Page 72 of Somno Slave

Something in my chest tightens around the words. I turn toward him, ready to say something, but the door opens behind him.

Sean and Mike come back in carrying black buckets, water sloshing against the sides, ice knocking together with a dull, hollow clink that seems to echo longer than it should.

The sound cuts straight through me.

Peter’s attention flicks to the buckets, quick and satisfied. “Good.”

My stomach turns cold.

“What are you doing?” I hear myself ask, but it comes out thinner than I expect.

He turns suddenly, eyes piercing through me. “Cleaning him up.”

They’re already moving before I can respond. The door into the interrogation room slams open, the impact travelling through the glass.

Sean hesitates only briefly before tipping the bucket. The first splash hits the floor, then his shoulder. Then all at once the freezing water crashes over him in a heavy sweep. Water crashes down his shoulders and chest, soaking through the fabric instantly. The orange darkens, clings, reshapes itself to his body.

I expect something immediate.

A gasp or recoil. Anything. There’s a delay instead before his body locks.

Then the reaction comes all at once, a full-body shudder that tears through him. His shoulders pull tight, muscles jumping under the soaked fabric as the cold hits deeper.

I feel it in my own body, a reflexive tightening low in my stomach.

The second bucket follows too quickly.

Water hits him again, heavier this time, spilling over the chair, pooling beneath him, dripping steadily from his sleeves.The sound fills the room, loud and constant, like it’s drowning everything else out.

He shakes. It runs through him in sharp, uncontrollable bursts, his body reacting in ways his face refuses to acknowledge.

Peter doesn’t rush the third. He takes it himself, steps closer, and pours it slowly, watching as the water spreads, tracking its path like he’s studying the effect.

It drags down Deogal’s chest in thin streams, catching in the lines of his body before slipping lower. An ice cube catches briefly against the fabric, then disappears beneath it.

My shoulders tense before I realise I’ve moved.

The jumpsuit clings to him now, every line of his body visible in a way it wasn’t before.

My gaze drops.

I feel it happen. Know I shouldn’t. I don’t stop it.

My breath catches, shallow and sharp, as the shape beneath the soaked fabric becomes clear.

He’s hard.

Again.

There’s no mistaking it this time, no angle to hide behind. It sits there, thick and angry, and impossible to ignore.

I tell myself to look away.

My hand moves without instruction.

Click.

The screenshot captures before I’ve decided I’m going to take it. The soft shutter sound barely exists in the room, but it lands inside my head like something much louder, something that shouldn’t have happened.