Farisia Rising

Dissonance

What have I done?

The thought rounded back and back, as Eva watched Reggie leer over his crumpled prey. Her heart hammered at her ribs. Her hand with the gun hung, useless and numb at her side.

"What are you going to—" her voice was paper-thin, lost to an involuntary, nervous swallow.

"You got legs," he didn't look at her, "Feel free to use them."

She glanced to the exit, a gaping maw capable of fitting ten vehicles side-by-side. But walking away would fix nothing. She knew that. It would worsen the sick feeling, if anything.

So she watched, call it vulgar curiosity or something more noble.

She watched, eating back the anxiety, the guilt.

"When I die, the sensor in my heart dies," Cateye threatened. "He'll send more."

Reggie placed a bloodied shoe to her cheek and pushed her head sideways, the concrete ground and his rubber sole now a vise.

"The tracker," he said. "Where is it?"

There arrived no answer.

So he removed the sole and knelt. He took her wrist in his hands and turned it, slowly. At first the pain was minimal, but he didn't stop. He kept on and on. Same pace, that malicious graduality. He wrung it out like a wetted apron, till a scream dredged up from her throat, hoarse and guttural. 

The crack was audible, muffled only by skin. But it wasn't enough.

He kept turning.

"Where is it?" he repeated. "I won't ask again."

The twisting flesh had gone from pink to red, and now, it was beginning to purple. Shivs of splintering bone protruded, threatening to cut through the flesh, to sprout forth like some chimeric birth. The blood had gone from her cheeks, and her eyes lolled in her head. The shock nagged, nearly rendering her unconscious.

"There are two-hundred-and-six bones in the human body," he elaborated quietly, "and I swear, I will break every one of yours if you don't answer me."

The dissonance held. In his eyes, there wasn't a drop of sadism to be found.

"It's in your...arm..." she wheezed.

"Point."

She obeyed, using her functional hand. Her index finger stopped just shy of his righthand wrist. It was still clawed, the finger. Her claws hadn't time to retract.

"Good," he took the claw and snapped it off, moving the razored edge toward the place she'd pointed. And he smiled, a serene smile. "It better be there."

She watched him, with hawkish intensity.

He didn't blink as he split the flesh. He didn't flinch.

He kept smiling, a smile one could almost describe as beatific, were the notion not a sore blasphemy. Perhaps it was the inverse then. A pure, blissful evil, uncanny and striking and terrible.

Cateye scoffed. "Can you be so vile that you don't feel pain?"

He dug on. "You seem to feel it just fine. So I'd say no."

"My brother...my big brother will feed your guts to the vultures... You hear me!"

"Looking forward to it," he finally struck gold, and dug the tracker out. He set the claw aside and held the little chip up, to examine. Then he tucked it in her breast pocket.

"So they'll be sure to find you," he explained, smile disappearing. "I'm nothing if not efficient."

He reclaimed the broken claw and brandished it, sharpside to her throat.