The door to my cell creaked open and I stepped into the corridor.
I reached down to pull off my ring when the King offered me some quick advice. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he suggested. “I deactivated the disruptor, so you’ll have your powers back for the time being...but if you remove it, the charge goes off. You won’t be much good to us if you get blown to sticky little chunks.” He let out a hearty laugh as he trudged back up the stairs. “And Morton hates scrubbing sticky chunks off the stone. I’d never hear the end of it.”
“Wow,” Dawson whispered once his father was out of earshot. “I don’t know how you talked your way out of that one.”
I didn’t either, to be honest, but I still wasn’t completely out of danger. If I failed to read the fire woman I’d be tortured and killed, and if I did manage to get some information out of her, there was no guarantee it would be worth trading for my freedom – assuming His Royal Capriciousness didn’t have a sudden change of heart.
“You can go now,” the King shouted from the top of the staircase. “Dawson, take her to the Tyrant...and when you have a moment, please let Morton know there’s some broken glass down there.”
Chapter Seven
After trekking through the castle’s persistently dank underbelly, Dawson and I arrived at an imposing steel door. It was a round, dense monstrosity as thick as it was high. Someone had left it slightly ajar, allowing a sliver of white light to seep into the torch–lit hallway.
Dawson reached out and grasped the edge of the door with both hands. He pulled it open to reveal a short, narrow man with a neatly trimmed mustache and a slick of dark hair.
“Ah, Master Dawson,” the man chimed in a posh British accent. He was in the process of tying on an apron, covering the front of his pastel blue dress shirt and white linen pants. “Always a pleasure to have you down in these parts. Don’t get many visitors in this wing, now do I?” He glanced at me and winked as if I should have known what he was talking about.
“This is Tyler Grant,” Dawson said. “Although some people call him ‘The Tyrant’.”
“I have no idea what could have earned me that dreadful nick name,” Tyler replied innocently, but with a glint of mischief dancing in his eyes. “And who is this lovely young lady?” He flashed a set of pearly teeth and stepped out into the hall, taking me by the hand. Referencing me as ‘young’ came off as a little odd since he looked to be in his mid–twenties, no older than I was. “Let’s have a look at you, then.” He spun me in a pirouette as if we were dancing. “This is quite the fine specimen, Dawson: high cheekbones, symmetrical features...I’m thinking her lineage is relatively local. Finland? Sweden, perhaps?”
“My parents were both Icelandic,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “And what’s it to you?”
He chuckled to himself as he unbuttoned his sleeves, rolling them to his elbows. “Ah, I’m sorry. Occupational hazard, I’m afraid. I am simply fascinated by different cultures and backgrounds – distinctive facial features, bone structures. I’d like to have all of them in my office at some point. A man and woman from every country in the world.”
“Your...office?” I glanced over his shoulder at the door he’d emerged from.
Tyler folded his arms loosely across his chest, flashing Dawson a wide grin. “I know what’s going on, you sly devil.”
“You do?” Dawson said, perplexed.
“Picking up a commoner, trying to impress her with a tour of the lower east wing...you wouldn’t be the first.” Tyler’s eyes met mine and he flashed his teeth once more.
“No, it’s not like that,” Dawson blurted out, the heat rising in his face. “She...it’s just not at all the situation. My father...er …the King … well, he told me to keep an eye on her, so it’s –”
“All right, all right, all right,” the mustached man said, holding both hands up in mock–surrender. “I’m not one to get in the way of a romantic escapade, no matter how...unique it might be.” He turned and stepped back into the room and we followed. It was empty. No furnishings, no windows – just a second steel door at the far end, identical to the first.
Tyler strolled towards the second door, pressing his hand into the surface. “One, one, three, eight,” he announced, causing it to chirp and swing open.
We entered behind him and the pitch-black room illuminated, detecting our presence. It was like the room we’d just left, but this space was outfitted with a table in the center – a long gray slab I’d imagine a mortician would use – and strapped to it was a girl. Naked, pale, her soft features obscured by a waterfall of red locks, and her limbs colored with angry purple welts. It was the intruder. The fire woman.
