WARNING: This chapter contains scenes of torture that some readers may find distressing.
Second instalment of the day, and I want you all to know that by the end I felt really quite awful. I hope that out there amongst you good folks, there is someone else who feels the same as I do when you finish reading it. And if you do, please let me know.
If you are reading this and you haven't realised that this update was TWO chapters, go back and read nine - it's really important!
Chapter 10. Bad day.
It wasn't until the next afternoon, when she finally lifted her drug-heavy lids to the orange gleam on her face, that she knew he had returned. She had no idea how long he had been, of course, but whenever it was that he reappeared he hadn't tried to wake her. Either he had decided to let her body come to of its own accord, or he simply wasn't able to bring himself to speak.
Looking at him now from where she lay, she guessed the latter. He was on his own bunk, his back to her, but she could tell by the way he breathed that he wasn't asleep, but that he was awake and very unhappy.
I wonder what they did to him... he's never normally this bad.
But then, she thought, he normally only went for a few hours at a time, and not more than half a day... or even nearly a full day if he had only recently been brought back.
Despite feeling decidedly rough herself, her headache was now a migraine and the afternoon sun half blinded her whilst her temples stabbed with pain, she felt she had to know if her cell mate was himself alright.
"Limburger..? Hey... fish-face... are you ok?" Though using a less than endearing form of address, her voice was soft and gentle. Much like he had spoken to her when he had tried to rouse her from her sedation, only her motives were purer. She was practically maternal right now.
He wasn't responding, so she tried again.
"Hey... I know you're probably feeling like crap right now... I know I do... but if you want to talk about it... believe me it helps, it really does. And I'm right here if you need me."
If you need me? Jeez... like this fat flounder needs babying anymore than he has been.
For a long time Limburger refused to acknowledge her, and stayed quite still on his cot. The silence gave the woman time to deal with her own problems, which she desperately needed because this was probably the worst she had ever felt in this place.
Aside from the pain, sickness and the flashing lights disturbing her vision, the symptoms of the migraine were only really the after-effects of the earlier assault on her brain. Through her foggy wakefulness, from deep inside her mind, she could recall with some clarity a very important, very disturbing set of memories.
There was the usual, as well; her long walk to the basement lab, the many-armed machine being attached to her, the smooth-skinned, silent alien pressing his buttons and sending her asleep. That was all there, as it always was. But this time she knew more. She hadn't really gone to sleep. Not all of her, just a part of her. And the following memories were really quite... unusual.
Or strange... or scary... or worse. There were so many words to describe what she saw, and yet none really fitted. After the lab she remembered the room with the machines. Now that she had seen it a few times she was able to draw comparisons with other, similar set-ups she knew of. It reminded her of the early computers on Earth, so huge they filled entire rooms. Except she was certain these computer-like machines were not primitive, but in fact very, very advanced.
Next she had seen another room, more like a workshop. She realised this was where her initial confusion had arisen. Her mind had tried to merge the two places into one, but they were definitely separate. There were other rooms, too, but she hadn't seen enough of them for them to make a vivid enough impression. The same went for the other people she kept seeing. Still just vague images, alien beings she could not identify amongst others she had seen before. She was certain a few of them were Martian, though no one she had personally encountered. And there were definitely the odd fish-like beings...
Plutarkians working with the mice? My head must be more messed up than I realise.
The strangeness of her visions, her memories and her dreams of these places, were constantly called into question in her reasoning. Charley was very well aware the whole thing could be a figment of her drugged imagination, or some kind of psychosis from being locked away and experimented on. But if they weren't the hallucinations of a crazy woman, then she had every reason to be feeling so uneasy about what she was seeing.
She felt sure that this time they had spoken to her, though like always all the voices were muffled and indistinct. Except for one. This time one had reached her. A computerised sound, a voice on a radio perhaps. Either way the digitizing of the message had somehow changed it enough to allow her brain to process it, and the words stuck in her mind now and she could not shut them out.
Perimeter down at target twelve... awaiting your command.
Charley hadn't been able to perceive the reply, whatever it was, but she felt sure that this 'target twelve' had just been blasted to pieces by whoever these people were. As she hadn't discerned any noticeable differences in and around the prison, target twelve was not anywhere she was within range of now.
