Page 41 of Somno Slave

Without emotion.

Like it’s something you can just... switch off. Like it isn’t already sitting in my throat, thick and rising, making each breath feel painful.

Another door groans somewhere closer this time, louder. Near enough that it rattles something loose inside my chest.

I inhale but it doesn’t go all the way in.

The interrogation room door shifts. It drags inward with the same reluctant scrape, a sound that sets my teeth on edge.

The first guard steps through. Then another. Then two more. They spread without speaking, muscle memory in the way they take their positions—one to the side, one near the chair, one hovering just behind the threshold like he’s waiting for something to go wrong before it’s even begun.

And then—him.

Deogal doesn’t enter like the others. There’s no urgency, no visible pressure forcing him forward. He crosses the thresholdslowly enough that it feels intentional, like he could stop if he chose.

His hands are restrained high against his chest; wrists fixed at an angle that looks wrong the second I really see it. It’s not just restrictive, it’sunnatural. It forces his shoulders back, pulls his spine into a posture that should strain, should ache, should show somewhere in the tension of his body.

Bruising deepens the violence of his face from where he was attacked yesterday. There are wires on him today, too. Thin adhesive pads bloom against his skin: at the throat, the wrists, beneath his collarbone. I follow the leads to a machine. Something cold opens in my stomach.

The guards drop him into the chair. I watch for a stumble, but he stills immediately without trouble. They strap him down.

My pulse shifts before my thoughts do, tightening low in my body in a way I don’t want to examine too closely.

“Good morning, Deogal,” Peter says into the microphone.

There’s no response.

Peter eases back, fingers moving across the desk as he taps the mouse, the monitor flickering awake. He reaches for a small control box, its coloured buttons catching the light as he turns it once in his hand.

Then he leans in again close enough that his breath clouds faintly against the metal grille. “Stand down.”

The guards move at once, boots striking in unison as they file out. The door seals behind them with a soft, airtight hiss that seems to press in on the room rather than close it off.

Silence follows.

Peter’s hand comes to rest beside the control box, his eyes locked on Deogal as if he’s waiting for something that hasn’t happened yet. He casts a look over at us.

“Ready?” he asks.

“Peter,” my voice comes out thinner than I want it to. “What is that?”

He glances me.

“Encouragement,” he says, then turns back.

“Last chance to save yourself some discomfort” he says. “Give me a name of another victim.”

Nothing.

“One location.”

Nothing.

“One honest answer.”

He flips the switch.

The first jolt is small, testing. Deogal’s body reacts before his face does, a sharp involuntary jerk, fingers locking white around the restraints. The monitor spikes, then settles.