Scene 1
First Dose
• •
The steel door folded inward.
The hinges tore free. Metal screamed. Three centimeters of steel plate crumpled like paper and flew into the outpost.
The first scream.
"Hostile incom—"
The word never finished.
Ian's clamp punched through the soldier's jaw. From below. Up through the tongue, through the palate, shattering the nasal cavity, lodging in the base of the skull. Heat traveled along the metal. Bone melted. Flesh boiled.
The scream erupted.
Not from the throat. Air escaping through the punctured jaw mixed with blood and produced a sound. A frequency no human vocal cord could achieve. A shriek not even an animal could produce.
Ian's left femur grew lighter.
0.5 seconds.
In that fraction, the iron skewer scraping the inside of his bone went still. The phantom pain held its breath. Twelve hours of relentless gnawing, silenced by a single scream.
Not enough.
He pulled the clamp free.
Blood fountained. Before the corpse hit the ground, Ian was already moving toward the second soldier.
"Fire! Fi—"
Gunshots.
Twelve rounds.
All missed.
No—they hadn't missed. The heat shimmering around Ian's body had bent the bullets' trajectories. Lead softened. Gunpowder ignited mid-air. Rounds that had left the barrel curved back toward the shooters' faces.
Second scream.
Third.
Fourth.
The pain drained from Ian's knee. His ankle grew light. The pressure crushing his spine evaporated. One scream for one pain. Exact equivalence. A grotesque alchemy in which another person's agony was converted into his analgesic.
The fifth soldier swung a mace.
Ian did not dodge.
The mace buried itself in his left shoulder. His clavicle cracked. New pain lanced up the nerve and struck the brain. But Ian's expression did not change. His right hand rose. The clamp punctured the soldier's eye socket.
Scream.
The clavicle pain vanished.
Six.
Seven.
Ian's heat engulfed the outpost. The air boiled. Concrete walls cracked. Ceiling fluorescents exploded. In the darkness, only Ian's eyes glowed. Amber flames flickering inside the pupils.
Maria stood in the doorway.
She did not move.
She watched.
The judge harvesting screams.
Ian's lips parted. Not a word. A breath. The breath of someone inhaling another's suffering. Hot air and the residue of screams rushed into his lungs.
No taste.
But it didn't matter.
Taste was unnecessary.
All that was needed was—
The eighth scream erupted.
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Scene 2
Harvest
• •
Nine.
Ten.
Eleven.
Ian was counting. The number of screams. The order in which the pains disappeared.
The twelfth soldier was clutching a radio at the end of the corridor. Before his fingers found the button, the clamp flew. Spinning through the air. Metal punched through the wrist. The radio hit the floor. The hand separated from the arm.
Scream.
Ian walked.
Slowly.
There was no reason to rush. There was nowhere to run. Heat saturated every exit of the outpost. Open a door and flesh melted. Break a window and the air burned lungs.
The thirteenth soldier dropped to his knees.
"Pl-please, spa—"
The clamp split his skull.
The scream cut off midway. An incomplete scream. Ian's brow furrowed—barely. The pain had only half-vanished. Something remained in his left shin.
Fourteen.
This time he went slowly.
He drove the clamp into the shoulder. Did not withdraw it. Injected heat. The warmth that began in the metal traveled through bone to the sternum. The soldier's mouth fell open. Eyes rolled back. Vocal cords vibrated.
A long, dense scream.
The shin pain evaporated completely.
Ian's stride resumed.
Fifteen.
Sixteen.
Maria followed. She did not step on the bodies. She navigated around the blood pools. But her eyes never left Ian. Not for an instant. In her hand, a small recording device. A red light blinking. Recording.
The seventeenth soldier was hiding behind a comrade's corpse.
Breathing was audible. Forty breaths per minute. The hyperventilation of terror. Ian kicked the corpse aside. The body struck the wall and crumpled. The soldier behind it was exposed.
A young face.
Couldn't have been twenty.
"Please—I'm just a recruit—I haven't done anything—please—"
Ian's hand paused.
0.2 seconds.
Recruit. Haven't done anything. The words passed through Ian's auditory system. Reached the brain. Were parsed for meaning.
He felt nothing.
