Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen


Friday, March 30th, 0012 NE

0804 hours



EDEN Command




THE MOMENT TIFFANY feared had finally come. As the cell door slid open and Benjamin Archer appeared, flanked by Oleg and two of his guards, the only thought that came to her mind was, We’re both about to die.

The rational side of her mind—one that was weakening with every step closer that Archer took—told her that death would be staved off so long as they withheld the truth. Corpses didn’t talk, so it didn’t serve a purpose for Archer to kill either one of them without getting what he wanted from them first. But even with that knowledge, the outright panic Tiffany was feeling was very real. It took but one look at Archer’s face to tell her everything she needed to know. Scowling with a set jaw and narrowed eyes, the judge seemed totally willing to let the two prisoners behold his displeasure. In stark contrast was Oleg, whose face looked as stoic as it had when he’d paid the room a visit earlier.

Across from Tiffany, Scott stared straight up at the ceiling, his good eye beaded onto it as if he’d found a single particle to fixate on. Such concentration was enviable. Tiffany didn’t have a lick of it.

Heart pounding, Tiffany repeated Scott’s instructions in her head. Don’t tell them anything, don’t tell them anything, don’t tell them anything. Tugging at her restraints, they once again kept her down.

Stopping just off to the side of them, Archer clasped his hands behind his back. With a lead-melting glare, he spoke. “And so now, it’s come to this.”

God, help us. Please, God, get Scott and me out of here!

“I’m not going to waste time, as you’ve already wasted more than enough of mine.”

“Did you find them?” Tiffany asked, her voice quivering. “Did you find the warehouse?”

Archer’s nostrils slowly flared. “Do not insult my intelligence.”

“I’m serious! I told you where to find—”

“Be quiet!”

Tiffany jumped at the sound of Archer’s shout. He didn’t even sound like the same man. He’s so angry. My God, he’s so angry…

Face flushed red, Archer drew in a long, purposeful breath. Lifting his chin, he asked, “Where is Northern Forge?” He scarcely waited three seconds—just enough time for Tiffany to cast a fleeting, desperate look at Scott—before he continued. “I will not ask a second time.”

What are they going to do? Despite Archer’s pointed tone, Tiffany could barely process anything the man was saying. That one question—what were they going to do?—was the only thing racing through her mind.

“Very well, we’ll do it your way.” Looking back at Oleg, Archer gestured the security chief forward. “Please begin with Miss Feathers.”

They were beginning with her! Beginning what? Sitting as erect as she was able, Tiffany’s wide eyes searched Oleg up and down. She noticed an object in his hand. A long, flat, but pointed sliver of wood. Like a file. The expression on Oleg’s face looked downright sickened.

“Though I prefer psychological torture—civilized torture, such as loud music or sleep deprivation—I’m afraid we don’t have the time. Instead, we’re going to cut right to the chase.” His amber eyes focused on Tiffany, and he lowered his chin determinedly. “This is a process called de-nailing.”

“Oh my God.” The words just blurted out; Tiffany’s heart rate skyrocketed.

“Start with me.” Scott fought so hard, he was jostling the bench. “Start with me!”

“Your fingernails are going to be removed, one by one, until you tell me what I need to know,” said Archer. “That file that you see now will be placed underneath the tip of your fingernail, at which point Mister Strakhov is going to shove it forward until the nail pops right off. And then we’ll do the next nail, and then the next, and then the next.” As he spoke, Oleg moved Tiffany’s hands to the armrests—she was too shocked to resist.

Longitudes and latitudes were flying through Tiffany’s head. The exact location of Northern Forge, the exact process by which she’d landed the Pariah there. She was ready to say it all. I can’t. I can’t tell them anything! She was going to.

Voice rising, Archer announced to the two prisoners, “This is how this is going to work. At any point during this little ordeal, one of you can tell me the location of Northern Forge. If what you say turns out to be untrue, which we will determine very quickly, this torture will resume with considerably more velocity.” He lifted his chin. “Personally, I find this a very unsettling means of gaining information, but in the name of the greater good, we will do what we must.”

Oleg stepped to Tiffany’s side. With the wooden file in one hand, he grabbed her left hand and pressed it down. The file was placed right in front of her index finger.

“Don’t do this!” she said, desperately squirming in a vain effort to tear her hand away. “Please, we can work something out!”

“I am sorry,” Oleg said.

He was going to do it. Hyperventilating, Tiffany shouted, “It’s at…!” Don’t say it! “It’s at…!” She had to say it.

