142
nner, it goes. Prey run for their lives. The moral is supposed to be that on average, the hunted escape the hunters because they're more motivated.
Maybe that was true when it all just came down to who ran faster. Doesn't seem to hold when the strategy involves tactical foresight and double-reverse mind fucks, though. The vampires win every time.
And now you're caught, and while it may have been vampires that set the trap, it was regular turncoat baseline humans who pulled the trigger. For six hours now you've been geckoed to the wall of some unnamed unlisted underground detention facility, watching as some of those selfsame humans played games with your boyfriend and co-conspirator. These are not your average games. They involve pliers, and glowing wires, and body parts that were not designed to detach. You wish, by now, that your lover were dead, like the two others in your cell whose parts are scattered about the room. But they're not letting that happen. They're having too much fun.
That's what it all comes down to. This is not an interrogation; there are less invasive ways to get more reliable answers. These are simply a few more sadistic thugs with Authority, killing time and other things, and you can only cry and squeeze your eyes tight and whimper like an animal even though they haven't laid a hand on you yet. You can only wish they hadn't saved you for last, because you know what that means.
But suddenly your tormentors stop in mid-game and cock their heads as if listening to some collective inner voice. Presumably it tells them to take you off the wall, bring you into the next room, and sit you down at one of two gel-padded chairs on opposite sides of a smart desk, because this is what they do--far more gently than you'd expect--before retiring. You can also assume that whoever has given these instructions is both powerful and displeased, because all the arrogant sadistic cockiness has drained from their faces in the space of a heartbeat.
You sit