What she had just witnessed, or else just been a part of, was perturbing to say the least. Every indication told her that somewhere, out there, a place had just been destroyed, and that she might even be responsible. Or partly responsible.
Were the Plutarkians using her somehow in their incessant march across the cosmos, a vehicle of knowledge, perhaps, or just simply as a vessel for a more clever mind to control? Had she given away vital intel to the enemy that allowed them to seek out their targets, or had she simply helped build the weapons that would annihilate them? There were so many possibilities, but however she had been used... whatever she had been used for... she had still been used.
Used. Abused. Corrupted? What else had her body or mind been put to? What other grisly tasks had she participated in? Or orchestrated?
Oh god... what if target twelve was Earth... or Mars... Oh guys...
The guys, she had almost forgotten them. Where were they now? Where they still looking for her? Did they even make it out the tunnels alive? Did they know what she was doing out here? That she was helping to destroy places, and people too no doubt? Were those Martians she saw in contact with them, relaying her evil deeds and turning her only hope of rescue against her?
She shuddered. There was nothing good she could make out of any of this.
Her mind would have gone on like this for the rest of the day had it not been for someone calling her back to reality. Limburger was finally up.
"Charley? Is that you?"
Did he just called me Charley...? Not meddlesome mechanic, or aggravating Earthling? Is that... fear... I hear in his voice?
"Yeah, it's me... i'm here... Are you ok?"
He was nodding and shaking his head, his words and expressions not agreeing. He said yes, his body said no. He said no, but he was trying too hard to look like he was fine. He clearly wasn't.
"Limburger... what did they do... what happened to you?"
He was rising from his cot, he was turning to face her properly. Something was different about him, but she couldn't tell what. Aside from the misery and the confusion she had not seen before on his masked face, that is. He was holding his stomach as if in pain. She wondered if skipping that last meal, the last two meals probably, had had a worse effect on him than she had realised. For a Plutarkian he was practically starving.
His rubber lips were turned down, his purple eyes watering. Pain and sadness. Fear, and disgust. He was rubbing his belly again. His belly? He had a belly now..? His stomach had been flat before he left last night.
"Uh... you got stomach ache?" He was nodding, she ventured further. "They... made you eat something bad?"
He shook his head. She could hear his stomach growling, he definitely hadn't been given anything to eat.
"Tell me, Limburger, what is it? What did they do?"
Charley had never before considered what kind of tortures a Plutarkian would mete out to another of its own kind. She had heard of humiliating punishments, like being forced to clean bathrooms with their tongues, or prostrating themselves before the high chairman in front of others, making themselves the focal point of verbal abuse. Heck, even the traditional greeting was a form of humiliation for some fish. She knew Limburger despised it.
The purple-suited man was lowering himself back onto his bunk, still cradling his abdomen. Charley pushed through her own pain and managed to haul herself from her cot, and staggered over to the barred divide between their cells. She lowered her body onto the floor so that her head was just above his mattress, and by his pillow.
He didn't lie down though. He sat back, leaning against the wall so that he faced her.
Secretly the woman was glad he had his shoes on, because the proximity to his feet was verging on toxic exposure should he remove them.
She waited, but still he didn't open up.
Charley didn't know why she did it, or how she could even bring herself to do it, but it had worked for her before with her friends, with her family, with anyone who had been in need of comfort. This nearly always broke the barrier, and allowed the dam of emotion to flow unchecked to her waiting ears. She was a listener. This was her way of helping.
Placing her delicate yet strong fingers onto his ankle, and giving it a gentle squeeze was all it took. The surprise on his face. It loosened his tongue, and the words began to tumble out.
By the time he had finished, Charley was glad she was not a member of this sadistic, scale-covered species. She knew that Plutarkians were capable of cruelty beyond anything she had known even amongst her own kind, and that it extended well beyond one-on-one physical harm and reached the levels of planetary devastation; cold and calculated theft, extortion, bullying, destruction, enslavement, experimentation. She knew of all that. Vinnie's mask, Throttle's eyes, Modo's arm. Karbunkle a mere pawn in the terrible games the Plutarkians played with other worlds and their inhabitants.
But the punishments extended to their own kind. Her hairs were standing on end just imagining it.
