The Knight, Death, and the Devil

Chapter 30: Kicking And Screaming

There is a difference between consciousness and awareness. Torin was still fully awake when they shocked him into submission, injected something into his neck, and slapped a pair of heavy cuffs on him—but he might as well have been knocked out for all the good it did him. All he could hear was the clipped chatter of strange voices just barely audible through his drugged haze.

Rumbles passed through the bench he was sat down on, the engine of some vehicle—it could have been either a speeder or starship, for all he knew. Eventually the noise ceased, and gloves hands wrapped around his arms and pulled him to his feet. From there his world became more voices, the whoosh of doors opening and closing, the scrape of metal flooring against his feet as he was dragged to some unknown destination.

Finally he was put down again, laid out on a diagonal surface before his cuffs were undone and his limbs were restrained. The bag was ripped from his head, and he was confronted with the blindingly bright sight of a well-lit gray room. Cold metal bands restrained his ankles and feet, and he jerked his head from side to side, rocking furiously to try and free himself from the rack he was strapped to. The last of his guards left the small room through the only door, leaving him alone.

Shortly after it closed, the door opened again and a robed figure entered, the armored silhouette just barely recognizable as that of a woman. A metal mask with two eye slits and a vertical slit down the center covered her face, making her appear more like a lifeless wraith than a sentient being.

"Torin Val." Her voice was modulated, filtered through the mask into a cold, hollow echo that barely registered as human.

"Who are you? What the hell is this?" He shook at the restraints, to little effect. The woman silently circled around beside him and touched gloved fingertips to his temple. A sharp jolt shot through his skull, like an electrical current, but subtler. He immediately recognized it as the touch of a Force user. Memories played before his eyes unbidden, wrenched out of his brain until he managed to force her out.

"Show me what happened to you," the woman said. Her hands gripped the sides of his head hard, keeping him still as she called forth memory after memory. Boarding Andar's ship, losing his Master, meeting Ziare, making love to her—he pulled the memories back down as they surfaced, but was unable to prevent his interrogator from seeing much of what he had experienced over the last month and a half. As the flurry of images reached the present, her hands drew away, leaving him gasping from the exertion of keeping such a skilled Force user out of his thoughts.

His interrogator left the room, closing the door behind her as she stepped into an adjoining room. Two Imperial officers stood nearby, watching Torin through a viewing window to the woman's right. She reached up to her face and took off her metal mask, then set it down on a table before putting down the hood of her robe.

The officers glanced at each other nervously, unable to read Vathamma's blank expression. The Sith stalked silently about for a few moments, rubbing the sides of her head with her palms and muttering under her breath, then began tearing at the walls of the room with the Force, clawing metal panels to the floor with horrible scraping noises that had the pair of officers backing away.

"Brainwashing!" she screeched, yanking a metal pipe from the wall as if she aimed to burrow straight through the building. "Manipulation! Mind control!" She spun around to face the Imperials. "Get me Cipher Nine—tell him to come equipped for an interrogation."

The Chiss agent arrived several minutes later, carrying a large briefcase which he set down on the table in front of the viewing window. The other agents frowned in horror at the array of instruments—syringes, vials containing noxious-looking serums, scalpels, and other devices that looked medical in nature. A true torturer was part surgeon, part artist, and all sadist—this was his tool bag.