Mia's eyes snapped open, the metallic tang of the tranquilizer gas still clinging to the back of her throat.
The drone of unseen machinery vibrated through the cold metal beneath her, a chilling prelude to the digital timer strapped to her chest: 00:48:59. The camera in front of her whirred, its unblinking red eye fixed.
Prometheus's distorted whisper filled the sterile chamber.
"The audience is waiting, little knight. Let's begin the show."
Her wrists and ankles were cinched tight, secured to rollers at the ends of an X-shaped table. The rough texture of the restraints bit into her skin.
With a soft click, a mechanism engaged. The rollers at either end began to turn, slowly, inexorably, pulling her limbs in opposite directions.
A raw gasp tore from Mia's lungs as an icy tendril of pain snaked through her shoulders, hips, knees, and elbows. Every joint protested, stretching, burning, threatening to dislocate with each agonizing millimeter of rotation.
Her muscles screamed, taut as bowstrings. She grit her teeth, her entire body a canvas of burgeoning agony, but the rack continued its relentless work.
She felt the grim separation, the agonizing strain on ligaments and tendons as her body was elongated, stretched beyond its natural limits. Her vision swam at the edges, battling the rising tide of torment.
Breathe, Mia. Control the pain. Don't give him the satisfaction.
Then, a mechanical arm, sleek and black, extended from the wall beside the table. In its grip, a gleaming, multi-faceted surgical tool glinted under the harsh lights.
Mia's breath hitched. No.
The arm moved with slow, deliberate precision, a tormenting crawl towards her right forearm—her dominant arm, the one that had held the blade, that had aimed the bow.
A cold, sharp point pressed against her skin, tracing an intricate pattern. The tool wasn't cutting yet; it was marking, etching a precise design onto her flesh, a horrifying prelude.
Then, with a chilling whir, the facets rotated. The cutting began.
A searing, excruciating pain exploded across her arm as the tool carved deep, precise lines into her muscle and tendon, mutilating the intricate network beneath her skin.
Mia clamped her jaw shut, a guttural growl vibrating in her chest, fighting the scream that clawed at her throat. But the cutting continued, slow and deliberate, each millimeter of the rotating blade tearing deeper.
The pain sharpened, white-hot, overwhelming her every sense. Her carefully constructed mental barriers shattered.
"AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!"
A piercing, guttural scream tore from Mia's lips, ragged and desperate, a sound stripped of all her defiant will. It echoed in the sterile chamber and, she knew, across the entire city, a testament to absolute agony.
Her body arched violently against the restraints, every fiber screaming in protest against both the stretching and the cutting. Blood, hot and viscous, welled up, pouring over her arm, staining the white table a horrific crimson.
She bit down on her tongue, tasting iron, fighting to remain conscious, fighting to deny him the satisfaction of her breaking.
Don't… please… not again.
Her world began to swim, the agony a black tide threatening to pull her under. Consciousness flickered, a tiny flame in a hurricane of pain.
Just as darkness threatened to claim her, a sudden, icy deluge shocked her system. A stream of freezing water slammed into her face, startling her eyes wide open.
Prometheus's voice, devoid of all humanity, cut through the buzzing in her ears.
"WAKE UP, KNIGHT."
Before she could even gasp, a jolt of raw, blinding electricity coursed through the metal restraints on her wrists and ankles.
Her muscles seized, convulsing violently. Her body arched, a human bowstring humming with agony, every nerve screaming as the current ripped through her.
Another piercing, involuntary scream tore from her throat, primal and filled with anguish. The smell of ozone filled the air. Prometheus was ensuring she felt every agonizing moment.
***
Arrow Cave (00:45:00)
A piercing scream, agonizing and raw, ripped through the Arrow Cave, amplified by the broadcast speakers.
On the giant screen, Mia writhed against the cross, her dominant arm now a mangled, bleeding mess.
Oliver choked, a guttural sound of pure anguish, his hands clenching into bone-white fists. He saw the black tide claim her, and for a terrifying second, thought it was over.
Then, the splash of water, jarringly clear on the broadcast, followed by the sickening crackle of electricity.
Mia's body convulsed on screen, and a second, higher-pitched agonized cry echoed through the speakers, a sound of absolute, unadulterated torment.
"NO! YOU BASTARD!" Roy roared, kicking over a chair, his face a mask of incandescent rage. He slammed his fist into the wall again, leaving a jagged crack.
"I'M GOING! I don't care what he wants, I'll tear this city apart to find him!"
Dinah staggered back from the monitor, pressing a hand to her mouth, tears streaming down her face.
