Exits
Inferior- 1.2
"You've developed quite a beard there."
"Bite me Uber." Jerrick snapped Seamus' remaining three left fingers with one quick squeeze. Seamus yelped.
"You don't hide your pain, you know you hurt, I know you hurt, why do you let this go on? You refuse to let the game end. Seamus, just tell me your last name and we can get down to ending all this."
"Bite me" a pause- perhaps he was considering the concept, that this was his own doing. Jerrick arched an eyebrow. Seamus continued, "U-ber", stretching his insult into two syllables. Jerrick broke Seamus' forearm into a piece for each syllable when he brought his fist down hard against the bone.
"So you've decided to continue going on the hard way. You really do need a shave kid." Jerrick adjusted the seat next to where Seamus lay immobilized. The sound of the Neitzchien's knife unsheifing made the little human shudder. Seamus' skin crawled as his captor gently began shaving the weeks worth of hair and stubble from his face. Blood dripped its fireball pattern on the floor, the table, and even splashed on the wall with a grand flourish of the blade. It could be called a very close shave in places. Jerrick moved the blade down, slowly scrapping the skin. When he nicked the bruised face Jerrick changed a nick that spilled a mere drop, to a scratch that lost a bit more as it oozed, and then to a cut that let red drip down his mudfoot's battered face. Seamus had cuts on top of bruises and broken bones that left him with misshapen limbs and quite a bit of pain. All that, and Seamus still had no last name!
Level 3 involved a sub dermal electrode. They were already using one to keep him awake at night. This one was much more powerful. The first shock nearly sent the kid into cardiac arrest. He was weaker than Jerrick had expected. His muscles jerked wildly and he screamed every time Jerrick pushed a little remote button. It was quite a display. "What is your family name Seamus?"
"Bite me Uber- Arggggg." The jolt left the boy gulping for air.
"What is your last name Seamus?"
"Bite me Uber." The boy gripped the sides of his bed as his body bucked against the straps that held him down. They had attached the main electrode under the skin at the base of his neck.
"BITE ME UBER!!" he yelled without being asked, Jerrick shocked him again.
Late on the 2nd day of Level 3 Jerrick caught a whiff of burning flesh. The electrode had burned out and burned a patch of skin on his victim's neck. "See that Seamus, you out lasted the electrode. I bet you are proud." Seamus rolled his eyes and smiled incoherently. This electrode stuff was not fun. Jerrick stitched another circuit into Seamus. "Luckily I have more." Seamus screamed. But not as loudly as before. In fact by the next day, it didn't hurt as much. The more Jerrick shocked him, the more he got used to the feeling. That was some information he would hold on to.
The boy was becoming a nuisance now. How could this simple kluge defy him like this? He was showing Jerrick up with this little act of defiance. Any other little mudfoot he had worked on had spilled their guts, begging for the sweet embrace of death by now. The areas he was delving into now were for the likes of enemy pride members and Caldarins. But Seamus still hadn't broken. He was stubborn and had nothing to live for if he betrayed his pathetic little rebel band. Once again Jerrick almost cared, before remembering that caring was not part of his job, (which was the basis of his financial security, which was the basis of his marriages, which had brought him his sons and daughter/ reason for living) and so the kluge needed to sing like a bird.
He couldn't claim the kid was mute- he was quite a screamer. But the only word he would provide was that one colorful phrase, "Bite me Uber." Jerrick punished the boy, severely, each time he uttered that distasteful idiom. Yet the boy persisted. He'd looked down on and bruised him, tried to scare and bleed him, and then fry his nerves. The mudfoot was simply infuriating.
Jerrick's supervisors were starting to ask questions. It was unusual that their "master extractor" was taking this ling to get results. Jerrick was running out of time and he knew it. This job held prestige and respect. Jerrick had just about won over a cute, young, third wife. That is quite a feather in the cap of a man with his weak genetic background. So level 4 torture began.
23 days by his count; Seamus figured he had been a prisoner in Jerrick's care fir 23 days. He'd been deprived of sleep, food, and water much of that time. The only people he ever saw were Jerrick and on exactly 8 occasions some sort of assistant to Jerrick, a Neitzchien Seamus had begun to mentally refer to as "Mr. Unibrow". It was Mr. Unibrow who would give him the water and bread that kept him alive. He missed Mr. Unibrow right now. The pain was catching up to him. Seamus had grown up in the camps; he knew hunger and thirst intimately. He'd been knocked around by random Neitzchien guards trying to act tough enough times in his young life. But even he had limits; he just wished they would leave him alone.
He was weak and he knew it. Jerrick was experienced enough to keep him from starving, or dehydrating. He could keep him close to death but still alive enough to torment. He was so weak he barely struggled when Jerrick tied a blindfold around his exhausted eyes. Then he felt his bindings coming loose for the first time in ages. But Seamus' heart didn't soar. He felt foreboding and dread. Jerrick had been smiling.
"Your last name Seamus?"
"Bite me Uber" he deadpanned. All Seamus felt was a new explosion of pain as he was whacked in the back of the head and crashed unceremoniously to the cold tile floor.