By POW

 

To start at the very beginning of this story, click here

 

Unical date: 3752.563.24 (that same evening)

Sleep?  As in, spend the night like this?  Chained up on the floor?  It didn’t seem possible.  And yet, for the sake of the scene, he would try.  He’d gotten himself into these additional restraints by his own actions; he would just have to suffer the consequences.  Damn… shaking things up after an afternoon of monotony was one thing, but now that he’d done it, he wanted to undo and go back to the monotony again!

Minutes crawled by, one by one.  The screams of the distant victim, either the same one or a new unfortunate bastard, continued to make themselves heard every so often through the door, grating on his psyche.  The room was pitch black, not that there would have been anything to see anyway.  Just concrete.  Sam squirmed around, trying to find a comfortable position and once again wondering why he had chosen to do this to himself.  He tried to eroticize the bondage and that worked for a bit.  He felt his cock grow hard between his belly and the floor and (gently!) ground it into the concrete.  It helped.  He convinced himself that he would be able to endure.  It would be an ordeal, but he would master it.

There were basically three positions available for his head: left cheek down, right cheek down, or chin down.  Chin down was the position his body wanted to be in since that oriented his head in its usual forward-facing way.  But the floor forced him to bend his neck painfully backward and so he couldn’t sustain that position for long.  That left him alternating between cheeks, switching it up every few minutes each time the crick in his neck began to complain.

As for his arms and legs, there was nothing to be done.  He could wiggle them but that was about all.  There was no way to shift their positions and no way to stop the steel from biting into his wrists and ankles.  Or rather, there was a way, but that way involved arching his spine ever further to put some slack in the chains, and that was an effort he could only sustain for half a minute at a time.

It didn’t take him long to figure out that he could roll over onto his side.  That was a bit of an improvement, and things got even better when he scootched his body backward until it was pressed up against one of the walls.  This let the wall and his body weight do some of the work of holding his legs folded, taking some of the strain off the chain.  His arms got no such benefit, and in fact the left one was worse off than before because he was now sort-of-but-not-quite lying on it.  Actually it was behind him and his shoulder and left pec were in contact with the floor, so his weight wasn’t directly on the arm.  All in all, not a bad position considering the circumstances, though his neck was not happy about the angle his head made while resting on the floor.  Well, unless he wanted to ask his cheerful, smiling guard for a nice, fluffy pillow, he was out of luck there.

I could ask Pyrellia to make one.

No.  Banish the thought.  Tough it out.  He could take this.  He worked at stiffening up his dick again and rubbed the tip against the floor.  No way he’d ever get enough stimulation to get all the way off by that method, but that was a good thing: if he shot a load, he’d want out in a heartbeat.  Better to stay horny and suck it up.

Some time later his left arm started complaining so he rolled back onto his belly, lingered there for a few minutes, then continued over to lie on his right side and nudged up against the opposite wall.  His legs wanted to stretch out but seemed to understand that was not currently an option.  He’d have settled for being able to adjust the position of the shackles so they weren’t constantly biting into the same place, but that wasn’t an option either.  His neck was a bit stiff and sore, but switching sides should help with that.

He remained for some unknown number of minutes.  (Ten?  Thirty?  Ninety?)  Then his right arm started to get pin-and-needly, so he swapped sides again, repeating the process as needed and losing track of the number of times he switched.  The minutes continued to crawl slowly by.  He resisted the urge to ask the AI what time it was.  As much as he wanted to know, the answer would almost certainly be a depressing one and knowing would only sap his resolve.  Besides, in order for this program to be any use he needed to forget that this was a simspace at all and just live the experience.  He shifted around as best he could to find the least-uncomfortable position and hoped for sleep to take him away.  The waiting was tedious, but he could do it, he could power through this… he just… he just needed to… take it… one… minute… at… a…

PAIN!!!

He shot awake, his legs cramping fiercely, fingers of his right hand gone numb.  He tried to wiggle them: nothing.  His hand was a block of wood at the end of his arm.  Shit!  He must have been out for a while or he would have noticed the sensations of his body’s distress steadily increasing.  Now, they fell on him full force and it was overwhelming.  He rolled forward away from the wall and lay on his belly once more.

This is not worth it.  His resolve to see the discomfort through almost completely dissolved.  He needed to get out of this predicament right now.  The sudden disappearance of the restraints would induce flaming agony as his limbs unfolded, but that would be temporary; he would get through it.  He gritted his teeth and braced himself.  “Pyrellia, end –”, then cut himself off.

