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The walls are breathing. The security officer is not.
Breathing is a little tricky, given the way his head is tilted; far enough back that the spinal bones of his neck and upper back grind together. The barrel of High Admiral Tfear’s rifle is digging into the soft flesh under his jaw. Maybe ‘digging’ is the wrong word. Clutching, more like it. The thing has what feels like an octopus’ sucker on the end, and between it and the moving walls, the security officer is taking a moment to reflect on how damn strange the Pfhor are.
As if being an empire of alien slave traders isn’t bad enough. They have to be weird alien slave traders.
Of course, all this navel-gazing is probably a coping mechanism to distract his brain from the fact that he can’t literally gaze at his navel, because there’s a fucking gun at his throat. But that seems like a distant worry at the moment.
The Pfhor have been trying to break him for a long time. He’s gone through all the stages of grief and accepted that this is his life now. For the foreseeable future. Unless Tycho grows a conscience, which is about as likely as Durandal magically rising from the dead and staging a daring rescue mission for one little human. What a bastard.
Speaking of bastards. His Royal Bugness is talking. Apparently has been talking for some time.
“...listening to me?”
“Nope,” he answers without hesitation.
“Insolent worm.”
Tfear’s skinny insect fingers flick a catch at the base of his weapon. The shifting walls go blurry as a sharp jolt of pain knocks the security officer’s eyes out of focus. For a second, he wonders why he’s not dead. As the pain spreads outward from the ring of the sucker gripping his neck, he figures out that he hasn’t been shot. Just injected with something. (Which, knowing what little he does about Tfear, may not be the nicer option.)
“What are you pumping me with now?” he says.
Correction: He tries to say. What actually comes out of his suddenly and alarmingly numb mouth sounds more like, “Whhhrmmwwnnnw?”
“Something to make you a little more pliable,” Tfear replies, apparently getting the sentiment after years of learning to speak fluent torture victim. He yanks the gun free, which should have been a relief. But as soon as the security officer tries to lower his head, the rest of his body comes along for the ride. The ability to control his muscles has officially left the building. Unlike the tranquilizers he’s (unfortunately) experienced before, however, his mind doesn’t share the same fuzzy, helpless newborn kitten feeling as the rest of his body. It has a perfectly clear front-row view as Tfear pulls him up by the back of the neck.
He’s never trucked with the whole religion thing. Just not his cup of tea. But tastes change over time, and now feels like a great time to chug a big old cup of religion tea and send a prayer out to whatever deities might be able to get him out of this hellhole.
Were Durandal still around, he’d never let the security officer live down the fact that he accidentally includes Durandal in that prayer.