Fortress of the Mind

[Onika Zepparah]

Onika followed the Selonian's eyes, and her hands clenched at her sides. "Fine, then," she said, and she stooped to unlace her boots. She kicked them off and gathered up the nylon laces, then moved to the front row and seized Cadet Pharidae's desk, sliding across the floor with a teeth-rattling shriek of metal until it stood at the foot of the podium.

She glared at Jeryd and nodded toward the desk. "Get on."

She sat Jeryd on the short edge of the desk and yanked his shoulders down so he was lying across it. Then she pulled his arms down along the sides and with eyebrow-raising alacrity lashed each of his hands to one of the desk's metal legs using her bootlaces. He couldn't help but grip the durasteel frame, and trying to pull away would only saw the nylon laces into his skin. They were overengineered like everything the Empire made. They wouldn't break easily.

Finally she slipped underneath the desk and tied Jeryd's bootlaces together, around one of the frame's crossbeams so he couldn't escape. He was bound to the desk like a bird in a snare.

Onika looked up at the chrono. Her preparations, while efficient, had taken another four minutes and thirty seconds.

She moved to stand at Jeryd's head, outside his field of view, and lay her hands on his stretched shoulders. Her fingers curled inward, and she began to massage them until they relaxed. She worked her way down his arms, teasing the tension away from his muscles and leaving them tingling. Cadet Catanna muttered something crude to Cadet Jolee. Onika ignored him.

"Have you heard of phantom limb syndrome?" Onika said as she continued her work. "You lose an arm or a leg, but your brain doesn't catch on. It sends you signals from the missing part. Heat. Cold. Pain."

She began drumming her fingers on Jeryd's left arm, up, down, and around every joint. Her other hand tapped the same rhythm on the desk, sending vibrations through the whole frame. Speeding up, slowing down, waxing, waning. She watched the chrono tick by for another valuable minute as she continued her work.

"Funny thing is, you don't need to lose a body part to experience it. I can make your brain believe this desk is part of your body."

The hand on Jeryd's arm stopped. The hand on the desk kept going. Every vibration rattled through the frame, into Jeryd's hand, and up through the bones of his arm.

"Which means that anything I do to the desk..."

Her hand became a fist and pounded down onto the desk's surface with a bang.

"I'm doing to you."

She crouched low and kept on tapping to keep the connection alive. Her lips almost brushed Jeryd's ear. "I can do anything I want, and it won't leave a mark. So what did she tell you?"

[Jeryd Redsun]

Jeryd winced. He saw the punch happen, but from his limited perspective, he had been unable to see where Onika's fist made contact. It certainly felt like a hit. Every muscle in his arm tensed from the impact, and his fingers grasped at the metal. Shortly to follow was the dull ache of a dead arm.

"Hells, Onika! Are you some kind of witch?" he muttered.

It was a fitting description. In a matter of minutes, Jeryd had gone from being under the influence of one kind of spell to something completely different. There had been jokes to be had, at Onika's expense, as she lashed him to the table, but he held his tongue. That was not his role to play. He had hoped to drag out the conversation longer, but his interrogator was industrious, and she was not to be delayed. Still, 8 minutes had gone by, and all he had to show for it was a dead arm. There was something to be said for her ingenuity, and her disturbing knowledge of the mind, but, in the end, all it proved was the lengths she was prepared to go to in order to avoid doing what needed to be done. So he would continue to feed her what she wanted: a pretext to avoid the truth. It was an easy 5 points in the bank.

"I tell you what," he said, the table creaked under him as he attempted to shift his weight to look at her, "If you give me another massage, I might be tempted to tell you everything."

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

Vissica hovered over Onika's shoulder, inspecting her handiwork. It had been a very unorthodox technique. The possibility remained that the half-breed simply wasn't prepared to use ruthless means against her fellow student, but even in deprivation of an efficient torture device, Onika's work was thoughtful and inventive.

Jeryd kept his feelings guarded, but even then, Vissica could discern a shift in them.

[Onika Zepparah]

Onika was ever conscious of the looming presence behind her. Even without her open senses, one look at Vissica was enough to give you sympathy with your evolutionary forebears trying to lie very still under a clump of ferns while something stalked by with drooling fangs and rancid breath. Was she buying it? This was essentially a parlor trick, something to you used on your friends to blow their minds, or - as the older girl who had taught her had put it - a thrilling bit of bedroom sorcery that went well with blindfolds and silk binders. Could it be used as torture? Onika wasn't really sure. Maybe if the victim was adequately suggestible. Which Jeryd wasn't. As far as she was concerned, he had all the imagination of a cinder block. Which meant she really needed his help to sell this, and -

And he was cracking jokes like a pulp Holonet spy. Onika's face went blank, and she lifted her knee into the underside of the desk, directly underneath his head.

That drew out a satisfying grunt, but it was probably more because of the headache than his arm. She needed something else. A hacksaw. A drill. Something to make him feel like she was cutting through bone. A chain to drag across the desk legs. A knife's edge to scrape along it like nails on a slate.