No.  If I quit now, I’ll be furious at myself.  This isn’t a code red situation, this is just a yellow.  Calm down and think.  What he needed was to get out of the chains, nothing more.  That would be enough, and then he could let the rest of the sim play out as planned.  He started again.  “Pyrellia, send one of the guards in to take the extra chains off.  Leave just the ankle shackles.”

“Acknowledged,” the familiar voice said.  Sam lay there, annoyed at having gone outside the system to control things that he should not be able to control, but aware that it was either that or abandon the scene entirely.  It took away some of the realness to know that he had the power to manipulate the guards with nothing more than his words.  Somehow, though, that was different than giving the guards commands directly.  If Sam had told Scorpio “take these chains off,” the only appropriate response would be a snorted laugh and maybe a kick from a booted foot.  But relaying the command indirectly through the AI… that gave him some plausible deniability, letting him still continue to feel like a captured prisoner and not a simspace programmer.  Sort of.

OK, not really.

The outer door clanged open and a bit of light spilled into the cell.  Then the inner door followed and the light came fully on.  Dim as it was, Sam’s eyes were still dazzled by the abrupt transition from complete darkness.  He lay there quietly while the guard unlocked the handcuffs and the leg chain, then removed them, leaving only the ankle shackles just as Sam had specified.

“Next time, you eat when you’re told, fuckwit.”

“Yes, Sir,” Sam murmured into the floor.  The guard left, closing the doors behind him and once more turning out the lights.  Sam’s knees had unbent part of the way when the connecting chain had been removed and his arms had fallen to the floor by his sides, but his joints felt like they had sand in them.  He slowly, gently tried straightening his legs and bending his arms and eventually got his feet down to the floor and his arms beneath him.  He lifted his body up and rolled to one side, propping a hand under his head to the great relief of his neck.  A few minutes later, sensation had fully returned and he felt able to stand.  Working by feel, he lowered the cot down and climbed onto it, settling in with his feet pointed toward the toilet and his head toward the cell door.

He stared into the blackness for a while, wondering if and when sleep would come to claim him once more.  He squeezed his dick a bit in a desultory way, not really in the mood for anything serious, and indeed it never rose to more than half-mast.  The cot was not comfortable and he found himself changing position often, rolling over and tossing about and trying to find a position where his neck was least unhappy.  He tried to convince himself that it was a huge step up from “hogchained on the concrete floor” but somehow that failed to satisfy and his body kept demanding more.  Well, tough shit, he told himself… though it did set him to wondering what was wrong with him that out of all the possibilities the simspace could provide him, this was the environment he chose to spend his time in.  Why not a comfortable feather bed from last night, the one with soft down pillows and a warm, smooth, strong body to snuggle up against?

Well, just because.  This is what he wanted.  He didn’t have to explain it or justify it to anyone.  Posh luxury might appeal to Mr. Featherstone, but Sam’s tastes ran in other directions, and that was no one’s business but his own.

Eventually, sleep came.

 

Unical date: 3752.563.25 (sixteen days until scheduled arrival at Kappa Redulans)

The outer door slammed open, then the inner; the light flashed on.  Sam was deeply asleep when it happened (exactly as he had programmed this situation to unfold) and it took him some time to grope his way up through the layers of cobwebs shrouding his mind.  Disoriented, he squinted into the brightness and wondered what all the clamor was.  By the time he was once more aware of his surroundings, he was being yanked off the cot.  Two guards were there, unable to fit their bulk into the cell with the cot down but quite able to reach in and haul Sam out of it.  He felt his heart kick into high gear once more as they propped him up on his feet.  One held up the black head bag from yesterday and soon Sam’s world disappeared into blackness once more as the bag was yanked roughly down around his head and the drawstring was cinched around his neck.  Hands grabbed his arms and forced them behind his back where they were once more cuffed in place.  Running fully on adrenaline now he found his footing and was able to keep himself upright as they marched him off down the corridor.  They steered him through the depths of the dungeon, walking him past other cells where other inmates waited for their turns with the torturers.  The distant screams, he noticed, had stopped.  Presumably because the next voice that would be making those screams was his own.

Through a door, then they shoved him down into a chair that had only a token attempt at a seat.  Just some boards for his thighs to lie on and a back to lean against.  Hands set to work all around him.  The ankle shackles came off and his legs were strapped in place at ankles, knees, and thighs.  The straps were yanked securely tight but not so tight as to cause him circulation troubles later.  His legs were bent ninety degrees at the knees, which were separated fairly widely apart by the feel of things.  With nothing under or in front of them, his cock and balls and ass were left exposed and vulnerable to whatever his interrogators might want to do with them.