“Now, Mister Strakhov,” Archer said.

Oleg’s shoulders tensed. She could see him hold his breath. Oh my God. For the most fleeting of moments, everything around Tiffany seemed to go still.

Squish.

Tiffany’s lungs erupted as the file was driven forward beneath her fingernail. It felt like she was burning alive. Every miniscule pressure that Oleg applied sent shockwaves of heat through her. Amid screams that quickly turned into shrieks, she flailed her head wildly.

“Stop it!”

The screams were from Scott, though she could scarcely register them above her own wails. Deeper and deeper, the file went as flesh and nail were separated millimeter by millimeter, each one more agonizing than the last. Liquid warmth soaked her hand. Blood. Eyes crying like open faucets, Tiffany rocked her head back and forth as the file pressed in harder. All human sanity and rationality left her. She was screaming like an animal.

The file jolted upward. The pressure in her finger gave way. Reaching down and in a final moment of fiery torment, Oleg ripped the nail off. For the first time since Oleg had begun, Tiffany found herself able to form coherent thoughts. Face tear-soaked and red, she leaned forward and rage-screamed at him at the top of her lungs. The pain was unimaginable. It shot up her finger and through her hand, up her arm, and into her shoulder. It upended reality.

And through it all, she’d stayed quiet. The location of Northern Forge was still secure.

The surge of pain was accompanied by a surge of adrenaline, anger, and defiance. Archer and Oleg had just ripped her fingernail off. Her fingernail. And she’d resisted.

She had resisted.

Just off to the side of her chair, Archer’s fingers played against themselves. They were sweating. With his own face a shade of pale, he stepped in her direction. “Now, would you care to talk?”

Sweaty strands of hair falling over her face, she glared up at him through the dangling tendrils. Her teeth clenched. Her chest heaved. In a voice so low it was scarcely recognizable, she thrust her eye daggers right through him. “The ring.”

The judge blinked. Oleg looked equally perplexed. “I beg your pardon?” asked Archer as he took a step closer.

Everything in Tiffany’s body went numb. Despite the two men towering above her, all the Valley Girl saw was the color red. Leaning her head forward, she seethed, “Take off the ring.”

From his chair, Scott stared at her wide-eyed. For the first time, all three of the men shared a similar expression. They all looked afraid.

“Take it off!” she shrieked. Clenching her teeth, she purposefully heaved her chest up and down. Hyperventilating in preparation to go through it again. Digging her ring finger into her chair, she waited for Oleg to take it.

“Tiff…” Scott said, shaking his head slowly.

She glared at him. “You tell them where it is, and so help me God, I’ll rip your vecking balls off!”

Archer hesitated—something uncharacteristic for the conversation they’d had thus far. Placing his hands behind his back in a way that looked awkward and uncomfortable, the judge nodded his head in Oleg’s direction. “As she wishes. Remove the nail on her ring finger, please.”

Holding down her ring finger, Oleg’s eyes met hers briefly before looking back toward Archer. “Are you sure?”

“Off!” Tiffany screamed, whipping her head forward and backward like a madwoman. “Off, off, off, off!”

Archer stormed toward her. “You want them off?”

“I want them off!”

“Do you want them all bloody off?”

Blind rage took her. “I want them all off!”

Snarling furiously, Archer shouted at Oleg, “Take every one off! Every bloody one!”

“Tiffany!” shouted Scott.

Opening her mouth, the blonde jettisoned every bit of anger from her soul in a single, unceasing shout. It had to be done to brace for what was about to come.

The file touched her nail. The security chief took a breath. The wood was pushed forward.

Fire-burning agony. Tiffany’s head swung in every direction, her ponytail whipping around like a writhing snake. What was once determination fell quickly to horror and pain. Farther and farther, the wood dug—worse and worse, the burning came. It was so much worse than before. As tears streamed from her face, she expelled every tortuous emotion in tormented shrieks. The blood—the melting heat—it consumed her hand.

There was a pop. The second nail fell.

“Another!” shouted Archer, pointing at Oleg and then to her.

Shaking his own sweaty head, Oleg grabbed her middle finger. This time, there was no buildup. He jammed the file right in.

There were no words—not spoken or in her mind—that could encapsulate how this felt. This was the kind of thing that wasn’t supposed to be done in a civilized world. A torment reserved for a cruder, barbaric time in history. If anyone outside of that room knew what was taking place, the whole operation would have been shut down. All Tiffany could think was that with every nail she lost, the pain would become more tolerable. But the opposite was coming true. Every jab hurt worse than the last. The nail of her middle finger popped off. He went right to her pinky.

