Claustrophobia

Chapter Nine - Xylaris - 1

Consciousness returned slowly like a lethargic dawn creeping into the streets. Pain thundered through her skull, overturning the furniture and bellowing for drink. Her eye sockets throbbed against her skull. When she tried to open her eyes she found she could only open her right; the left eye was swollen shut.

Through bleary vision she saw a dimly lit warehouse with boxes stacked like skyscrapers. She couldn't tell if it was the hangar from Helios, and she didn't care. She just wanted the pain that was splitting her head in two to go away. Her chest cried when she took breaths of stale, sweaty air. Her arms, bound with a coarse rope behind her back, ached like a bitch. Her ass ached from being sat for so long. Z9 just wanted the pain to go away.

She looked at the door across the room, which she now saw wasn't from Helios. It had a black door handle, which suggested they had arrived on Xylaris. If she concentrated hard enough, she thought she could feel the hum of the Abyssal Cluster through the walls, the haunted swirl that Xylaris orbited. The ghosts were calling for her. She thought she might be joining them soon.

Someone snuck up on me, Z9 thought. How could I have let my guard down like that so easily? How could I have been so ridiculously blasé about it? Never underestimate your opponents. That's rule number one.

The door opened and a bulky figure entered the room. Z9 blinked the water from her eyes. It was Ser-Serad in all his glory. He nodded to an armed guard just outside to stay posted, and the door to the hangar slammed shut.

Ser-Serad walked over to Z9, who was applying some painful breathing techniques in an attempt to bring herself under control. Ser-Serad knelt down and looked her in the eye. He was a great boar of a man, with arms like tree trunks and eyes like blazing yellow suns. He had a single silver canine that glinted in the dark. He was a mass of muscle with spots of evil shining through. 'You've caused us quite a bit of trouble, Miss Z9.'

Z9 wanted to spring forward and headbutt him in the face, to dent the barely-concealed smirk he hid behind steel eyes. She tried to smile. 'I try my best.'

'We guessed that the HyperGP driver couldn't have been responsible for that skirmish with Grohaw. That conclusion wasn't too hard to reach, but we couldn't know for definite. You thankfully showed up and confirmed it for us.'

'Once again, I try my best.'

Ser-Serad stood up and paced the room. He walked behind her and Z9 tried to turn her head, but her neck couldn't twist that far no matter how much she wanted to. After straining she gave up and willed the new kink in her neck to go away, along with all the other pains.

'We've looked you up,' Ser-Serad continued. 'We've run you through every system we can find, through all of the files and computers. We even hacked into a few of them just to be sure. Do you want to know what we found?'

'If you found my sex tape; that was a long time ago when I was young and confused.'

Ser-Serad, for all his intimidation, couldn't help but smirk at Z9. 'We found nothing, Z9. Nothing at all. According to every record in the Empire, you don't exist.'

Z9, who usually loved being untraceable, now resented it. C.A.T would of course, if it ever got back to them, deny all knowledge of her. She was going to die here with nobody to remember her. Lonely, in a warehouse, at the hands of the brute pacing her with saliva dripping from his lips.

He returned to squat in front of Z9. With one eye swollen shut he looked to her very much like a troll. He was big and bulky, muscle rippling underneath his suit. He put a paw on Z9's leg and she shivered with revulsion. She could feel the grime of his brother marking her flesh.

'So here is what we're going to do. We're going to keep you here until you tell us who you are and how much you know. And then we're going to decide what the best way to dispose of you is. I've a personal preference for letting a couple of rapists from Kalvulseah out and trapping you in a room with them for a few days, after which they'll they cut your throats and feed them to a baying pack of hyuntigers. Fortunately for you, my colleagues seem to think that just putting a bullet through your head, and denying you the pomp of a spectacular death, would be even more damaging.'

'A double suicide right here and now is looking pretty appealing to me,' Z9 spat.

Ser-Serad smiled. He got up and looked down on her. 'You're got a lot of fire. Some of us wondered if you might be some kind of superspy, but I reckon that's ridiculous. I think you're just a girl who decided that she could play action-hero, and got caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time.'

'A spy wouldn't get themselves captured like this, now, would they?'

'Everyone makes a slip-up from time to time. In the midst of your pain, you might give away everything that you know about what we're doing here. Or you can say it now and spare yourself the agony.'

Z9 fixed him with an icy stare and held her lips tighter than an iron gate. She wanted to writhe beneath her bonds, but she had more dignity than that.

Ser-Serad nodded. 'I thought that might be the case.'

He let a fist fly. It rocked into the side of Z9's head and pain erupted through her skull. Darkness descended and threatened to consume her world entirely, stars dancing in her vision like the constellations she had seen from Helios' portholes. Somehow the pain kept her rooted in reality and stopped her slipping into the beautiful abyss that beckoned her, which she herself called for.

'Don't you go on me yet,' Ser-Serad jeered, stepping around to the side of her. He pulled her back squarely into the chair and whispered into her ear. 'We've got plenty of time to kill, and I want this to be fun.'

Z9 watched from the edge of consciousness as Ser-Serad reached down beside one of the crates and brought forth a whip. It was black and knotted at the ends. It didn't have nine tails, but those three knots were enough to break down anyone's pain threshold like a battering ram.

Ser-Serad brandished it in front of him. A quick flick of the wrist sent it darting to the floor, then snapping back like a snake striking its prey. He smiled, bringing it to dangle over Z9's face. The rope was coarse, and Z9 wondered how many others had been lashed with the same cords, whose blood had tasted the tongues.

Someone knocked on the door. The smile dropped from Ser-Serad's face. He turned away from Z9, scowling that his fun had been spoiled. 'What is it?'

The door opened and the guard, a man in his mid-thirties with a slight stubble that hadn't been shaved in a day or two, scurried in. 'I'm sorry, sir, but there's a commotion downstairs. People are breaking in.'

Ser-Serad glanced at Z9, who could barely keep focus in one direction. 'Friends of yours, I would imagine.'

Nobody knows I'm here. It can't be anyone to do with me. Even I don't know where I am.

Ser-Serad took the cat-o-nine tails and lay it carefully on the floor in front of her. 'That'll be waiting for you when I return. Enjoy your dread.' With a firm hand he turned the guard around and the two departed the hangar, leaving Z9 alone and afraid.

Z9 couldn't remember having ever prayed before, but she gave one up to the skies now.