Meanwhile, his arms were uncuffed and set down on the chair arms, where similar straps were applied to hold them down.  Once all those were secure, a few more went around his waist, chest, and neck.  The neck one was left loose, but if he leaned forward it pressed against his Adam’s apple in a very uncomfortable way.

Somehow, he was managing to not get an erection from this experience.  His captors would no doubt have worked with it if he had, but it was truer to the scene he had set up without that detail.  The goal of this experience was not to experience some play-torture and then shoot a load, the goal was for Sam to hold out as long as he could against his interrogators.  If he managed to endure for three days, the scene would end with a “win” scenario with the metaphoric cavalry riding in to his rescue.  Then he could get himself off if he wanted to!  Maybe force himself on one of his former tormentors, that would be hot… but first he had to get to that point.

The bag came up off his head and he once more found himself in the glare of overly-bright spotlights, two of them up a bit above eye level to the left and right of center.  A third was down on the floor between them.  The three formed a triangle that fully covered everything in front of him with glare.  He could only see shapes and forms by turning his head to the far left or right, and what he saw there were just more stained concrete walls like the ones in his cell.

“Eyes over here, dickwad,” a voice said.

“Aw, it doesn’t matter where he looks,” a second voice almost indistinguishable from the first replied.

“Yeah, but I like giving him orders.  Gives me an excuse to hurt him for disobeying,” the first responded.

The second voice snorted.  “Like you need an excuse.”  These were unprogrammed lines, the result of the characters he had created acting “naturally”.  Already the feel was better than it had been in any of the pre-scripted porn sims.  Stop thinking ABOUT the scene and LIVE it!  He swiveled his face and eyes forward.  The first voice was coming from the right side; the second from the left, both seeming to come from directly beneath their respective lights.  Positions of maximum glare, in other words.  He couldn’t help but squint into the brightness.

The voice on the left, the second voice, went on.  “You, my friend, are here because you have information we need.  It’s a code that unlocks a device that we have obtained.  We need to know what information is stored on that device, and you are going to provide the code that unlocks it.  One way or another.”

He paused a moment.  “We don’t have much time, so I’m only going to give you one chance to do this the easy way.  If you do, we’ll take you straight back to your comfortable cell.  If not, then I’m afraid I’m going to have to turn you over to my colleague here.”

“Pick the hard way, fuckwit, just give me an excuse.”

Ah.  Good Cop, Bad Cop, that’s what this was.  Although “good” was a bit of a stretch in this case.  It wasn’t so much a choice between the carrot and the stick, it was more the stick or not the stick.  Well, Sam knew which he was going with, so it was kind of nice to get the preliminaries out of the way quickly.

“One chance, my friend,” Good Cop said.  “Give me the code.  Now.”

Sam debated saying something, but everything he thought of sounded like it belonged in one of his novels.  “Do your worst, space scum!” or “Not in a million light-years,” or “Wild paktaars couldn’t drag that code out of me.”  Instead he sat silently, unable to see his interrogators and thus not knowing how long he had until Good Cop lost patience and handed the reins to Bad Cop.

Not long.  “Eh, fuck it.  I’m disappointed but not surprised.  Your turn.”

“With pleasure.”  The bag suddenly came back down over Sam’s head – there must be a third guard standing behind him, maybe even a fourth.  Then something bit his chest and he yelped.  It had been accompanied by a cracking sound… electricity?  His arm was next and the sting made him jump and grunt again.  Then his thigh, then his calf, then a different spot on his chest.  He had no idea where the next jolt was going to come and each one made him startle and cry out when it hit.  His tormentor slowed down then, pausing longer between zaps, giving Sam’s mind more time to dwell on anticipating the next one.

“I can do this all day,” Bad Cop told him.  Zzzzap to his left shoulder.  “Allll day long.”  Zzzzap to his right forearm.  “So if you want it to stop, just give me the code.”  Long pause, long enough that Sam was forced to let out the breath that he didn’t realize he’d been holding, and that was when it came, right on his belly.  Another long pause, and then the zapper made the cracking sound right next to his ear, but didn’t actually contact his skin, though he jumped and yelped as if it had.  In only a few short minutes he had been conditioned to associate the sound with the pain.

