Page 32 of Somno Slave
They shed layers as they talk. Bits of gear drop onto the table with dull, careless sounds. Their shoulders loosen as they come down from it, tension bleeding out of them in quiet, satisfied ways.
Relief. Then something else.Pride.
Peter looks up eventually. “Someone’s quiet.”
For a second, nothing comes out. My chest rises too fast, breath catching somewhere it shouldn’t.
“You hit him.” My voice barely exists. “You didn’t stop.”
His spine straightens.
“Yes,” He says matter-of-factly. “He wasn’t complying.”
I blink. “So, youbeathim?”
My voice shifts before I can stop it. Something tighter. Something harder. “What part of that was procedure?”
“You’re focusing on the wrong thing.”
“No,” The heat rises now, pushing through the shock. “There are protocols. There are laws—”
“And he’s already broken them,” Peter cuts in, flat. “Extensively.”
“He’s still a human being!”
The sound he makes isn’t quite a laugh. It slips out the back of his throat, low, incredulous, edged with contempt.
“No,” he snaps, turning on me fully. “He is not. He is a fucking parasite. A thing that hollowed out three people and left their families choking on what was left. And if you thinkthis,” he gestures at his bloody knuckle dusters, “was excessive, then you are painfully naïve.”
My face burns.
“I won’t be complicit in this,” I manage.
Peter watches me for a moment, like he’s deciding how much I already understand. “You agreed to be here.”
“That’snot what I agreed to.”
“No?”
“I do not condone torture!” I rush. “That was awful, not to mention illegal! I could lose my licence over just being here!”
He snorts. “You’ll be fine.”
He rattles the knuckledusters in the palm of his hand. “As I said, you just need to sit behind the glass and observe. All I need is your signature.”
“Signature for what? You didn’t tell me.”
The silence is disgusting, like something dragging down the back of my throat.
He watches me for a long moment.
“He’s on death row, Rheda.” He finally says.
My mouth dries. “You can’t know that.”
“I know it’s unlikely he sees the inside of a long-term prison cell,” he replies, just as evenly. “The government wants him gone. We have two weeks for a full confession before they take the choice away from us.”
The world stills. I don’t respond straight away.
