Men and women came and went.
Some lasted longer than others.
But they all inevitably succumbed to their torture. Their Awakenings painful and eventually taking their lives.
I stopped caring completely—there was no room for it when my ultimate goal was survival.
The only thing that kept me tethered to reality, kept me sane, was Faylinn. I felt a kinship with her—something that went beyond physicality. She wasn’t a sister, certainly not a lover, but she was mine.
And I loved her.
Her cries of pain were the worst.
She pleaded with them. Begged until she was a sobbing mess—tears running down her face to mix with the snot from her nose. Saliva pooled in her mouth from the pain, dripping into her hair.
Faylinn’s little cries of agony and sobbing shouts of “please” were a worse torture than the hot blades plunged into my flesh.
My body felt physically ill, my stomach threatening to expel what little food I was given every time her voice broke from her suffering.
“P-please, please. No. No,stop. Please s-s-stop.”
If any of the other men and women in the space cried or spoke to the men in black robes, I didn’t hear it. I didn’t care.
Faylinn was the only one who mattered.
“Stop, please juststop. I don’t feel anything in my blood Awakening. Please,please,PLEASE.” Her last word ended on a shout and a scream as something was sliced across her flesh. I could hear the distinct sucking noise as it was removed and her broken yell as it was pushed in again.
“Please stop,” I whispered.
The man in black robes halted with a blade poised over my chest. I’d blocked out his actions hours ago—my brain wholly focused on Faylinn and her agony.
“You’ve never said a word. Not once in the three months you’ve been here,” he rasped, and I involuntarily stiffened.
Months? Shit.
The timing was less of a surprise than it should have been. Instead, I was worried that I gave myself away. I opened my eyes to the quizzical stare of the man.
Slowly, a triumphant smile spread across his face, and he dropped his blade to the metal side table before methodically wiping the blood from his hands with a towel.
“You know,” he mused, “there is more than one way to inflict pain. Clearly, your body doesn’t feel physical torture. But mental?”
My breaths came in quick pants, my hands curling into fists as each muscle in my body tightened.
“Emotional? Yes, that’s something we haven’t used on you before.” The man pat my shoulder as if thanking me.
“You!” He turned from me to gesture to another man in black robes. “Move your subject. This one needs . . . a special placement.”
My throat constricted around nothing as saliva pooled in my mouth, nausea roiling in my gut.
The table I was strapped to began to move, Faylinn’s screams growing louder as we traveled.
No, no, no, no.
“Here we are. Your new spot. Doesn’t she just look so beautiful with blood running down her skin?” the man whispered in my ear as the top half of the table was raised. I was in a seated position now, the table turned so I had a full view of Faylinn lying naked on the table next to me.
But it wasn’t her nakedness that fazed me. Bodies were bodies at this point.
It was thethousandsof cuts that littered her flesh. Some old and scarred, others fresh and still oozing blood onto the table underneath her body. My heart jolted in my chest at the sight, the need toprotecther nearly overwhelming.