"He's... he's doing this to break us," she choked out, her voice barely a whisper.
"He's torturing her. For us to watch."
She glanced frantically at the ticking bomb timer on the screen, her heart sinking.
"We have less than forty-five minutes!"
Prometheus's voice, chillingly calm, layered over Mia's fading cries.
"See, Queen? Your knight falls. Your strategies are useless. You preach hope, but all you bring is despair. You failed this city, Oliver Queen. Just as you failed your father, your sister… just as you failed me… and now, you fail her."
The last words were laced with a chilling, personal satisfaction, as if he tasted Oliver's pain.
"See how you tremble, Oliver? How many times will you watch them die before you finally break?"
Oliver stood motionless, his eyes locked on Mia's tormented image. His vision blurred, an unwanted reel playing in his mind: a burning wreck on Lian Yu, Thea's lifeless eyes as he held her, the chilling moment Sara slipped from his grasp.
The crushing weight of Prometheus's words, the vivid memory of every past loss, crashed down on him. His breath hitched, ragged and shallow.
He closed his eyes, fighting for control, fighting the urge to shatter something.
Not again. Not her. Not this way.
Curtis, pale and trembling, typed furiously, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
"He's highlighting every one of your past failures, Oliver. It's pure psychological warfare. He's trying to paralyze us with guilt and rage. And the public! They're watching this! The broadcast signal is embedded in every major network, encrypted with military-grade precision, with layers upon layers of unbreakable code!"
His T-Spheres spun wildly, reflecting his own growing panic.
"Mia... Oh God, Mia!"
***
Kairon – High-Rise Perch (00:40:00)
Rain lashed against Kairon's visor as he surveyed the panicked city below.
Sirens wailed, news choppers circled like vultures. The terrified murmurs of the crowd reached him even here, punctuated by Mia's horrific cries amplified through public speakers across the cityscape.
Kairon's gloved hand, resting on his gauntlet, subtly clenched, the reinforced alloy groaning faintly as a distinct twitch worked at his jawline beneath the mask. His internal biometrics, Sage would note, registered a spike in stress hormones.
Each sound was a hammer blow, designed to break not just Mia, but the city itself.
[Sage's voice, calm but edged with warning, crackled in his earpiece.]
["Analysis confirms Prometheus's signal is distributed across a quantum-entangled network, making traditional tracing highly improbable. Optimal bypass vector identified, though risk of detection remains at 78.3%. Mia's vitals are spiking, Kairon. She is undergoing extreme duress."]
Kairon's jaw was a granite line. Prometheus had pushed his pieces. He had revealed his king, daring them to move. But this was more than a game; this was a desecration.
He brought up his gauntlet, a complex holographic interface shimmering to life. This wasn't just any tech; it was a marvel of reverse-engineered schematics and repurposed components, forged from the very pieces he'd systematically acquired from Star City's most secure facilities.
It hummed with the stolen genius of the city's brightest minds, already processing thousands of data points.
"Probable is not impossible, Sage," Kairon's voice was a low growl, devoid of his usual detached calm.
"We bypass it. What's our window?"
[Sage replied, her digital tone precise.]
["Momentary vulnerability detected within the primary broadcast relay. Estimated duration: 1.7 seconds. Insufficient for full trace, but adequate for a directed data injection. Query: Do you wish to initiate a location triangulation concurrently with the hack? Probability of success: 92%."]
A flicker of a smile, grim and cold, touched Kairon's lips beneath his mask.
"Always thinking ahead, Sage. Execute both."
His fingers flew across the interface, a blur of motion only Sage could truly track. He bypassed firewalls, breached encryptions, surfing the digital currents of Star City's broadcast network.
It was risky, leaving a faint digital trail, but necessary. A knight's defiance. And for the King to respond… Prometheus would understand the message.
For a single, jarring second, the city-wide broadcast of Mia's torture flickered. The image distorted into static, then reformed, no longer showing Mia, but a stark, black screen with a single, glowing symbol: a white knight chess piece, defiant and unmoving.
Then, a line of cryptic code, stark white against the black:
"You're not the only one who plays games. – K"
It vanished as quickly as it appeared, replaced by Mia's gruesome image, still suffering. But the message had been sent. A ripple in Prometheus's carefully constructed chaos.
[Sage's voice came back, a hint of surprise in her analytical tone.
"Injection complete. Message delivered. Prometheus's counter-measures re-engaged in 0.05 seconds. Digital footprint minimal, but not invisible. Location triangulated. Mia's precise coordinates acquired and uploaded to your retinal display. Estimated distance: 7.4 kilometers. Query: Your risk profile just escalated, Kairon. Was that truly the most efficient use of our window?"]
