Static.

The holo flickered to show a picture of an office. Inside, two men sat at a desk, observing a holo file from the cantina. The first one was a tall man, Corellian in stature, who leaned over his desk to watch it. His fingers ran along a thin mustache in thought. This was the Imperial Warlord Haggron.

On the opposite side of the desk sat a smaller, stockier man. Upon closer viewing, it could be seen that this man was Belin, the Ewok trainer at the circus. He, also, was deep in thought, watching the holo.

The room they were in looked like a burned out hotel suite. The walls were still black with ash and burns, but a gray substance was visible at the joints of the wooden beams, bringing strength back to the structure.

Against the opposite wall sat a chair. From where the arms should rest, there were boards that went straight out on the sides, with straps at the end and the middle of them. Two leg-rests sat on the floor at a forty-five degree angle from each other, straps at where the ankle and knee would be. Instead of straight boards forming the leg-rests, metal piping ran on both the left and right side of the leg, leaving the back of the leg unprotected.

A table stood near the chair, with drawers underneath the smooth wooden finish. On the top of the table sat various metal instruments, each one looking more strange and sinister than the next.

The door beside the chair opened, and two troopers entered. Between them walked Siee Janson. Her hands were bound in front of her, and her face was red from bruises she had received during her initial interrogation a few days earlier.

Haggron looked up from behind the desk. He waved the troopers towards the chair. They grabbed Siee and roughly forced her to sit, strapping her into the different boards. All the while Siee struggled, staring straight at the tall man, her gaze hard.

The Warlord smiled at her. He stood from his seat and walked around to the front of his desk, then leaned against the edge. “Well, well, well… I see you are enjoying my hospitality, Miss Janson.”

“The foods good, but your service could use some training,” Siee answered, her voice holding a sarcastic tone. Her eyes followed Belin as he walked to the table beside her, starting to sharpen some of the instruments.

“Ah, yes… always a smart remark with you,” Haggron snorted. He watched as Belin turned to her, a sharp knife-like object in his hands. He places it against her cheek and runs it down her face and between her breasts lightly, not drawing any blood. Siee took a deep breath and locked eyes with Belin.

“Not just yet,” Haggron stated. Belin moved away, a look of disappointment on his face. “I want to talk to our lovely guest first.”

“Then talk already,” Belin replied, growling.

Haggron sighed, and he knelt beside the chair, getting to Siee’s eye level. “Siee, your friends ignored me. I warned them not to send a rescue for you… now I have a New Republic covert ops team to deal with. I want to know who they are.”

“If you’re talking about the girl in the other room, I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

“Defensive?” Belin commented.

“I’m sure,” Haggron laughed. He went to his desk to retrieve the holo projector.

“I can’t tell you if she’s NR or not cause I don’t know who she is,” Siee continued.

“Maybe this will refresh your memory?” He held the holo projector in front of her, the fight from the cantina playing before her eyes. Belin kept a close watch on her face for any reactions, but Siee’s face would not reveal any secrets.

“Is Fel with them?” Haggron asked.

“Not that I see,” Siee replied.

Haggron sighed and turned to Belin. “You may begin.”

Belin, however, did not hear him as he noticed Siee’s face twitch as one of the men, Fel in disguise, got hit in the gut. “Run that back a moment,” he stated, pointing to the holoprojector. Haggron quickly rewound it and they both watched as Siee saw the scene again. This time, she made herself blink at the exact moment of the gut punch.

“Looks like a group of locals took out your big boys,” Siee commented.

Belin frowned and picked up his knife again. He slowly trailed it down her face, between her breasts, across her stomach, and down her thigh. Finally, he stabbed the instrument into her leg, right above the knee. It stuck out of her leg like a stiletto.

Siee hissed at the pain, biting her lip and grasping at the edge of the arm board with her fists. Haggron leaned in. “IS FEL WITH THEM?” he asked impatiently.

Siee opens her eyes, staring at Haggron. “I can’t tell,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “I haven’t seen him in a few days. Maybe he’s changed.”

“Not good enough!” he yelled.

Belin slowly pulled the knife out, then began to cut a winding trail up her thigh, leaving a ribbon of blood in the knifes wake. Siee looked up at the ceiling, biting down hard on her lower lip.

Haggron saw her reaction and growled. “Again,” he stated.

Belin smiled as he put the bloodied knife on the table, having carved from her knee to the dimple of her hip. This time he picked up an extremely sharp tool that resembled a carpenter’s V-shaped chisel. Standing near her arm, he began a trail from the delicate skin between her thumb and forefinger and as he moved across her arm, a thin curl of skin peeled away behind it.

