“For some reason, I don’t believe you.” Each word dripped with a menacing hatred.
Gemma dug her fingernails into her palms, begging the stars to let the Kaizen see into her mind, to believe that she couldn’t give the captain the answers she wanted.
They positioned the tub below Gemma’s head. Bile rose in her throat as she realized what it would be used for. The horrors of waterboarding had been passed down from their ancestors, the criminals who’d been victims of torture before they’d been stranded on Reva.
Gemma viciously shook her head, her blood throbbing in her skull. “I’m not lying. I’m not lying. Please.”
“Dip her,” the Kaizen instructed.
Gemma’s screams started when the lieutenants lifted the metal bar—from which she hung—into the air. She writhed against the ropes on her wrists and ankles. “Please, no. Please. I don’t know!”
They dropped her headfirst into the water, so fast she barely had time to suck in a breath.
The chill of the water nipped at her cheeks; Gemma almost sucked in the fluid as she shrieked. She twisted from side to side, trying to bend at the waist and lift her head from the bucket—searing pain screamed from her wrists and ankles, the fire matching the burn in her lungs.
Images of Christian, her friends, Nadine—dying naked and alone—flashed through her mind, and her resolve to fight waned.
In one swift motion, she was back in the air.
Loud, piercing wheezes echoed off the room’s metal walls as Gemma gasped for oxygen. The fluid was up her nose, in the back of her throat—
“Why did you try to kill Rami?” the Kaizen roared, every word spoken as if it were its own sentence.
Between her gasps, Gemma managed to shout. “Because he killed my sister!”
The door to the torture chamber opened once again. The clicks of expensive shoes tapped on the floor as someone approached. “Take her down.”
Rami.
The Kaizen spun toward him. “Sir, she—”
“Take. Her. Down.”
The Kaizen snapped her fingers, and the metal bar returned to its original position. The tub of water was shoved away. Knives slit the ropes that bound Gemma.
She tumbled to the ground—into the blanket held in Rami’s arms.
“Get out. Now,” he snapped at the Kaizen and her lieutenants. The three exited the room without another word.
Gemma shook uncontrollably as Rami tightened the blanket around her. Her arms and legs hung as if they’d detached from her body, and her lungs still burned from inhaling water. Where the fabric brushed against the burns on her side and back felt like alcohol against an open wound.
But right now, the pain reminded Gemma that she was alive, and that some semblance of decency had been returned to her. She could suffer with the scorching ache.
“I’m sorry about that.” Rami made sure Gemma was steady before stepping away from her. “The only instruction I gave Phoebe was to bring you here for questioning. And notthatkind.”
Gemma couldn’t respond. Why was he showing her kindness? Where had the caricature of a man disappeared to?
The flamboyancy he seemed to carry had evaporated. Even his perfectly maintained appearance had diminished. The jacket of his suit was gone, his shirt untucked and his tie missing.
“I will make sure your gown is returned to you before you leave this room,” he continued. “I do think we need to talk, though, before I can let you go. Are you able to get to a chair?”
Rami motioned to one of the metal chairs at the table in the center of the room, the same ones in which she and Moriah had sat.
Nodding, Gemma moved her legs and winced. The agony in her joints was awful but not unbearable, and feeling had started returning to herarms and feet. Gemma tucked the blanket tighter around her and sat in a seat opposite Rami.
The game master’s brown eyes were kind, to Gemma’s surprise. There was no anger or hatred there, only concern. How could he have murdered her sister? Was this a ruse to get her to speak since the Kaizen’s methods were more likely to kill her?
Gemma stiffened. He was pretending to be her savior, but she knew better. A flash of the image of his hands around Nadine’s throat crossed through her mind.
