DN - Torture

Graywytch returns with a bowl of water and begins splashing my forehead, my chest, my stomach, my groin. She sets the bowl aside and retrieves a needle from somewhere behind me. It pinches into my elbow, but she misses the vein. That’s okay, though, since she’s not at all shy about digging around inside my arm until she finds it. After she’s got her blood sample, she pulls the needle out and lets the wound trickle until the bleeding stops on its own. She’s moved on to cutting my shirt off with a pair of surgical scissors and snipping my bra away as well. With my own blood she begins painting squiggle figures on my chest and down my stomach. She’s muttering under her breath, some kind of chant.

Through it all, I am silent. I’m holding myself in tight, because if I don’t I will start screaming, and I’m not sure I’ll stop. I am not giving this bitch the satisfaction.

Then Graywytch turns on the lights, and there’s some quality in them, some ineffable weirdness in the pale blue light that the blood responds to. It starts to bubble and hiss and BURN oh God I’m burning it hurts IT HURTS so—

So despite all my best intentions, I’m screaming.

And I was right.

I don’t stop.

Back in my cell, the door clunks shut behind me, a fusillade of locking thumps as the bolts engage. A few moments later, the slot clacks open and another terrible meal is shoved through the hole. I’m barely finished with it before the lights die, plunging me into pitch darkness. And that’s the day.

***

My chest stings and throbs when I run my fingers over the rough spots where the burns crinkled my skin up. One of the security guys, who I gathered was some sort of medic, smeared a chemical-smelling goop on them. It helped a bit. Then he stood by and she hit me with the lights again. When I get out of here, I’m gonna punch him in the mouth. Hell, I’ll be generous—mouth punchings for everyone! So I start laughing, and then I start shivering and clenching, and eventually I fall asleep.

The screaming buzzer wakes me up again. My heart is sprinting, my hair is damp. Another awful, awful breakfast, and then they drag me into the experimentation chamber again. I don’t fight this time. No point. Until I have a plan, I need to play along and minimize the damage. If I could get my hands on one of their guns, maybe.

Shit, I wish Calamity was here. She’d know what to do. Or, better yet, wouldn’t have gotten captured in the first place.

I’m strapped into place again. Off goes the shirt, again. More blood samples, more Finger Painting of the Damned, and then more pain. Lots more pain.

For an instant, I sense the lattice.

With every ounce of will I leap at it, try to catch and pull on it, tear myself loose and blast out of this room at speed. But it slips through the fingers of my mind and fades. The collar at my neck gets hot. This happens a few times. Sometimes the lattice is clear and bright. Sometimes fuzzy and indistinct. She keeps making adjustments to her equipment or the cadence of her chanting, trying again and marking down the results in a ledger.

Graywytch purses her lips after one round of experiments. I sag and gasp in the restraints. The medic comes by to swab my wounds with a soaked cotton ball held in some forceps. The red haze of pain fades, and for a moment I can think again. My temples are wet from where the tears have streaked back from my eyes into my hair.

***

Graywytch starts the torture up again. She’s narrowed the beam of light this time, and passes it back and forth across my chest according to some unknowable pattern. It kind of hurts, in the same way that the sun is kind of bright.

When she shuts the light off, I lie sagging, gasping, sweating in the chair, trying to unkink my brain enough to speak.

“What are you getting out of this?” I ask when I’m able to get my mouth to work. “Money? Power?”

She reaches over and flicks the switch for the lights. One long, scalding second, and then off again.

“Shut up.”

“How long have you been working with him?”

But she only ignores me. Stands at her lectern and scribbles her notes. Then she pulls the light fixture down and replaces the lens with another one, darker in color. A few moments later the lights start up again, and so does the burning.

The lattice shimmers into being. It’s hard and clear, so close I swear I can grip it. But I can’t. My mind won’t tangle with it properly. There’s a buzzing in my gut, just behind my navel.

The light dies, and I collapse with relief. Think. I’ve got to think. I’ve got to try something new. I flop my head over to the side to look at her, grope for something useful to say. Nothing. Can’t think. The fear smothers me. My mouth goes on ahead by itself.

“Myra,” I call. She looks up at me. “When I get out of here, I’m going to kill you.”

- Sovereign, Chapter 15