Wailing in open-mouthed shock, Tiffany couldn’t even see through her tears. Forcing the pain from her consciousness was impossible. It was too raw. Even the small pop in her violently whipping neck—a muscle being pulled—went unnoticed in the torrential agony.

Oleg stopped as soon as the pinky nail had been removed, Archer’s hand on his shoulder prompting the relenting. From all three men, there was silence; the only sound was the blond woman’s whimpering. Barely discernable beneath it were the two words Archer had been waiting to hear.

“I’ll talk.”

Drawing a breath that seemed as surprised as it did relieved, Archer quickly eased Oleg away. Unwilling to look down at her blood-soaked left hand himself, he asked her, “Where is Northern Forge?”

Tiffany lifted her head, eyes hidden by hair that was now tossed every which way. Head wobbling woozily, she stared through him and said, “It’s up your tailpipe.”

Silence. Behind Archer, Scott closed his eyes and bowed his head. Oleg did likewise. As for Archer, he simply stared.

A laugh escaped Tiffany’s lips, followed by another, then another. Like the delight of a crazy person.

Smack!

Archer’s open palm slammed against the side of Tiffany’s face, rocking her whole head sideways. The judge exploded. “I will beat you senseless! I will smack every ounce of sanity from you until there’s nothing left but a vapid husk!”

Face throbbing, Tiffany heard Archer’s words, but they didn’t register. Nothing registered beyond the steadily burning pain in her hand.

“This is not working,” said Oleg, as if it needed to be said.

“Then we will torture him.” The judge pointed to Scott, though his eyes were still fixed on Tiffany.

Again, she found it within her to laugh. “Torture him. I don’t care.” The truthfulness of the sentiment was revealing, even to her. But she knew the truth now. It didn’t matter what they told or didn’t tell Archer. Neither she nor Scott were getting out of there alive—not with the torture she’d just endured. Archer wouldn’t risk the revelation that he’d just committed a war crime. They would die either protecting their friends or betraying them.

There was something freeing about that level of clarity. For the understanding of not only one’s mortality, but one’s place when it came to the whole picture. What was the life of two outlaws when the fate of the human species was at stake? With every ounce of torture she endured, resistance became easier. If this was all meant to make her talk, it was doing the opposite. And so, feeling pain so intense it’d grown numbing yet streaking past caution like a supersonic jet, Tiffany flipped the hair out of her face and stared at Archer like someone laying down a dare. Tears streamed down her cheeks; with the burning in her tender fingers, they weren’t going to stop. But they didn’t define her. Not in this moment. Not in any.

“You will not sleep,” Archer said. “You will not rest.”

Oleg cleared his throat. “We should reassess this.”

“You will not have one moment of anything resembling peace until you give me the location of Northern Forge. I will have you flayed alive. I will make you watch him burn,” he pointed to Scott, “until the stench of his smoldering flesh reeks in your nostrils so strongly, you smell him in the afterlife.” With every word Archer spoke, rage distorted his face ever more. “Nothing will stop me, do you understand? Not you, not him, not the Nightmen, not your bloody friends. There is nothing—nothing—that will stop me. I will own everyone you know. I will rule everyone you know.”

Eyes slowly widening, Oleg opened his mouth to try and interject.

“There will be statues erected in my name. There will be monuments built in honor of what I have achieved. I will be a god to these people.”

“Judge—”

“You cannot imagine how powerful I will become. How unrivaled in all of human history. Me. Me!” Face rage red, he pointed a finger at himself. “I will be that powerful, and you will be nothing. Nothing! You will be blotted out—erased!”

The veil was being lifted right before their eyes—the fourth wall shattered to pieces, revealing the man behind Benjamin Archer. This unscripted tirade, this diatribe…it didn’t matter what logic Archer used to justify his quest. This was what it was all about. When all of the politics, and the alien species, and the players, and the scenarios were stripped away, this was about power. It was so simple. So human.

Archer’s face was still red, though he seemed to have realized what he’d just done. Inhaling a purposefully deep breath, he took a step back and straightened out his garb. Clearing his own throat, he spoke reservedly. “One of the many things I’ve been blessed with is the privilege of working alongside those of like-minded ambition. Those who want to accomplish much—and who recognize when they’re on the right side.” That last part, he’d said almost sideways. It was obviously intended for Oleg to hear. “You may knock me for my ambition, but do not confuse that with a lack of priority. My vanity,” he said the word with spite, as if remarking on what he felt Tiffany and Scott were already thinking, “may be exactly what’s required to save our species.”

