Dreaming

[LtCmdr Kennin 0]

The wall moved again. The eerily pale woman reappeared, looking more devilish than before. Once more she seemed half surprised her captive lived. "Have you considered my offer?"

 

"Throw in the keys to a new shuttlecraft, and you might have a deal," Kennin murmured hazily, not opening his eyes.

 

The arcane expression seemed lost on her. "I'll take that as a no."

 

She produced a small remote like device and tapped it once. The restraints recoiled into the wall and Kennin fell harshly upon the hard, fleshy surface of the floor.

 

Struggling to gather his limbs beneath him, Kennin uttered one soft, profound, "Ow."

 

"Stand," she commanded.

 

"Yeah, that's happening," he muttered, testing his weight on his elbows. The room didn't spin when he lifted his head. He figured that was a positive sign.

 

She grabbed him by the uniform and pulled him to his feet, looking directly into his eyes.

 

"I will give you one last chance...one last chance to capitulate before you find what the meaning of true pain is..."

 

He looked up at her foggily. "We haven't gotten to the true pain yet?"

 

A smile crossed her face. "You have only begun to feel pain."

 

"No, I've been feeling it for a while," he replied, putting his hands out to try and steady himself on his feet. "Can't say as I'm fond of it, either..."

 

"What, this?” She placed her hand into the wound. "You think that is painful?"

 

Stars went nova in his vision. The room turned a fuzzy grey at the edges, and he could hear the blood pumping in his ears. His fingers clutched convulsively at her arms. "Yea -- yeah, that'd..."

 

Devious pleasure oozed from her smile as she pressed her fingertips into the wound, and the same pain he'd felt before amplified. His head dropped forward slackly, consciousness fled.

 

She released. Pathetic. She let him fall to the floor, and produced a small vial of clear liquid. Kneeling she applied it to his skin and it soaked in, eliminating the toxins coursing though his blood.

 

Sometime later, Kennin stirred, the wound in his abdomen had been sealed, though a great deal of pain remained. The pale female stood a few feet from him, grinning evilly.

 

He flopped onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, trying to make his eyes focus. "I was hoping you were just a dream."

 

"Unfortunately for you... I am all too real."

 

"I suppose your people don't know the one about flies and honey, huh?” It was nice on the floor, he decided. Nothing spun or flashed or popped or changed colors.

 

Another expression almost lost on her. "You're alive aren't you?"

 

"Lemme get back to you on that one."

 

"Where are you from, Tom....?"

 

"Missouri," he murmured, watching the light shifting on the ceiling, "'fore I moved to Calaveras County t'get 'way from m'aunt Polly..."

 

"Missouri..." She seemed unconvinced. "And what Quadrant is that in?"

 

"Quadrant?” His voice strengthened just a touch as he began to pull his scattered focus back. "This one."

She sighed reluctantly. "You are not from this Quadrant...we know this...so tell us something we don't know."

 

"All right," Kennin said gamely, "If you mix mints and soda, you can make a really great volcano for the school science fair."

 

Once more she sighed. "I did not want to have to do this..."

 

"Science is so under-appreciated," he muttered, trying to get purchase on the floor before she could approach him.

 

She pressed a button on the remote; Kennin found himself literally strung in mid-air as tendrils from the ceiling grabbed his arms and legs and pulled him up, while tendrils anchored to the floor pulled him down.

 

Kennin struggled for a moment, then relaxed into the tendrils. "If you wanted my attention, all you had to do was ask."

 

"We did ask you. And all you've done is yammer. Now... the time for games has come and gone. Now I will extract the information from you whether you want to give it to me... or not."

 

"I think 'not' is a fairly good bet.” Some part of his mind wondered why he couldn't just shut up. He chalked it up to too much recent exposure to the more arrogant side of the Fleet.

 

"How prideful and arrogant of you," she smirked. "You don't think I have heard this from a thousand people across thousands of worlds."

 

"You really get around. Recommend a good vacation spot? I'm thinking sun, sand... no tentacles..."

 

A smile crossed her face. "You see we have ways of gathering information from you...whether you want to provide or not."

 

"Yeah, you said that already." Shut up, he told himself firmly. He didn't listen.

 

She pressed another button, and spiking tendrils rose from the floor and buried themselves into Kennin’s spine. "Now...where were we..."

 

He cried out at the pain of the intrusion, and clamped his jaw shut on any further sounds. Once again he focused on his breath, hoping to banish the nightmare vision of the red-eyed ghoul and the shadowy horror chamber.

 

"Oh yes," she said vivaciously. "Where is your puny ape race from?"

 

"Ape race?" Kennin mused aloud, closing his eyes on her eager face. "Apes -- 'Then join our leaping lines that scumfish through the pines, That rocket by where, light and high, the wild-grape swings...'"

 

A low hissed escaped her lips; she tapped a button. Kennin felt pulses of energy leaping through his body from the tendrils. The fragment of verse dissolved as the pain struck. He screamed, drew breath, and screamed again.

 

"Answer the question," demanded the woman as he writhed with the pain. "Correctly," she added.

 

"Qu- question?” He couldn't hold the thought. Every nerve in his body was on fire; he was certain he could trace them all by the electric path they sizzled through his flesh.

 

Her thin, wispy eyebrows lifted, and the pain stopped for the moment. "What is the name of your homeworld, and where is it located."

 

"Hom... Ah!” His body shook with spasms. "Ear -- Earth!" he sobbed out.

 

"Earth," she repeated, grinning widely. "And how do we get to this... Earth?" Changing her posture, her long lanky proportions seemed some how more frightening now -- now that she accomplished her goal. She circled the strung up Kennin, tapping something onto a small device.

 

Weeping softly, Kennin clung to the tendrils that bound him, feeling as though the marrow had cooked from his bones. "Down the rabbit-hole," he whispered, tears streaming freely. "I'm late, I'm late, I'm late... off with her head."

 

The Rabbit Hole? She again looked perplexed by the non sequitur. For a few moments she studied him, debating her next move. She'd broken him, and if he didn't say anything of use now...he was likely past the point of usefulness. He had one last chance. "I ask you one more time...how do we get to Earth?"

 

"Away, away," he crooned softly, eyes shut and a small smile beginning to drift across his features. "Hole in the stars..."

 

"In death's kingdom, Waking alone at the hour when he is left trembling with fear," she paused moving her hand over his body, and leaned down very close to his ears. "Lips that would kiss should form prayers to broken stone."

 

His lips moved soundlessly for a moment, repeating her words. "... There are no eyes here..." he breathed.

 

She disappeared once more, and Kennin fell to the organic floor. Silence filled the room.