*TRIGGER WARNING*

The Legionaries brought the wastelander women back with them to camp. They bound their feet and carried them on their shoulders. One of the women, the larger blonde one, wouldn't stop shouting obscenities at them until Reave punched her in the eye. The smaller brunette could only watch the Legionaries march in quiet horror. It was morning when they made it back to camp. Julia had already managed to fall asleep, although she hadn't slept for long before her brother came back to the tent. He smelled overwhelmingly of blood and dirt, and he fell onto his bedroll in a dead sleep.

She awoke promptly before sunrise. Her brother was still asleep. She got up and inspected the camp. The women they'd captured the night before were being kept separate from the slaves, captures not yet broken. They had been fitted with explosive collars even though they were bound completely, chained to a large boulder. When Julia awoke they had just fallen asleep of exhaustion, the brunette resting her head on the blonde's shoulder.

Julia didn't have any special compassion for the women, noting the polka-dot track marks on their arms, their sunken eye sockets, the greasy sheen around their lips that came from habitual jet huffing. The signs of drug abuse. She was sorry they had been captured by the Legion, certainly. Nobody deserved to be made slave to the Legion, not even junkie raiders. But Julia had danced with the Legion many more times than these women, had been in much more vulnerable situations and not only had she avoided capture but had handily come out on top of every encounter. She pitied these women the Dead Souls had captured, to be sure. She pitied their weakness and stupidity.

Her policy was usually to free captures, if it was convenient. She didn't bother with the slaves. Slaves were already broken, they weren't made to wear collars and most of the time they were capable of leaving on their own. They just didn't know how to be free anymore.

Julia had never seen a capture broken before, but she had seen the aftermath time and time again. Legion slaves ceased to be people, ceased to be autonomous creatures and ceded all identity to their owners. Julia imagined it took a lot of evil to destroy someone so completely, to annihilate a consciousness so thoroughly. The time it took to break people into shells was so great and the people so numerous the consolidating of slaves had considerably slowed the Legion's progress across the southwest. The Legion would be able to reach the west coast in a year if every new conquest didn't necessitate the breaking of a new batch of slaves. Julia didn't really want to see what breaking a capture looked was like, but she couldn't free these women for fear of blowing her cover.

She waited for her brother to wake, which he did a few hours later. He awoke with a broad grin on his face, an undisturbed and untroubled sleep behind him. He was quite clearly proud of himself for having killed three men the night previous, although he did not bring it up to his sister. He ate a lot for breakfast, mantis eggs and freeze-dried apples. When he was finished with breakfast he did inspection, looking over his men from toe to tip, informally chiding them for breeches of uniform. He was in good spirits, awaiting the arrival of the centurion and the rest of the centuria. They were expected in two days time. Today, though, they were going to begin breaking the captures. Mortuus discussed with Reave how to do it.

"We could just keep 'em tied to the rock," Reave said, but Mortuus waved his suggestion away.

"No, no good. I say we get the poles," Mortuus was well-versed in the breaking of captures, and had learned in his own way to really make it potent. He'd studied under the Legate, after all, and no man was more skilled at breaking captures than the Malpais.

They got the slaves to set up the poles, spacing them out about three and half feet apart and pounding them into the ground with sledgehammers. The poles themselves were roughly six feet high, necessitating the use of a ladder to pound them into the ground. All throughout the day the sound of the sledgehammer rang through the camp. Ting, it hit metal. Ting, it struck again. Like the uniform ticking of a clock it rang, ting, as the metal was driven deeper into the earth.

Every strike chimed an omen of doom, a countdown to Julia knew not exactly what but she dreaded it like the chiming of the metal, ting, signaled her own death.

The slaves finished pounding the four metal poles, ting, into the ground at dusk. Tingggg, the final blow heralded doom, and the dispositions of all the women in the camp reflected as such. The captures grew more desperate with each blow of the hammer, whispering frantically to each other and even begging to be released, pleading and crying. Julia grew more ashen and withdrawn as the slaves worked, playing with her coat to keep herself occupied and grasping each of her weapons to reassure herself. The reactions of the slave women of the camp, who were the majority of slaves, were by far the most troubling. The slave women had not once expressed a single emotion since Julia arrived in camp, eternally grim-faced and downcast. They never talked amongst themselves in any way Julia could see, yet now they were exchanging glances, grouping together and watching the captures, sizing them up. Julia chillingly realized they were not deciding how the new captures would react to the breaking process, but whether the two women would survive at all. Surprisingly it seemed the blonde, the louder and bolder of the two, was not given good odds.