Kairon scanned the coordinates, overlaying them onto a tactical map.
"Industrial district. Abandoned sub-basement. Too many blind spots. He wants us to walk into a trap."
"Efficient enough, Sage," Kairon stated, his eyes narrowing.
"He needs to know he's not the only grandmaster on this board. Let him wonder who else dares to challenge the King."
He slipped back into the shadows, a ghost in the storm, leaving the digital echo of his challenge hanging in the air.
***
Arrow Cave – Escalating Desperation (00:35:00)
"What was that?!" Dinah shouted, pointing at the screen, her voice hoarse.
"A glitch? A message?"
She looked from the screen, where Mia's still-convulsing form was visible, to Oliver, desperation etched on her face.
"Oliver, we need to go now! Every second she's enduring that..."
Curtis, momentarily stunned by the broadcast interruption, stared at his console.
"It… it was a hack. Someone breached Prometheus's broadcast. A custom signature, untraceable. A chess knight symbol and a message: 'You're not the only one who plays games. – K'!"
He looked up, wide-eyed.
"Someone else is out there. Someone who knows Prometheus's game. Storm-Walker."
Oliver's eyes snapped open, a flicker of something new in their depths—not just despair, but a spark of defiance.
"Storm-Walker," he murmured, a name half-question, half-recognition. He clenched his jaw, the implications of the cryptic message, and the identity of its sender, beginning to sink in.
Roy stared at the screen, a grim smile touching his lips amidst his fury.
"So we've got help. Good. Because I'm done waiting." He grabbed an arming arrow, his movements sharp and decisive.
"He's baiting us, Roy!" Dinah warned, but her gaze lingered on the phantom image of the knight. The realization of what Prometheus was doing, twisting their emotions against them, was a bitter pill.
"He wants us to make mistakes. We can't just charge in!"
Meanwhile, the city outside was a cacophony of fear. News anchors, initially reporting on Mia's abduction, were now struggling to maintain composure, their voices breaking as Prometheus's broadcast continued. Emergency services were overwhelmed.
The city's mood was turning from panic to a volatile, dangerous despair. Citizens gathered around public screens, eyes wide with horror, unable to look away from Mia's ordeal, unable to understand why their heroes couldn't stop it.
The repeated agonized cries from the broadcast seemed to rip through the very fabric of their city's resolve.
On a street corner, a young mother openly wept, clutching her child, her face a mask of terror. A usually stoic newscaster, a veteran of countless crises, choked back a sob on live television, unable to continue reading the teleprompter.
Curtis slammed his hand on the desk, his face grim.
"The broadcast's origin… it's a phantom! He's using a new kind of distributed network, constantly shifting. It's like trying to grab smoke! Every time I think I have a lock, it shifts. And the longer it runs, the more it self-propagates!"
He gritted his teeth, sweat dripping onto the keyboard.
"But I will find it. I swear it. We can't let her..." He trailed off, unable to voice the unspoken fear.
He glanced at the relentless bomb timer, its glowing digits a cruel countdown. Thirty-five minutes. That's all the time she has left. That's all the time we have left.
Suddenly, a new hiss echoed through the broadcast feed. A thin, vaporous cloud, faintly green, began to seep from unseen vents near Mia's head.
Her eyes snapped wide, pupils dilating, a desperate gasp caught in her throat. Her body seized, no longer from electrical current, but from an unseen, all-consuming dread that twisted her features into a mask of pure terror.
She thrashed against the restraints, her head whipping violently side to side as a horrific, choked-off gurgle escaped her lips.
"NO! NO! GET AWAY!"
Her voice, though distorted by primal fear, pierced the city's loudspeakers, followed by frantic, guttural screams unlike any before, as if she was seeing unspeakable, personal horrors, fighting monstrous illusions only she could perceive.
Across Star City, the sight of their hero succumbing to an invisible terror sent a collective shudder through the populace.
On the giant screens, Mia's contorted face and desperate, fear-laden cries were a direct assault on the city's last vestiges of hope.
People stumbled back, clutching their heads, some retching at the sheer psychological violation on display.
The earlier cries of outrage faded, replaced by whimpers, disbelieving murmurs, and the chilling silence of utter defeat.
It wasn't just Mia's body breaking, but her very mind, and with it, the spirit of Star City.
Prometheus wasn't just showing them pain; he was showing them their own deepest fears mirrored in their hero's eyes, proving that even their champions could be reduced to screaming, terrified shadows.
The city watched, paralyzed, as its hope bled out, moment by agonizing moment.
End of Chapter 20