Ten minutes gone. Her time was halfway up, and she hadn't made any real, meaningful progress. She'd tried to be kind. She'd tried to give him an out. And he was mocking her. She could swallow failure. But she wouldn't swallow her pride.

Onika pulled away from the desk with one final kick that probably hurt her unshod foot more than him. And she turned back to face the class. "I need an assistant," she said. "Cadet Hoob."

This was a desperate gamble. She didn't even know if Vissica would allow it.

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

Nebbil made a move to stand, and was frozen in place by Vissica's raised paw. He abruptly course corrected to remain in his seat.

"Cadet Hoob already has an incentive to not cooperate with your interrogation. Instead, I will be your assistant."

[Onika Zepparah]

Onika turned smoothly toward the Selonian. "With respect, Lady Vissica, Cadet Hoob is uniquely suited for the task. I believe I can provide adequate incentive."

She looked back toward Nebbil and held out a hand of welcome. She smiled and gave him a slight nod, encouraging.

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

The Selonian's almond-shaped eyes widened slightly, and she let her breath out in a testy hiss from her nose. Her eyes briefly flicked back to Jeryd, then returned to the half-breed.

"You now have nine minutes, Cadet."

Vissica's torso twisted nearly 180 degrees. She beckoned again for Hoob.

[Jeryd Redsun]

When the cracks started to show in Onika's composure, Jeryd fought to keep his smirk from sight. If he was to keep her believing they were on the same side, forming a united, albeit secretive, front in the face of Lady Vissica's cruel tutelage, he had to play his part. So he grunted, and he hissed, when she lashed out in frustration at the desk. She was expecting him to break too easily. If he confessed his secrets under the influence of her cute massage technique, Vissica would sniff out the deception in an instant. Besides, he wasn't about to crumble from some Twi'leki parlour trick in front of the whole class. He deserved more credit, more dignity, than that.

The sudden change of tactic caught him by surprise. His brow creased as he craned his neck to inspect the rows of spectating cadets. Nebbil rose with uncertainty, as if bracing himself to evade danger at any moment. For the first time since they met, Jeryd was annoyed with his unassuming pink torturer. Why did she have to bring him into it? And directly under Vissica's glare? He cast his mind back to their first day, recalling the sight of Nebbil folding, fetal, from brutal assault at the hands of their ruthless Selonian instructor. And, judging by the look on his friend's face as he approached the grim stage, he was thinking of the same thing. He twisted to get a better look, laces biting into his wrists, and summoned a grin full of confidence.

"Hey, Neb. Easy on the face, okay? I only have the one."

[Onika Zepparah]

Onika twisted inside with revulsion at what she was about to do. But to Nebbil, she smiled. She knew, much to her chagrin, exactly how much teeth to show, how deep her dimples should fold, how much her eyes should crinkle, to achieve the precise mixture of inviting and alluring that would draw him in without intimidating him. She reached a hand down to help him up onto the stage and rubbed his knuckles in a small circle with her thumb.

"Thanks, Neb," she said, softly. "Everything will be fine, okay?"

Then she seized him around the shoulders and forced him backwards into the welcoming embrace of the Regulator. Its wrist and ankle restraints found him with unerring efficiency, and with a throaty electronic hum, the machine vibrated to life, its twelve spidery manipulator arms unfolding with a high-pitched wine of twisting servos.

"Wh- What are you doing?" Nebbil cried, voice strained with terror.

Onika stepped behind the control panel, daunted by what she saw, but she kept her outer shell cool and unyielding. Hard red eyes stared at Jeryd's bound form like a statue.

"There's more than one way to make you feel pain at a distance, Jeryd," she said.

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

Vissica's dark eyes brightened a bit at the sight. Although it was perhaps unsavory and manipulative form for a Selonian, the Knight could appreciate the possibility of cold, clean results from the mongrel's treachery.

"Impressive." she crossed her arms, surveying not just Onika's new prisoner, but the state of both the interrogator and her subject.

[Jeryd Redsun]

From the moment Onika walked Nebbil out of sight, Jeryd grew suspicious. There was something off in the way she offered him reassurance, like she was overcompensating for something. When the footsteps turned into a scuffle, Jeryd knew. The snap of metal restraints sent a chill down his spine. He knew, and yet he refused to believe, even as Neb's cry pierced him like a blade, and the hateful buzz of the Regulator churned the collective apprehension of the room into alarm. Jeryd heard the gasps and the startled utterances that punctuated Onika's betrayal, and he pulled against his bindings to catch a glimpse of her, to catch a glimpse of his friend. There was no pretence in his grunting and hissing this time; the laces coiled tighter around his ankles and wrists, making it impossible to see what was going on.

"Onika, what the hell are you doing?" He snapped in his frustration, casting his gaze frantically left and right, until she appeared behind the control panel. Her calm was infuriating, and at repulsive odds with his racing heart. "Don't you dare do this!"