She didn't know what to say. She squeezed the velvet trouser leg again, before slumping back against the bars, trying to come to terms with the nature of her neighbour's present existence. And of her own. Truly, for both of them, this really had been a bad day. And his haunting recollection of his own experiences of abuse really had brought it home to her:
You humans assume that the other species on your planet are somehow lesser beings, that they do not experience the world as you do, and thus are less important, less deserving of your sympathies. What if I was to tell you that my species perceives the world much in the way the fish species on your world do? Would that make you care more for them, or less for mine?
What if I told you that our greatest fear is suffocation? Would you believe me? We have gills for underwater, we have lungs for the air. This is how we differ from Earth fish. But take either away and we are capable of drowning, or suffocating, just like you and your fish can.
What if I told you the scales on our bodies were as sensitive, if not more, as your finger nails? Sure, you can file and trim your nails without any feeling at all, but what happens when you rip one, tear one, pull one out? Does that not hurt you?
What if I told you that taking the wrong kind of bath, a swim in the wrong kind of water, could kill me in less than twenty minutes? I'm not just talking toxic waste here. You know we are resistant to many toxins, heck we even consume things that would kill most other species. But if you shoved me in the dead sea I wouldn't float, like you would, I wouldn't get out and rinse off the salt, and wonder at the marvels of nature. If I was even still alive, I would dearly wish I wasn't.
What if I told you that, unlike your fish I can hear despite lacking external ears, but like your fish I have a line of sensory organs down my body that are capable of detecting even the tiniest electrical impulses? Can you imagine what it would be like? You know how your eyes are hurting with the light now, after just a few months in half darkness. Can you imagine having a level of sensitivity almost 100 times stronger... do you think you could cope?
Limburger had paused at this point, closing his eyes and framing his face into a picture of torment. So far he had the woman's attention. He was getting her to think. There were things you could do to a fish that would never even cross a mammal's mind.
He had continued his tale in barely a whisper, the words themselves almost as hard to endure as the torture itself. He lifted his jacket and pointed to a bare, weeping patch of skin just below his rib cage.
They started here, first... then moved elsewhere. Just a few at a time. But that was enough. Then came the salt. Not enough to kill. Just enough. The wrap around my neck... I couldn't breathe, I didn't want to breathe in the salt, but in the fresh water bath I did, I wanted to so it could flush it out of my gills, but I couldn't. It was inside me, burning. But I couldn't breathe it out at all.
Tears were slipping down the front of his mask now. By the crystal trail left as the water evaporated, it was clear that most of the salt was still trapped within his bodily fluids.
He lifted his jacket higher, showing the wide-eyed woman at his side the tiny nodules tracing the length of his lateral line.
All it takes is a few wires, and a current. It doesn't have to be strong. A few volts. That's all they needed. It takes a lot more than that to upset a human, but for us, it just needs a double-A battery in the right spot...
If Limburger had stopped there, Charley would still have been left feeling sorry enough for him as it was. But the last thing he went onto describe made her heart positively bleed for him.
"How long have you got... 'til...?"
"About a month. Give or take a few days."
"And... will that be it? How bad...?" Charley was trying to decide if nine months followed by one excruciating event was better or worse than one month followed by potentially hundreds of excruciating moments.
"Depends. If they're from the spawning line it will be... the worst. From a brooder line, probably not too much worse than for anyone else... but still bad for someone like me"
"Which do you think it will be?" Charley was a quick learner, even his brief description of his species' reproductive strategies painted a good enough picture in her mind of what was going on.
"Knowing Camembert... probably a spawner. For me i'm sure he's picked a spawner."
"Jeez... and when will you know? On the day?"
"In a couple of weeks. By then the size difference... will be obvious."
Limburger groaned and rubbed his swollen belly. Even he had not considered his punishment would be extended this far. For some this might be considered an honour, bearing the young of the High Chairman, but he knew better. He was sure plenty of males had offered themselves up for the role, offering to take the place that evidently Camembert himself was unable to fulfil. But these males would all be from the brooding line. No male in their right mind would offer to brood if they were a spawner. And it was his own misfortune that he was a spawner... and that his boss kept detailed records of each and every family line.
