CELLS A2 AND A3
There was a dead silence, like all of the air had been sucked out of the cell. Bowman noticed it immediately when he woke up, even before he realized that he had woken up on the floor. Minutes with his eyes wide open and he still couldn't believe it.
No more beds. No more mirrors. No more cameras. No more cellmates.
And no food this morning. Even the ball was missing.
He lazily bivouacked into the A3 bathroom, compelled to it like a magnetic pull, his jaw hanging low and his tongue hanging out of one side. He passed through the white frame, leaving the vibrant glow of the cell, his vision narrowing on the body lying at his feet, the smell of fresh strawberries in the air.
"Good morning."
SUBJECT: SABRINA
SPECIES: MINK
CELL: A3
Sabrina felt warmth against her back. She wondered if this meant that she had been secured there for a long time, or if someone else had. She had to crane her neck to see where the voice had come from.
Snively, munching on popcorn from a bowl, smiled at her. "How are the restraints? Are they too tight?"
She twisted her wrists and ankles, seeing if she could work them free. She gave up immediately, sinking and trying to relax. "Yes."
"If they're cutting off circulation, then I'm wasting both my time and yours." He placed the bowl down on a nearby examination table, knocking a couple of instruments together.
Sabrina flexed her tail under her back, feeling a cramp warming at the base of her spine. She cleared her throat. "No. They're fine."
She knew what was coming, and felt the dead weight of defeat crush her. They were no longer bothering to announce the tortures, just picking them out of their cells at their own discretion. All of her muscles went slack under the pressure. Buster… how long had Buster lasted before he had succumbed to this?
"There's much fun to be had." Snively said, smiling so hard it looked like it was hurting. It was so exciting. "Do you happen to know how hot blood is?"
"… N-no…" Sabrina felt her throat go numb.
"Come, now, this is easy. You're a mammal. 90 degrees to 100. Fahrenheit."
"Fascinating." She was finding her rhythm quickly, listening to his droning voice and turning off her extremities. She could handle this. She could handle this.
"A shame about Holly's baby, isn't it?"
Not even that could bring her back out of it. "Yep."
"Do you know what it died of?"
"Nope."
He was smiling even wider. "So! I've tortured you before. Forgive me if I don't remember. All of you rodents look the same."
"Imagine that."
"But I do seem to remember the technique you're using. Real tough, practically impossible to get answers out of." Snively stamped on the floor and an unseen machine roared to life, sputtering underneath. "It's a good thing I'm not looking for any this time around."
She noticed for the first time the odd texture of what she was lying on. Porous. Tiny holes along the length of the table. She lifted her head as far as the restraint would allow, and saw Snively pulling four more leather straps out of his belt loop, holding them high enough so she could see. He came over to her left side and slapped all four down across her stomach.
"I'm not lying. There really is a lot of fun ahead."
The straps stung but it was kids stuff so far. She learned all of this before her thirteenth birthday. Stare at the wall, in this case, the ceiling, whatever cuts off the fear trigger. She felt one of the leather straps tightening around her left arm, near the shoulder.
"And do you know what Buster died of?"
Almost, almost, but, "No."
"Tsk, tsk, you do. Massive blood loss." He pulled the strap tight. She felt her pulse pounding along the length of her arm. "When you saw what was happening to him, just when you started screaming your head off, what was your first thought?"
It took her a moment to remember, but she didn't get the chance to answer.
"See, what I did, I punctured the carotid artery inside of his throat, with a hypodermic needle. The pressure running through that artery tore the hole open wider with every pump, and the blood had nowhere else to go but into his stomach. It was only a matter of time before he got sick. Neat, huh?"
"Mmm."
"You thought it was something else?"
Her heart ached and her arm felt like it was on fire but she kept her cool. She heard the sound of a blade dragging across steel.
"I envy you. I only saw it happen on the monitors. You were privileged enough to have front row seats."
Clamping her jaw shut, she grinded her teeth back and forth, trying to drown out Snively's voice. What came out of her was, "You let me live last time. Don't make the same mistake again."
He managed to understand perfectly. "I won't."
She felt the knife enter her wrist, and then it was overpowered by the explosion of blood escaping from three veins. She cried out through clenched teeth and hot spit gurgled at the back of her throat. Pain radiated up to the strap at her shoulder. She screamed for thirty seconds until her arm was dripping slowly, emptying.
Sabrina vaguely heard Snively sighing and saying, "Amazing, all of that fluid, desperate to get out because of that pressure, that muscle pumping stubbornly every second of every day; pump, pump, pump, determined to continue no matter what. I hope I tied the strap tight enough."