Sympathy? Absent.
Mercy? Absent.
Only one calculation remained.
How long will this scream last?
The clamp entered the recruit's abdomen.
Slowly.
Pushed in. Through skin. Through muscle. Until it reached the viscera. No heat was applied. Cold metal only. The recruit's mouth opened. His pupils spasmed. His spine arched like a bow.
The scream erupted.
Long.
Deep inside Ian's left femur, the oldest phantom pain dissolved.
Eighteen.
Nineteen.
Twenty.
Ian kept walking. The corridor ended. Stairs appeared. Footsteps from the upper floor. Multiple sets. Those still waiting. Those who had not yet screamed.
Twenty-one.
Twenty-two.
Twenty-three.
He climbed the stairs. Blood left footprints. Whether his own or someone else's, he did not distinguish. There was no need.
Twenty-four.
Twenty-five.
Pain was leaving Ian's body. Phantom pain dissolving in screams. The iron skewers inside his bones pulled out one by one. Seventeen years of accumulated suffering, transmuted into twenty-five screams and evaporated.
Almost there.
One left.
Ian opened the door to the outpost's top floor.
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Scene 3
The Mirror
• •
A man was standing inside the room.
Middle-aged. The rank insignia of the Third Outpost Commander was pinned to his shoulder. But he held no rifle. Brandished no weapon. His hands were folded before his waist, and he was facing the door as though receiving a guest.
"I've been expecting you."
Ian's stride stopped.
0.3 seconds.
Heat shimmered at his fingertips. The fingers gripping the clamp trembled—barely. Not from pain. The pain was already buried under twenty-five screams. Something else. Alertness. An instinctive threat detection.
"CS-0042."
The commander spoke.
"Or what do we call you now? The Judge?"
Ian's eyes swept the commander's carotid. The pulse was elevated. Above ninety per minute. Fear was present. But the man had not fled. Had not knelt.
"Three years ago."
The commander took one step forward.
"The rebel suppression operation. The annihilation of Production Block 7. I was the rear-echelon commander. I didn't torture you personally, but I heard the screams. Through the comm network."
Ian's grip on the clamp tightened.
Screams.
Three years ago.
His own screams.
This man had heard them.
"Beautiful."
The commander's mouth curved upward.
"The final moments of a noble revolutionary. I thought you'd hold out to the end. But you broke. You screamed. You sold your comrades. That's what humans are. That's what you are."
Ian did not respond.
There was nothing to respond to.
The commander's words were fact. Three years ago, Ian had screamed. Had failed to endure the pain. Had proven his weakness. And the price of that weakness had been everything.
But.
"Let's negotiate."
The commander said.
"What you want is screams. I can give you screams. More screams. Access the Imperial database and I can provide thousands—tens of thousands—of targets. Keep me alive and—"
Ian moved.
One step.
The commander's words stopped. Mouth frozen open. Ian's heat swallowed the room. Air evaporated. Wallpaper charred. Ceiling paint blistered and peeled.
"Negotiate."
Ian spoke. Opening his mouth for the first time.
"There is nothing you can offer me."
The clamp rose.
The commander stumbled backward. His back hit the wall. Nowhere left to retreat.
"W-wait. You don't know yet. What happened to you. That torture—that experiment—"
Ian's hand stopped.
"Experiment?"
The commander's eyes flickered. The agitation of a man who has realized his slip.
"N-no, I mean—"
"Talk."
Ian's voice was level. But the heat had begun lapping at the commander's skin. Facial hair curled and singed. Eyebrows darkened. Skin flushed and began to cook.
"I'll talk! Please—the heat—stop the heat—"
The commander's screams began.
But Ian did not stop.
He raised the heat.
Slowly.
"Talk while you scream."
Ian's mouth moved. 0.3 millimeters. Upward.
Not a smile. Not a grin. But the muscle had moved. For the first time in seventeen years. The sensation of facial muscles relaxing while hearing a scream. The strange calm that arrived while observing another person's suffering.
The commander howled.
"CLEAN—CLEAN SLATE—!"
Ian's hand stopped.
"What is that?"
"A p-project. The Empire's. Test subjects like you—"
The commander's words were cut short.
