Page 78 of Scaled Daddy's Secret Heir
The first question lands like a drop of ice water.
“Who sent you?”
My jaw is clamped. My spine is steel. They expect this. Theydesignedthis. They want resistance, not cooperation—for they feed off struggle like a starving beast.
I smile inwardly, bitter.
“No one,” I say.
“That can’t be true,” they say.
“Try me.”
For days—hours or weeks; time loses structure here—they cycle through psychological pressure. Lights that flicker. Silence that booms. Humming that pulses against the skull like a heartbeat that isn’t mine.
They try empathy first—stories of shared losses, of greater good, of peace and suffering and hope.
I listen without blinking.
Then they try guilt—personalized messages about lives I’ve ended, people I’ve hurt, wars I’ve waged in silence.
My hands don’t flinch.
They try isolation—to make me think I’m alone.
They fail.
Because in the blackness behind my eyes, there’s a voice.
Soft.
Insistent.
“I’m alive because she got out.”
I clutch to that like a lifeline.
They escalate.
Now it’s physical.
Twitching electrodes against the nerve centers. A heat lamp that burns without damage. Cold that stings every pore.
They watch for a crack.
They expect a compromise.
They think pain equals truth.
They’re wrong.
I don’t give themthat.
Time bleeds together—each session ends in gray emptiness, each beginning in sterile lights and the hum beneath the floor. My body is exhausted, but my mind isn’t done yet.
I think of Leah.
How she fought to keep moving even when blood and grit and instinct screamed for rest.