A second later, it bit his neck and he jerked and yelled anew.  A few more zaps, irregularly spaced, and then a new wrinkle: Bad Cop touched him with the zapper but with the power turned off.  And still Sam twitched at the contact.  A different way of messing with his head.  Then came a torrent of hits all over the place in quick succession: arms to legs to belly to neck to shoulder and back down again.  The way he was bound exposed a lot of skin and Bad Cop seemed to find every bit of it.  Finally the pace relented and Bad Cop resumed the more sporadic interval technique he had been using before, though every so often there would be another burst of contacts, or a touch with no jolt, or the sound with no touch, keeping him off balance all the while.  Throughout, his tormentor kept reminding him that he could stop the pain at any time by just giving them the code.

There came a time when almost a minute went by with no hits.  Sam sat on high alert, awaiting the next touch of the zapper, holding his breath without meaning to and then letting it all out with a whoosh and sucking in a fresh lungful.  Another minute with no pain and no words from the interrogators… was the session over?  He started to take a breath to say something, which must have been the sign they were waiting for because the zapper plunged into his belly and this time it didn’t leave.  Multiple jolts per second in the same spot blended into one searing flame.  Sam tried to fold in on himself and back away from the implement that was causing the pain, but there was nowhere to go.  He exhausted his breath shouting and had to inhale, and still the pain went on.

When it finally let up, he sagged in the straps, gasping.  “You ready to talk yet?”

Hell, no.  Not yet.  It took Sam a second or two to compose himself enough to speak.  “Why don’t you take your toy and suck on it?”

Good Cop gave a slight snort.  “I think you can stop holding back.  Fucker’s still got an attitude, it seems.”

Bad Cop dove in with the zapper, starting at Sam’s knees, alternating between them and slowly working his way up the insides of his thighs.  Sam tensed every muscle in his body, knowing what this was leading up to.  The bites from the zapper crept closer and closer to his helpless genitals and there was nothing he could do to protect them.  His legs strained against the straps but for all the power he exerted, nothing moved.  Soon enough, the zaps were coming on either side of his dick.  He could feel the rest of the tool and Bad Cop’s hand on his dick and balls as the jolts were delivered.  Sam leaped upward with every touch, or would have if the straps would have allowed him any movement, and all the shouting he was doing was starting to hurt his throat, and yet he couldn’t stop himself from doing it.

At last Bad Cop reached his target.  Sam felt the zapper underneath his balls and realized for the first time that it had two contact points because he could feel one beneath each of his helpless nuts.  Bad Cop held it there while Sam tensed and strained, waiting, waiting, waiting…

ZzzzzAPPP!

Multiple discharges, two long seconds of fire in his balls.  Sam screamed, fists clenched, toes curled, muscles straining against the straps.  The current finally stopped and Sam got a few seconds of break, but then it returned and this time set the tip of his dick on fire.  Sam practically exploded trying to tear his body free from the restraints.  Another brief break, then another long jolt to the nuts, then back to the dick, over and over.  The pain was overwhelming but Sam held firm, keeping his screaming to wordless shouts rather than pleas for mercy.  Strangely, as the assault went on, it actually seemed to become easier to take.  Perhaps his nerves had become overloaded and simply couldn’t keep up with the stimulation?  Not that it was easy by any stretch of the imagination, just that somehow his system had maxed out.  Perhaps his nerves could only shout “ow!” so loudly and further stimulation couldn’t increase the volume any further.

At last, Bad Cop ended the assault.  The pain stopped and Sam sat there panting and straining.  He felt hands undoing the straps and only then did he dare to relax.  They shackled his ankles together once more and his hands were re-cuffed behind his back.  They made him stand and marched him back through the dungeon to his cell.  They pushed him in and closed the barred door behind him.

“Back up against the door,” one of the guards barked.  Sam complied and the guard removed the cuffs.  “Turn around.”  The cuffs were re-applied with his hands in front, and then the bag came up off his head.  The outer door closed and Sam was alone in his cell once more.

A smile broke out on his face.  He had done it!  He had withstood the first round of interrogation!  There would be more to come, but for the moment, this counted as a win.  He folded the cot up against the wall and marched triumphantly across the two meters of floor space that comprised his domain, then spun around and paraded back to the door, over and over, clanking his chain and beaming like a kid on a brand-new bike.

The euphoria lasted five, maybe ten minutes, and then he began to come down from the high.  As the feeling of triumph faded, he became increasingly aware of the soreness in his muscles all over his body.  The jolts hadn’t left any permanent marks on his skin, but the way he had fought against the straps had been more of a workout than he had realized at the time.  It was fine, though – it was the good kind of sore, like after a hard session at the gym or a long run.

