Post by Rose's Thorn on May 9, 2009 21:46:29 GMT -5
XD jk. Anyway. Here be the intro:
The underground lair was dank and had the overpowering odor of sweat, grime, filth, blood, fear and torment. Voices echoed against the cavernous walls, angry voices, pleading voices, and – almost unbelievably – bored voices. Stalagmites shot threateningly from the ground and stalactites loomed precariously over the heads of pa$$ersby. That ended though – beyond the caves were rooms: rooms that were empty save for a decor of various torture tools, victims, and captors.
“I ask again: are there more of you?” the vicious man with the hollow, beady eyes, the gravelly voice and the whip demanded.
The girl – no older than nineteen and no younger than fourteen – could do nothing but breathe heavily. Her lungs were aching with even the effort of dragging air into them and her head could only think: Please, no more of this, please no more, please, please, please no more…
The whip cracked down again on her back again and she let out a sound that was a cross between a scream and a whimper.
“Are there more of you? Answer me, you useless b!tch!”
She tried to speak, but her tongue was heavy in her throat, her eyes were watery, her wrists were chafing at the metal bands around them, and her back was shrieking in agony.
“N…y…y…” she tried to answer.
He cracked it again and again she cried out, falling into the chains that held her to the wall, using them and only them to support her body. She could stand on her own feet no longer.
An image crossed her mind: She could see the body of a boy in a separate room. He had dark skin, as if he was Indian or Arabian, and he was silent as…well, as the grave. He was strapped to a table and his limbs were limp and bleeding. His eyes were glazed over and his flesh was horribly bruised and battered. He was dead. There was no doubt of that. The same type of men who were threatening her were also standing around this boy, though they were not exactly the same men. They were simply cut of the same horrible cloth.
“At least he told us that they’re out there,” a short, grotesquely stocky man said.
Her vision swam back to the present and out of her vision of the future as the whip snapped against her skin once again.
Another man stood in front of her. His eyes were a dark, dark brown, so dark as to think that he had walked straight out of the gates of hell.
“Just tell the nice man what he wants to know, and we’ll stop hurting you, girl.”
Tell them what they wanted? Tell them that there’s more out there and let them all be savagely maimed like this, too? No. She wouldn’t have it. No!
“There’s…no…m-more…”
The man standing in front of her scrutinized her face and then looked up to the one with the whip.
“She’s lying.”
The whip snapped again and she screamed.
“Just tell us what we want to know. Are there more? Where are they? How powerful are they? What are they plotting?!”
In a fit of rage she cried out, “They’re not plotting anything!”
Oh.
Crap..
She’d just revealed exactly what they wanted to know.
That there were more.
The soulless-eye man grinned.
“Take her out,” he ordered and her last thought before the bullet pierced her brain was a vision of a bloody, bloody war.
-
“Where are they?!”
The demand was shouted into his ear and even beyond all the other agony for some reason that pain seemed to pierce through. He shrank back from the man.
“Where are who?” he yelled back.
“The others!”
Something metal – a wrench, he thought – clamped around her left pinky and the boy winced with the knowledge of what was going to happen. The wrenched closed and his finger throbbed – then it suddenly twisted and the shock rippled up his arm and his entire body felt the pain in just his one little finger. A cry slipped pa$$ed his lips.
“You know who I’m talking about!” he bellowed into his ear. “The others! The other freaks like you, the other mutants! The other sick blasphemies against nature! Where are they?!”
A club slammed down on his ankle and he screamed.
Francie… was what went through his mind.
Francie was the other “freak”, the other “mutant”, the other “sick blasphemy against nature”. His own sister. She was just six years old and had been bearing the power of invisibility since she was born. But she was the only other one he knew. Yet he knew there were more out there. He’d just never met them.
“I don’t know!” he shouted back. The club bludgeoned his leg again and he heard a crack that vibrated through his bones.
“Yes you do, you filthy little water-breathing mutant liar! Tell me!”
For a moment, he took in a deep breath and squeezing his eyes shut, expecting another blow to snap against another of his bones. But it didn’t. The captive breathed out and let his eyes flutter open.
A pair of eyes was staring into his own and he exclaimed in surprise.
“Are there more of you? What kinds of powers do they have? Where are they hiding? Are they planning to conquer us? Where do the powers come from? What is your weakness?”
The interrogations prattled on and on, demanding more and more out of him.
“Answer me!”
The wrench clamped around one of his three remaining fingers.
“I don’t know! I…there are more. There are more! But I don’t know where!”
“I know you know.”
