfully imprisoned.
Made to repent for his uncommitted sins
And to walk through hell and back.

Tortured through mind and body.
Pushed to breaking point.
Forced to fight for his life

And kill his only friends.

He saw nothing.

His experience of the world he lived in was reduced to a cacophony of muffled sounds and searing pain that came when he least expected it.

He could hear them talking now.

"Approaching destination. Prisoner is secure and ready to be transferred." a low, grumbling voice spoke from near to him.

Another voice replied, but this one was disembodied, synthetic and raspy. "Fucking brilliant. Just make sure the little shit doesn't squirm. We don't want a fuss in front of the other inmates… that could turn out to be a problem. You read me?"

"Loud and clear. I'll handle it."

He felt the truck grind to a halt and he swayed in his seat.
Suddenly, a hand grabbed his shoulder and wrenched him into a standing position.

"Get off me, you stupid-" he began to say as he turned his bag-covered head towards the hand.

Another hand grabbed his other shoulder and threw him to the side. He tripped in his blindness and plummeted to the metal floor of the truck. Just before he could bring up his fused straitjacket-arms to break his fall, a brutal kick to the ribs shot him backwards.

He fell.
And crashed onto what felt like hardened dirt specked with gravel.
He heard a grunt of effort and two feet landed beside him; once again a powerful hand grabbed him by the shoulder and forced him to stand up.

He felt the bag shifting on his head, and his eyes suddenly flooded with blinding light.
Beams shone through his thick, tousled black hair. He squinted his large, dark blue eyes as they adjusted to the sheer intensity of the crisp yellow rays that burst from the midday sun.

They focused.

A huge, ugly behemoth of a building sat at the top of a gradually sloping hill straight ahead, in the distance. Several other short, fat white-washed buildings dotted with pathetically small windows lay around it.
The image of the heinous complex of edifices was broken up by a triple-layering of immensely tall mesh fences that bared furious teeth of chrome barbed wire.

He looked up to see a huge concrete guard tower with railed balconies looming above him.

The person who had been throwing him around was a burly, grizzly-looking man dressed in a plain, black, padded guard uniform, with huge shiny boots and fingerless gloves. The man gave him an almighty shove.

He stumbled forwards, and cursed as he struggled to keep his balance and began to walk slowly towards the fence.
It started to slide open with a rattle, and he could see another man dressed similarly to this one pulling it open from the side.
As he stepped over the threshold, and his bare feet sank into the harsh gravel at the entrance.

This place was to be a part of him now.

His new home.

"I'll go round the outside through that ditch and flank the two on the right, OK? You cover me."

"You got it."

Rick sprinted out from behind the police car and leaped into the soggy little ditch by the side of the road. Bullets and buckshot zipped past him as he flew.

He landed with a squelch and immediately began to combat crawl through the nettles and the damp grass. He could hear the crack of Shane's 9mm and the roar of other two officers' pump-actions blasting behind him as the two suspects took cover behind their overturned SUV, which was now riddled with bullets.

He stopped just close enough to get a definite shot on the two leather jacket-clad men and slowly got into a crouching position. He drew his trusty Python 44. and aimed its polished sights at the torso of one of the men.
He inhaled.

His finger began to clasp around the trigger.

"RICK!"

Rick turned at the sound of Shane's voice.

And felt himself explode.

He toppled backwards into the ditch in an eruption of ripped cloth, torn-apart flesh and spraying blood as a myriad of sparkling little stars of lead ripped through the left of his torso.
His head lolled back onto the grass, and as the sky became ever more colourless to his eyes, his shirt began to soak with blood.

He could almost feel his blood soaking through his shirt.

It pressed up against the walls of his veins, desperate to get out, to free itself and be rid of its oppressors.
The dark red fluid that coursed through him almost had a will of its own.
Almost.

Silently, he trundled down the corridors. To his left, jeering crowds of riled-up, hungry, bored men smashed the steel bars that separated them from what little freedom they were entitled to. They screamed hollow insults at him and writhed in their cages.

The man behind him pushed him head-first through a set of double-doors and slammed them shut behind him.

Before him stood 4 figures clad in the familiar black uniform, and in the middle of them stood a short, ugly man with a horrendous frown on his round little face and his hands behind his back.
He wore a white suit and polished white shoes, in contrast to the dark figures that surrounded him.

The wretched little man spoke.
"Ganta Igarashi."

His voice was raspy but high pitched, which sounded particularly unsettling when coupled with his thick, southern accent.
Ganta remained silent. He narrowed his eyes in defiance.

"You can forget that name for the rest of your life, kid. You will now be known only as DM-04. Understand?"

Ganta still refused to answer.

"I said, Do. You. Under. Fucking. STAND?!" the little man screeched.

Not a sound came from Ganta's mouth.

"You know what? I'm not even going to bother punishing you. I'll just let the kind old folks here at the Meriwether County Correctional Facility do the job for me.
Take him away."

Ganta felt a gloved hand yank him backwards from the hair and he fell to the floor.
The other four men closed in, one of them wielding a huge syringe filled with clear liquid.
He squirmed and growled in a desperate attempt to delay the inevitable.

Ganta felt himself being lifted into the air.

"I'll never give up!" he screamed at the top of his lungs at the little man, who was now walking away. "I'll fight every step of the way to get the fuck out of this damned place, I'll kill you all if that's what it takes!"
The little man carried on walking for a few steps, then stopped and turned sharply on his shiny white heels.

Ganta's vision blurred as the syringe buried itself in his neck.

"You can forget that attitude for the rest of your life as well, kid.
Fighting won't get you very far." he rasped.

"…Not in this place."