She lifted her head to look at her wrist. Blood trailed out of it and dripped through the holes in the table.
"I'm trying to eliminate that pesky muscle from the equation, as you can see. I wonder how long your arm can last without it. What do you wager? An hour? Two hours?"
No, no, no, no no no no he's getting the upper hand get it back, get it back, get it back-
"I think your leg will last longer. What do you think?"
She knew she wouldn't get that far. Her willpower was unraveling, her mind multiplying the pain in her arm by four, thinking about how much it would hurt…
"I told you this would be fun."
Get it back, get it back, get it back. Whatever it takes.
She met with Snively's eyes first. He waited for something devastating to come out of her mouth. When she stuck her tongue out at him, he almost broke character and laughed.
He cried out when she clamped her jaw back down and bit it off. She swallowed the back half of her tongue before he could get to her. She kept her jaw closed against his frantically groping fingers, and she breathed more and more air through her clenched teeth until the final remains of her tongue slipped back and blocked her windpipe. She felt blood running down her throat and Snively was calling for a medical 'bot's assistance and she grinned under his hands, scared but feeling great about it all at the same time.
"Good morning."
SUBJECT: SHIRK
SPECIES: RACCOON
CELL: A2
"I'm gonna cut you into a million pieces and send you to every star in space, motherfucker. You're gonna have to learn to breathe through your stab wounds."
"Heel, vermin, it isn't working. If you were a fish I'd throw you back." Snively was savoring the time he was spending with this raccoon. He didn't want to do too much to him, because he was such a good source of the tension in his cell block. A guy like Shirk was a walking wrench, constantly throwing himself into every gear system in close vicinity. "Shirk is such a stupid name, by the way. Was someone trying to be funny?"
"Your blood is gonna see daylight."
"Nothing sees daylight in Robotropolis." There would be no intimidating this one. He was all contracting muscles and no thought for the future, but Snively had anticipated that. "How long were you a kid before we ran you all into the forest like scared insects? Five, six years? I'm wondering, did you have any friends?"
Shirk thrashed and struggled against the restraints, chucking as many insults as his lung capacity allowed him. Snively ignored them all.
"Or did you ever get the feeling that your parents were just paying other kids to talk to you?" That was the ultimate test; the deepest seeds of manipulation were usually the first to be uncovered, and if Shirk caught onto the game early on, the rest would be pointless. "Operators are standing by. Remember, we're giving out special treatment to those who help us find more of your kind."
"Fucking waste of time…"
"Untrue. It's working like gangbusters so far. We have had several cases where we didn't even need to torture prisoners for information. They simply… give it up. I'm appalled at this, naturally, being deprived of so much sound and fury signifying nothing, and with so many more coming in, it's becoming… difficult to accommodate you all. Not to worry, though; everyone will be in their rightful place when the new cell blocks are finished. You might see us as evil, Shirk, but we don't go back on our word. Ever. Those who defect will get special treatment, they will be spared any future pain, and they will live long and healthy lives." He allowed an apologetic expression to surface, inwardly hoping it was convincing enough. "They'll just have to wait a little longer, you know? If that drug-addled, chemically imbalanced brain of yours is worried about what your cellmates will think, have no fear. There are several floors in this building. We can… relocate you… So no one will know. They'll think that I killed you."
An affirmative wasn't the point. The goal was to tell Shirk what to think without him knowing it, to give him the illusion of freedom. He wanted him to be worn down to the nub, so far gone that he no longer associated himself with his mirror image in the cells. Snively would watch day and night until that moment happened, and Shirk would no longer hold himself responsible for his own actions. Freedom really was a funny thing.
"Let's get this over with," the raccoon said, lost in thought.
Snively himself was eager to move on. He had already accomplished what he wanted to do, and in record time. "One more thing: be sure to ask your new cellmate how he liked it."
He went through the motions and sent the unconscious body back before lunchtime, stifling a yawn as he moved on. Just another day in paradise.
"Sorry I'm late. I just came back from lunch."
SUBJECT: SIMON
SPECIES: RACCOON
CELL: A2
Simon twitched and cried out when he felt the weight of the book on his chest, realizing he had been awake for almost ten minutes.
"I finished it an hour ago, just after you were brought here. It was what held me up. Riveting stuff, really."
The raccoon strained to see the cover. "What is that? Victory Tastes Yellow?"
"You certainly know your hardbound editions. Here, let me get that…" Snively took the book back into his hands. "This is the mink's, right? Sabrina? You can inform her, if you see her, that I kept her bookmark in place, so she can pick it back up right where she left off."
Simon didn't bother trying to free himself. "Thank you."
