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“Tell me what you know of the rebel camp outside the walls of the city.”
I wait for her to lie to me, to try to deny what I already know. The rebel Rath K’zar was trying to reach it with his human when they were crushed beneath endless tons of rock.
“I haven’t been there. I’ve only heard about it.”
She surprises me with her honest answer. I truly expected her to at least try to lie. That is what humans do when they are afraid. They try to hide their true natures and they will deny anything remotely resembling the truth.
“They were expecting you, weren’t they.”
“Yes,” she admits. She really is truthful. I like that about her. I think she senses there is no longer any point in deception. Her life hangs in the balance. I could dispatch her in a fraction of a second, and I intend to the moment she tells me what I need to know.
“Will they mount a rescue attempt?
“I hope not.”
“But you expect they will.”
That’s a reason to keep her alive. I intend to eradicate everybody who has gone beyond the wall. If I can tempt them back inside the wall, that will save work, time, and be entirely satisfying. I did not have the satisfaction of executing Rath K’zar and his human lover, but there are others who could take their place. There are conspirators both inside and outside these walls. I keep my sanity by reminding myself that where there is life, there is the potential for revenge.
This human will make good bait. All I need to do is show her suffering. I need to make it graphic, entirely for the benefit of those who are waiting for her to be free, and who owe her their lives. They will not be able to resist the urge to come to her rescue.
“It is time you and I made some promotional material,” I tell the little human. “Come along.”
I get up and stride away. She takes forever to follow after me, forced as she is to hop about behind me unsteadily. The guards who took her crutches away have vanished into a respectful distance. I have two choices: to wait, and let her hop her way after me, or to pick her up.
“I don’t need help,” she says, her tone more fraught and tense than it has been since I met her.
“Of course you do.” I sigh as I pick her up underneath my arm, wrapping my limb around her midsection. I can feel the sharp poke of her hip and the outline of her ribs against my flesh. She has not eaten well.
I should take satisfaction in having starved her out of hiding, but I do not. As with everything to do with this human, besting her is shameful. She has taken so much of the pleasure of capture away by being pathetic. It is quite irritating, though I suppose she cannot help being a worthless, hapless little human.
I carry her somewhere more private, and simultaneously more public. I have many chambers in this oversized castle made by old hands and ancient minds. I prefer the architecture of Megaris, but the king must occupy the palace, or it is simply a very large apartment building. The room I take her into is sparsely furnished. I have not used it before. My father used to use it to make recordings of himself torturing prisoners. They are still all preserved in the royal digital archive. He used to play them while he mated with his harem. There were rumors he could not climax unless someone was begging for their life. I tend to believe that rumor.
I have never found any particular use for this room until this moment. There are cameras set up around every bit of it, a hundred eyes from a hundred angles allowing any single image to be rotated three hundred and sixty degrees. It is quite a fascinating tool, and I am sure it will create the most stunning hologram display of this rebel human’s torment.
“Is this a kill room?” She asks the question with an almost innocent curiosity. “It looks easy to clean.”
“It is a televised torture chamber.”
“Oh.”
I drop her on the ground, though I let her slide before she falls, a kindness I would deny if anybody were to ever question me.
“Take off those clothes.”
She does as she is told, avoiding my gaze. She does not want me to see her naked. I would not want to be seen naked either if I were her. She bears the scars of a harsh life on her face and across her entire body, now that I see her without coverings. There are particularly nasty marks across her back, down her spine, and over her belly.
There is not a part of this girl that has not known pain. Hurting her will not be easy.
