I switch to the left wall. Sixteen monitors showing Chaff Island.
Volk's cage sits in a clearing two miles inland from the drop zone. Steel bars. Concrete floor. No roof—just open sky and the oppressive heat of Caribbean sun beating down on naked skin.
The drone hovers above him, a tether holding his instructions dangling from it. Cream envelope. Black wax seal. Identical to Scarletta's except for one critical detail.
Hers has roses and promises of punishment that will make her scream while I coax blissful orgasms out of her.
His has a death sentence with a sixty-minute head start.
I zoom Camera 3 closer as the drone drops the card. It flutters down in a spiral. Volk reaches up, fumbles, grasps it with desperation.
Opens it, eyes searching for salvation…
You want to survive? Then listen close, prey.
His hands shake. Slight tremor. Barely visible. But I see everything.
I'll give you one chance to get away.
He thinks I'm bluffing. That this is some elaborate blackmail scheme. That I want money, or leverage, or information.
He's wrong.
I want his screams.
Move east through the jungle, one mile straight— Station One holds your freedom. Don't be late.
It's a lie, of course. He's here now. He's never leaving. Not alive, anyway.
You have sixty minutes to reach the cache,
Where clothes and supplies and weapons stash.
Miss the deadline and I hunt you bare,
Naked and screaming through island air.
I'll start with your fingers, peel back the nails,
Then move to your cock while you beg and you wail.
I'll skin you alive and keep you awake,
Feed you your own flesh for every mistake.
Now run.
Volk hesitates, frozen in place, his chest heaving with ragged breaths. He tilts his head back, squinting against the harsh morning sun as he searches the empty sky. The drone is already gone—vanished as quickly as it appeared—but he stares upward anyway, as if divine intervention might materialize from the cloudless expanse above him.
Water. That's what his cracked lips are begging for. Sixteen hours on this godforsaken rock without a single drop. His throat must feel like sandpaper by now.
Food would be a fever dream at this point. His body's already eating itself from the inside.
But I give him nothing.
Not a goddamn thing.
Because nothing is precisely what he's earned after all these years. Less than nothing, if such a thing existed.