"… You're very polite. Simon, is it?"
"Yes."
"Hmm. Well, I appreciate your attitude. Do you mind?"
Simon suddenly felt himself forced into a sitting position at an alarmingly quick speed. The room came into full view. Trays at his right and in the far corner of the room, tubes and wires hanging from the blinding white ceiling, sinks everywhere, a door at the end of the room. Snively standing close by.
"As for the book, I thought it was okay," Snively went on, cradling the book in his arms and flipping through random pages. "A bit overrated, if you ask me. His previous novel, Consider Yourself Dead, was better, and I'm not just saying that because everyone likes this one, I really mean it. Personally, my favorite of his is Learn From My Mistake." A soft clap and the book was closed. "You strike me as a very intelligent life form, if you don't mind my saying so."
"None taken."
"We didn't find a lot of text books when we ransacked your village. I'm guessing a majority of schooling was done through direct instruction?"
"Yes… yes, that's right. Rotor, for me."
"Ah, sure, the walrus. We didn't see much of him running around the city, pretending to be useful, like your superiors."
"He primarily built the weapons. Catapults and trebuchets. You saw his handiwork."
"Again and again. You're here because I thought I should inform you…" He turned, narrowing his eyes and cracking a grin as though sharing a deep, dark secret. "Sabrina said the last thing she remembered reading was the scene just before the neon pulse." He ended the sentence as though it were a question.
"I… don't know, I've never read it. It sounds right. Ice down the back of his shirt, was it?"
"Mmmyes. Only… her bookmark is a good fifty pages after the neon pulse scene."
Snively let the facts hang in the air, but Simon seemed uninterested in them. "She might be a fast reader."
"Might be. I don't believe that, however. I don't think you do, either."
"What makes you say that?"
"Come now, your group has been worried about a traitor ever since you arrived. Funny that it's the first thing you animals think of. Your collective paranoia fuels hours upon hours of entertainment. You debate it quietly every day with others you think you can trust, constructing mind games and engineering defense traps, hoping to smoke out whoever did this to you, convinced for whatever reason that he or she is in your cell with you."
"… 'Or she.'"
"I'm only trying to help. I know that has to sound strange coming from me."
Simon rested his head against the table, trying to relax in spite of his awkward position, his arms raised high above his head and all blood rushing to his toes. "I have a theory."
"… Do you?"
He nodded. "None of us can remember falling asleep when you gas us. At first, I thought it was a side effect that you and the magnanimous doctor never bothered to rectify, but then it occurred to me: the average mammal's memory settles into long-term every fifteen minutes, give or take. That's why you would have trouble remembering if someone came up and hit you in the back of the head really hard with a blunt instrument, for example." Simon took a deep breath. "Now… fifty pages is a lot, I will say that, but Sabrina is a smart girl. I trust her. I trust her a lot more than I trust you, because in the end, it is you who killed Buster. Not her."
Snively silently stared back, teeth jammed together, looking sorely disappointed.
"And you're probably lying, anyway."
"Smart life form, all right…" Snively mumbled. "Something else I have to ask, to satisfy my curiosity… you end every just about sentence with 'sir' when talking to Tristan. Why?"
"I'm sure you do the same with the benevolent Doctor Robotnik." Simon ignored the hardening in Snively's features and continued. "Although… the respect I have for Tristan isn't because I fear him. I fear for his enemies."
"And here I thought there would be bad blood between us."
Another click and the table slammed back into a horizontal position. A headache was beginning to form inside of Simon's skull as Snively wheeled an instrument tray to the side of the slab. Everything sped up.
"You know, my enjoyment doesn't come from taking you animals apart…"
Simon, nursing the pounding behind his eyes, registered the glint of a long needle heading towards his neck.
"Putting you back together again… now that's a good time."
He was awake for most of what happened but didn't bother screaming in response to the pain. What would be the point, after all.
"Good afternoon."
SUBJECT: DURANGO
SPECIES: COUGAR
CELL: A2
The insults between the shocks became tiresome within the first ten minutes. "I'm impressed. No, really, I am. You have a very high tolerance for pain, and that's just more enjoyable for me."
"I'll make it to the end of this if it kills me."
Snively chuckled briefly before saying, "Have you ever heard of collective unconsciousness?"
"Sure, it's a bigger laugh than you are."
"Oh, I don't think so. Coincidences in this life happen far too often for them to be meaningless." Snively lightly patted Durango's leg. "Now, I haven't told anyone about it, but the game will be ending soon."
"You don't say."
"You can feel it winding down, can't you? It's running out of steam, and so are we. An experiment can only go on for so long before it's the same thing over and over again. You kids, you really surprised us. Your group has done the best out of everyone."
