by Tom Hansen
<
“I nearly died?”
He looked at her with a quizzical expression. “Uh, yes. Yes, you did, but that is no matter. Glory to the Frost Queen if we give our lives.”
He gave her a half-hearted smile. “Nothing to worry about. While there may have been some complications with the dosage, the initial testing I was able to perform on you during those moments was quite promising.”
“Promising?”
“Oh yes.” He grabbed a pad of paper and scanned over it. “Your body took to the serum quite well, I must say. Better than anyone else I’ve seen up to this point, in fact. It’s quite remarkable that your mind is this sharp following the initial testing as well, though I do have to worry if your brain cut off secondary functions in order to ensure survival of primary, so that might explain why you are so lucid now when previous tests showed noticeable degradation.”
He squinted at something on the paper then looked up and scanned her ordinals. “In fact, you have near-perfect traits for what I’m working on, but we still need to keep your magic under control next time I begin the full treatments.”
<
He pulled a tube from under her arm, scrutinized it, and tossed it to the side.
“I’m going to need more tubing, and double these restraints for the next pass. I don’t think we’re going to get another chance at this.”
In the back, a female assistant replied. “Yes, sir,” then marched out of the room.
The Translator stood, pacing back and forth, mumbling numbers and words to himself.
2201 looked around the room. It was still destroyed from the last experiments. Broken tables and chairs lined the walls. The middle was cleared of the debris as well as two doors. One door led to the hallway, while the other to a room. Two soldiers fitted glass into a cutout on that wall.
“What is the window for?”
“Huh?” The Translator looked up. “Oh, it’s just another observation room, should I ever get more than one patient in here. It will allow me to work on multiples at once.”
A thought percolated in her mind, but not from the voice. It was a memory, something she had seen with her own eyes.
A girl with red hair had been in that room.
She had screamed. She cried and begged to be let go.
She had locked eyes with her and hadn’t taken her gaze from 2201 the entire time.
Everything had gone white.
2201 remembered them replacing the window before.
<
“You did have multiple patients. You had my sister. Is she still here? I would like to leave with her.”
The Translator yelled for his assistant, and soon they injected her arm with more sedative.
As the drug worked through her system and mingled with her blood, she remembered the red curly hair. She remembered the cries of anguish. She remembered her voice, young and sweet, and full of emotion.
The girl had called 2201 something.
Something other than 2201.
“What are those?” Ynya panicked, seeing the red hair placed on the wooden desk before her. “Whose is that?”
The Warden picked up the hair with two fingers, holding the strand between them. “Oh, this? This is one of your sister’s.”
Ynya pulled against her restraints once again. “Whose? Whose is it? Finny? Meki? It’s too curly for Synol! Tell me!”
He smiled and let go of the thin hair. It fell, alighting on the book where he brushed it off and back to the table.
“Oh, Ynya. There seems to be a gross misconception that you are somehow in control. You seem to think that if you yell at me more, or demand that I give you something, that I will just give it to you.”
He picked up the hair once again. “I don’t have to give you anything I don’t want to, and right now, I have no desire whatsoever to give you any information.”
He turned, holding the hair out. “Take this to the sister’s room, we will need it for later.”
“Yes, sir.”
The guard left with the single hair.
Ynya fumed. In her struggles, the manacle had cut into her wrist. It was already raw from the Ordinations and it now bled. Blood dripped down the chair and onto the floor.
The Warden picked up the book and flipped it open. It was another of the registration books that Ynya and Synol found earlier.
“Do you know what this one is from?”
Ynya didn’t reply.
He snapped his fingers.
Two guards moved like the wind through the doorway, grabbed her head with a harness, and pulled it back so she looked straight up.
One grabbed a skin of water and held it up to her mouth.
“I asked you a question, but if you are not going to answer me, then I will have to assume the only reason is that you have a mouth full of water that prevents you from speaking.”
Ynya smiled.
“I thought you weren’t going to torture me? I thought that you were going to use other methods to break me.”
He chuckled for a long while, which turned into cough like it had before. After he caught his breath, he snapped, waving his hands around. The guards let go of Ynya’s head and left the room.
“Oh, you are going to be so much fun, aren’t you? Fine, but I expect answers, or I will have to show you something that is quite…unpleasant.”
She looked at the book. Given the strange handwriting and the ledger being upside down, she couldn’t quite make out what the words were. “It’s a ledger from the Hall of Records.”
“Very good, but it’s not the one with you and your sisters, oh no. This one is much older.”
“How old?”
He picked up the book, showing her the spine.
“Seventy years ago?”
He placed the ledger back down on the table and spun it around.
“As you can see, there are two names on this that might interest you. The handwriting is a little archaic, but we’ve since improved our teaching methods to ensure we’re not using obscure dialects anymore. If you read carefully, however, you might notice you recognize a few words.”
Ynya read over the page. Much of it was illegible, but three words stuck out, arranged over the course of two names.