The wrench squeezed tighter and the motion in his finger constricted as blood flow was stopped. He could picture his finger turning a deep shade of pink. His head was swimming with anguish and he couldn’t even think anymore. Francie’s face sat in his mind and he wanted so badly to not betray, but he longed to tell them where to find her, just for a reprieve from all of this.
“Won’t talk?” the man said snidely. The wrench twisted and he could feel all the nerves and control of the small body part disappear. Tears slipped out of his eyes, stinging them – yet he couldn’t rub them not only because his hands were bound but because he couldn’t use his fingers. Blood swam in his vision and he wanted so badly for it to be over.
“I…I don’t know…where anyone is…I don’t know…where there are more…”
“But you know there are more?”
“Y…y…yes…”
The man snorted.
Something heavy and blunt was being pushed into the tiny gill-slits in his neck, mocking his own special talent.
“Then there’s nothing else you’re going to share with us? Nothing else you’re going to tell us? You’re going to keep anything else you know ’til the day you die?”
“Which’ll probably be today,” someone in the background commented snarkily.
The boy didn’t move. Speaking may cause his neck to move, and then may cause the metal thing in his neck to rip his fragile gills apart.
“Fine,” the menacing man decided, “I guess I’ll take that all as a yes.”
He pressed the metal slab of whatever that was – a wedge of some kind – into his neck, through his gills, deep, deep into his throat, ripping apart fragile veins and arteries and nerves along the way. The boy’s breath started coming in short, stuttering gasps. His eyes swam with tears and blood and the room span with his dizziness. His throat felt closed off and stuffed up, as if someone had shoved a sock into his trachea. The pain in his neck was the very essence of pain itself; he couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, could barely even realize where he was.
He blacked out.
Shortly afterward, his breathing ceased.
-
The men from the room of the psychic and those from the room of the water-breather joined forces in a dignified, civilized meeting room, a far removed change of pace from where they’d just come from – although all had taken a detour to a bathroom for a shower before arriving.
“There are more out there,” someone said – one of the ones from the girl’s torture chamber.
“We found out the same thing,” said someone from the chamber of the water-breather.
“Did your group discover anything else? We couldn’t get anything else out of her,” one of the psychic’s tormenters remarked.
“No. But we think he was hiding something,” a man said disconcertedly.
“So do we. She seemed extremely untrustworthy,” another man agreed, his voice riddled with suspicion.
“Then it’s settled,” someone announced.
“Yep. Let the hunt begin.”
The underground lair was dank and had the overpowering odor of sweat, grime, filth, blood, fear and torment. Voices echoed against the cavernous walls, angry voices, pleading voices, and – almost unbelievably – bored voices. Stalagmites shot threateningly from the ground and stalactites loomed precariously over the heads of pa$$ersby. That ended though – beyond the caves were rooms: rooms that were empty save for a decor of various torture tools, victims, and captors.
“I ask again: are there more of you?” the vicious man with the hollow, beady eyes, the gravelly voice and the whip demanded.
The girl – no older than nineteen and no younger than fourteen – could do nothing but breathe heavily. Her lungs were aching with even the effort of dragging air into them and her head could only think: Please, no more of this, please no more, please, please, please no more…
The whip cracked down again on her back again and she let out a sound that was a cross between a scream and a whimper.
“Are there more of you? Answer me, you useless b!tch!”
She tried to speak, but her tongue was heavy in her throat, her eyes were watery, her wrists were chafing at the metal bands around them, and her back was shrieking in agony.
“N…y…y…” she tried to answer.
He cracked it again and again she cried out, falling into the chains that held her to the wall, using them and only them to support her body. She could stand on her own feet no longer.
An image crossed her mind: She could see the body of a boy in a separate room. He had dark skin, as if he was Indian or Arabian, and he was silent as…well, as the grave. He was strapped to a table and his limbs were limp and bleeding. His eyes were glazed over and his flesh was horribly bruised and battered. He was dead. There was no doubt of that. The same type of men who were threatening her were also standing around this boy, though they were not exactly the same men. They were simply cut of the same horrible cloth.
“At least he told us that they’re out there,” a short, grotesquely stocky man said.
Her vision swam back to the present and out of her vision of the future as the whip snapped against her skin once again.
Another man stood in front of her. His eyes were a dark, dark brown, so dark as to think that he had walked straight out of the gates of hell.
“Just tell the nice man what he wants to know, and we’ll stop hurting you, girl.”
Tell them what they wanted? Tell them that there’s more out there and let them all be savagely maimed like this, too? No. She wouldn’t have it. No!
“There’s…no…m-more…”
The man standing in front of her scrutinized her face and then looked up to the one with the whip.
“She’s lying.”
