Chapter Twenty-Three
Rheda
I keep my eyes on the desk because I know if I look back into that room, I’ll see him looking at me. Worse. I’m terrified I’ll want him to be.
The image of him doesn’t leave.
It fixes itself somewhere behind my eyes, replaying in fragments I can’t control—the tilt of his head, the low, broken sound that slipped from him, the way the muscles in his neck pulled tight, standing out under his skin like something straining to break free.
It shouldn’t stay this clear; it shouldn’t stay at all. But it does.
Heat floods my face before I can stop it, too fast, too exposing, my grip tightening against the armrest as something unsettled twists low in my stomach.
I shouldn’t be thinking about it.
I shouldn’t be reacting to it.
But my body doesn’t seem to care, and that more than anything makes something cold slip down my spine.
Peter re-enters the viewing room. He turns without warning and throws something across the desk. It lands in front of me with a blunt, cracking sound.
I flinch. The plastic is cold when I pick it up. Smooth. Too light for what it is. I recognise it a second later. The electrocution dial.
“When I tell you, shock him.” His voice is flat as if this is already decided.
Something in my chest tightens around the words. I turn toward him, ready to say something, but the door opens behind him.
Sean and Mike come back in carrying black buckets, water sloshing against the sides, ice knocking together with a dull, hollow clink that seems to echo longer than it should.
The sound cuts straight through me.
Peter’s attention flicks to the buckets, quick and satisfied. “Good.”
My stomach turns cold.
“What are you doing?” I hear myself ask, but it comes out thinner than I expect.
He turns suddenly, eyes piercing through me. “Cleaning him up.”
They’re already moving before I can respond. The door into the interrogation room slams open, the impact travelling through the glass.
Sean hesitates only briefly before tipping the bucket.
The first splash hits the floor, then his shoulder.
Then all at once the freezing water crashes over him in a heavy sweep.
Water crashes down his shoulders and chest, soaking through the fabric instantly.
The orange darkens, clings, reshapes itself to his body.
I expect something immediate.
A gasp or recoil. Anything. There’s a delay instead before his body locks.
Then the reaction comes all at once, a full-body shudder that tears through him. His shoulders pull tight, muscles jumping under the soaked fabric as the cold hits deeper.
I feel it in my own body, a reflexive tightening low in my stomach.
The second bucket follows too quickly.
Water hits him again, heavier this time, spilling over the chair, pooling beneath him, dripping steadily from his sleeves. The sound fills the room, loud and constant, like it’s drowning everything else out.
He shakes. It runs through him in sharp, uncontrollable bursts, his body reacting in ways his face refuses to acknowledge.
Peter doesn’t rush the third. He takes it himself, steps closer, and pours it slowly, watching as the water spreads, tracking its path like he’s studying the effect.
It drags down Deogal’s chest in thin streams, catching in the lines of his body before slipping lower. An ice cube catches briefly against the fabric, then disappears beneath it.
My shoulders tense before I realise I’ve moved.
The jumpsuit clings to him now, every line of his body visible in a way it wasn’t before.
My gaze drops.
I feel it happen. Know I shouldn’t. I don’t stop it.
My breath catches, shallow and sharp, as the shape beneath the soaked fabric becomes clear.
He’s hard.
Again.
There’s no mistaking it this time, no angle to hide behind. It sits there, thick and angry, and impossible to ignore.
I tell myself to look away.
My hand moves without instruction.
Click.
The screenshot captures before I’ve decided I’m going to take it. The soft shutter sound barely exists in the room, but it lands inside my head like something much louder, something that shouldn’t have happened.
Peter turns sharply. Even through the glass, I feel it.
My heart stutters hard against my ribs as his gaze locks onto me, sharp, questioning for a fraction of a second before it shifts.
He gestures to where he thinks I am.
Short. Sharp.
The dial.
I look down at it in my hand and then back at Deogal.
Water drips from him. The floor beneath him is slick, reflecting the light in broken pieces.
Electricity and water.
The thought hits fully formed now, heavy and undeniable.
This isn’t procedure.
This isn’t controlled.
Peter signals again, harder this time, impatience cutting through whatever restraint he had left. My thumb hovers for half a second longer than it should.
Then I press.
The reaction is immediate.
His body jerks violently against the restraints, every muscle seizing at once. The chains snap tight with a sharp metallic strain as he’s forced against them, water splashing outward from the impact.
A sound tears out of him. It doesn’t sit right. Too raw. Too deep. It scrapes against something instinctive in me, something that recoils before I can process it.
Peter motions again.
My body forgets how to breathe naturally.
I press again and this time it’s worse.
The current runs through him in visible waves, his body locking, releasing, locking again. The rhythm wrong, too much, too fast. Steam lifts faintly from his skin where the water meets heat.
The smell hits a second later. Metallic. Burnt. Something that shouldn’t be in the air.
I swallow against it, my throat tightening.
Peter empties the last bucket over him. Water crashes down again, feeding the reaction, making everything harsher.
My teeth grind together without me meaning to. My free hand lifts toward my throat and stops there, fingers hovering just below my jaw.
A low sound escapes him, somewhere between a groan and something else I don’t want to name. Then the corners of his lip tip up.
Water drips from his chin, slow and steady, collecting beneath the chair. His skin is marked now, darker bruises forming beneath the electrodes, colours deepening where the current has taken hold.
He looks wrecked.
He looks—
I stop the thought before it finishes.
My hand releases the dial. It hits the desk softly. I reach for my pen, but the biro feels wrong as soon as I pick it up.
I swap it out without thinking, fingers closing around the blue gel pen instead. The ink moves cleanly when I test it against the margin, smooth and immediate.
I wait for it to smear. It doesn’t.
I start writing.
The words come too fast, crowding into each other, my handwriting, losing its usual control as I try to keep pace with what I’m seeing.
Trying to define it.
To reduce it.
To force it into something I can hold at a distance.
But I know as soon as I write the words, I’ve made it all very real.