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I watch the subject on the monitor, and let myself feel the anticipation.

Let’s see if he’s as interesting up close.

His cell is still as death.

I watch him through the one-way glass, the afterimage of the strobes fading from his retinas as he slumps in the harness. He’s slick with sweat, hair matted, the veins in his neck mapping out a history of dehydration and abuse. If I slow the video feed, I can catch the precise instant he regains himself—eyelids flicker, jaw grinds once, then sets like stone.

Most men, after this sequence, either sob or vomit. Samuel does neither. Instead, he closes his eyes and focuses on his breathing, deep and even, two-count in, four-count out. He’s controlling the panic, refusing to surrender even in the aftermath. There’s a stubbornness in it I find exhilarating.

On the monitor, his stats have stabilized. Heart rate a little above baseline but not in the danger zone. The lactic acid spike is already coming down. He’s using pain as an anchor, not an obstacle. I haven’t seen that in a civilian since my own induction.

I swallow, tasting salt at the back of my throat.

Fuck.

The room behind me is empty, silent except for the low cycling of the air scrubbers. I had Lane and the rest of the crew stand down, no distractions, no noise. This is the phase I always conduct alone.

A memory surfaces, unbidden: one of my first years at Westpoint, a trial gone off script. The subject was a triple-lifer from the Nevada facilities, a man who’d burned two people alive over a gambling debt. He lasted twelve minutes in this chair, spat teeth, then begged for death. The footage is still used as a training video.

Samuel has tripled that duration.

I lean forward, elbows to desk, the synthetic surface cool beneath my skin. My reflection in the glass is a blur—a silhouette at the edge of the real. All I see clearly is him.

A band of muscle tenses and releases along his thigh. He tests the ankle cuff, but not with the frantic panic of a trapped animal; it’s methodical, mapping the limits. His breath mists the air, chest rising and falling in clean, sharp arcs. The sweat has started to bead at his temples, running in fine lines down his cheek. There’s a mark on his lower lip from where he must have bitten down. I want to taste the blood.

The phrase from before floats up, unexpected: If you wanted me to tie you up, you could have just asked.

I feel the heat coil in my chest, then lower. I know the reaction isn’t clinical. The data says everything it needs to. What I want now isn’t more evidence. It’s to see how he’ll respond when the script is burned, when it’s just him and me and no layer of glass in between.

I key into the console, patching my voice into the cell. The microphone is set to a mild distortion, so it won’t register as human.

“Do you feel fear?”

He lifts his head, eyes slitting open. He stares at the camera, not at the door.

“No,” he says, voice ragged but clear. “I feel hungry.”

The shiver that passes through me is not shameful, though it should be. I log the response. My palm, pressed to the desk, is damp.

Through the glass, I watch as Samuel’s hands flex in the restraints. He’s not testing them now—he’s waiting. There’s a tension in his body, every muscle defined by suffering. I want to be the one who pulls the next sound from him.

I toggle the wall speaker, drop the volume to a whisper. “What do you want?”

The answer is a long time coming. When it does, it’s almost a laugh.

“Not going to give it to me, are you?”

I don’t reply. I want to see what he does with silence.

He grins, and there’s blood on his teeth. “That’s what I thought.”

My heart slams, once, hard enough I have to let out a slow, deliberate breath. The feed captures my face for a second in the reflection. I look like a different man.

One who wants.

I pull up the protocol overlays, though I know them by heart. The next step is routine: re-administer the sedative, bring in a handler for physical assessment, escalate with tactile deprivation. Instead, I type in a custom override, locking down the cell to everyone but myself.

I’m going to do this one by hand.