He had no idea what time it was, not that it mattered.  There was no way he’d be able to get back to sleep for a while.  He used the toilet, then sat on the floor of the cell, fiddling with the handcuffs and the ankle chain, idly stroking his cock into semi-erection and letting it soften up again.  Eventually he became aware of the sound of screaming again, off in the distance through the metal door.  It was the sound of some simulated character merely pretending to go through what Sam had actually gone through.  Damn, that felt good, to know that he had held out!  He needed to not get cocky, though – that was only the first round of the game and there would be many more to come.

Time passed.

When the door next slammed open, fresh adrenaline surged through his blood, but it was just a guard with his meal.  Sam accepted the bowl and downed the contents as quickly as he could.  Holding the bowl in one hand and the spoon in the other was tough with his hands joined together, but he managed.  The guard took the bowl back and closed the door.  At that point, Sam realized that he still had dried food from his previous meal stuck to his face and chin, only now he was in a position do something about it.  He went to the sink and washed his face as best he could.  Afterward he knew he wasn’t clean, but at least he was cleaner.  Looking down at the rest of his body, he realized he was covered in a thin layer of paste made of dust from the floor mixed with his own sweat.  There was no way he was going to get that off with the tiny drip from the sink… but why bother even trying?  The grime fit the scene, and it felt right to be dirty.  Maybe he should have left the dried stew in his stubbly beard?  Oh well, too late now.  He drank some of the water, then settled in to wait again.

The waiting was tough.  The sense of triumph from having mastered the first ordeal gave way to the knowledge that there would be a second ordeal coming soon, though he had no way to know exactly when.  He tried to not think about it, figuring that there was nothing he could do to either slow or hasten the moment’s arrival, but not thinking about it was impossible.  His mind kept dwelling on the door and when it would open next and what would happen when it did.  Every time there was a sound he would think here it comes, but then nothing would happen.  He realized the anticipation of torment was stressing him out just as much as the torment itself, but there was nothing he could do to change his mindset or alter his body’s reactions.  His captors were probably letting him stew like this knowing exactly what was happening to him.  They didn’t need to lift a finger; he was putting himself in distress all by himself, doing their work for them.  The bastards.

Inevitably, a time came when the sound at the door was indeed the guards coming to fetch him for his next session.  Anticipating it for so long didn’t help a bit in the moment.  His pulse raced as they repositioned the handcuffs behind him and dropped the familiar bag over his head again, then force-marched him once more through the hallways and into the interrogation room.

Instead of depositing him in the chair, this time they laid him out face-up on a hard surface, removing his restraints and affixing his limbs to new restraints at either end of the table he was on.  They left the bag on his head and so it was by feel and sound alone that he determined what this session would entail.  Clicking noises above his head and below his feet were accompanied by a steady increase in tension in the bindings at his wrists and ankles, pulling them apart with his body stuck in between.

He was on a rack.

Good Cop spoke to him once the tension had been set to a point where he was held down, but only lightly, feeling the pull but by no means suffering from it yet.  All the guards’ voices sounded the same to Sam and he had never seen any of their faces, but it was nevertheless clear who was talking by the words and the tone of his voice.  Or maybe the guards switched roles from one session to another?  Sam would have no way of knowing.

“I think it’s pretty clear why we’re here and what’s going to happen next.  Why don’t you save yourself some trouble and give me that code now, hmm?  Before things start to get uncomfortable.”

Sam remained silent.  No wisecracks this time.  It was the prudent course of action.

After perhaps half a minute, Good Cop once again handed the session over to Bad Cop, or perhaps Bad Cops.  “Looks like he still wants to be a tough guy.”

“We’ll see who’s tougher, him or the machine,” Bad Cop sneered.

Really?  A line that corny could have come straight out of the mouth of one of Captain Jack’s adversaries!  His urge to mouth off overwhelmed the part of him that counseled prudence.

“Is a rack seriously all you guys could come up with?” Sam said as the ratchets slowly clicked and the slack in his limbs was steadily taken away.  “Kind of lacking in the imagination department, don’t you think?  Little old-fashioned?”

Good Cop was the one who replied.  “Sometimes the classics are classics for a reason.  Consider a hammer.”  Click, click, click.  “Easy to use and very effective at what it does.  When you have a nail you need to pound, why would you waste effort being ‘imaginative’ when you already have a perfectly good, if old-fashioned, tool for the job?”  Click… click…  The ratchet sounds were coming further and further apart as the tension in Sam’s limbs grew.  “That’s all the rack is, it’s a hammer.”  Click.  Sam felt Good Cop’s breath hot against the hood right next to his ear.  “And you, my friend, are just another nail.”  One final click and the ratcheting stopped.

