Page 125 of Stars in Nova

The cell was a sterile, unyielding void.

Its slick, frigid walls pulsed with a dull blue light that neither illuminated nor comforted.

A steady buzz emanated from somewhere unseen. It was designed to unsettle, vibrating just below the threshold of normal hearing.

Samira sat cross-legged on the floor, her back straight and her eyes closed. She ignored the cold seeping into her skin through the thin fabric of her jumpsuit, her breaths slow and deliberate.

‘Twas also arid asfokk, with not a drop of water to be seen.

She wondered if all liquid had been sucked dry from this hellhole to be stored in the silos that surrounded Cygnus, bound for some unseen land.

Three days in this place, and still, they hadn’t broken her.

Concealed speakers crackled to life without warning, voices cutting through the suffocating silence.

The tones were mocking, distorted to sound human and alien, their words overlapping in a maddening chorus.

‘Your people are lost.’

‘You are forsaken.’

‘You are abandoned.’

The auditory torture was underscored by bursts of static, flashes of glaring white light streaking through the room in jarring intervals.

Samira flinched the first time it happened, but only once.

Now, she sat unmoving, her resolve as solid as the walls around her.

Still, the torment continued at intermissions, which were impossible to measure—with little concept of day or night.

After a span, a pair of hideous biomechanoids dragged her from her cell.

Up close, the cyborgs, one-time Vaelorii, were grotesque.

Their human features had been hacked to tack on the white and silver cybernetic components.

Except the lighter surfaces were streaked with dirt, blood, and gore.

She’d also glimpsed signs of a shadow-like a miasma hiding and obscuring their consciousness that sometimes leaked out.

A veiled darkness behind the flesh and cybernetics.

Twas uncanny.

They took her into a second chamber where another set of Corilian inquisitors began their work.

The room was empty except for a blinding lamp overhead and a chair with restraints, which she refused to sit in. Instead, she stood, her chin lifted as they circled her like vultures.

The interrogators spoke in monotone voices, their faces masked under sleek, expressionless helmets.

‘Tell us about the weapons. How are your allies fighting back? What are their plans?’

Samira didn’t answer. Her silence enraged them, and they increased the intensity of their games.

They forced a cybernetic helmet onto her and projected vivid, false memories.

Of her children captured, Misandra lying lifeless in the caverns, Kisan betrayed and abandoned by his team.

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