Siee shut her eyes and turned her head to opposite way, only to have her hair grabbed by Haggron as she was forced to view the holo again. “Is he there?!” Haggron hissed, pointing to the holo with his other hand.

“No,” Siee manages to growl through the pain.

Belin removes the carver from her arm, the long curl of skin falling to the floor. He now picked up a hooked tool, sharp and jagged, and placed it against her chest. He and Haggron exchanged glances.

“You know, I can stop all of this if you would just cooperate,” Haggron whispered into her ear.

Siee turned her head to stare back at him with hard eyes. “You’re gonna kill me anyway. Why should I bother?”

Haggron shook his head and stepped away, nodding once more to Belin. The shorted man smiled, then in one swift motion hooks the object under the neck of Siee’s flightsuit. With a single stroke, he ripped the material open from neck to navel, exposing her soft skin underneath. Haggron smiles with a look of pleasure in his eye. “Belin is quite good at his job,” he told her. “His subjects have lasted for days under the shear torture.”

Bringing the instrument slowly down the length of her left breast, Belin grunted in pleasure as he plunged the hooked instrument into her skin beneath the edge of her right floating rib. A quick cry of pain escaped from Siee’s mouth as she tensed up.

Satisfied to finally getting a reaction, Belin moved the hook in a sawing motion downwards, going not quite deep enough to harm her internal organs but plenty deep enough to hit the nerve endings. Siee’s cries echoed in his ears like sweet music as he then cut alongside her pelvic bone.

“I so hate to see you this way,” Haggron said, talking between Siee’s chilling cries. “Just tell me what I want to know.” His voice was maddenlingly calm.

Belin stopped his movement suddenly and pulled the tool out. Relieved, Siee lowered her head to her chest, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.

Haggron stepped forward and backslapped Siee across the jaw. “Tell me now!” He back-handed her again, the opposite direction. Siee looked up at him through the bangs that now hung down over her face. “Tell me, Miss Janson, is your Colonel Fel among your would be rescuers?”

While they spoke, Belin pulled out a pair of scissors and a different jagged knife from a drawer. He leaned down beside Siee and cut the material away from her legs, leaving her in a pair of very short shorts cut from the fightsuit.

Siee locked eyes with Haggron. “I hope so,” she growled. “Because he and my brother will rip you apart with their bare hands.”

Haggron laughed maniacally. “You poor deluded child,” he said, then leaned straight into her face. “I don’t think so!” He then stood and waved Belin forward. The shorter man knelt between Siee’s legs, tossing the knife back and forth from one hand to the other. He then choose a place on her inner thigh and began to carve slowly along it.

Siee, who’s eyes had been locked with Haggron’s, quickly clenched her face in pain and was unable to hold back the scream that came to her lips. Haggron walks forward and grabs her head, pulling it back painfully by her hair. “Tell me! Is Fel there?” he shouts.

Panting, Siee felt the tears leaking freely from her eyes. “Go to Kessel,” she muttered.

Haggron looked at her for a moment, then released her hair. “Don’t hold back,” he spoke to Belin. “Just don’t kill her.”

Belin grinned, and stabbed the knife into the back of her kneecap. Siee screamed in pain once more, and continued to do so as the knife cut deeply down her calf, then back up her shin in small sawing motions.

Haggron laughed. “You sad little woman. Where are your friends now? They have abandoned you.”

“They’ll find me,” Siee stated, her voice cracking.

“Tell me where Fel is, and I will show you mercy.”

Belin continued along her pelvis, retracing the original cut along that line, only a little more deeply this time.

“Even if I knew where he was, I wouldn’t tell you anything,” Siee hissed.

Haggron gave her no reaction. “The neck now I think, but carefully.”

Siee slumped her head over, almost falling unconscious from the pain while Belin changed knives. The table was now stained red from the dripping instruments that lay along the top. She steadied her breathing, trying to get herself to focus her mind away from the pain, a basic skill taught during intelligence training.

Belin returned and placed the knife just above her right clavicle and moved it along the nape of her neck as thin trails of blood rolled down her chest. Seeing no reaction, he repeated the action on the other side and connected the two lines right under neckline, cutting as though he were carving an intricate torc into her skin.

Haggron, seeing that Siee had withdrawn mentally from the torture, sighed and reached into his desk. He pulled out two items and hid them in the cradle of his palm. He walked back to them and looked down at her. “I grow tired of asking this. Is Fel there?”

