Stepping up the torture

Posted on Wed Jun 12th, 2019 @ 7:54am by Commodore Phoenix Lalor-Richardson
Edited on on Sun Apr 10th, 2022 @ 8:03pm

Mission: Episode 1: Hell is a four letter word
Location: Romulan Prision
Timeline: MD 9 - undetermined
845 words - 1.7 OF Standard Post Measure

When Phoenix was finally dragged from the cell, she knew where she was bound. Phoenix had, over her years in the fleet seen and heard about various races and their interrogation techniques. This would be as bad. She knew knives and other implements were in her future. Possibly drugs and constant torture reinforcement.

Two guards held her by the arms and she refused to give them the satisfaction of dragging her. She kept pace with them and was quiet even as they all but threw her into a chair and chained her legs and wrists down.

The questions then came. They wanted troop movements and ship patrol assignments, and they wanted to know how to break her crew. Each time she gave them the answer "I don't know. They will have changed it by now." And every time she spoke her native tongue, a knife came out and they sliced at her legs and arms with it, thin shallow cuts that caused pain and blood to swell.

They wanted the shield access codes for the Elysium as well, though she and they all knew, it would have been changed as soon as the Federation found they were missing.

After several hours, she heard a voice she absolutely hated. Sokath. The Romulan 'Assigned' to her. “Take her to the tank. Let’s see how much she defies us after that.”

-----==-----

Phoenix wanted nothing more than to sleep. Either that or die. She was exhausted. The tank was a horrible place, water poured in for hours, filling the room until she could barely breath then it drained away swiftly flinging her to the floor, drenched and gasping for breath. This was repeated over and over again. Each time, she grew less and less able to keep her head above the water. The last time, which felt like minutes ago, she had failed to maintain herself and had sunk beneath the churning water, thinking it was ending. Her mind screamed and she wished for death in the depths of her soul. Then the water had been drained away and she now lay gasping and coughing up water on the cold wet metal floor as she had for the past few hours - or was it days? She could not be sure.

Her body shivered, her limbs ached and her eyes burned as there was surely something in the water to cause that. She was stripped to her underwear, and it made it harder for her to maintain her body heat. Food, had not been even considered by those who were trying to make her break.

Then she was dragged from the tank and thrown into her cell. Her hair dripped in its now uneven lanks and she crawled, slowly to the pallet that served as a bunk. She curled into the uneven surface, thin cloth over straw she knew, and lay there shivering, her eyes tight against the cold. As the door clanged shut, Sokath's voice came through the bars. "More tomorrow Princess... lets see how long you last."

It was cold, and dark when she woke. And she was weightless. Floating in a dark, void. It was, to put it in human terms, pitch black. Her skin prickled as she tried to move and look, and oh gods, Zero G. She hated Zero G. It was her most closely guarded secret that Phoenix Lalor was one of the rare bunch of cadets who had violently puked her way through Zero G training. The plus side was that she had nothing in her stomach. She twisted her eyes squeezed shut and curled herself into a ball. Floating sucked big time for someone who preferred to have their feet on the ground.

A whistle sound was her only warning before pain blossomed in her right foot. She cried out in pain. Some sort of projectile had been shot through her foot. Tears welled and Phoenix dashed them away with a hand. Deep in her mind, information welled. 26 bones in the foot of the average humanoid. Erisians, she wanted people to know, had 28, that braced between Metatarsals of the last two toes. It felt like that projectile had shattered more than one bone. Reaching down she clamped her hand on her foot to stem the bleeding. But as she did so, wrapping her left hand around her right foot, her right hand bloomed in pain as another projectile cut through it. Right at the center of the palm. She screamed. She could not help herself. And then another pierced her left thigh, and one hit her left shoulder while another got her in the right hip. Pain seemed to burn through her body and soon enough the pain caused her to black out.

Once they confirmed she was unconscious and near enough to death, the Romulans beamed her to a medical suite where her wounds were tended and patched up and she was dropped uncaringly back in her cell. she didn't stir as she was left there. She was deep within her own mind, battling pain and exhaustion.