"This must be where we get the medals."
"It is amazing that it has continued for this long, really."
"You're flattering yourself. The year isn't even over yet."
Suddenly, loud, obnoxious cackling came out of Snively's gaping wide mouth. He laughed for a long time, holding his side in pain. "Please," he said, wiping away tears. "Please, don't tell me that you don't know."
Durango waited for it.
"The year is over, fangs. You think we keep you animals asleep for only a night at a time? Sometimes it's for three full days and nights. We feed you your minimum survival requirements and pump you full of drugs so you're dependent upon us 24/7. You think you have it so easy? Please."
"And now, you want me to be grateful for finally letting us go? No. No way. Even if it were true, I wouldn't thank you for ending it. You never should have started it."
"My, my, my, touchy all of a sudden-"
"I've been feeding you a lot of bullshit tonight, Snively, but I mean it when I say this: Don't let me live, because if you do, it'll be the biggest mistake you'll ever make in your life, which won't last much longer."
"How unoriginally bone chilling."
A mere flick of the wrist and Durango was thrashing around again, enough voltage running through him to power a microwave. Snively kept it on for so long that the attachments on the Durango's body began emitting white smoke.
"And for the record, I mean it when I say that if I had a choice as to which prisoners survived this experiment, I'd sure as hell make sure that you wouldn't be one of them."
Durango cleared his throat with one rasping cough. "Admirable."
"Still don't believe me? I've been torturing your friends all day and I haven't asked a single question about other freedom fighter groups. Why is that?"
"Because you're full of shit."
"Careful…" he said, wagging a finger back and forth. "I can crank up the amps and clot half of the blood in your body in under a minute."
"The truth is, Snively," Durango spat the name with contempt, "You're a bored little freak who's running out of ways to hurt his own prisoners, and you figure psychological torture is the next route. Only problem being… you aren't scary, and when you try to be, it isn't even funny. It's sad-"
The generator snapped and crackled and Durango thrashed hard enough to snap his ankle in half against the table. A fang broke off and flew out of his mouth. Lights in the room dimmed and came back to full.
While he regained his breath, he thought that he heard something. "What-tt was th-that?"
"I think you busted an eardrum." Snively touched the side of the cougar's head and stared at the smear of blood he came back with. "That must be a bitch to wash out. All sticky and flaky and shit. It's going to be even harder when we turn off your shower."
"I-I'm shocked beyond reason."
"The tenants have been complaining about the temperature of the water, so we're getting rid of it entirely to stop the complaints. I know it's your primary source of fluids, but don't worry, we'll keep the toilets running. For a bit." Snively had to stifle a laugh, working it into clearing his throat. "I am sorry. I'll bet death is sounding pretty swell right about now, isn't it?"
Durango licked his dry and cracked lips. "When do I get to speak to your partner in crime?"
Snively's hand lighted on the ON switch. His favorite moments in life happened when he hesitated. "Never."
SUBJECT: JENN
SPECIES: RABBIT
CELL: A3
"Jenn, I'm not going to ask any questions. In fact, I'm not even going to speak to you after I turn this on. But do you know what I am going to do? I'm going push this large spinning drill closer and closer to you, until it touches your fur. It's going to spin so fast that your hair will catch fire, and I'll have to pour some water on it to keep it cool. Then, once all of your fur is yanked out, or burned off, I'm going to push the drill even further forward until it breaks your skin, one layer at a time. I'm going to push it past your abdominal muscle wall and into your intestines. Do you know what then? I'm going to hold it there, just shy of your spine, and I'm going to bring the speed down a bit so that your entrails slowly twist, round and around and around. You're going to lose a lot of blood, I can tell you that much. And you're going to be in a lot of pain. A lot of pain. But, are you going to die? I hope not. I hope that you'll live through this, and you'll have learned something by the end of it. That, and honestly, stomach injuries freak me out. Seriously. I nearly faint at the thought of them. However, one way to relieve myself of this affliction is to completely saturate my senses in what I fear. Call this… therapy." He backed away from her and placed his hand gently on the power switch. "Ready?"
"Evening."
FINAL SUBJECT: TRISTAN
SPECIES: WOLF
CELL: A2
Already losing count of how long he had been by himself, Tristan was in no mood to dance. "Assuming your goal is to get information, what makes you think I'm going to be any different from the others?"
Snively continued on into the room, only looking up after he found the right button to press. "Because you're actually going to listen to me."
He pressed it. The restraints came loose and Tristan fell off of the upright table and down to the floor. His limbs didn't respond in time to protect himself from impact. His nose slammed into the floor, his head filled to the brim with stars.
