Katarina.
She is chained to the ceiling, as I am. She looks far worse than me, bloody, bruised, and beaten.
They started with her.
“Katarina,” I whisper. “Are you okay . . . ?”
She looks up at me, her eyes brimming with tears. “Don’t look at me,” she says, her eyes drifting down to the floor.
A new Mog enters the room. He is wearing, of all things, a white polo shirt and a crisp pair of khaki pants. His haircut is short. His shoes—loafers—scuff quietly across the floor. He could be a suburban dad, or the manager of a neighborhood store.
“Howdy,” he says. He grins at me, his hands in his pocket. His teeth are white like in a toothpaste commercial.
“Hope you’re enjoying your stay with us so far.” I notice the bristly hair on his tan arms. He is handsome, in a bland way, with a compact but strong-looking build. “These caves can be awfully drafty, but we try to make it as cozy as possible. I trust you have two buckets in your cell? Wouldn’t want you to go without.”
His hand reaches out so casually that for a second I think he is going to caress my cheek. Instead, he pinches it, hard, giving my flesh a twist. “You are our guests of honor, after all,” he says, the venom at last creeping into his salesman’s voice.
I hate myself for doing it, but I begin to cry. My legs give out entirely, and I dangle hard against my cuffs. I don’t allow myself to sob audibly, though: he can see me cry, but I won’t let him hear it.
“Okay, ladies,” he says, clapping his hands together and approaching a little desk tucked into the corner of the cell. He opens a drawer and pulls out a vinyl case, which he unwraps on the surface of the desk. The ceiling light glints off an array of sharp steel objects. He picks them up, one at a time, so I can see them all. Scalpels, razors, pliers. Blades of every kind. A pocket-size electric drill. He gives it a few nerve-shattering whirs before putting it down.
He strides over to me, putting his face right up in mine. He speaks, and his breath forces its way into my nostrils. I want to retch.
“Do you see all of these?”
I don’t respond. His breath smells like the breath of the beast in the cage. Despite his bland exterior, he’s made of the same foul stuff.
“I intend to use each and every one of them on you and your Cêpan, unless you answer every question I ask truthfully. If you don’t, I assure you that both of you will wish you were dead.”
He gives a hateful little grin and walks back over to the desk, picking up a thin-looking razor blade with a thick rubber handle. He returns to me, rubbing the dull side of the blade against my cheek. It’s cold.
“I’ve been hunting you kids for a very long time,” he says. “We’ve killed two of you, and now we have one right here, whatever number you are. As you might imagine, I hope you are Number Three.”
I try to inch away from him, pressing my back hard against the cell wall, wishing I could disappear into the stone. He smiles at me, again pressing the dull side of the razor into my cheek, harder this time.
“Oops,” he says, tauntingly. “That’s not the right side.”
With a single dexterous motion, he reverses the blade in his wrist, the sharp side now facing me. “Let’s try it this way, shall we.”
With reptilian pleasure he brings the blade to the side of my face and swipes hard against my flesh. I feel a familiar warmth, but no pain, and watch with shock as his own cheek begins to bleed instead.
Blood flows from his wound as it splits open like a seam. He drops the blade, clutching his face, and begins stamping around the room in pain and frustration. He kicks over the desk, sending his instruments of torture scattering across the cell, then flees the room. The Mog guards who’d been standing behind him exchange indecipherable glances.
Before I even have a chance to say anything to Katarina, the Mogs move forward, unshackle me, and drag me back to my cell.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN