The Core Sector was a monument to clinical efficiency, a place where light was always sterile and silence was a tool of oppression. Mara sat strapped into a reinforced chair in the center of a windowless room, her wrists and ankles locked into cold, unyielding iron. She had been here for what felt like days, though the lack of windows and the constant, artificial brightness made it impossible to track the passage of time. The walls were smooth, featureless panels of soundproof material, designed to isolate the prisoner from everything but their own thoughts.
A low, buzzing hum began to resonate through the room, a sound that Mara had come to dread more than physical pain. It was the sound of the Neural Spike, a device used by the interrogators to exert pressure on the neural pathways of
