LETHAL TOUCH: BREAKING THE PRIME CEO

THE INTERROGATION

SRHIIINNGG.

The screaming inside the cabin belonged to the vacuum of Kael’s own skull. It was a frequency, a jagged saw blade of sensation cutting through the absolute quiet he had spent twenty years perfecting. In the pitch-black hold of the transport, the absence of light felt like a physical weight, pressing against his bleeding eyes.

The ship groaned, the sound of stressed alloys echoing through the floorboards. Kael felt every vibration. He sensed the six Enforcers shifting in the dark, their suits whirring as emergency hydraulics kicked in. They were blind, but Kael wasn't because he had the thrum.

"Stay back," Kael ordered with a voice thar sounded like it had been dragged over miles of flint. It cracked, the pitch betraying the chaos in his chest.

"Prime, the power..." a soldier started, his vox-unit distorted.

"I know," Kael snapped. He felt the ship level out. The graviton thrusters whined, fighting to stabilize without the guidance of the central brain. He reached out into the void, his hand finding the edge of the containment chair.

Adia was there. He could feel her. She was a furnace in a world of frost. Her breathing was a shallow, staccato rhythm that hammered against his eardrums. He could hear the obsidian dampeners humming, a low, poisonous moan as they fought to choke the light inside her veins.

The vessel slammed into the docking cradle. The impact jolted through Kael’s spine, a lightning strike of pain that made his vision flicker with crimson sparks.

"Move," Kael commanded, though he was the one who could barely stand. He reached for the release lever on Adia's harness. The magnetic locks disengaged with a dull clunk.

He grabbed her arm. Her skin was a fever. The moment he touched her, the screaming in his head dimmed into a low, thrumming vibration. It was a relief so sharp it nearly made him weep.

"You're shaking like a leaf, Prime," Adia whispered. Her breath smelled like the salt of the Sinks and something sweet, like dying flowers. "Maybe you should sit down."

"Walk," he hissed, dragging her toward the hatch.

The secondary door hissed open, forced by a manual override. A flood of sterile, blinding brilliance poured in from the High District hangar. It felt like needles stabbing into Kael’s corneas. He winced, shielding his face with a trembling hand, but he didn't let go of her.

They staggered down the ramp. The hangar was a vast, cathedral-like space of polished white ceramic and chrome with no dust and no smell. Just the cold, recycled scent of filtered oxygen. A dozen more Enforcers stood in a perimeter, their visors reflecting the overhead panels.

"Secure the perimeter!" Kael yelled at the nearest unit. He felt his balance slipping. The world was tilting, the white floor threatening to swallow him. "I'm taking the asset to Wing 10. No one enters without my direct clearance."

The soldiers hesitated, their suits clicking as they registered the state of their Prime. Kael’s undersuit was a shredded ruin, his chest a map of blackened burns, and his eyes... he knew his eyes were a disaster.

"Did you hear me?" he roared. The frequency in his chest spiked, causing the nearby lights to flicker.

"Yes, Prime," they droned in unison, stepping back.

Kael led Adia toward the elevator. His boots clattered on the pristine tiles, a rhythmic strike that matched the beating of the heart that wasn't his. He could hear it, the thud-thud, thud-thud of Adia’s life force. It was leading him like a leash.

They entered the elevator. The doors slid shut, sealing them in a small box of mirrored steel.

Adia slumped against the back wall, her knees buckling. The obsidian cuffs on her wrists glowed an angry, bruised violet. "This place is a tomb," she croaked. She looked at her reflection, pale, dim, her golden veins barely a flicker under her skin. "Is this where you lived for twenty years? In a box of mirrors?"

Kael didn't answer. He watched the floor numbers climb. 50... 80... 110. The higher they went, the more the pressure in his skull increased. The High District was saturated with the Ecstasy of the Elite, a background hum of stolen joy that felt like static on his nerves.

"You're sweating," Adia noted, her voice dripping with a cruel sort of pity. "The silence, it's gone, isn't it? It’s all just..."

"Shut your mouth, Smuggler," Kael muttered. He leaned his forehead against the cool steel. He felt a phantom sting in his left wrist. He looked down. Adia was wincing, the heavy dampener biting into her bone.

He felt it, the pinch, the ache, the cold bite of the glass.

The elevator chimed. Wing 10.

The doors parted to reveal the Interrogation Wing. It was a corridor of absolute whiteness. The walls were translucent panels of glowing phosphor, casting no shadows. It was a place designed to erase a person’s sense of self.

Kael marched her down the hall. The Enforcers at the door stood aside. He pushed through the heavy acoustic seal of Interrogation Room One.

The room was a simple box. A table made of reinforced polymer. Two chairs, no windows, and the light was so intense it seemed to wash the color out of everything.

He shoved Adia into the far chair. A magnetic tether snared the dampeners, locking her wrists to the table. She hissed as the sudden jerk sent a flare of pain through her arms.

Kael felt a sharp, sympathetic jolt in his own shoulders. He stumbled, catching himself on the edge of the table. He sat opposite her, his lungs burning.

He tried to start The Cold Scan. It was a foundational technique of the Mint, the Prime sits in absolute stillness, a statue of indifference, until the subject’s own anxiety forces a confession. He closed his eyes and reached for the void.

It wasn't there.

Instead of the empty hole, he found a riot.

He was vibrating with his entire body hummed at a frequency that made his teeth ache. He looked at the table. A stray drop of water from his hair fell onto the surface. It danced, caught in the tremors of his hands.

"What... did you... do?" Kael asked. His voice cracked again, a high, thin sound that lacked any authority.

Adia leaned forward as much as the shackles allowed. Her eyes were dull amber, but they held a spark of defiance that scorched him. "I didn't do anything, Prime. I told you on the roof. I just filled the space you were hiding in."

"Liar," he gasped, clutching his head. "I can hear it. Why can I hear your heart?"

"Because you're finally listening," she retorted, wincing as she shifted her arms, and Kael flinched in perfect sync, his own wrists burning with a phantom fire. "You're vibing like a faulty wire, Prime. You're plugged into me, and you don't know how to pull the plug."

"I left none of that decades ago," Kael whispered, more to himself than to her. "I'm the Zero."

"You're a man who's terrified of the dark," she snapped, leaning closer, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous hum. "You think this room is safe because it's bright? It’s just another box. And now, you’re here with all the things you tried to kill."

Kael’s vision swam. The red-blue tint intensified, turning the white room into a shifting, psychedelic nightmare. He could see the rhythm of her blood moving under her skin and the heat rising off her.

"Stop it," he moaned.

"Stop what? Existing?" Adia laughed a jagged dry sound. "You're the one who brought me here and you're the one who couldn't let go."

"I have orders," he said, the words feeling like ash in his mouth.

"Orders?" Adia sneered. "Your heart is beating at a hundred and twenty strokes a minute 'cause I'm scared. You're not following orders, Prime. You're following me."

Kael slammed his fist onto the table. The bang was a thunderclap in the small room. "Tell me how to break the link! How do I shut it off?"

"You can't," she said, her voice suddenly soft, almost weary. "The Null Zone didn't just stop the rain. It fused the wires. Don't tell me you can't gasp what just hapenned to us back on the roof. You’re a part of the Well now. And I’m a part of your Hole."

Kael felt a wave of nausea. The hypocrisy of his entire existence was crashing down on him. He had spent his life emptying others, and now he was overflowing with a sensation he couldn't name. It was a heavy, restless hunger, an ache that made him want to reach across the table and touch her again, just to see if it would ever stop.

"You're a monster," he whispered.

"Look in the mirror, you fool," she replied. "You're the one who's bleeding color."

The air in the room suddenly changed. The temperature dropped five degrees in a heartbeat. The high-frequency scream in Kael’s head reached a deafening crescendo.

He looked at his wrists. The skin was beginning to glow with a faint, crimson light, a mirror of the amber trapped in Adia’s cuffs.

The door behind him began to cycle open, making the seal hissed, releasing a scent of synthetic flowers and something cloyingly sweet, like rotting fruit.

Kael turned, his hand going to the empty holster at his hip. His heart, her heart, stuttered.

A shadow fell across the white floor, long and jagged.

"Prime," a voice purred. It was a sound of pure, silk-wrapped malice.

Kael felt the resonance in his chest shatter. He couldn't move. Every nerve in his body was screaming a single, terrifying word.

Run.

But the door was already open, and the white light of the wing was being swallowed by a green-pink glow that made the very air feel like it was weeping.

Adia’s eyes went wide, the gold in them surging for one final, desperate second.

"Prime..." she whispered, and for the first time, she sounded as terrified as he felt.

...