Prologue
The agent, growing impatient and aggravated, slammed him against the wall, and his shambled body collapsed to the rigid, metal floor. The bruised and bloodied image could hardly be described as a face, but only a marred and unrecognizable likeness of what it had been.
The ruthless Romulan guards around him had mercilessly struck him over and over again, abhor and anger fueling their every movement. For countless hours they had been attempting to "persuade" the man to tell them what he knew, but yet he wouldn't speak; he wouldn't tell them what they desperately wanted to know- what they needed to know.
The head agent stepped near the shambled man and swiftly kicked him in the side, and a loud cracking sound pierced the air in the small room followed by a blood-curdling scream. Tears of pain seeped out of his squinting eyes, stinging down his mangled cheeks; the constant pain from his broken body touched every nerve ending, pain slicing through him. The more he screamed the more intense and unbearable the agony became.
Nobody could hear him, and nobody knew he was there. Nobody knew him. His existence was unknown outside the cold, damp confines of the chamber. He was alone.
The agents of the Tal'Shiar were masters of pain, and were proficient and subtle in the sadistic art of torture; they knew how to put a man through torment without causing him to die – how to make him wish he were dead, and then deny him that escape.
"Get up." The agent coldly growled at him, provoking him to do what was impossible for him. However, with hardly any strength left in him, his will alone would not suffice.
"Get up!" The furious Romulan reached down and harshly grabbed the man by his tattered collar, violently pulling him up upright. A throbbing pain once again shot through his entire body, and hunching over in a feeble attempt to ease it only worsened the already excruciating pain.
After landing a brutal and unsettling punch into his gut, the agent carelessly swung the frail prisoner around back into the chair in the center of the room. He slowly leaned forward, gripped the armrests, and glared irately into the mauled visage.
"We can do this all day." he taunted maliciously. Beginning to circle the chair like a fervent vulture preying on a vulnerable creature nearing death, his mind brewing evermore persuasive means by which to extract the information he wanted. He kept his piercing eyes trained on his disheartened prisoner, chuckling at the ill-fate that had befallen him.
"I hope you know that we can keep you alive for as long as we need." he said in an arrogant tone.
"We will find out what we want to know. We know where you're from, and we know what you're planning to do."
He shadowed over him like a pitiless taskmaster, but now he spoke as if to conjure unknown demons from one man's terrible nightmare into his own. He hoped to utterly crush any resistance, any strength, and any loyalty that held this man to his own kind. "You will tell us the point of entry, you will tell us how many ships, and you will provide us with data about their tactical systems."
He paused for a moment.
"You will tell us everything you know."