The darkness pressed against her eyes like thumbs.
Charybdis hung in the chains, her weight supported by her wrists, by the spikes, by nothing at all. She had stopped counting the hours. Stopped counting the minutes between the man's visits. Stopped counting anything except her own heartbeats, and even those were starting to blur together into one long, continuous pulse of agony.
Her body was a roadmap of what he had done. Every cut, every burn, every twist of those terrible spikes—they were landmarks now, points of reference in a landscape that had become nothing but pain. She could feel each one individually if she concentrated. The deep gash across her chest that wouldn't close. The dozens of shallow slices on her arms, her legs, her stomach, each one singing its own small song of hurt. The spikes—gods, the spikes—buried in her shoulders, her hips, her back, grinding against bone every time she breathed.
She breathed anyway. Couldn't help it. Her body kept doing that, kept living, kept hoping despite everything.
Stupid body.
Her sister's face floated in the darkness behind her eyes. Scylla. The other half of her soul. The one who got away.
Did she get away? Is she safe? Is she looking for me? Does she think I'm dead?
Does she wish I was dead?
The thought was poison, but she couldn't stop it. It seeped into her mind like blood into the cracks between stones, spreading, staining.
If I were her, I'd wish I was dead. I'd want it to be over. I'd want—
A spike shifted as she moved, sending fresh fire through her nerves. She screamed. Couldn't help that either.
The sound echoed off the bloody walls, came back to her, mocked her. She was alone in here. Alone with the pain, the dark, the endless waiting for him to come back and do it again.
What does he want?
She knew. Of course she knew. Information. About her sister. About the Architects. About the ones who had hired them, created them, used them. About everything.
And I'll tell him.
The thought should have shamed her. Should have made her clench her jaw and swear to die silent. But the shame was drowned in something larger, something that filled every corner of her broken body:
Hopelessness.
There was no rescue coming. No rescue could come. Her sister couldn't teleport into a bunker she didn't know existed. The Architects didn't care enough to send help for one failed asset. The world had moved on, and she was still here, still hanging, still hurting.
This is what we did to others.
The thought came from nowhere—or from somewhere very deep, somewhere she'd buried long ago. She remembered faces. Hundreds of them. The people she and her sister had killed for the Architects. The ones who had begged. The ones who had cried. The ones who had looked at her with those same eyes—those hopeless, desperate, please don't eyes.
This is what it feels like.
A sob wracked her body. The spikes twisted. She screamed again, but it turned into something else halfway through—a keening, animal sound that was part pain, part grief, part the terrible weight of understanding.
I deserve this.
The thought was clear. Sharp. True.
I deserve every cut. Every burn. Every spike. I deserve worse. I deserve—
"Stop."
She hadn't meant to say it aloud. But the word hung in the bloody air, small and broken and utterly useless.
No one answered. No one ever answered except him, and he wasn't here. Not yet.
Maybe he won't come back.
The hope was pathetic. She knew it even as she thought it. Of course he'd come back. He'd said so. He'd promised.
Promises from monsters are just threats with better timing.
Who had told her that? Some victim, probably. Some dead person whose name she'd never learned. They'd been right.
I'm sorry.
She didn't know who she was apologizing to. The victims? Herself? The universe for existing? It didn't matter. The words were just words, and words couldn't undo what she'd done, couldn't erase the faces, couldn't bring back the dead.
Nothing can.
The darkness pressed closer. The pain sang its endless song. And Charybdis hung in her chains, alone with the weight of everything she'd done and everything she'd become, and waited for the monster to come back and hurt her again.
Because that was all she was good for now.
That was all she'd ever been good for.
I'm sorry, Sissy. I'm sorry I couldn't be better. I'm sorry I couldn't be different. I'm sorry I couldn't—
The door opened.
Light spilled in, yellow and sickly, painting the blood on the walls in shades of rust and rot. A silhouette filled the frame—tall, still, terrible.
She started screaming again before he even reached her.