Putting OCs in Situations 💜

The bright orange end of the poker came back into Lulan’s view. It smoked and sizzled with contact in the air, hovering just a few inches away from his face. The heat so close to him seemed to make the fresh burns flare more. He lay still against the table, holding a strained but still smug smile in his expression.

“How about it then?” Tonár turned the poker slowly in his hand. “Think an extra 20 degrees will made a difference?”

“Mhn, maybe. You’re taking a while to test that out, though.”

Lulan saw the glint he always hoped to bring out in Tonár’s eyes when they talked, annoyance. It always gave him satisfaction knowing he could get under Tonár’s skin so easily. The look held as Tonár spotted an old wound still healing on Lulan’s collarbone and pressed the poker’s glowing end against it. Lulan’s throat let loose another scream as the heat traveled through his chest. His back arched against the table and he strained against the cuffs. It hurt no more or less than the other burns Tonár had branded onto him in the past two hours they had been in here, really. Still, Lulan’s eyes watered, sweat ran down his face, and his nerves overwhelmed him with the sensation.

This wasn’t getting used to it, he just knew what to expect from himself at this point.

Tonár pulled the poker away again, leaving Lulan to catch his breath with the scent of burning flesh in the air. Lulan’s chest expanded as he breathed in deeply. He wanted to collect himself better, but Tonár wasn’t interested in giving him any time.

“Well, this burn doesn’t look that much different from the others,” he goaded, “I guess I could try upping the temperature again, unless you’re ready to talk now?”

“Ah, I—uh—” Lulan gasped out, stumbling over his words. The slight waver in his voice caught Tonár’s attention. He lowered the poker and leaned closer to Lulan’s face.

“Well?”

“I’ll—I just—” Lulan’s voice was far quieter than before, “I’ll… I’ll tell you one thing…”

The intrigue on Tonár’s face couldn’t be hidden. He watched Lulan intently, awaiting whatever information he had finally decided to provide.

“…You look even stupider up close.”

Lulan couldn’t contain himself any longer. His lips cracked into a smile and he erupted into laughter. His wounds still pinched with burning pain as his body shook, but it didn’t stop the nearly giddy joy in him.

“Em, your fucking face! Oh I wish I could’ve gotten a picture of that! You thinking you actually had me! Too fucking funny!”

Lulan kept laughing as Tonár leaned back, his lips pursed in bubbling anger. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath in.

“Oh, I can’t wait until I finally get to kill you…” he seethed through his teeth, “Believe me, I’ve had a few ideas on how to make the most of it.”

“The fact that you haven’t even brought down his moral by this point is troubling, Colonel.”

A new voice cut into the room outside of Lulan’s periphery, which stopped his laughter and sent chills down his spine. He craned his neck to the side to get a look at who was speaking, although he had a hunch as to who it might be. To his own confirmation, Admiral Jentari stepped out of the shadows of the room and towards him.

“I’ve seen you achieve greater progress in shorter times than this.” She spoke to Tonár almost like a teacher scolding a student. The look on his face as she spoke said the same thing. Lulan found it amusing, even if the Admiral’s presence made his heart run. Her presence was unnerving, and he had no idea how long she had been in this room with them.

“I suppose everyone comes across a challenge… some point or another.” Tonár only muttered the last part, showing a side of his embarrassment of failing to successfully interrogate his prisoner. In front of his boss, no less.

“Challenge or not, this arrogant pride is an obstacle to us discovering the location of his team,” Jentari spoke with an air of impatience. “But that will be dealt with today. Then I expect results as soon as possible, Colonel.”

“I’m sure that’ll work out just great for you.” Crush his spirit, Lulan had heard that one before. Always from these high and mighty types who think everyone below their command is a mindless drone, and their enemies aren’t worth the dirt on their boots. Yes, he’s heard those words before. But no one who had uttered them before ever even came close to getting him to crack.

Why should the Admiral be any different?

As if waiting for the cue, the interrogation room door opened and in walked another person, pushing in front of them a hovercart. From where he was laying, Lulan couldn’t quite see what all was laid out across the top, not until it came up right next to him. A neat arrangement of sharp looking medical instruments, contorted metal frames, a dermal sealer, and a small pile of bandages next to a deep, silver colored tray. The way they caught the light above set an uneasy feeling in Lulan’s stomach.