Tyler leaned in and brushed the hair from her face, revealing vacant green eyes. They lolled back into their sockets, unable to maintain focus. She was fading in and out of consciousness. “Now this is a specimen,” he announced. “Scottish and German ancestry, if I had to guess. But it’s her superhuman ability that’s fascinating. She can’t burst into flames anymore thanks to our disruptor ring, but her healing abilities? Incredible! I’ve already sliced and stabbed her with every tool at my disposal, and you’d barely know it by the looks of her. Sure, she’s a little black and blue, but every single cut has mended on its own.”
“Stabbed?” I whispered, my eyes transfixed on the prisoner.
“Toolbox,” he shouted, prompting a portion of the wall to slide open, revealing an arsenal of medieval torture devices. They were all neatly displayed as if ready to be photographed; curved blades, syringes, hammers, tongs – some still dripping with crimson, dotting the white metal floor. “Well this is unacceptable,” Tyler groaned, kneeling to inspect the blades. “The cleaners were supposed to sterilize all of the equipment prior to my second session. I’m going to have a word with Morton about this.”
“What has she told you?” Dawson asked.
“Not a great deal,” Tyler replied. He stood and walked towards the slab, leaning in towards the girl. He used a thumb to prop open her eyelid and produced a pencil–sized flashlight from his pocket, flashing it in her pupil. “She’s resistant. I have no idea how she’s holding on for so long, but it’s remarkable.”
“She’s a person,” Dawson insisted. “Not just some science experiment. We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“She’s an intruder,” Tyler was quick to correct him, clicking off his light before tucking it into his shirt pocket. “And you’d be wise to remember that. If your father hears you speaking this way he might think you’re sympathizing with the enemy.”
Tyler yanked a pair of white plastic gloves from his back pocket and snapped them over his hands, strolling towards the wall full of blood–stained weapons. “I’m going to get started. Would either of you care to stay and watch? I don’t mind an audience while I work.”
“No, thank you,” I was quick to reply, holding up a hand.
His eyes immediately snapped to my thumb, and the pulsing red ring that encircled it. “Wait,” he asked, “are you a prisoner?”
“No,” Dawson said. “Well, not exactly. She arrived just before the superhuman, and –”
“But she’s wearing a suppression ring,” Tyler interrupted, extending a finger towards me, “which means she’s not only a superhuman herself, but she’s in royal custody.”
Dawson shrugged awkwardly – his gesture made even more awkward by the fact that he was buried beneath plates of armor. “If you want to get technical, then yes, I guess she is.”
“Fascinating,” he whispered. Tyler turned and pulled a pair of long, jagged blades from the wall, rubbing them together is if he were about to carve a Thanksgiving turkey. “Well, if you are planning to stay I suggest aprons. You wouldn’t know it thanks to the cleaners, but after the first session this room looked like a Picasso painting.”
“We have orders from father.” Dawson motioned towards me. “Brynja here is going to read the prisoner.”
“Read?” Tyler replied suspiciously.
“B
rynja can read minds,” Dawson explained. “She’s going inside the fire woman’s head to figure out when the next attack might be.”
“Hmm ...” Tyler stared at me, humming and hawing as he drummed the tips of the blades into the edge of the table. “You see, I could take your word for this, but you know how the King is a stickler for paperwork. Do you have a royal decree signed by His Majesty, authorizing this amateur interrogation?”
“We don’t have time for this,” Dawson shouted, his voice strained. “We’re completely defenseless, and everything is down: shields, EMPs, CDUs; Taktarov could fly in here right now with an army of superhumans and we’d have nothing to fight him with. The only things that are working are the disruptor rings, and something tells me he won’t let us put one on him if he decides to show up.”
The fire woman groaned. The skin at the corner of her lips danced, curling at the edges. She was trying to manage a smile.
