Saeko collapsed as soon as she reached the second floor, unable to even move after the high concentration of alcohol that had entered her system. The nausea and dizziness was unbearable.
"Oh my goodness! Your face is like a tomato! Are you alright?" The door to Michaela's door swung open, and Shizuka dressed in sweatpants and an XL-size t-shirt rushed to her aid.
Michaela, who was dressed in a more revealing attire of hot pants and a tank top, placed a finger on her neck and a palm on her forehead. "No worries. She's just drunk. You smell that on her breath? That's absinthe, which I'm guessing Karena gave to her. There's a can of tomato juice and water in the fridge in my room. Fetch those for me."
"Right." She rushed back and returned with the two things. Michaela alternated between the two beverages, giving small sips of it at a time and carried her to the couch in the living room. "Is it normal to be this hammered after just one drink?"
"If it's absinthe, yes. It'll make a tequila with lime seem like kahlua milk. The weakest one is seventy-percent alcohol. Even if you water it down, it will hit you hard. Now that she's….well, indisposed, we can move on to the next stage. Let's see how she does against psychological warfare." Michaela's lips curled into the smile of a mischievous prankster, albeit a bone-chilling evil one.
Saeko's eyes snapped open as she turned frantically to check her surroundings, only to be stopped by the pain ringing in her head like church bells. She tried standing up, but they did not move. They did, but not separately. It was the same with her legs as well. They were bound together. And she could not see a thing. The intensifying humidity of her face made her realize there was a bag over her head. A small alarm was blaring in the back of her head, telling her to struggle, to fight, to run, something.
"Great, you're awake." She felt the bag being lifted off, but was still unable to see due to a blindfold. Even her hearing was fuzzy. "You took your time waking up after going out for three days. Guess you've never really played around with narcotics before."
Saeko tried to speak, but could only utter incoherent mumbles. Her tongue felt numb.
"Oh, by the way," the voice continued, "since you took your sweet sweet time to wake up, I had to….entertain myself with your male compatriot." The blindfold came off, and from behind, a gloved hand showed her the screen of a tablet. She scrunched her face at the sudden exposure to light. As her eyes adjusted, a cold hand grasped her heart. After several gasps of air, she screamed in horror as tears came tumbling from her eyes.
It was a half-naked man with a blood-soaked bag over his head, his outstretched arms and legs restrained and covered in every kind of wound imaginable. Much of it was festering. His hands were utterly broken, with both pinkies and thumbs flayed, shards of bone sticking out from the skin, missing nails, fingers, and toothpicks piercing the palm. The feet had holes in them with the drill bits still embedded in the flesh, and his ankles were charred black. And the right side of his chest had an all too familiar tattoo of the Roman numeral seven.
"No," she sobbed. "No no no no no, please….please let him go…." She tried to close her eyes and turn her head, but a vice-like grip of her head kept her eyes focused on the screen as the torture continued. Every hellish spectacle made her scream, sob, vomit, and scream all over again.
"I always start with the mind. Slooowly apply the pressure. You would be surprised how resilient a person can be. Despite how fucked up he looks, he's still breathing. But all it takes is a single push through the oblivion that is death's door. Let's see how long you can last, shall we?" There was the sound of a match striking, and Saeko sensed a strange aroma. A mix of what seems to be fresh parsley, coconut oil and chocolate. Soon she felt her consciousness sink into a deeper pit of darkness darker than the room she was in.
A familiar ceiling appeared within her sight as she opened her eyes. She was lying on the couch in the living room of the safe house, shirt drenched in sweat and forming a large puddle on the couch. "What the…..?" But the safe house was in ruins as if a hurricane had blown past it. Windows were shattered, half of the roof was gone, walls and ceilings were punctured with holes from debris. Everything was utterly destroyed.
This could not be real. Clearly remembering inhaling some drug, some hallucinogen before passing out, the only explanation was that this is a dream. A sick, twisted and utterly fucked up dream. Repeating that as if it were a prayer, she picked up the sword laying on the ground, the Murata blade.
"Enjoying yourself?" The fuzzy voice echoed. There was nobody around, but the voice was loud and crackled with static. "Fear is what clouds your judgement, even drive you mad. Show me who you are, little girl."
Saeko let a long, shuddering sigh escape. This was the first time in a long while Saeko felt true, murderous rage. If she ever found who this was, she would carve him up and feed him to the infected while he was still alive. With a bang, she suddenly felt a searing pain shoot through her left shoulder. The sound was something now all too familiar to her: a gunshot. She writhed on the floor as she gritted her teeth. The shot came from behind. Turning her head, she gripped the sword tightly to face her foe.
It was Ryuji. He had just tossed an empty gun to the side and was armed with a sword of his own as well. He was shirtless but instead was covered in bandages with blood seeping through it. His cargo pants were caked with dried blood, the sandy colored fabric now blackish red.
Saeko blinked, the sword almost sliding out of her hand at the realization that he was the one that had just shot her from behind. Even now, he was charging at her, sword in hand. The silver lining was that her dominant arm was still functional. Pushing him back with a yell, she stood up, only to be barraged by a series of quick thrusts followed by an upward slash. Two of the thrusts caught her just below the eye and the earlobe. She lapped it up with the tip of her tongue as if it were a glob of honey.
Strangely enough, her head was clear despite the pain, and her heart leapt with joy as their blades clashed. The strong stench of blood didn't bother her as much anymore.
She had practiced with real swords but only ever sparred with them about half a dozen times in her entire life and all of them were "staged", going through a predetermined set of motions. But this….this was different. She felt her nether regions heating up at the desperate need to slake her lust for carnage.
Without realizing it, Saeko began giggling like a little girl, the sword now no heavier than a feather duster as she swung. "YES!" She screamed, but her look of joy soon turned to a horrified realization as Ryuji's head fell hard and rolled across the floor.
Saeko's blood froze. The ecstasy washed away like a sand castle in the waves. The sword clattered to the floor as she realized what she had done, and to whom. Her heartbeat was going haywire. No, no, no, no, no. This is a dream, this is a dream, this is a dream this is a dream this is a dream wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wakeup wakeup….
Everything stopped. The daggers of pain caused by her heart stopped. Or rather, was stopped by a sword plunging through her heart from behind. "I warned you," a raspy woman's voice fell on her ears, "and this is the price you pay."