“Alright, Rebel,” Jentari said the last word as if she had a bad taste in her mouth, “I’d like to see how well that façade of yours holds up by the time this is done.”

She rested a hand on top of his foot and Lulan suddenly realized what she meant. The instruments, the frames, the neat stack of bandages waiting for him.

“No.”

“Proceed, doctor.” Jentari lifted her hand away, but remained close to Lulan’s side watching as the surgeon pulled up a chair by the end of the interrogation table. Lulan looked down and could see his head hovering between his feet, already pulling on gloves. He struggled in his restraints, flinching hard as he felt cold disinfectant spread over the bottom of his foot.

“This… this won’t get me to tell you anything, you know.” He did his best to keep his voice from shaking despite his growing rambling. “I’ve already made that clear to your lapdog back there.”

Tonár glowered at him from the corner of the room, but Jentari’s expression remained unchanged. The Admiral merely watched him in a quiet, unsettling way. A mind game, Lulan figured, to see if he’d crack before they actually went to cut into him. He wouldn’t budge, but his breath quickened as the surgeon pulled the hovercart of instruments closer to him.

“You’re just wasting your fucking time!” Lulan’s voice rose to a shout. “This won’t change one goddamn thing, okay?! It doesn’t matter what you do to me, you’re not gonna make me talk!”

A gasp left his lips before he could catch it as he felt the cold metal of one of the frames enter the open space of his booster. Then another over the other foot. He fidgeted, trying to pull himself out in vain as they started to expand.

“Will you fucking listen to me?! It won’t work anyway, so just don’t fucking do it!”

“Hold.” Jentari spoke just as the expanders were about to bend the frames of his boosters. Lulan held his breath. He tracked Jentari’s every move as she came closer to his head. She looked down at him with cold indifference, like a scientist inspecting her dying lab rat.

“Here I was thinking you were an intelligent creature, but you still grovel and bargain like a common sonda. I believe this course of action is working exactly the way I want it to. There is one small exception, however.”

She held her hand out to the surgeon, who placed something small in her palm. She brought it into Lulan’s view, a small headband with little blinking nodes pointing inward. Lulan recognized it and started shaking his head.

“I can’t have you thrashing around while Lieutenant Yelvik operates. We wouldn’t want to cause any unintended damage.”

“No!” Lulan tried to pull away as she slipped the headband over his forehead. There was a sudden pulse, and his body relaxed all at once. He was still awake, eyes open and breathing normally. Even the sensation of touch seemed unchanged. But the rest of his body was limp as a noodle. He couldn’t even lift his head to see what the surgeon was doing to him.

“Wh…Wha…” His words slurred under the forced immobilization. His heart raced as he looked Jentari in the eye, watching her lean down until she was next to his ear.

“I think this should be enough to bring you down from that pedestal you’ve built for yourself. Don’t you think? Doctor, proceed.”

She pulled away and Lulan felt the expanders start up again. He let out a barely stifled groan of pain as they pushed apart the inner structures of each of his boosters. The lower half of him was hot with pain that he wasn’t sure when they finally stopped. The expanders kept the strained cartilage in place and open wide enough for the surgeon to begin his work.

“N…Nuh…!” Lulan blamed the barrage of pain to his nerves for the tears growing in his eyes. He could feel every adjustment, every poke and prod the surgeon made on his boosters as he took one sharp tool after another to them. His breath hitched with strangled screams, a strange sensation as he couldn’t move his mouth to catch a proper breath yet couldn’t stop himself from letting out the cry. He felt the running of blood through the heat with each drag of the scalpel. He squeezed his eyes shut, praying he’d pass out from the pain and escape this sensation.

Whether he had or not, he wasn’t sure. All he did register was a sudden and strange sensation of coolness within his boosters, followed in time by the quick retraction of the spreader frames on both his feet. Lulan gasped, the pain not disappearing but shifting to a dull, buzzing sensation through his legs and torso. He started to notice the wetness on his face from his tears and the harsh, raw feeling in his throat from screaming.

But he was alive, and he hadn’t cracked.

“You’re true to your word, Captain,” Jentari came back next to him and nudged his head so he was forced to face her. Her expression was unchanged, yet had an air of smugness Lulan didn’t notice before.

“No response this time? No last-ditch effort to spite us?” She taunted him. With one hand, she pulled away the headband on Lulan’s forehead. As if waking up in fright, his body flinched back to life, and he found himself shaking. Whether it was from the pain or lingering fear, he couldn’t quite tell.