“Talia Oblique and Nora Oblique?”
Chapter Nineteen
They dumped her back into the Pit as the 20th bell rang.
“Ynya?” Gustave pushed through the crowd with Tyrain in tow.
“Have you seen Synol?” She asked, picking herself off the ground.
Gustave shook his head. “I’m sorry, no. I spoke with her for a little while after they took you away but then they came for her, too.”
“He tried to talk to the guards, but they wouldn’t listen to him.” Tyrain interjected.
Ynya looked around. “What about Joanne?”
Both men looked dumbly at her.
“Dammit. Is there anything we can do?”
“Sorry, there isn’t anything. What did they do to you?”
Ynya scowled and paced along the northern edge of the Pit. She studied each door in hopes of obtaining any bit of information about where Synol was.
“Ynya?”
She whirled on Gustave, how dare he–
No. It’s not his fault.
She stopped pacing, willing herself to not move. “I spoke to the Warden while chained to a table. He threatened me a couple times, showed me a single strand of red hair, and some names in a book. That’s all he did to me for hours. He didn’t hit me, burn me, throw anything at me. He didn’t do anything to me!”
As she spoke, rage built up in her mind once again. Ynya was mad that he hadn’t tortured her. She worried that anything she had said or admitted to him in that session had been meted out on her sister in her stead.
Ynya couldn’t bear knowing that Synol had suffered instead of her. The thought was almost too much to handle.
Not knowing what was going on was the worst part. If they had just tortured her, then she would have been able to handle it, but the way things were going, she didn’t know what she would do…
“Ynya.” Gustave grabbed her by the shoulders and stopped her pacing. His massive hands were warm on her cool skin. They felt welcoming and caring.
Part of her wanted to ask him to pull her in, to hug her, and keep her warm. She missed someone big and warm to hold her and tell her everything was going to be alright. She missed her father.
The other part wanted to push him away, tell him to never touch her like that again.
She split her decisions down the middle. She stopped and stared at him.
“What?”
“Pacing and making fists isn’t going to do any good for Synol right now. Did the Warden indicate she was anywhere specific?”
Her mind stopped whirling out of control from the question. Had the Warden said anything of value? He had about her mother, but that was too much to worry about for now. She needed to focus on Synol.
She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“That’s a start. It’s not much, but it’s something. We don’t know where she is.”
The bells chimed for attention.
“1267071302! Time for your Enlightenment!”
“You have got to be kidding me, I just got back here.”
Gustave let go of her. “It’s one of the tactics they use. Sleep deprivation and continually calling you. They are trying to make sure you stop having any identity other than what they give you.”
Ynya balled her fists once again. “Well, then I’ll make sure to hold on to it.”
She marched forward, identifying herself to the guards once again.
As they took her from the Pit, she glanced back to Gustave and Tyrain. They watched her with sorrowful looks on their faces.
The soldiers led her past two doors and told her stand just outside of one.
A door opened to the side and two guards stepped out with Synol between them.
Synol limped out. A soldier to either side helped keep the weight off her right leg. Her matted hair clung to her face and shoulders. She had a bruised eye and a cut along her jaw.
Ynya’s heart sunk and she opened her mouth to yell. As she did, a gloved hand grabbed her from behind and pulled her through the door.
The hand cut off her voice before she could say anything.
The door shut, plunging Ynya’s world into darkness.
They wrestled her into manacles once again, and replaced the glove with a ball stuffed in her mouth that prevented her from vocalizing anything but grunts and groans.
Ynya had to be careful to not struggle too much, because she was barely able to breathe.
Finally, a lit torch returned the light.
The Warden sat across from her once again.
Two blood-stained rags lay at his feet. He methodically wiped four speckles of blood from his face before looking up.
“Fancy meeting you here, Ynya. You keep making friends every time you leave, so we’ll be sure to learn those names and bring them in for questioning.”
He finished with the rag and tossed it on the floor with the rest.
She glared at the pile.
He followed her gaze. “Oh yes, that would be Synol’s blood, of course. She doesn’t seem to be able to withstand my interrogation techniques very well and certainly has a lot to say.”
He stuck a finger in his ear and pulled out a rolled-up bunch of wool. “This helps, though. Constant screaming in your ears can really wear you down, don’t you think? One should really worry about their mental health in a place like this.”
He pulled a ball of wool from his other ear and dropped them both on the floor. “You know what I love to hear though? Laughter. And you know what they say about laughter, Ynya?”
He turned and placed his palm upright behind him, waiting for the guards to hand him something. “They say that laughter is the best medicine.”
He showed her the two large black feathers in his hand. “Now I don’t know where they came up with the phrase, because honestly, it doesn’t sound right to me. I would think healing magic is the best medicine, but what do I know? I torture people for a living, so maybe I’m wrong.”
