And then the lights cut out.
The room vanishes. The gray becomes absolute black. The silence that follows is so complete that for one horrible moment I’m not sure I still exist.
Chapter Three
ALEXEI
By morning,he has been in darkness long enough to forget what light feels like.
I observe the subject through the night-vision feed. His gray-green form is curled in the chair as much as the restraints allow. Sleep has come in fragments, never longer than twenty minutes, interrupted by the cold and the discomfort and the disorientation of existing in a void.
Each time he wakes, he speaks.
The pattern is consistent: consciousness returns, silence presses in, and the subject fills the void with his own voice.
The content varies. Sometimes he recites what appear to be childhood rhymes, the cadence familiar even when the words are unclear. Sometimes he narrates his situation aloud—describing the room, the restraints, his own physical state—as if speaking it makes it manageable. Sometimes he simply counts, the numbers climbing higher and higher until his voice cracks and he starts again from one.
In the small hours, he recited a prayer in Russian. The words were too slurred with exhaustion for the audio system to capture clearly, but the rhythm was unmistakable. I made a note of the timestamp. Religious frameworks can be leveraged during extraction—the guilt they produce, the confessional impulse.
Later still, he spoke his mother’s name.Mama. Mama.Just twice, barely audible, before he fell back into fitful sleep.
I did not make a note of that one.
Silence is intolerable to him. This confirms my initial assessment.
The subject has been in custody for approximately thirty-one hours. Baseline psychological destabilization is proceeding within expected parameters. Resistance remains high but is showing early signs of erosion.
The subject shifts in his sleep. His shoulders curl inward, his chin drops toward his chest, and his body rotates slightly to protect his left side. I observe this adjustment three times over the next hour.
Possible previous injury. I make a mental note to observe during the next physical contact.
The monitor shows his face in the green-gray wash of infrared. His features are slack in sleep, the arrogance stripped away. Without the animation of consciousness, he looks younger than thirty-one. The file indicates he was seven when his mother died. The file indicates his father raised him with methods that the Kennel would recognize.
There is a small scar at the corner of his left eyebrow that the file does not mention. I find myself wondering how he acquired it—a childhood accident, perhaps, or something more deliberate.
The thought arrives without invitation. I let it pass without documenting it. Some observations do not require notation.
I prepare for the next phase.
The tray is assembled: a glass of water, filled to exactly eight ounces, positioned for visual accessibility but physical inaccessibility. Nothing else. The absence of tools is itself a tool, communicating that this session will not involve pain.
The corridor is empty as I walk to the Processing Room. The Tower’s sub-levels operate on a separate schedule from the floors above. Only essential security personnel are present. They do not acknowledge me as I pass. This is appropriate.
The biometric scanner accepts my palm. The lock disengages.
I enter the room and activate the lights.
The fluorescent panels ignite simultaneously, flooding the space with full illumination.
The subject’s reaction is immediate: his body jerks against the restraints, his eyes squeeze shut, and a sound escapes his throat that falls somewhere between a gasp and a groan.
I wait.
His eyes open in stages, squinting against the assault of light. His pupils are contracted to pinpoints. Hours of darkness followed by sudden full illumination produce temporary visual impairment, headache, and heightened emotional reactivity.
I set the tray on the table.
The glass of water catches the light and refracts it across the gray walls. The subject’s eyes track the movement, then fix on the water itself. I observe the involuntary motion of his throat as he swallows.