His awareness of self was almost admirable.

Northern Forge,” Archer said, taking another step back. “I need to know where it is. You’re going to tell me, so that I can destroy it. The more you resist, the worse this will become. That, I guarantee you.” He glanced briefly at Scott before returning his amber eyes to Tiffany. “Take some time to think about it.” Clasping his hands behind his back, he said, “With me, Mister Strakhov.” With no further words, the British judge about-faced and strode out the cell door. As soon as he and Oleg were out, the door slid shut. Scott and Tiffany were alone.

Leaning her head back, Tiffany moaned through tightly clenched teeth. The throbbing in her fingers had been there all the while Archer was speaking. With he and Oleg out of the room, all there was to focus on was the pain.

And was it pain. This went beyond excruciating. The burning washed over her hands in pulsing waves. Opening her mouth, she screamed in loud, tormented sobs. She couldn’t hold it in.

“Tiffany,” Scott said, his own voice breathless. “Are you all right?”

What did he think? For a moment, she hated him for asking. But she knew he didn’t mean to sound oblivious. Just the same, she didn’t have it in her to answer. Whatever bluster she’d possessed, she’d already laid it down. Now she just hurt.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that I got you into this.”

He hadn’t gotten her into it.

“This is wrong in so many ways. So many ways.” The repetition seemed as much for himself to hear as her. Like he needed to wrap his own mind around it.

Eyes sealed and with tears still streaking, all Tiffany could manage was a pained whimper. Oleg had pried off every fingernail on her left hand except her thumb’s. The thought that it would be next—at least, if they continued going down that particular path—was horrifying. How was she going to make it through this?

One fingernail at a time.

Biting her quivering lower lip, she mustered up the courage to look down at her hand. When she laid eyes on it, the pain surged again—as if seeing the bloodied stubs at the tips of her fingers made it all that more real. Her entire hand was crimson. A glance to the floor revealed the discarded nails. They’d just been left there.

Nobody is coming to clean this up. Nobody is coming to treat me. It was likely that the only people she would see from then on out would be Archer, Oleg, and whatever guards were actively involved in this conspiracy. No one else would be allowed to see this. Stay strong. Don’t let them win. Whatever you do, don’t tell them the location of Northern Forge.


For the next several hours, Tiffany and Scott sat in silence. Only the pilot’s moaning and whimpering provided any sort of background noise, as the pain came wave after wave. Sometimes the waves were small, and she could tolerate them with only a grimace. Other times, it felt as fresh as if Oleg was right there again. In those moments of abject, wailing torment, she almost wished for death.

Eventually, she was paid another visit by Oleg—but not until she’d almost fallen asleep. Just at the point where physical exhaustion was causing her head to bob, the security chief showed up to pour ice water over her head. The act left her in gasping, stunned shock. A second dousing hours later—again with her on the verge of sleep—confirmed the sleep deprivation process. She’d resisted torture of the physical variety—now they were attacking her mentally and emotionally.

The worst was when the ear-splitting sound of a pop song began repeating over the room’s speaker system. It was a song by a band she actually knew well: Slammin’ Sam and the Wham Ka-Blam, a group of surfer-haired crooners she’d spent her teenage years jamming to. The song was called Fun in the Summer Sun, and it contained a plethora of whoa-whoa’s and ooh-ooh’s, which Tiffany just adored. Scott wasn’t fond of it, and he remarked after only the third listen that it was, “the most banal and meaningless drivel,” he’d ever heard in his life. After repeat number thirty-seven, she was starting to agree.

If there was any hope that Archer and company would settle for just ice water and loud music, that thought was extinguished as soon as the second torture session began. It went much like the first, and it left Tiffany once again crying, screaming, and bleeding as Archer stuck his face in hers and demanded to know the location of Northern Forge. When she didn’t provide it, he turned his ire to Scott, imploring him to “spare his friend” from additional torment. For a while, it seemed he might be the one to break—but every time the threat rose, Tiffany screamed through her tears for him to stay strong. At the end of the hour-long ordeal, the blonde was left shivering, feeling stone deaf, and without a single nail on her ten fingers. The pain was unimaginable—the worst she’d ever felt. Not even the never-ceasing lyrics of Fun in the Summer Sun could distract her from the burning.

