Chapter 39 #3
Einar steps forward and crouches at the edge of the cage, peering down at me like I’m something fascinating.
“Below Grandi,” he says softly, almost mocking. “Under the fish auctions. Beneath the city everyone thinks they know.” His smile is thin. “Poetic, isn’t it? How easily hunters become inventory.”
I grip the bars, knuckles whitening. “If you think this ends well for you—”
“Oh, it ends very well for me,” Einar says. He reaches onto the floor and lifts up my mask.
He turns the mask in his hands, admiring it. “This is worth a fortune,” he murmurs. “Not the rubber and filters. The idea. The fear. The myth.”
My stomach turns.
Einar looks up, and his pale eyes are almost gentle. “You wanted to know who put out the hit on Elara,” he says. “You wanted to believe it was someone you could punish.”
He leans closer to the mesh lid, voice lowering so only I can hear.
“You were asking the wrong question,” he whispers. “The right one is: who benefits from you chasing it?”
I stare at him through steel and mesh, and my mind flashes to Elara’s face—her fury, her intelligence, her insistence on truth. My little scribe, dragged into a story she never consented to be inside.
Einar’s smile widens slightly. “You’re going to help me,” he says. “Whether you want to or not.”
Einar straightens, smooth and unhurried, like a man concluding a lecture.
He gives a small nod to someone behind me.
I don’t see the hand that moves the valve. I hear it.
A soft psshhh—almost polite.
At first, nothing happens.
Then the air changes.
It’s subtle enough that my instincts hesitate, trying to name it. The smell comes last—clean, sharp, wrong. Not rot. Not chemical sweetness. Something metallic and cold, like a winter coin held too long on the tongue.
I suck in a breath without meaning to.
Bad mistake.
The burn hits the back of my throat first, a dry, crawling sensation that spreads upward instead of down. My lungs don’t seize. My vision doesn’t blur. There’s no panic response my body can cling to. Just… pressure. Like invisible fingers sliding along my vocal cords, testing their elasticity.
I cough once. Hard.
Sound comes out wrong—fractured, shredded, like it’s being torn apart before it leaves me.
I try again. A word. Any word.
Nothing.
My mouth opens. My chest works. My diaphragm obeys.
But my voice is gone.
Not hoarse. Not weak.
Gone.
My pulse spikes, heat slamming into my veins, adrenaline screaming fight, bite, break—and my body surges against the bars on pure instinct. The cage rattles, steel screaming under force, but the sound that should come with the effort—the growl, the threat, the promise of violence—
—is silence.
Einar watches with professional interest.
“Ah,” he says softly. “There it is.”
I grab the bars and shake them, fury tearing through me, jaw clenched so tight my teeth ache. I try to snarl again.
Nothing.
Not even breath shaped into sound.
Einar crouches, resting his forearms casually on his knees, entirely unbothered by the violence inches from his face.
“That,” he says, “is Muteveil.”
The word settles into me like a sentence.
He tilts his head, studying my reaction. “Beautiful name, don’t you think? The Norwegians insisted on it. They’re very poetic when it comes to silencing people.”
My hands flex, searching for pain to anchor myself. I scrape my knuckles deliberately against the bars until skin breaks. Blood beads. The pain is sharp and grounding.
Still no voice.
“It’s not a paralytic,” Einar continues, conversational. “Not a sedative. Those are crude. Too many side effects. No, this one is much more… selective.”
He gestures vaguely toward his own throat.
“It targets the motor coordination between breath and phonation. The muscles still work. The lungs still work. You can scream internally all you like.” His lips curve faintly. “Your brain knows what it wants to say. It simply can’t convince your body to let the sound escape.”
Rage surges, violent and incandescent. I slam my shoulder into the bars again, metal biting into muscle.
Einar doesn’t flinch.
“The effect is dose-dependent,” he adds. “A light exposure gives you hours of hoarseness. Enough to ruin a speech. Enough to end a career. What you inhaled?” He hums softly. “You won’t speak for hours. Possibly longer.”
Days.
My jaw tightens until my temples throb.
Einar stands and takes a step back as one of the men adjusts the valve again, sealing it shut. The air clears slowly, ventilation pulling the gas away with clinical efficiency. My lungs feel normal. My body feels normal.
That’s the worst part.
There is no dramatic collapse. No weakness to exploit. I am fully conscious, fully functional—and completely voiceless.
“Do you know why this works so well on men like you?” Einar asks.
I glare at him, eyes burning.
“Because your reputation is built on sound,” he says. “On the voice behind the mask. The threat. The command. Take that away, and suddenly you’re just a very strong man behind bars.”
He lifts my mask again, turning it so the hollow lenses stare down at me.
“Vapor without a voice,” he murmurs. “Almost disappointing.”
My chest heaves. I force myself to breathe slowly, methodically, refusing to let him see panic. I test my throat again—try to force air through clenched teeth.
Nothing.
Not even a whisper.
Einar leans closer, lowering his voice as if sharing a secret. “You see, Lucan, this isn’t about punishing you. If I wanted that, we’d already be carving lessons into your skin.”
His eyes flick to the blood on my knuckles, then back to my face.
“You’re the perfect bait,” Einar says lightly. “And an even better cover-up.”
His men move, lifting the cage’s side handles. The entire enclosure shifts, a transport mechanism hidden in the floor engaging with a low mechanical groan. They begin to roll me toward a corridor that smells like antiseptic instead of fish.
A corridor that smells like a lab, that’s when I make a final decision. My fingers reach for a small remote, a tiny button, and my thumb presses down on it.
Einar walks alongside, unhurried, mask in hand, and speaks as if he’s offering advice.
“Try not to break yourself on the bars,” he says. “He hates damaged samples.”
My blood goes ice-cold. Where the fuck are they taking me. I tighten my grip on the bars until my scars ache, until the steel bites into old wounds.
Through the bars, Einar meets my gaze one last time.
“You came here hunting,” he says softly.
The corridor darkens as we descend.
“And now,” he adds, “you’ll finally understand what it feels like to be the prey.”