A young boy, no older than twelve, was led into a clean, metallic room, full of mechanical devices that seemed meaningless to him. He clutched a tattered ferret to his breast, and comforted her as he looked up in fright. Three doctors, wearing starched lab coats and uninterested expressions, methodically worked at whatever they intended to do. After the boy had entered, a doctor pushed a lever, silently shutting the iron door. He might have run, had he known what they intended to do, but he was at a loss, and all he could do was comfort his daemon and hope that the doctors and their machinery would not hurt him.
The nurse who had brought him in beckoned comfortingly, and the boy couldn't resist going to her, into her soft, gentle arms, and her blank smile. She helped him take off his old clothes, and cleaned him up, before putting him in a neat paper gown. The nurse's daemon was cleaning his ferret, tenderly, and he did not notice when the nurse, methodically, as everything was done here, threw his old clothes into a garbage disposal.
She took his hand, and led him into a wire mesh cage. He asked what this was for, and she merely answered that he had to have a routine operation that would not hurt or be much inconvenience. This, he drank in, and he obediently stepped into the cage, while his daemon hopped into a smaller cage on the other side of him.
When the nurse closed and locked the mesh door, he began to shiver, and he turned around in his cramped quarters, until he faced his life companion. The doctors continued to work, pulling levers, checking gauges, and doing other tasks the boy assumed were harmless. Then, all of a sudden, his ferret daemon began to scratch at the mesh, frantically, glancing above them fearfully.
Then, the boy saw what she saw, and his heart froze. Above he and his daemon, between their two mesh cages, was a silver blade. Realization dawned on him like the moment before a terrible storm. They were going to separate him from her. He began to claw at the cage like she was, before he turned and tried to break open the door, but though the mesh was light, it was sturdy.
Thoughts raced through their little minds, of frivolous games that they had enjoyed so much, of long evenings lying on soft grass and talking with each other. All of this would end in less than a moment. He let out a piercing scream, full of anguish and pain, loss and heartbreak. He would never be so close to his dear Leticia again, not even if they survived, for it would never be the same as it had been. She would never see him the same way again, his usually reserved figure, his dreamy eyes when he talked of his plans for their future.
Andrés shrieked, but his yells rebounded off the metal walls, making no more than a whisper in the silent halls of Chillido. The Spanish Inquisition had taken hold, and here, in the town of Cartegena, it had established a dreaded Station, doing what had been done in Bolvangar five years before, a process called "intercision".
Then, as if the world had suddenly slowed, Andrés, out of the corner of his eye, saw a doctor pull a lever. The boy had no idea how he knew that this was the lever that would end it all, but he did, and he struggled, and tried to free himself, all the while staring up at the blade, which shivered, and hovered above his head, before slicing down, cleanly cutting away the lifelong bond between human and daemon.
The nurse looked blandly at the slumped body of the boy, and noted that the daemon had vanished, before unlocking the door and tossing the corpse into the garbage.
