Page 319 of Lodestar

“Don’t you mean who? Got some of your friends here, Sheridan. It’s going to be one big party.”

For the first time, his stoicism ruptured—his jaw quivered. “I can give you anything you want.”

“I don’t want anything.”

“Power, money?—”

“How about, after years of being raped, can you delete the memories? Can you give me back nights where I sleep through without being plagued with nightmares? No? Didn’t think so.”

“I have connections!”

“What connections couldyougive me that would put you in a position to bargain?” I crowed.

“There must be some reason you’re here,” he shouted, sounding more and more desperate by the minute. “You must want something or you'd have just killed me weeks ago!”

I smiled at him. “You know, at my core, I’ve always been a hater. It’s just in me. It’s just who I am. And you, my dear Sheridan, have gotten on the wrong side of all that hate.”

I strode forward, letting the metallic tip of the cattle prod shriek as I trailed a path into the metal wall.

At my approach, with the last of his waning adrenaline, he tried to kick out, to take me down, but I just clipped him around the head with the tool in my hand, using its bulk to aid me, then I dug the prongs into his cheek.

“The question is, do you want to live, Sheridan? I could kill you right now. Take you away from this with just a couple of pulses from this device. But then that robs you of what you’re still hoping—that you’ll be saved. That someone from your world will come and rescue you and you can eke out another decade of getting rich on other people’s misery.” I dug the tip into his cheek harder, until blood bloomed on the flesh and it was scraping against his teeth. “What’ll it be? Life or death?”

I wasn’t waiting for an answer, not really, but he snapped, “Kuznetsov is just using you.”

“As far as I can see, he’s giving me everything I could have hoped and dreamed for. Unlike you.”

I let the prongs trail down his chest and buried them against his dick. As he yowled in pain, I watched with sweetsatisfaction, feeling the switch being pressed in my brain as the indoctrination this man had overseen during my training began to kick in.

Pain = answers.

Answers = mission success.

At some point, it didn’t even matter about promotions. They just had you so fucking hooked that mission success became equated with your country’s safety, even if you were pulling stunts you knew that no American would dream you were doing in their name.

“Come on, beg. You might as well. You don’t know what I’m going to do, so you should try to bargain with me.” I retreated at the last moment before I zapped him in the crotch. “Once upon a time, I used to be able to make grown men weep without even touching them. Now, I have this.”

He tried to shove the cattle prod away from his junk, but I kicked my leg out and pressed my booted foot to his throat. He gasped as I added extra pressure to his trachea.

“I’m not—” He spat. “Going to—” He groaned. “—waste my breath.”

I dug the prod harder into his balls. “Yeah, you are. You’re going to sing for me. You’re right in that it won’t affect my judgment, but you have to try, don’t you? Just like I had to try and acceptmyfate.” I smiled as I borrowed Dead To Me’s catchphrase. “Sucks to be you, Sheridan.”

“I-I can give you information.”

I tried to pretend I wasn’t interested. “About?”

“Your grandfather.”

“I can find that myself.”

“You can’t! He’s not as?—”

“I’m bored. I think I’ll play with some nuts,” I snarled, watching his eyes flare wide in horror and a high-pitch screech escape him as he wheezed:

“I have files, records, at my estate in Florida. Blackmail material. Worth billions of dollars in the right hands!”

“On whom?”

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