“Is something amusing?” Tyler asked. He leaned in and pressed the serrated blades to her throat, hard enough to send a trickle of blood rolling down her neck.
“You can dissect me if you’d like,” she hissed, eyes blazing with defiance. “I won’t breathe a word.”
“That’s the interesting thing about my line of work. You see, everyone bleeds, and everyone feels pain. Some more than others, but there is always a breaking point.” Tyler pulled the blade away from her neck and skewered her abdomen, so suddenly that it went through her back and scraped the table below. “There’s always a button you can press...and if you press it enough times ...”
Her screams filled the room, intensifying as Tyler twisted the blade.
I didn’t care how much the humans hated the superhumans and vice versa – this was getting us nowhere. “Enough!” I screamed. “The King promised me a chance and I’m taking it, right now. If it doesn’t work you can torture both of us.”
The Tyrant paused mid–twist. “Really?” he said, cocking a dark eyebrow. “That is an interesting proposition. Two beautiful specimens in the same day?”
“I’ll hop up on the table myself,” I promised. “Now please pull the sword out of this woman’s belly button and let me try it my way, okay?”
Tyler glanced down and actually laughed. “Oh, right.” He yanked out the blade, splashing his apron with a ribbon of blood. “She’s all yours.”
Chapter Eight
Every memory in this girl’s head was purely innocent: walking along the beach in Croatia, shopping for a new toaster after her old one caught fire, selfies she took next to the spaghetti dinner she’d just ordered, posting pictures of her cocktail, more of her dessert...how many pictures does one need to take of a single meal? And who are these pictures even for?
With my palms pressed into the fire woman’s temples I squinted my eyes shut, trying to force my way into her subconscious. It was a lot tougher than usual. If I’m within a couple of meters of someone I can typically read their thoughts; nothing deep or meaningful, but usually what’s floating around on the surface. To get in really deep? I need to make contact. That usually allows me a backstage pass to all the filth and debauchery: details of late–night chat sessions, the dark fantasies, the selfies they took that are most definitely not food–related. You know, the good stuff.
I was doing everything right: physical contact, deep concentration, but this girl was giving me nothing. And it wasn’t by coincidence. If she’d teleported into a castle and tried to kill a bunch of people she wasn’t a saint – that much I already knew. She was focusing her mind on all the fluffy, candy–coated memories because she was trying to hide all of the secrets.
“I can’t work with any of this,” I grumbled under my breath.
“Well time is running out,” I heard Dawson say, his voice panicked. “My dad is going to want results, and if –”
“I know,” I snapped, keeping my eyes forced shut. “Just keep your pants on for a second. I’ve never run into this kind of resistance before.”
“She’s conditioned,” Tyler said matter-of-factly.
I opened my eyes, turning to face him. “Conditioned for what?”
“Some of Taktarov’s followers are conditioned to endure torture,” Tyler explained, casually buffing a stain out of his blade with a damp rag. “Rumor has it the Manticore Uprising even trains their spies to withstand mind control. If I had to guess? She’s an expert at keeping people out of her head...people like you, not to put too fine a point on it.”
The interrogation room’s heavy metal door swung open, hitting the wall with a clang. It was Drake. Dawson’s older and grumpier brother stepped inside, sword in–hand. And he looked even grumpier than usual. “The King sent me,” he announced. “He wants an update on the fire woman.”
“Nothing yet,” Tyler said. “So, Brynja, is it? Are you ready to hop up onto the table so I can get to work?”
“No!” Dawson shouted. “This isn’t fair! Dad said we had an hour!”
“The King,” Drake was quick to correct him, “is growing impatient. He wants results, and His Majesty has decided to move up the timetable. There’s motion over the east Atlantic and an attack could be imminent.”
“You owe her,” Dawson said, stepping towards Drake.
The two young knights were chest-to-chest, eye-to-eye, veins protruding from their necks. Drake tightened the grip on his sword and Dawson reached down, curling his fingers around the hilt of his weapon.