OK, that was less corny.  The analogy was crystal clear, as was Sam’s role in it.  His body was thoroughly stretched.  He wiggled around a bit, seeking any sort of slack he could find, but there was not much there.  He could bend his knees perhaps a degree, and likewise his elbows.  He could lift his hands and feet a tiny amount.  With effort, he could lift his hips off the table and he did so, trying to redistribute the stretch around a bit, but when he set them down again they landed in pretty much exactly the same place.  The strain wasn’t awful, but he was definitely uncomfortable.  He lay there, concentrating on breathing, which required a bit of effort because of the way his abs were drawn up into a concave hollow between his ribs and his pelvis.

“You know the drill, cocksucker.  Any time you want to stop, you know what to say.”  Bad Cop, clearly.  Good Cop always called him “my friend”.  As if.

The guards mostly ignored him, letting the rack do their work for them.  The sound of their voices blended into a hum as they chattered about nothing much.  Every couple of minutes, one of them would turn the crank one notch tighter and Sam’s limbs and spine would stretch that much more.  After three or four tightenings, he was really starting to feel it.  But he held his tongue.  They couldn’t really hurt him; the simspace’s protective settings would see to that.  They could stretch him out but well before any joint or ligament damage could occur, they would be forced to end the scene, or at least ease up on him.

Dammit, why was he thinking that way?  How was he supposed to genuinely believe this was real if he kept reminding himself it wasn’t?

Well, the stretch was certainly real.  His breathing was coming in punctuated gasps now, a forceful ejection of stale air followed by a deep intake of fresh, then a series of quick, shallow breaths until his body reminded him that he needed to do it again.

Click.  Another notch tighter.  And this was followed by a burst of pain across his chest.  He thought at first that some internal organ had ruptured, but then he realized the pain had been accompanied by a smacking sound.  Before he could put the pieces of the puzzle together, it happened again and he jumped (well, twitched) at the impact.  They were whipping him, or smacking him with a belt or some such.

A third crack came and the sense of helplessness became overwhelming.  He couldn’t see the blows coming, couldn’t even hear the whistling of strap through air because of the muffling effect of the hood, couldn’t brace himself for the impact.  He couldn’t fold in on himself to protect his vulnerable areas and couldn’t even squirm to dodge away.  His body was held so perfectly immobile that they could plant the strokes with surgical precision wherever they wanted on his chest.  All he could do was lie there and take the pain, flinching with each blow and trying to remember to breathe every now and then.

There was another option, of course: he could yield and give them what they were looking for.  But he was not quite ready to give in, not yet.  And hopefully not for a good long time.  Instead he sucked up the pain, the discomfort, the stretch pulling at every sinew, the slashing cuts of the whip, knowing that this was why he was here.  He growled, fierce animal sounds tearing forth from his throat.

The lashing paused and he dared to think that perhaps he had survived another session.  But no, they were just taking a moment to tighten him up another notch.  Click.  Fuck, at this level of tension, every click of the ratchet didn’t just add to his pain, it doubled it.  They gave him a minute to get used to the new level of stretch and the increased difficulty in catching a good deep breath.  Then the whip came down again.  Sam growled and twitched, twitched and growled, lost in an animal haze of suffering.

Then, mercifully, it stopped.  The lash stopped swinging and the tension in his arms and legs eased all at once.  He gasped with relief.

“Think we’re gonna need to get him a longer cot?” one of the guards joked.

“Fuck ‘im.  He can hang his feet off the edge,” another responded.

His arms didn’t want to come back down.  They had frozen in position and didn’t want to move.  Thankfully, the guards didn’t force him but let him pull his elbows to his sides at his own pace.  They weren’t too kind, though, because he still wasn’t quite ready to try standing when they put the ankle shackles back on and hauled him to his feet.  Sam teetered a bit but did not fall.  His hands were once more cuffed behind him, which seemed pointless since they were too weak to do anything with anyway.  He was already wearing the hood, so off they went down the twisting passages back to his dreary cell.

The guard removed the head bag and swapped the cuffs to the front again once Sam was locked inside.  The wash of relief when the outer door closed was less intense this time, but it was there.  He had won another round!  But doing so had taken a lot out of him, and he was exhausted.

Time was irrelevant in here, so he used the toilet, folded the cot down, and soon had fallen asleep.

 

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