The skin and muscles of his body seemed to have melted away, leaving behind a gruesome remnant, a shell, a husk, a disfigured memory of the magnificent creature he had been.
She could barely stand to see him like this, with his body about to be defiled by those two humans, who were preparing some sort of surgical equipment. It was pure torture for Arin. She wanted to rise up and smash their faces into the wall.
But she was bound and helpless, with nothing covering her body but a thin white gown, and tight restraints around her waist, wrists, and ankles.
In the blink of an eye, they had taken everything from her.
What kind of people were these? What kind of dirt was hidden behind the smoothly oiled machine of the Federation?
“I see you’re awake, Sergeant Varga.” E1’s flat voice reached her ears, and Arin found herself looking up into the woman’s expressionless face. The agent was wearing her datalenses again, and they flickered with information as she stared at Arin. “Don’t worry. The internal examination was carried out while you were unconscious. It was no surprise that we were able to collect a valuable sample of alien semen.”
“How did you know?” Arin hissed, a wave of revulsion coursing through her. They’d violated her while she’d been knocked out. She clenched her fists in anger. Oh, if only she had the strength of a Kordolian right now. She would tear this place apart.
“Your escape pod’s networking systems aren’t exactly secure. My people were able to hack the intercom. I heard most of it, Arin.”
“You have no idea what you’ve done, agent,” Arin said. Her voice was flat and lifeless. “You think they’re going to letyou get away with killing one of their own? You’re just poking a hornet’s nest. You shouldn’t provoke them, agent. They will take Earth and everything on it, and we humans won’t be able to do a thing. Not you, not me, not the entire fucking Federation.”
“I don’t have much sympathy for traitors, Arin Varga, and you almost sound like a Kordolian. You shouldn’t be so quick to write off your own race.”
“What do you think we’re going to do when the entire Kordolian fleet turns up on our doorstep? Fight them?” Arin closed her eyes as a fresh wave of despair crashed over her. She didn’t have the energy to fight anymore.
“Senator Monroe was right to have been suspicious of you. From the very start, she didn’t like the way you talked about these aliens, almost as if you admired them. Stockholm syndrome can be dangerous, Arin. Look what it’s made you do. My offsider is in a critical condition because of you. Shame.” E1’s smug, self-assured tone made Arin want to punch her in the face.
“I’ll fucking kill you,” Arin whispered, her voice thick with hatred. “When the Senate finds out about what you people do behind closed doors…”
“But the reality is that they don’t care. They know we exist, but they don’twantto know what we do. They just give us orders and we get them done. They turn a blind eye to our methods. Up here, we’re not bound by the conventions of Earth. People disappear in space all the time, Arin.”
Right then, Arin knew she wasn’t getting off this vessel alive. She’d been snatched from the jaws of death only to be delivered to an even worse fate. “Does my mother know about you people and what you do?”
“If it’s any consolation, General Varga just thinks you’re being picked up for a debrief. She’s going to be told the official story, the one that everyone else will hear. We’ll inform her that we received a distress signal from your pod. Shortly beforeyou disappeared, you were in a panicked state, saying something about there being a Kordolian onboard. After that, we lost the signal.” E1 stepped away as two men wearing surgical masks and lab suits entered the room. “She’s a traitor,” the agent said coldly. “You both know what we do to traitors. Get the information out of her, then dispose of her.”
Arin glanced from side to side, searching for something,anythingshe could use to escape, but she was hopelessly trapped. All she saw were plain white walls on one side, and Rykal’s mutilated form through the glass on the other side. She strained against her bonds, but they were made of metal and held fast, cutting painfully into her skin.
E1 walked out of the room, her footsteps a hollow echo as she left Arin to the mercy of the two men.
Arin was well and truly alone.
One of the men ran a gloved hand up her leg, caressing the inside of her thigh, exposing her as he lifted the hem of her gown. Arin froze as she heard the sound of a zipper being undone.
“Interrogation’s the boring part. All we have to do is inject her with Acufol, and she’ll spill everything. Boss won’t mind if we have a little fun first.”
“Get your filthy hands off me,” Arin hissed as the man got up onto the bed, straddling her.
“Shut the fuck up, traitor.” A gloved hand struck her in the face, and Arin tasted her own blood as it pooled in her mouth. She took a deep breath and spat with great force and venom, her blood splattering across the man’s white lab suit and mask.
“Fucking bitch!” He slapped her again, then pressed his hand hard against her cheek, grinding her face into the hard metal surface of the bench. “You can’t do anything here. Why resist it? Just give up and take it, traitor.”
The cold metal of the bench pressed painfully into Arin’s cheek as she was forced to look to one side. Her breath caught in her throat as she raged against the futility of her situation.
She was completely, utterly helpless.
She stared at Rykal’s still form, watching as a scientist inserted a long needle into his stomach and extracted a tissue sample. Another man in a white lab suit stood behind a monitoring device, interpreting data.
Rykal was getting probed. The indignity of it made Arin want to scream, but she held her tongue.
Because she realized that Rykal’s scorched face was turned towards her.
When had that happened?