The whip snapped again and she screamed.
“Just tell us what we want to know. Are there more? Where are they? How powerful are they? What are they plotting?!”
In a fit of rage she cried out, “They’re not plotting anything!”
Oh.
Crap..
She’d just revealed exactly what they wanted to know.
That there were more.
The soulless-eye man grinned.
“Take her out,” he ordered and her last thought before the bullet pierced her brain was a vision of a bloody, bloody war.
-
“Where are they?!”
The demand was shouted into his ear and even beyond all the other agony for some reason that pain seemed to pierce through. He shrank back from the man.
“Where are who?” he yelled back.
“The others!”
Something metal – a wrench, he thought – clamped around her left pinky and the boy winced with the knowledge of what was going to happen. The wrenched closed and his finger throbbed – then it suddenly twisted and the shock rippled up his arm and his entire body felt the pain in just his one little finger. A cry slipped pa$$ed his lips.
“You know who I’m talking about!” he bellowed into his ear. “The others! The other freaks like you, the other mutants! The other sick blasphemies against nature! Where are they?!”
A club slammed down on his ankle and he screamed.
Francie… was what went through his mind.
Francie was the other “freak”, the other “mutant”, the other “sick blasphemy against nature”. His own sister. She was just six years old and had been bearing the power of invisibility since she was born. But she was the only other one he knew. Yet he knew there were more out there. He’d just never met them.
“I don’t know!” he shouted back. The club bludgeoned his leg again and he heard a crack that vibrated through his bones.
“Yes you do, you filthy little water-breathing mutant liar! Tell me!”
For a moment, he took in a deep breath and squeezing his eyes shut, expecting another blow to snap against another of his bones. But it didn’t. The captive breathed out and let his eyes flutter open.
A pair of eyes was staring into his own and he exclaimed in surprise.
“Are there more of you? What kinds of powers do they have? Where are they hiding? Are they planning to conquer us? Where do the powers come from? What is your weakness?”
The interrogations prattled on and on, demanding more and more out of him.
“Answer me!”
The wrench clamped around one of his three remaining fingers.
“I don’t know! I…there are more. There are more! But I don’t know where!”
“I know you know.”
The wrench squeezed tighter and the motion in his finger constricted as blood flow was stopped. He could picture his finger turning a deep shade of pink. His head was swimming with anguish and he couldn’t even think anymore. Francie’s face sat in his mind and he wanted so badly to not betray, but he longed to tell them where to find her, just for a reprieve from all of this.
“Won’t talk?” the man said snidely. The wrench twisted and he could feel all the nerves and control of the small body part disappear. Tears slipped out of his eyes, stinging them – yet he couldn’t rub them not only because his hands were bound but because he couldn’t use his fingers. Blood swam in his vision and he wanted so badly for it to be over.
“I…I don’t know…where anyone is…I don’t know…where there are more…”
“But you know there are more?”
“Y…y…yes…”
The man snorted.
Something heavy and blunt was being pushed into the tiny gill-slits in his neck, mocking his own special talent.
“Then there’s nothing else you’re going to share with us? Nothing else you’re going to tell us? You’re going to keep anything else you know ’til the day you die?”
“Which’ll probably be today,” someone in the background commented snarkily.
The boy didn’t move. Speaking may cause his neck to move, and then may cause the metal thing in his neck to rip his fragile gills apart.
“Fine,” the menacing man decided, “I guess I’ll take that all as a yes.”
He pressed the metal slab of whatever that was – a wedge of some kind – into his neck, through his gills, deep, deep into his throat, ripping apart fragile veins and arteries and nerves along the way. The boy’s breath started coming in short, stuttering gasps. His eyes swam with tears and blood and the room span with his dizziness. His throat felt closed off and stuffed up, as if someone had shoved a sock into his trachea. The pain in his neck was the very essence of pain itself; he couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, could barely even realize where he was.
He blacked out.
Shortly afterward, his breathing ceased.
-
The men from the room of the psychic and those from the room of the water-breather joined forces in a dignified, civilized meeting room, a far removed change of pace from where they’d just come from – although all had taken a detour to a bathroom for a shower before arriving.
“There are more out there,” someone said – one of the ones from the girl’s torture chamber.
“We found out the same thing,” said someone from the chamber of the water-breather.
“Did your group discover anything else? We couldn’t get anything else out of her,” one of the psychic’s tormenters remarked.
“No. But we think he was hiding something,” a man said disconcertedly.
“So do we. She seemed extremely untrustworthy,” another man agreed, his voice riddled with suspicion.
“Then it’s settled,” someone announced.
“Yep. Let the hunt begin.”