CHAPTER 7 - Deimos #2
His breathing turns ragged instantly. The air in the room seems to vanish, the walls closing in until the space feels no larger than a coffin. He realizes a horrifying irony: Madeline, the woman he thought he could control, will be the one to document every mark I leave on him.
I move back into his line of sight, watching the terror glaze over his eyes.
“There’s something fascinating about the human brain,” I say conversationally, as if lecturing a student.
“When you remove enough sensory input… it starts creating its own.”
I let the implication hang in the air.
“Hallucinations. Voices. Darkness that never ends.”
I lean one last time, my gaze locking onto his with an intensity that seems to pin him against the chair.
“You’ll destroy yourself eventually.”
The unnatural calmness in my voice terrifies him more than a scream ever could. He searches for a flicker of mercy, a hint of hesitation, but finds only a void.
“And by the time you start begging me to end it…”
A small, sharp smile touches my lips.
“I might consider it.”
After a long, heavy pause, I reach for a pair of black surgical gloves and slide them slowly over my hands. The snap of the latex against my wrists sounds like a gunshot in the silent room.
“Enough of the chitchat.”
My expression turns cold. The same face I wear when I do my work.
Jake already looks like he's given up. For a police officer, he broke remarkably fast, but I know his type.
He will fight again. His survival instinct hasn't quite realized it's already dead.
I can see the impending agony reflected in the pallor of his face.
He still has no idea how far I'm willing to push this.
The full setup takes some time. And he watches every single move I make. I’m not only going to destroy his body. Not exactly. I’m going to betray his biology.
“You’re bracing yourself.”
I murmur, my fingers dancing over the IV manifold.
I can smell the salt of his sweat and the sharp, metallic tang of adrenaline. I tape the first bag.
The Anchor. The fluid inside is crystal clear, shimmering with a synthetic, jagged energy.
“This is going to pin your consciousness to the front of your brain. It’s a cage of hyper-awareness. You won’t be able to blink, you won’t be able to faint. And you certainly won’t be able to die.”
My hands move with precise calm.
“And then,” I continue, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper as I adjust the second dial.
“The Razor. It’s a beautiful little neuro-sensitizer. It’s going to peel the insulation off your nerves, one by one. Right now, these straps feel like a dull pressure. In five minutes?”
I glance at him.
“They’re going to feel like they’re made of rusted saws. Your own heartbeat is going to sound like a sledgehammer inside your skull.”
I check the third line. The stabilizers. I need his heart to keep pumping. To keep the substances circulating through his muscles. I’m not going to let him slip into shock. I’m going to keep him vital. Functional. Alive.
I pick up the needle. Steel. Cold. Unforgiving. And press the tip against the bulging vein in his forearm, feeling the frantic heat of his blood beneath the skin.
I slide the needle with a slow, agonizing precision. Then I watch the first tremor ripple through his frame. It’s subtle at first. A tightening of the jaw, a sharp hitch in his chest. And then the chemicals take hold.
The Anchor hits his system like a live wire. His eyes snap wide. Pupils blowing out until the iris is nothing, but a thin, suffocating ring of color. He’s not just awake. He’s hyper-alive.
“There you are,” I whisper, leaning in close.
“Stay with me now. Don’t you dare blink.”
With the second dial. The fluid merges into the line. His reaction is violent. His spine arches against the chair. Muscles cording into knots so tight they look like they might snap the bone beneath them.
Every nerve ending is screaming now. Stripped of its armor. To him, the air in this room must feel like a thousand needles. The weight of his clothes feel like a shroud of lead.
Before my final touch, I need to make this fucker pay for the nickname he used for Madeline. For the way he thought he could possess her.
So I slowly drag the small scalpel through the muscle and flesh of his tongue. He vomits almost immediately, the iron scent of blood and bile spilling onto the floor. I step back just enough to avoid the mess, watching with clinical detachment.
I let him feel it. All of it. He can still scream, a wet, gargling sound, but now he’s more focused on the copper-tasting heat filling up in his mouth.
That’s only the start.
I smile. The sight of his silent struggle is a masterpiece of agony. Biological betrayal. Now for the final touch.
I pick up the heavy, noise-canceling headphones and the silk-lined, light-proof blindfold. Without another word. I slide the headphones over his ears. The external world vanishes for him. Replaced by a deafening, amplified thud of his own heart.