"Two things." Snively said after a pause. "First: if you try to hurt me, a pair of SWATbots will be in here faster than your missing blue friend, and they'll separate every atom in your body until I am satisfied."
Tristan managed to lift his head off the ground as sensation slowly and painfully returned to his extremities. "Wouldn't dream of it."
"Second: if you try to run out of here, you'll escape. Nothing will obstruct you from reaching the forest, the Forbidden Zone, or wherever you'd want to go. But your friends… they will suffer greatly in your absence."
Tristan flexed his fingers and waiting patiently for the time to act. Until that moment, "I'm listening."
There was a brief hesitation, like Snively was relishing his triumph, before he began. "I've been watching you very closely, and I'm impressed with how you've maintained order. There were some tense moments but you managed to keep everyone concerned with their own well-being without resulting in the exploitation of their cellmates. They listen to you, hold you in very high regard. Therefore, I have concluded that you are the most useful member of your cell block."
"Useful to you?"
"To us. How you're all acting now is how you acted back in Knothole. You didn't get as good as you are overnight. You've had experience."
"And now, you want to know about the other freedom fighter groups." Lifting his head, Robert could see the all-knowing smile gripped over Snively's jaws.
"Not all," he said. "We've captured most of them, as you probably guessed, but that northern group… man! Slippery as all get-out. If you have anything you'd like to impart to me, I'd really appreciate-"
"Nope."
"It would be a great service-"
"Sorry."
"But we would be most inclined-"
"Not interested."
"You would see Holly alive again."
All blood flow ceased and Tristan's breath caught in his throat and weighed his head back down to the floor. He'd reacted as though he had been hit.
"She's only been dead for twenty four hours. The Robotocization procedure flashbangs a photograph of all brain activity, saves it, and restarts it under a new default, keeping old memories stored in a hard drive externally attached to the spine. With your cooperation, we could… give Holly a second chance. We could try, anyway."
He felt like he was coughing up blood when he finally spoke again. "How can you save her brain activity if it's been nonexistent for twenty four hours?"
"Tristan, this deal I'm proposing… it's going to require a bit of trust on your part. Similar to how I'm going to trust you on the location of the northern group. You wouldn't waste our time with a false location, would you? That would mean that we'd Roboticize Holly, but we wouldn't undo it. She'd go right to the forges with the rest of them. Humans dig deep, Tristan. She would be working for a very long time."
He and Holly had kept their relationship secret back in Knothole. Bad politics surrounded them, and they wanted their romance to be all their own, them against the world, no matter what. They did their damnedest not to become another tragic footnote in a long line of star-crossed lovers. Now, however, it looked as though their hard work didn't mean anything. Snively couldn't have known that they were dating in secret. They had been put together in the same cell by chance. Pure, dumb luck.
Fate stabs you in the back from the front, Tristan thought. This deal tempted him more than running out the door did, more than getting up and clawing Snively's eyes out as soon as he was able to. There was just one thing that was bugging him… "What about her baby? You wouldn't be about to save that, right?" Tristan managed to push himself up to a sitting position. "No deal. Find the group yourself."
Snively's full reaction was almost undetectable. He still wore that facsimile of an understanding expression, his hands clasped together, but in his eyes… severe disappointment or blinding anger.
It was worth it.
All of it.
Two SWATbots had entered the room to investigate the commotion but stood by, watching as the human snarled like a rabid animal. Snively grabbed his prisoner by the neck and tossed him into a table on wheels, knocking it over and sending torture instruments in every direction. Tristan let it happen to him, taking every kick and punch like it wasn't solid. Years of pent up frustrations were being let out, and oh was it exciting. Blood splashed across Snively's unblinking face as he slammed into busted lips, broken teeth, split skin, and very little resistance. Tristan was chuckling inwardly. He didn't think the guy had it in him.
Everyone was returned to cells A2 and A3 the following day. With new injuries to nurse and new information to process, they all thought to themselves that it wouldn't be boring again for a long time. Tristan and Jenn stayed in their beds when they woke up, staring at each other from across the cells. It appeared as though Sabrina had come back the worst, now unable to speak without her tongue. Durango and Simon felt bad enough to give her their food, smashing the rotten fruit in the bowl so she could eat it like a paste. Shirk retreated into a corner and kept to himself, shaking like mad.
Only Bowman was surprised that they had all returned. He managed to conceal his shock upon awakening, assuring himself that they wouldn't think a difference in the position of Holly's body was anything too weird. He could always blame it on his captors, if need be.
But Bowman almost jumped out of his skin when he heard someone say that they could smell strawberries.