Tainted | Kuroshitsuji ✔️

Chapter 38: Warped Smile

A/N: I know, I know. *guilty look on face* Who is the lazy author here? *raises hand* Who hasn't updated this story for monthsss? *raises hand, sheepish smile*

AHEM! Hereeee is the next chapter (after a decade)!

#38 - Warped Smile

Screams.

He could hear them loud and clear, travelling from the blocks of dull grey buildings his attention was centered on. To his demonic ears, they sounded as though someone had placed a microphone next to the agonizing person while she, clearly a female from the sharpness the sufferer emitted, was screaming her lungs out.

His crimson eyes left the buildings to study the details around it. The bird's-eye view from the highest branch of the tall tree beneath offered him a clear and panoramic sight of SIGMA's headquarter that he noted to be surrounded by high barbed wire fence and sentineled by guards.

Every crooks and corners was dangerously littered with the guards. They were all over the compound, clad in the same dark leather robes and red cloths tied around their left biceps. Sweeping his gaze across, he noticed that all four corners of the rectangular perimeter the headquarters was within were guarded by one watchtower each, with three guards stationed on them respectively, and found two heavily guarded gates at north and south.

Security was troublesomely tight, he thought with a sigh as he turned his gaze back to the buildings and focused to pick up more sound.

Shrieks and...A voice full of naked hatred spitting obscene words beyond imagination at the tormentor.

A ghost of a smirk flickered across his lips. That must be her. His lips which were once a smirk crumbled into a frown as he narrowed his eyes in concentration.

Now, where exactly in the buildings was she held in?

....

Her eyes snapped open as she let out a loud gasp, her heart thudding almost painfully against her ribcage. It did not take long before realization that she had passed out entered her sluggish mind.

Inhaling sharply, Estella slowly raised her head with a weak groan, only to grimace with pain.

Everything was rushing back, coming back so fast that she felt suffocated — the cruel smug smirk, the sharpness when the whip came in contact with her skin, her screams and swearing, and the burning stings which were currently making her grit her teeth in pain and her eyes water.

"Urgh..." She hissed between her teeth."...That bastard." Blinking her tears away when the stings had settled, she glanced down at the bloodied gashes peeking out from her torn tightsuit and made a face. Lowering her head back onto the plank below, Estella blew out a long heavy sigh while taking a glance around.

How long was she unconscious? She wondered when she realized that she was alone again. And how long has it been ever since she was seized from the Phantomhive manor? Estella stared dully into the ground as the familiar sinking feeling from the conversation with the Demon returned, but this time, more awful.

"It seems that the subject has regained consciousness, sir."A meek voice snapped her out of her stupor.

Estella turned her head to the door and glared at the two visitors. "A174, I see you have woken up," Victor Blair was sauntering into her cell with a nervous guard trailing behind him. He met her glare with eyes twinkling back at her, seemingly looked like he was amused about something.

Refusing to waver under those pair of unnerving eyes, Estella cocked her head at him with a smug smirk. "Hmm, I guess..." Her eyes reflected boldness and defiance. "...I'm one of the 'unbreakable' ones you were babbling uselessly about earlier, huh."