Siee laughed. “You think that after going through all this that I would tell you now?”

Haggron shook his head. “Convince her.”

“Who needs toes?” Belin stated, kneeling between her legs. Without switching knives, he started to cut away the sensitive skin between her toes. Then started to cut a line along her inner sole. Siee’s panting started to sound like a mixture of crying and laughter. This angered Belin, and he stabbed the knife into the tender innersole of her foot. Siee let out a scream of pain, and Belin smiled.

Beside them, Haggron filled the hypo in his hand with an amber liquid from a vial. Siee saw this from the corner of her eye and watched. “I want to tell you something, Miss Janson,” Haggron said as he made sure he had the correct dosage in the hypo. “You see this? This is relatively new. It’s called Interrinol Phosphate. Neat stuff.”

“Never heard of it,” Siee hissed as Belin withdrew the blade from her sole.

“It renders the victim totally truthful,” Haggron explained. “Only one drawback, though. About six hours after the dose, the victim becomes a vegetable… incapable of a return to normal life.” He grinned at Siee.

She locked eyes with him. “You’re bluffing.”

He laughed. “I have heard that as it is injected, it creates a system wide burning sensation… kind of like being vaped by a turbo laser, only very slowly.”

Siee licked her lips, not breaking the locked gaze. Haggron didn’t waver either. “The drill now, I think,” he spoke to Belin without looking away.

Her gaze switched to Belin as he pulled a drill from the bottom drawer of the table. He walked with it around to her, as yet, untouched arm and placed it against her shoulder blade. Haggron stood in front of her once more. “Is Fel with them?”

Siee tenses, but does not respond. Haggron looks to Belin, who nods. He turns the drill on, moving it toward her shoulder. Then, at the last minute, he changed direction and drilled the long, jagged bit into the bicep of her arm. Siee wailed out in pain, thrashing around in her seat as the bit went through flesh, muscle, tendon and then into the precious bone. Siee’s fingers on that hand splayed open, the tendons popping up against the flesh of her palm and turning white.

As Belin pulled the drill out from her arm, Siee slumped forward, almost passing out. Shaking his head, Belin lowered himself to the ground. “Not yet, sweetheart,” he stated as he drilled into her shin, right below her shattered kneecap.

Arching her back, Siee pressed her chest against the straps, but they refused to let her free. Haggron leaned down to her face. “Now tell me, or the drug is next. You will tell me everything. You will not only tell me about Fel, but about the whole NRI. Then you will be dead in hours.” He laughed at his own thoughts.

Belin pulled the drill out from Siee’s shin, not bothering to reverse the drill bit. It tore out more flesh and muscle. Siee’s whole body shuddered once in pain, then collapsed in relief.

Not wanting to let her rest, Haggron stabbed the hypo into her jugular vein. “Tell me now or I push it in!” he shouted at her.

Siee started to whimper, her body shuddering from pain and exhaustion. In a low voice, she whisperd. “Yes.”

Haggron nodded and stood, leaving the hypo still in her neck. He turned to Belin, who was smiling smugly. “Summon the commander of the guard. I want all troopers ready for assault within the hour.”

“Yes sir,” Belin said. He tossed the drill onto the table, then jogged out the door to do his duty. Once he was gone, Haggron stepped back to observe the smaller man’s work.

Siee sat slumped in her chair. Her stomach was a series of cuts, while blood trickled down her young breasts from the neck wound. One arm had a long line of skin missing, blood dripping to the floor, while the other was fine except for the gaping hole in her bicep.

Her legs were ruined, Haggron concluded. One leg was a mess of bloody lines up and down from hip to ankle, heel to toe, and the kneecap was been injured. Not as bad as the other one, of course; the other kneecap was shattered under the skin, and right below it was another gaping hole that used to be her shin. The only part of her body that lay untouched was the foot, but with her knee destroyed, Haggron doubted that she would ever be able to walk on that side again.

The Wraith breathed heavily, and Haggron knelt down to stare at her in the face. “Good job kid,” he said, pulling the hypo from her neck, grinning. “How does it feel to be a traitor?”

Siee looked up at him, and summoned the rest of her strength to spit in his face. Haggron laughed and wiped the spittle from his face. He stood and motioned to the two guards at his door. “Take her back to her cell. No treatment, but be careful with her. I want her alive so Fel can see just how much she suffered for him before they both die.” He pulled the hypo uncerimoniously from her skin

The guards nodded and unstrapped her. Unable to stand or walk, the guards threw an arm over each of their shoulders and dragged her away, a trail of blood following them out.

-------END-------