Phase Four
*****
Location Unknown
LIAO’S EYES FLUTTERED OPEN. Her body ached, her skin raw and red, face puffy and bruised. She was lying on a metal floor in a room with metal walls and a metal roof—far from the sandy vault she had last stood in—a five-metre cube.
She remembered the sand. She remembered the electricity arcing over her whole body. She remembered Anderson.
[“Welcome,”] said a voice, feminine and stern, seeming to reverberate around the whole room, coming from no source she could determine. [“State your name.”]
“Melissa Liao.”
[“So it is The Butcher of Kor’Vakkar.”] The voice seemed pleased. [“Welcome, Commander.”]
She grimaced against the light. “It’s Captain Liao now.”
[“I shall update your profile.”] The voice practically curled its words in the air, the normally smooth Telvan dialect rough and bitter. [“We had always thought that you would eventually find your way to us, Captain. Your name has travelled far for a member of such a frail species. Yours is a legacy of destruction that I had not expected to see in my lifetime. I am Commandant Yarri. You and I are going to become good friends, I feel.”]
The faint sound of screaming echoed in the distance. Liao tried to sit up and almost toppled over. Her weight was wrong. A glance at her right side revealed her prosthetic had been removed, now just a metal-capped stump where her flesh ended. The itching was gone.
“Where I am?” she asked, unsure of what else to say.
[“You are our guest,”] said Yarri. [“Cenar wasn’t the only station we have. Your efforts were impressive, and its destruction has inconvenienced us significantly, but we have others, as you will discover in time.”]
“Go to hell,” Liao spat. “I’m not afraid of the Toralii version of the Hanoi Hilton.”
[“Meaningless babble,”] said the Toralii. [“Your work is war, Butcher, but mine is pain. Let’s see how much your tongue wags after you’ve spent even a night in Zar’krun.”]
Zar’krun. Liao didn’t know the word exactly, but like many Toralii compound words it had a rough translation.
The Hold of Eternity.
Iraj’s lesson drifted back into her mind. Through difficulty comes ease. With a soft click, the metal of the floor rearranged itself, forming itself into grid like a waffle iron. She scrambled to try to find purchase, but the gravity intensified, a mighty hand pulling her down flat against the ridges and against the fiery heat that burned within them.
Then there was only an eternity of screaming.
The Lacuna series continues with Lacuna: The Requiem of Steel, coming in 2015.