Then I secure the blindfold. Total darkness. Absolute isolation. He is trapped inside the fortress of his own skull now. He can’t see the blade I’m holding. He can’t hear my footsteps. He has no idea where the next touch will come from. Or how long the silence will last.
Inside this void, his mind will begin to invent terrors far worse than anything I could do.
I stand back, watching his chest heave in a frantic panic. Thanks to the stabilizers, his heart holds steady. He is now a prisoner of his own heightened biology.
I pick up a single crow feather from the tray.
I don’t need anything sharp yet. In this state, even a feather will feel like a searing brand.
The silence is absolute. Heavy. A suffocating blanket that swallows his frantic gasps.
It’s fascinating to watch the transition.
He’s no longer fighting the chair. He’s fighting the void.
His head falls back. Then jerks forward. Searching for a horizon that no longer exists. I’ve replaced his reality with a chemical cage.
I bring the feather to his throat. The moment the soft barbs graze his skin, he convulses. To a normal man, it’s a tickle. To him, with the substance running inside his veins, it’s a line of liquid fire.
He can’t even hear the sound of his own agony. The same way women aren’t heard when fuckers like him abuse them.
After a long while of tormenting him with the feather, I slide one headphone slightly back from his ear. I know my voice will explode like thunder in his ears when I finally choose to speak.
“Can you feel it?”
I whisper, watching his entire body flinch at the mere vibration of my breath.
“The way your own skin has turned against you? You’re a prisoner here, and I’m the only one who has the key.”
Then I slide the headphone back into place. Next I drag the ice cube down his sternum. He reacts as if I’m carving him open.
I test a few more objects. A Wartenberg wheel. A burst of high voltage. Hot wax from a candle.
His mind finally begins to fracture. This is the sensory crossover. Hallucinations born from a brain. Desperately trying to make sense of a lightless, soundless world of pain.
Inside the darkness of his skull, the boundaries of his body begin to dissolve. He can no longer feel the chair beneath him. He feels like he’s floating in a sea of static and broken glass.
Because he can’t see the ice, his brain interprets the cold as searing. Because he can’t hear his own gasps, he starts to hear things that aren’t real. The only sound covering the room is him choking on the blood still pouring from his mouth.
He starts to see “phosphenes.” Shattered geometric patterns of neon light exploding behind his eyelids with every touch I inflict. He’s no longer in my apartment. He’s lost in a kaleidoscope of agony.
I watch his lips move. A silent, desperate prayer to a world that no longer exists.
“Don’t leave me yet,” I whisper, even though I know he can’t hear me.
“We’ve only just begun to see what you’re made of.”
For me, it feels quick. For him, it feels endless. In reality, nearly five hours have passed.
The room is silent. I move with clinical precision. But then, the rhythm changes. His arching spine begins to sag. The frantic, jagged gasps that had been his only language, soften into a shallow, hollow rattle.
“Stay with me,” I growl.
His head lolls to the side. Unresponsive. He has lost a great amount of blood and the hallucinations are winning. In his mind, the darkness finally turns from a cage into a sanctuary. I see it in a way his jaw relaxes.
The Anchor is still pumping. Forcing his heart to keep its beat. Retreating. Artificial. He is drowning in the shallow end of his own consciousness.
I take the blade and press the cold steel against his cheek. He doesn’t flinch. The chemicals still make his skin scream. But there’s nobody left inside to hear it.
I watch his chest rise one last time. Then it settles into a terrifyingly slow cadence. The light under the blindfold has gone out. The end is a visceral collision of chemical force and cold finality.
I reach for the emergency bypass on the IV, flushing a concentrated bonus of pure adrenaline directly into the line. It hits him like a lighting strike. Probably the same feeling I had when I first saw Madeline.
His body slams against the restraints. His spine snaps taut with a sickening crack. His heart is already strained. Surges into a frantic, violent gallop.
This is the final flare of a dying star.
I reach up and rip the headphones away. The sudden rush of silence in the room must be deafening to him. Then, I tear off the blindfold. His eyes are bloodshot. The pupils are blown. Struggling to focus through the haze of hallucinations.
I lean close. My face inches from his. Forcing my image to be the only thing in his shattering universe.