Darkest Before Breaking Of The Dawn

Bigger They Are

"This is the room I found him in. Almost just as I had left it." Gamora recognized, very openly allowing her distaste to drip through her words. She glared at the room–at the discarded pieces of wire. The very spot Rocket had been left. But there was one thing out of sorts that hadn't been here before.

"What's different about it?" Nebula probed her curiously from the doorway.

Gamora approached cautiously, glaring down sinisterly at a white box peeking out of a gray plastic bag. A bag that read 'Hala's Pest and Rodent Control Shop'. Nudging the bag down with her foot revealed the words on the box.

Her mouth worked against a sneer. "This." She stated coldly, callously nudging the box over. "Rodenticide. From a shop on Hala I presume."

Studying it carefully, she bent down to pull out what she thought was only the receipt. Nebula watched her face harden even more. "And it was purchased on the same day I found him." She noted with a hint of cold foreboding.

"Then our torturers went shopping. Do you think they were going to use this on him?" Nebula pointed out one of the most probable ideas with unease.

Gamora's steely expression remained unmoved until she turned the receipt over. And the sneer grew on her face again as she read the note out loud. "For 89P13 with love. So you don't go hungry ever again." She crumpled the note in a tight fist, dropping it to the floor.

Her next move was much more furious, foot shooting out to sharply kick the box across the room. Panting out of rage, she refocused her anger on the blood-stained cage, glaring down at it and fighting against the urge to wreck it.

"Those bastards. They were done with him, weren't they?" She seeks out her sister who also looked at a loss of how to process all this–senseless cruelty. "That's why he was left so neglected. They probably got tired of waiting for him to die, so they were going to poison him. And of all things, rodent poison!"

Nebula calmly picks up the box, reading the back of it. "This is made up of anticoagulants, which would have given him four to six days to live. His blood would have lost the ability to clot, leading him to bleed internally and die." She met Gamora's wavering gaze steady yet holding back her own indignation.

"He would have suffered horribly for days until death." Gamora just about snarled out, shaking her head at the horrible mental image of Rocket in that state."And after all he already went through at the hands of these monsters!"

Nebula nodded, silently but grimly agreeing, looking remorsefully at her sister's hunched form over the spot where Rocket had been found.

"It seems that though the sick bastards left, they didn't bother to even eliminate any evidence." Gamora noted in disgust, thinking back to the other rooms filled with torture devices, still blood stained and covered in loose furr.

Claw marks and bloody paw prints a testament to the struggle Rocket endured until he simply couldn't fight anymore. "It's as if they had nothing to hide. Nothing to be ashamed of. As if these savages were proud of what they'd done to him." Her face wrinkling in revulsion, fists shaking at her side.

"Knowing how cruel they were, they probably were." Nebula commented grimly, watching Gamora cautiously as her fists clenched. Nebula wordlessly dropped the box of poison in her satchel, patiently waiting for her to calm.

Gamora promised she wouldn't break anything else, to avoid compromising any evidence. Though Nebula couldn't blame her for wanting to. Turning away, her keen eyes focused on something at the corner table of the room.

Gamora was too busy reliving the unwelcome surprise of finding one of her dearest companions, who became like a brother to her–reduced to a furry mass of wounds, bruises and broken bones. Her blood boiled just being here.