The torture even carried over into mealtime. Rather than being presented with utensils, Tiffany’s wrists remained strapped to the chair and her food positioned by her face atop a small table. It forced her to have to lower her face into whatever plate or bowl they’d given her and to eat like an animal. It was most irritating when it was something like chicken on the bone, and oftentimes her efforts at haplessly tearing and gnashing only resulted in food falling to the floor, where it was never retrieved. It was most humiliating when it was something like soup or mashed potatoes, which left her face a complete mess. No straw was provided with any drink, forcing her to bite down on the edge of the cup and just lift her head, at which point more of the liquid ended up on her clothes than in her mouth. Oleg became the sole deliverer of any and all sustenance, the woman known as Ching having disappeared long ago. Tiffany could only imagine that this torture was something someone like Ching wasn’t supposed to see.

But the worst part of everything came when Scott was taken away. Sometime after she’d endured her first meal, Oleg and his guards came in and rolled Scott’s bed out of the room. They gave no indication as to where he was being taken. She never saw him again. Worse than the fingernails, the ice water, the loud music, and the dehumanizing mealtime was the isolation. With Scott there, at least there was someone to share misery with, despite the fact that most of the misery was hers—an intentional decision, she thought, to try and breed resentment toward him in the hope that she would talk. There was a camaraderie that was theirs and theirs alone. But now even that was gone. Tiffany wasn’t sure what she believed on a spiritual level, but she knew that Scott was a man of genuine faith. If the Hell he believed in was real, she couldn’t imagine it was much worse than this.


The bright lights in the room never changed, so Tiffany had no context of day or night or of one day and the next. She measured time in the hours—and sometimes seemingly minutes—between douses of ice water. On occasion, her drowsiness seemed to slip past them for a minute or two, though any taste of actual slumber was met with a rude and wet awakening.

There came a point during it all when even the music seemed to fade away into a sort of ambient background noise, where lyrics lost their meaning and the sound of guitars, drums, and bass beats melded together into a single, indistinguishable static. It was amazing what the brain could block out when it got desperate enough. But the truth was, this was beginning to work on her. There was a certain madness that sprouted when one heard the same thing over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. Fun in the summer sun. Ooh-ooh. Whoa-whoa. Fun in the summer sun. Ooh-ooh. Whoa-whoa. Fun in the summer sun. Ooh-ooh. Whoa-whoa. In moments of what little sanity she felt she had left after what must have been forty-eight hours of Slammin’ Sam, she no longer cared that it had fallen from one of her favorite songs to the one she hated the most. She was as unresponsive to the music as she was to the water. At some point, it was all just like breathing.

And yet through it all, Archer remained, arriving to shout in Tiffany’s face from mere inches away, “Where is Northern Forge?” She began to long for his visits, only because it meant the music would stop—though even that didn’t stop its presence in her mind. No more was this manifested than when she answered him by screaming the lyrics to the song right back in his face. The act got Archer angry. He thought she was mocking him. What he didn’t know was that the lyrics to Fun in the Summer Sun were the only things she knew. Her mind couldn’t dig up the location of Northern Forge if it wanted to. And so days passed. And passed.

And passed.

Some four to five of them later—or at least, so it seemed to her—Archer’s tactic changed. The music ceased, as did the buckets of water and sleep deprivation. What replaced them was something worse than anything she could have imagined. Something that made her appreciate in horrifying detail what Scott had been through in helplessly watching her get tortured. Archer simply entered her cell, showed her a long metal skewer, and explained how Oleg was going to heat it up and slowly push it into Scott’s body, where it would be twisted and maneuvered to cause maximum pain—and how she would hear it all happening live over the speaker system. She was informed that, at any point, she could tell them what they wanted to know and the torture would stop.

What ensued was quite possibly the worst thing she’d ever endured. The fingernail ripping, ice-water drenching, and music blaring had all been tortures inflicted on her. But to hear someone else tortured…someone she cared for and respected…that brought torment to a whole new level. The screams she heard from Scott Remington in those days that followed, she would never forget. With her head hung and in tears, it took everything in her not to spill the beans of Northern Forge. They could torture her for as long as they wanted; she could live with that. But this? Feeling directly responsible for the prolonged and painful torture of another?

For that, she hated EDEN more than ever.

But it was what it was. Both she and Scott knew the price of revealing Northern Forge’s location. And so, even out of one another’s sights, they kept their secrets. Regardless of what atrocities they faced, it was what they had to do. Only death or some brazen rescue could save them.

By that point, she’d have taken either one.


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