I could feel the cold bite of German steel pressing against the center of my forehead. It didn't pierce my skin, but it was close—close enough that I imagined the chill cutting straight through the bone. The cold wasn't unfamiliar to me. I was a soldier, after all. Then again, not the kind who fought on the front lines. I was mostly intelligence. I suppose that makes it worse. Why I'm thinking about this now, I can't say. It's not really "thinking," more like fragments drifting through my skull.
Somewhere nearby, I heard the heavy boots of a large officer switching shifts. As if nothing had happened. As if I hadn't been stabbed, shocked, and beaten for hours. Midnight or morning—those were usually the times shifts changed, unless something unusual came up. I'd seen this brute six times already. They brought me in at midnight, I think. But time? Time doesn't flow here as usual anymore. My understanding of time is taken from me due to this 6 days long torture session
One moment electricity, the next a wrench across the face. Like some twisted routine.
I think they enjoy it. That's the worst part.They hit with a precision I almost admire—never hard enough to kill, never soft enough to forget. Just a fine balance of torment.Even the electricity has a rhythm to it. And the skinning... well, they've refined that to an art.
"This ends when you want it to," the brute said in his broken English."Just talk."
"I told you," I murmured, half-grinning through the blood on my lips. "I don't know a damn thing."
"You are bad liar," he replied flatly.
Then the current surged through my body again. I was strapped to the chair, helpless. He didn't hold back. Not even for show. He didn't care.
"It's a simple thing to say," he continued, same tone, same dead eyes. "Say it, and this ends."
That disgusting smile spread wider across my face.
"Why don't you hook me straight into the city grid, then?" I said. "Maybe that'll jog my memory."
"You ask for this," he muttered.
And he turned the dial. Full blast. My body convulsed again, wracked by pain so intense it bent the edges of my perception.
Still no expression on his face. No flicker of doubt. No trace of humanity. Just the dull, grey fog of a man who'd long since surrendered to whatever darkness lived inside him. It wasn't rage. It wasn't even cruelty. Just... hunger. A slow-burning, buried thirst for something he couldn't name.
He repeated himself once more, without a shred of inflection.
"Talk."