6. Sie
SIX
SIE
Rattling sounds brought me back to consciousness.
Fuchsia was standing outside my cage again, only this time, instead of his usual menacing look, he was fumbling over keys before he had my cell door creaking open. I knew it had been a couple of hours since he last visited me—the piss on my clothes had finally dried, although the stench lingered.
I fucking hated him. He always managed to find new ways to get under my skin, and peeing on me earlier—that was the fucking cherry on top.
He was dragging me through the halls before I registered what was happening. My feet kept slipping out from under me as I tried to keep up with his long strides.
And then I realized I wasn’t writhing in agony as we walked. He was holding me by my good arm, mercifully leaving my mangled, broken one untouched.
It wasn’t until we were turning down another hallway that I realized he was abnormally quiet. Usually he’d be throwing retort after retort about Scotlind, and whenever he’d grow bored of that, he’d tell me exactly what he had planned in the torture room. It added to my dread, knowing what was to come as I was forced to walk down the long hallways.
I was nothing more than a walking corpse, and I tried my damned best to keep it that way. I didn’t want to feel, didn’t want to think, didn’t want to exist.
I ran into his back as he abruptly stopped. We were in a closed hallway, one without all the prisoner cages. I looked up and saw another guard standing in front of us.
“Where are you taking him?” the guard asked. I didn’t recognize him. Besides Fuchsia and the illusion user, they were all starting to blend together.
Fuchsia cleared his throat before answering. “The torture rooms.”
The other guard smirked. “Going for round two, Nial?”
Nial—Fuchsia had a name, not that I wanted to remember it.
“Uh—yes,” he stuttered.
“Well, don’t let me stop you.” He shifted out of the way for us to pass, but Fushia didn’t move.
We stayed in the hallway for long seconds before he leaned me against a wall. If I had the strength, I would have used the freedom to fucking pummel him. I wanted nothing more than to beat him to a pulp, but even leaning against the wall was taxing. Chills were working their way through my body, and my vision was going in and out.
“Oh, my shoe. I need to tie it.”
I blinked again, trying to focus on what he was doing as he bent down and started un -tying his boots before slowly redoing them.
The other guard went to grab me. “I’ll bring him to the room for ya, Nial. You don’t want to leave someone like him out for too long.”
“No,” Fuchsia-Nial half screamed, then cleared his throat again. “Um, I’ll do it.”
The guard cocked a brow, watching as Fuchsia grabbed me again—still by my good arm—and started guiding me past the hallway.
“Shit,” he murmured under his breath as we walked through another section of cages. The torture room was just at the other end.
My vision blurred as someone opened the door for us, and Fuchsia brought me inside for the second time today.
“Nial, what are you doing back?” Brown asked. He was my second least favorite person here, after Fuchsia. I only recognized him by his deep-set brown eyes. He possessed illusion, and the two of them worked together to make it their mission to fucking shatter me.
“Ah, you know me, I just couldn’t wait to hack into him again.” Fuchsia started bringing me further into the room.
Multiple tables were lined throughout the space. They wanted the loners—the prisoners in the cages—to be tortured together. If ours wasn’t as bad, we had the misery of hearing and seeing what was being done to others.
It sparked competition within the guards to see who could get their prisoner to scream the loudest. Some even took bets.
I didn’t need my vision clear to know the floor had grates every ten feet for excessive blood to drain and every weapon imaginable was hung up along the walls. This room was engrained in my fucking memory.
Only one other loner was in the room with us now. He was strapped to one of the tables having his fingernails slowly removed.
Brown-eyes put down his instrument, saving the loner from losing another nail. I glimpsed three bloodied fingers before I looked away. “Want me to do the honors?” he asked, then gestured toward the poor guy strapped to the table. “He can wait.”
“No, don’t let me stop you,” Fuchsia said as he clumsily pushed me down onto a table across from them. I cursed as my bad arm hit the metal. “I have something… um special planned for him.”
Brown-eyes shrugged, and I didn’t need to look to know he went back to torturing the loner. I focused on my breathing, trying to block out his screams, as I prepared for the pain that would soon follow me.
In through my nose, out through my mouth.
Fuchsia strapped me onto the table.
Slow, deep breaths. Think of nothing. I am nothing.
“Uh, let’s see. Yeah, this will do.” Fuchsia plucked a knife off the wall and stalked toward me. And then with his free hand he… scratched his ear. I closed my eyes. I was seriously on the verge of becoming delusional because I swore the man I hated so much just reminded me of Peter. The motion was so eerily similar to how he used to tug on his ear when he wanted me to enter his mind. Fuck. I missed him. I never got to see him after he went back to Lux. I prayed he made it out alive, but he wasn’t at my coronation…
Cold metal grazed my uninjured forearm.
In through my nose, out through my mouth.
“Right,” Fuchsia’s voice sounded again, and the slow drag of it all was killing me. I usually would have been half bloodied by now. My only saving grace with him was his impatience. He always escalated things too quickly, but if he planned on taking his time now…
In through my nose, out through my mouth.
I could do this. The physical torture was always better than the mental ones. The illusions were what I couldn’t stomach.
I waited for the slice of cold metal to burn, to feel the sting as it sank into me, but it never came. Instead, I felt sweaty hands against my neck. The gentle touch to the area was so surprising that I jerked. Before I could open my eyes, Fuchsia’s fingers pressed down, applying pressure to that perfect spot before I passed out into beautiful oblivion.
I came back to myself with my back pressed against a wall in a bathroom. Fuchsia was standing over me with… the fucking Luxian Princess.
It took me minutes of blinking and adjusting my eyes before I realized neither of them were looking at me. I turned my head to the side and saw… Fuchsia again, only he was unconscious.
The Fuchsia that was standing over me kept tugging on his ear. “Sie, it’s me. We’re getting you out of here.”
I was fucking losing it, or delusional, or brown-eyes had me in another illusion in the torture room. Either way, I knew this wasn’t real. I had too many visions of Peter and Scotlind rescuing me, only to wake up in the same cage.
“We don’t have time for you to coddle him,” the princess spat, her voice was a lethal whisper. “Get the guard and let’s go.”
“Right,” Fuchsia said. Then he squared his shoulders before bending down, hovering over the two of us and punched the already unconscious Fuchsia in the face. I couldn’t process what was happening as punch after punch was thrown until his features were a bloodied mess, and he was no longer recognizable.
I looked down at my body. I wasn’t in my piss-prison uniform anymore. Instead, bloodied Fuchsia was in it and new, clean clothes were on me.
I didn’t have any new cuts on me either. Nothing to show for my time in the torture room. I tried to remember what happened and couldn’t. All I could recall was pressure placed over my neck before I blacked out. My arm was still mangled. The bone sticking out made me want to pass out all over again, and if I wasn’t in so much pain, the agony from it would be all I could focus on. But the chills were worsening. I could feel a sweat starting to break out …
Maybe this was what dying felt like. Maybe the closer you came to that bridge, the crazier your mind worked.
The princess disappeared, completely vanishing before my eyes as Fuchsia picked up the other one, positioning his mangled face toward his chest, and started walking away with him.
“Don’t move,” Fuchsia called over his shoulder. His voice sounded eerily familiar, but I knew it was just my brain playing tricks on me. “We’ll be right back, Sie.”
Then I was alone again. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to.
I leaned my head back against the wall, closing my eyes, too exhausted to try and break out of the illusion.