Because the clamp had gone through his throat.
Blood fountained. Foam burst from the commander's mouth. Eyes rolled back. The vocal cords ruptured, and the final scream scattered into the air.
Twenty-six.
Every pain inside Ian's body vanished.
Total absence of pain. Total silence.
The first stillness he had felt in seventeen years.
But.
"Clean Slate."
Ian murmured.
A new thorn embedded itself in his mind. Not pain. Something else. A question. Incomplete information. A phrase the commander had begun and could not finish.
Behind him, Maria's voice.
"Recording complete, Your Honor."
Ian did not turn.
He was looking down at the corpse.
Already cooling meat. A mouth that could no longer scream. A throat that had shut before delivering the answer.
"The Data Rat."
Ian said.
"He'll know."
"Yes."
Maria answered.
"He'll know."
Ian's foot moved. He stepped over the corpse. Blood clung to the sole. It was warm. Residual heat still in it.
Beyond the window, darkness stretched. The underground labyrinth. The heart where data cables tangled. Where the ghost had built its nest.
Next destination.
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Scene 4
The Signal
• •
Maria's fingers tapped the recording device.
"Transmitting."
The red light turned green. Data escaped through the outpost's wreckage. Through severed communication lines. Past Imperial surveillance. Into the labyrinth of sewage pipes and data cables.
Ian stood by the window.
No pain.
Painlessness for the first time in seventeen years. The inside of his bones was hollow. Where the iron skewers had been, only emptiness remained. The emptiness was not unpleasant. The nerves that might have registered displeasure were quiet too.
"Response received."
Maria's voice.
Ian turned his head.
Text appeared on the device's screen. Brief. Three lines.
Transmission received.
CS-0042 survival confirmed.
Coordinates on standby.
"The Data Rat."
Maria said.
"He's waiting for you, Your Honor."
Ian did not answer.
He stared at the screen. CS-0042. His Imperial identification number. A number marked deceased. A ghost's tag.
The screen blinked.
New text.
Additional intel:
Today, 21:00. Sub-level of the Central Processing District.
'Eli' — transfer record detected.
Ian's fingers stopped.
Eli.
Eight years old.
The child Cal had fled with.
"It appears the Imperial informants are transferring the child."
Maria read the screen.
"Destination—"
The screen blinked again.
Destination: CLEAN SLATE facility.
Ian's pupils locked.
Clean Slate.
The phrase the commander had spat out before dying. Experiment. Project. The key that would explain what had been done to Ian's body.
And Eli was being taken there.
Maria asked.
"Your Honor."
Ian did not answer.
"Are you going to save her?"
Silence.
Ian ran an internal inventory. Eli. What did the name stimulate? Did the memory produce anything beneath the sternum?
Nothing.
Sympathy. Absent.
Responsibility. Absent.
Only one sensation remained.
Curiosity.
Clean Slate. He wanted to know what it was. What had been done to his body. Why screams had become his painkiller. Where this heat had come from.
"I'll go."
Ian said.
"The answers are there."
Maria's mouth curved.
"It is an honor."
The recording device blinked again.
New data.
This time, audio.
[Audio file attached — Source: transport vehicle, internal intercept]
Maria's finger pressed play.
Static.
Ragged breathing.
And—
"Somebody help…"
A child's voice.
"Is anyone there…?"
Eli.
"I'm scared…"
The voice was shaking. Crying threaded through it. The most wretched sound an eight-year-old could produce.
"Mister…"
Through the static.
"Ian mister…"
The audio cut.
Silence.
Maria looked up at Ian.
Ian's expression had not changed.
No emotion in his eyes.
Except—
"Fascinating."
Ian said.
"I wonder what that scream would taste like."
Beyond the window, darkness stretched.
Toward the Central Processing District.
Toward the Clean Slate facility.
Toward where Eli's scream was waiting.
Heat bloomed from Ian again.
Fingertips.
Up the arms.
Over the shoulders.
To the heart.
The phantom pain would return. The painlessness would not last. Soon the iron skewers inside his bones would begin moving again.
Before that.
The next scream had to be found.
Ian's foot moved.
He crossed the window.
Fell into the dark.
Maria followed.