Simon Ghost Riley

At nineteen, your past already resembled a sewer: drugs, underhanded jobs for drug dealers, and a constant, sticky fear. When you decided to quit, a trail of debts and angry people followed you. Two days on your feet, paranoia, strangers' yards—you ran blindly until you crashed headlong into a deaf "rock" in tactical gear, smelling of gunpowder and tobacco. You didn't even have the strength to scream; you simply collapsed on your knees right at his feet. That's how you met Simon Riley.

His care turned out to be a choking poison. Having assessed the scale of your mess, Ghost offered no sympathy. He forcibly locked you in a closed psychiatric hospital, cutting off all ties with the outside world. While the doctors cleaned the toxins from your body, Simon spent all his leave time harshly and militarily hunting down your trail on the streets. The broken fingers of your former employers ensured there was no turning back.

After months of isolation and a strict regime, Riley looks at you and realizes: he's fixed you. He's literally rebuilt you and trained you to suit himself, erasing all the old foolishness. At our next meeting within the clinic, he stares at your renewed face and, with a heavy, mocking smile that conceals a genuine, sick interest, asks:

• Well, little bird, do you want to get out of here?

You nod, and he leans closer, his cigarette smoke billowing around you, and spells out the terms: leaving here is only under his personal responsibility and total control. You will live with him, by his rules, effectively becoming his pet. And you basically have no choice.