After having his scales pulled out, his body burned by salt, suffocated, and then electrocuted, Limburger had been subjected to one of the most humiliating punishments a male fish could ever dread being given.
They had lain his naked body down on his back to expose his cloaca, which was sited much more anteriorly than the openings to some other vertebrates – though not so far forward as most Earth fish. Like them, though, there was only the one opening, and solid wastes and reproductive excretions all exited the same way, brought there via their own separate ducts. Like fish, like reptiles, like birds. But not like mammals.
In spawners, females expelled their eggs through this opening, usually into some kind of nursery pool. Spawning males would fertilise the eggs externally. If paired with a brooder male, the male would either use a specialised evagination of his cloaca to fertilise her internally before she spawned, or else he would use this organ to draw the eggs inside him, and do it there. Then it was up to him if he released the clutch or not. Brooder males had an internal compartment, a sort of womb.. or incubation chamber... which was also the part that extruded out to collect the eggs. It could pull back inside and contain the eggs until they hatched, and then the fry would make their own way out into the world.
For a brooder male, this was nothing really, for his body was perfectly capable of accommodating even the largest of clutches, and the opening to the outside could be consciously controlled by him if need be.
Obviously, brooder females usually kept their eggs inside their own chamber, but if for some reason she wasn't able to carry the young (if she was damaged, or sick, or too old) then she could pass her offspring off to a brooder male. The eggs of a brooder very rarely survived an external spawning.
Spawner males had no need for a brooding chamber, but still retained a vestigial pouch, and a rudimentary opening from his sperm ducts; though it could barely be considered an opening for it was practically fused shut. For this reason, brooder females were reluctant to partner spawner males. If something went wrong with her, it was unlikely that her mate would willing volunteer to brood her eggs. Surrogacy was rife amongst Plutarkians.
Now, whether or not Camembert was a brooder or a spawner, he wasn't likely to ever take on the role of pregnant father due to his high rank and political duties. And if his wife was a brooder, then unless she was unable to carry her own young, allowing her eggs to be implanted in Limburger made her just as sadistic as her husband. For she had to willingly force the eggs out of her in order for the transfer to be made, because surgically removing them was too risky for either mother or her offspring. There was no way Camembert would want to damage his own progeny.
The female fish had deposited her eggs into a container filled with a special fluid to protect the undeveloped roe. Limburger had seen what was coming, the eggs, the giant syringe heading toward his opening. The eggs were transferred into the barrel of the syringe, and a huge, large bore needle pressed onto its end.
Before they could go through the with procedure, a camera had been inserted to find the opening. It was no good going in there blind, they had to be sure the eggs were able to be deposited inside the chamber, and where the entry point for it lay.
The camera was bad enough, but the needle was worse. He felt the cold steel slip inside, and he felt the sharp tip puncture the fused opening. He felt it push further in, reaching into the tiny space of the vestigial chamber. A normal brooder would have a much larger chamber, but his was going to have to stretch considerably to accommodate such a huge clutch.
Camembert was watching the whole thing in exultant delight. His useless subordinate was howling with pain as the plunger was pushed, and as his belly began to swell. It was all the more enjoyable because it had to be done slowly... they couldn't take the risk of rushing it and rupturing the precious, tiny sac.
It had taken over half an hour to fill him, and afterwards he had been re-dressed and led back to his cell. Limburger had returned whilst his neighbour was asleep, and despite the desperate cramping inside his abdomen he kept quiet. He tried his best not to make a sound as he lay his trembling body down, and kept his mouth tight shut as he adjusted himself to try and get comfortable on the mattress.
He knew it wouldn't be long before he could tell if these were spawner eggs or not. Spawners tended to have larger young, as there was more space in a hatchery for them to grow than inside a brooding chamber. If this was the case his belly would swell faster, and when the time came for them to hatch, their emergence from his body would be one of the most unpleasant, most demeaning birthings in the entire cosmos.
And if he lived, he would no doubt spend the rest of his life bearing young for his planet's leader, because that was all he was now deemed fit for. If he couldn't provide resources then he would provide his body as a nursery. When he eventually outlived that use there was one more thing they could do with him.. and right now he wasn't sure if he really wanted to live long enough to see that day come.