“These were supposedly left by the Raven herself after a particularly bloody night here at the compound.” He struck a pose, with one hand on his hip and another on his chin. “Though it does bring up a question. If I am wrong, I suppose I will need to test my theory, right? I should test it until I have enough data to support my new hypothesis.”
He held his arms out and two soldiers helped him out of his red leather jacket. “I won’t be needing that for now. No point in wearing red leather if you’re not going to use it for hiding blood, right?”
He wiggled the feather in his right hand at Ynya. “Prepare her.”
Two soldiers stepped forward, grabbing her and wrenching her body straight while also doing the same to the chair.
Before Ynya knew it, she was tied to a stretcher.
They flipped it over on some unseen hinge, suspending her by the wrists and ankles with the stretcher to her back. They hoisted her into the air and hung her so she faced downward parallel to the ground.
The Warden approached her.
Ynya hung above him, the ball gag still in her mouth.
“It’s good you wear such thin dresses. It means I can get to your underarms easier this way.” He wiggled the feather at her again. “Oh, and your neck and feet. Yes, Ynya. I think we’re going to get a lot of data for my new hypothesis.”
Chapter Twenty
They put her back into the Pit.
Instead of storming in like she did last time, she walked carefully, arms folded. She took slow, methodical steps, like a mouse surveying her new environment for the first time.
“Ynya?”
She flinched.
“Ynya?” It was Gustave.
She turned to him, an uncontrollable shake in her jaw starting up the second she saw him.
She scanned his body. He seemed unhurt from what she could see.
She noticed Tyrain missing, and tried to open her mouth to speak, but words refused to come.
Ynya was too open, too raw and exposed. She wanted to hide, curl up, and pretend like the last two hours didn’t happen.
The Warden hadn’t hurt her physically, at least not directly.
Her lungs burned and her jaw throbbed from the gag she’d bit down on repeatedly. She’d spent an hour vacillating between biting down and opening up enough to get air into her lungs.
She’d rather have been punched in the stomach for two hours.
Finally, the words came. “Where is he? Where is Tyrain?”
The large man’s face grew sullen. “They took him away. I tried to stop the guards but they wouldn’t listen to me this time.”
Ynya nodded. “It’s because they know I care for him. They are going to take you at some point, too. Anyone in this place that I interact with, they’re going to take. It’s how he’s going to torture me. Instead of hitting or cutting me, he’s going to harm everyone I love. He’s going to keep me up all night laughing, or enjoying a nice meal while my sister is in the next room having needles stuck in her.”
Her body shivered. It started in the base of her skull and quickly spread through her whole body. Ynya couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control it. Her hands and feet shook so much that she wasn’t able to keep herself standing properly.
She fell, but not to the ground.
Gustave’s hands were there, holding her up. Those large, warm hands that never hurt her. Never hurt her sister or anyone else. Those warm hands that cared for his family, and tended to his younger sister when she came back a broken girl from her training.
Ynya was slowly becoming that girl. She was reverting. Time dripped away with every tear that fell from her eyes. Time she had spent maturing. Time she had spent learning. Time pulled away, threatening
to stay away forever.
The bells chimed once again.
“No!” She pulled against his massive arms, unable to budge them. “I can’t go back already. I just got here.”
“1267071302! Time for your Enlightenment!”
Chapter Twenty-One
She woke with a start as someone rapped her knuckles.
“You need to drink. I can’t have my star student get dehydrated, you know.”
Ynya struggled to focus on the man in front of her.
The Warden.
He didn’t wear red anymore, he hadn’t done that in a while. Right now he wore a fancy button-up shirt with ruffles and a vermillion handkerchief tied about his neck.
She sipped some of the water from the skin. It soothed her parched throat.
“Now, you know what I need to hear, don’t you?”
Ynya shook her head. “I won’t say it.”
There were three of him, swimming in her vision. Three Wardens. Each had a slightly different hue to the others as they spiraled around each other.
“Ynya, I understand that you are young and impetuous, but you have to understand where I’m coming from in all of this.”
He stood, pushing back his chair, then paced around the small interrogation room.
“I have all the time in the world to make you talk. I am not going anywhere, neither are any of the guards here. We can do this all day long. We have spells to keep us awake.”
He grabbed his right ear, shaking the lobe at her. “Notice how I don’t have the hoop through my ear. I can remove the hoop from your ear and you can wander freely around this compound without one too. All I have to hear are the words.”
He sat down, spinning the chair around this time, and folded his arms against the back. “How warm would you be if you had access to your magic right now? How much better would life be if you could keep you, your sister, and those you care about warm? How much are you willing to endure for something that will inevitably happen?”
He pulled a deck of cards from his pocket and spread them out across the table.
“I’m going to play myself a game of solitaire. By the time I’m done, I expect that you will have something to say to me. If you don’t, whatever suit I finish with last, will be one of the people you care about killed. Now, I can’t bring myself to kill off that big oaf, but I heard you met his younger sister, right? The failed Skarmyord?”