The Legionaries all shared looks of carnal jubilation at the prospect of breaking new captures. As the day wore on the ghoul Scratch even began to salivate, as a hungry dog might. They all licked their lips at every ting of the hammer.

Julia was not specifically banned from observing the breaking of new captures, but she was not invited either. It seemed to her she was just expected to be there, that she would want to be there to watch whatever they did to the two women. She decided to observe discreetly, so as not to betray her true feelings about the matter unconsciously, and in the likely event that she would rather leave.

They unchained the women from the rock. They were weak from not eating or drinking the whole day, and they were starting to get withdrawals. They tried to fight back even still, but they were forced to the ground, three men to hold them down each. They cut the women's clothes off with a knife, lasciviously groping at their bodies. The blonde defiantly cursed the Dead Souls, but both were soon totally naked.

Their arms and legs were bound with leather belts to the metal poles, stretching them like animal skins between the rods, leaving them exposed and vulnerable. The Dead Souls withdrew, forming a semi-circle around them. The slaves completed the circle, so that the women were surrounded. The captures stood naked and humiliated, the blonde screaming insults and foaming at the mouth while the brunette simply hung her head in shame, desperately trying to deny her reality.

Julia heard the heavy footfalls of her brother as he approached the circle. He stood looking from woman to woman before approaching the spitting and screaming blonde. She spat on his chest and called him a faggot, to which he yanked her head back by her hair and hissed something Julia couldn't hear in her face.

"Junkie whore," Mortuus Anima called the woman through clenched teeth. She winced in pain. Her hair pulled free in Mortuus' grasp. A sign of malnutrition, not that he cared. He unbuckled his belt with one hand, letting his pants fall around his ankles. He stared directly into the woman's eyes, relished her horror as he grasped his member and thrust it upwards inside of her body. She shrieked.

Julia looked away at the first thrust, unable to watch. She felt nauseous. She retreated away and threw up.

The blonde continued to shriek as the Dead Souls hooted and hollered, laughing as Mortuus raped her. Julia couldn't watch anymore but she could tell by hearing that once finished with the blonde her brother started raping the brunette while one of his men without pause started to rape the blonde. She shrieked until she was completely hoarse, while the brunette was mostly silent through all eight assaults. Occasionally she burst into a jagged sob. The Legionaries laughed and reveled, taunting the women and sometimes beating them about the face and chest. Julia silently cried the entire time, hugging herself and wishing she were anywhere else but she couldn't move.

The very worst thing she'd ever seen a Legionary do had been done by her own brother.

Each man had his way with the women, ending with the ghouls. When they were finished they left the women there, naked and bruised, bodies soiled by ejaculate. They were left splayed out, unable to fall to the ground for the bonds holding their arms up. Julia watched them once it was over. The blonde was completely catatonic, the brunette continued to sob and weep over her own broken body. The slaves wetted the women's brows, pouring some water into their mouths possibly out of pity, although more likely as commanded given the ritual, practiced way the rapes had commenced.

"You missed the breaking today," Mortuus told his sister when she finally returned to the tent.

"Oh," Julia said. "It's over?" she asked him, totally numb.

"Ah, naaah. We just did the first tonight. We're leaving 'em out for the centuria," Mortuus grinned. He was pleased to welcome his commander with captures to break. He knew it would earn him commendation.

After her brother fell asleep, Julia slipped out of the tent and made her way to the captures. The blonde was still in paralyzed shock, but the brunette was completely dehydrated from crying and looked at Julia mournfully as she approached. She said nothing and her gaze soon fell. She slumped over as much as she was able.

"What are your names," Julia whispered to her. The brunette stared at Julia in wearied contemplation, as though she had forgotten her own name already.

"My name is Rose," she said in a cracked whisper. She gestured to her companion, "Her name is Hope."

Julia stayed with Rose for awhile, cradling her broken body and resting her forehead on Rose's forehead, Julia weeping the tears Rose no longer could. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she whispered to Rose again and again, stroking her hair and rocking back and forth gently.

Julia wiped away her tears, letting Rose go to slump over defeated again.

"Rose, I want you to know, the Goddess watches over you always," Julia whispered in her ear, quietly giving her an overdose of Med-X while stroking her face. She then apologized to Hope, stroking her blonde hair and giving her an apologetic kiss on the forehead. "The Goddess watches over you, Hope," she said, giving her too a lethal dose of pain killer. Soon Hope and Rose fell asleep and quietly died. Julia wept silently over their lifeless shells, still unable by the bonds of the Legion's leather to fall to the ground.