“I owe her nothing,” Drake seethed. “This wench could be working for Taktarov for all we know. This could be part of some plot.”
“Boys, boys, boys,” Tyler interjected, “If the King’s only two heirs slice each other to ribbons in my interrogation room, I don’t want to be the one who stood by and did nothing.”
“What do you propose?” Drake said flatly, his eyes laser focused on his brother.
“I propose we give this Icelandic beauty one last chance at a reading.” He produced a small plastic bottle from his pocket and popped off the lid with his thumb. He reached for the fire woman’s jaw and pulled it open, tilting the vial onto her tongue. A dozen tiny red capsules spilled into her mouth. He clasped his hand over her lips, causing her eyelids to snap open.
“What the fudge did you just feed her?” I shouted.
“Just a moment,” the Tyrant said calmly, now using both hands to prevent her from spitting out whatever he’d forced down her throat. The woman’s body tensed like an iron rod, vibrating as if it were conducting electricity. A heartbeat passed and she sagged, melting onto the table. Her eyes remained open but were foggy and lifeless.
I lunged forward and gripped her shoulders, shaking her against the slab. “Did you kill her?”
“Not yet,” Tyler said, folding his arms and tucking his gloved hands into his armpits. “The dosage I gave her would finish off a regular human, but she might survive it.”
“Might?” I pressed my fingertips into her carotid artery, detecting a faint pulse.
The interrogator once again produced his pen light and shone it in both her pupils, causing them to dilate. “Our fire woman is alive...at least for the time being. And her mind has been weakened significantly. If I were you I’d take advantage of this situation and jump into her head for a quick conversation – emphasis on the ‘quick’.” Tyler stepped aside and gestured with one hand; a stately flourish, as if he were beckoning me to enter a ballroom for a formal affair.
I swept my blue hair aside and leaned in, preparing to read the fire woman, hands poised on either side of her sagging head. A single touch transported me like a hurricane, tumbling through her memories. A swirl of dreams and desires and darkened thoughts raced by, spiraling me towards a grassy knoll. I landed by a glassy, sun–drenched river where a young girl sat on a rock, kicking her tiny feet into the water. The flame–haired child couldn’t have been more than ten. It was the fire woman, taking refuge in her favorite memory.
“Where did you come from?” the little girl asked, smoothing her hands over her powder bl
ue dress as she hopped to her feet.
I shrugged. “Another time...another place. I don’t know. I think it was a different reality.”
“Anywhere is better than here,” she smiled. “Well, not here...I love it here. But back where we came from.”
“So I’ve been told.”
Her emerald eyes widened, searching mine. “Why are you siding with the humans?”
“Why are you siding with Taktarov?” I asked in response.
She turned and took her seat on the large flat rock by the river bed, lifting her dress before dipping her toes back in the water. “I don’t know. I was born after the war started. I don’t even know why we hate each other, to be honest.”
I took a seat at her side, crossing my legs. “I need information.”
“I know,” she said, without averting her eyes from the sparkling water.
“I need to know if an attack is coming.”
“I’m low–level,” she shrugged. “They don’t tell me about these things. I’m a nobody. Just a scout.”
“A scout?”
“They sent me to look for holes in the castle defense. Chinks in the armor.”
I thought back to the conversations we’d had in her presence. Dawson, admitting that all of the shields were down, revealing that the castle was vulnerable. “You told them, didn’t you?”
She nodded weakly. “Of course I did.”
“He sacrificed you. Sergei Taktarov...he sent you here knowing you’d die.”
“Probably.” Her child–like voice was light and innocent, but her words carried a crippling weight, dragged down by someone who had endured unspeakable horrors. “I knew it might be my last mission, but this was better than the alternative.”
“How can you let him use you like this?”
“And what are the humans doing with you?” She said sharply, turning to face me. “They’ll never trust you, you know. None of them will. You’ll always be the outsider – always persecuted for who you are, not what you do.”
The Manticore Ascension: A Short Story in the Arena Mode Universe Page 5