“Perhaps the reality of your situation hasn’t quite hit you yet.” Jentari held the top of his head and turned him to the other side, where the surgeon was approaching him. Lulan already knew what happened. They had clipped him. They tore into him and took away the ability to use his wheels. It was true that the reality hadn’t quite hit him yet, but he knew it would eventually. She was just looking to rub salt in the wound. Lulan knew he would have to expect it in time.

What he didn’t expect, however, was the surgeon carrying a tray holding the severed, bloodstained remains of his wheels just for him to see.

“Oh…” A soft cry left his lips and his head fell back against the table. All at once, pain and grief seemed to crash all around him. How could he have not realized what they’d done to him? His eyes couldn’t leave the sight of the now former segments of his body. He tasted bile and salt in his mouth, as though the image was about to make him sick.

“I feel compelled to make a distinction about the decision to do this operation,” Jentari spoke plainly and without a hint of remorse, “This is not meant as a means for interrogation for the location of your base. If it were, it would be rather sloppy and ineffective. No, this is a reminder, Captain. A word of warning that your defiance and unruliness will not get far with me. It is my sincere hope that you take this to heart in the future, so that I do not have to issue further reminders.”

“You… you fucking bitch!” Lulan’s voice broke as he screamed out the words. He turned back to her, eyes filled with tears and blazed with rage. He struggled against the restraints, exhausted and hurt but wanting to tear Jentari’s throat out. He didn’t want any reminders, no reminders, no torture. He won’t have any of it anymore.

Jentari’s hand sailed through the air, the back of it slapping Lulan hard against the table. He instinctively fell silent from the shock, but still drew in shaky breath alongside hot tears. His lungs froze from Jentari’s sudden movement towards him, leaning forward as she grabbed the top of his hair to make him look up. Her eyes were cold, lifeless and without mercy, but he couldn’t look away. He couldn’t close his eyes as death bore into them.

“No more interrogations for the rest of the day,” she whispered to him. “You’ll have the night to recover, but know this. It will be the last night of peace you will ever know for the rest of your treacherous, insignificant life. I will make sure of that.”

She released him and turned to leave without another word. Lulan remained froze on the table as if she had never left. The agony in his body refused to die down, even as he forced air back into his lungs. He thought for sure she was ready to kill him just then. The desire to do so was set deep in those earth-dark eyes. But she couldn’t, not quite yet.

Not until Lulan had already shattered into a million little pieces.

He had no thought or strength to pull away as Tonár released his restraints and pulled him to sit up. He caught another glimpse of the surgeon’s table of instruments and the tray holding the now dead limbs of his wheels. His throat lurched, threatening to bring up the remains of the poor excuses of a meal they had given him earlier. No time was spared for that as Tonár whipped his legs around to the table’s side and pulled him down to the floor. His feet, still bleeding and weak from the pain, hit the floor and shot bolts of agony through his body. Lulan cried out and crumbled to the ground, barely holding himself up on his hands and knees.

“Get up,” Tonár growled at him from above. Lulan gasped, still trying to get his bearings with his legs feeling like jelly. They wouldn’t work, not in any way that would bring him standing so he could walk out of here with dignity. Tonár nudged him in the thigh, and he groaned softly.

“Get. Up.” Tonár’s patience was running short fast. “Unless you wanna crawl on the goddamn floor.”

“I… I can’t…” The words left Lulan’s mouth before he could smother them in his throat. The weakness burned in him, mocked him with the same cruelty of his tormentors.  

“Then don’t,” Tonár replied curtly, “I’ll just hitch some rope around your ankles and drag you out.”

The thought of that sent jolts of tension through him. He couldn’t stand, but he refused to let Tonár or any of them touch him again. Cursing himself with each movement, he began dragging himself forward on the floor. First a hand, then a knee, another hand, another knee, moving no more than a couple of inches with each motion. His cheeks burned from the humiliation, knowing Tonár looked down at him with a smug, sadistic grin.

But still he moved forward. Out of the door and down the detention hall agonizingly slow until they came up to Lulan’s cell door. It opened with a hiss, moments before Lulan felt Tonár’s foot kick him in the back and into the cell. He fell with a thud, ready to turn and curse Tonár out just as the cell door closed shut again. Now alone, his remaining energy left him. He laid limp on the floor, eyes closed and refreshing with tears as he tried to calm down.