Jupiter's Halo Book One: The Lies

Chapter Seven "The Voice Inside"

Aitkin opened his eyes in total darkness. The shaft of light that had speared down from above on his every previous waking was gone.

He’d been dreaming, or maybe just remembering.

Timonny.

Why the man had entered his thoughts he didn’t know. He’d been back on the Pride. Standing in the small circular briefing room with Itona, Mentrim and the First Lieutenant. It was the briefing. The start of a mission that had seemed so simple and somehow ended with him here. He couldn’t put the pieces together. He’d been injured. Weak and blind and someone had what…? His memory faltered. There were so many gaps.

But Timonny. In his dream, he was looking straight at the man as their Captain briefed them. He was sure that hadn’t been the case. His attention was on Itona. It was always on her when she was near.

In the dream, Timonny’s face had been different. Wrong somehow. Aitkin tried to concentrate on the memory. Tried to pull it back into focus as it slipped, as dreams so often do, disappearing like wisps of smoke. He was left with nothing more than a feeling.

A feeling about Timonny that was… odd.

As the feeling faded he began to take note of his surroundings. The room was silent and still. He didn’t know if it was the same one as before or if he’d been moved again. He could see nothing. The only sound the rasping of his own shallow breaths.

He tried to move; to shift his body and alleviate the ache in his back, the numbness in his thighs. The restraints held him fast and he ceased his efforts, saving what little strength he had for when the light and the questions returned.

There was pain still, throbbing throughout his body. His head ached incessantly, his skin burned in the dry air and his muscles were cramped from the extended time he’d been forced to stay seated.

It was all irritation, minor really and should be nothing he couldn’t endure. That was in normal circumstances. After the days of relentless torture his body was all but broken. His mind teetering on the edge.

He looked down, unable to see his own flesh in the blackness that filled his world and imagined how abused his body must look.

He’d been cut everywhere. The blade had kissed him lightly and deeply all over. Where it dove it sliced through skin, muscle and bone with equal ease. He knew his flesh would be a network of scars, so tightly packed in places as to appear mesh-like.

The pain of the fourth question had been worse in its most recent iteration. The knife had waved before his eyes and he’d tensed, expecting the stinging fire to rage across his bared chest.

It hadn’t.

After his declaration of silence, the blade had wavered and disappeared from view. He’d waited to feel it re-emerge, wondering where the pain would come.

It had taken a long time. His nerves were taught, jangling at every imagined movement of the air or whisper of clothing.

Restrained as he was he couldn’t turn his head more than a fraction to either side, but as the seconds ticked past he tried vainly to spot his captor before the next cut made its fiery tracks across his skin.

Seconds became minutes. Those minutes passed slowly, but pass they did. Every moment stretched out as his mind told him the next would be the one. His heart thumped in his chest and he knew he was reacting exactly how they wanted.

He was panicking.

A Lieutenant of the Deorum Marines was not supposed to fall to such base emotions as fear and hysteria. They were made of stronger stuff than normal men. They were toughened, forged to be strong in all the martial disciplines and superior to their enemies.

Sweat had trickled down his brow, stinging his eyes. His hands and legs shivered despite the dry heat of the air.

Aitkin was beginning to understand that no one could be impervious to fear. He’d hoped he could hold his silence and show them no face but that of a professional killer, shorn of remorse or concern for anything but the orders he was tasked with.

That was the face he tried to portray. The lie that hid his weakness, his doubt.

It had been a naive belief and whoever waited outside the light had seemed to know immediately. It felt as if the wielder of the knife could look through him, into him. The owner of those pale hands seemed to know every time where Aitkin feared he would strike and chose to place the blade with care and skill.

They were toying with him. Sending him a message to remind him there was no other way but theirs. He could go on attempting to maintain his sham and they would prove him wrong, or he could admit defeat.

Either way they would break him.

Either way he would fail.

When the knife finally kissed him again it did so without preamble. He’d jerked to the left, straining against his bonds to see the cut coming, believing he had pinpointed the direction from the faintest of sounds.

On his right hand, he felt the fire blossom across the tips of his fingers and the shock and pain had forced a scream from his lips that he wouldn’t have believed was even human, had he heard it issue from the mouth of another.

He jerked and thrashed. The pain driving his body against the bonds that held it. He shouted, roared and cried, waving his fingers, curling his toes, arching his back. There was nothing he could do but endure it and every muscle within him strained to find a way to relieve the agony.

His hand burned, the fire spreading up to each knuckle. He wanted to beg his torturer to cut it off. To saw through the wrist and let the offending part drop away, taking the shattering pain with it.

He bit his tongue again, shearing through where the auto-surgeon had deftly reattached it before and dimly felt the warmth of his blood as it dripped onto his bare chest.

His torturer had left him to his anguish. There had been no more questions. Another session was complete and Aitkin was alone, waiting for the agony to subside.

His screams had become whimpers. The whimpers quiet sobs. Blood loss weakened him and eventually he’d slipped into unconsciousness.

For once the auto-surgeon hadn't awoken him during its ministrations. He'd been left to sleep. That one small kindness no doubt another trick to play with his mind.

Even with that knowledge, the moments of lucidity without accompanying pain had been blissful. He tried to caution himself against the urge to relax, knowing to allow his body and mind to embrace the respite would make it all the more difficult to let go of when the pain returned.

It was no use. His muscles, so rigid for so long, began to lose their tension. His body slumped into the seat, allowing the restraints to bear his weight fully and his mind turned to thoughts of her again.

He bathed in the heat of the dry air. It was still, a complete void for his senses no matter how he strained to hear the slightest sound or stirring. In the silence he thought he could hear her voice; calling to him with words too muffled to be distinct, but clear in their intention. Or maybe the words were his. His mind was so jumbled now.

The feeling he got was clear at least. She was telling him to hold on. It was odd as if the emotions came from somewhere else to fill a space inside him. Aitkin tried to clear his head enough to concentrate, but his thoughts were fogged. They’d drugged him.

Itona was there, somehow. She believed in him. Loved him. She wanted him to hold on. She believed he could endure.

“I can’t” He whispered under his breath.

They would start again soon he knew. Whether there was just one or many watching him, he knew they would reveal themselves again now he had shown he was conscious. He chided himself for letting the words slip from his mouth.

The light came on above him, its shaft a perfect circle of luminescence that threw his body into stark relief but left utter blackness stretching from his toes and fingertips.

He heard the faint swish of fabric brushing the floor - the first sign he’d had of anyone in the room but for the voice - and felt his body tense instinctively at the thought of the agony that would soon eclipse his world again.

The subtle murmur of Itona’s words faded in his mind.

 “What is your name?”