Vice Bunker 28 (Patreon)

Finally, we return to Sophia Hess

-VB-

Vice Bunker

Chapter 28

-VB-

When I finally allowed myself to appear before Sophia, I saw and felt no pity.

Sophia looked like a mess. Her disheveled hair, wild eyes, and the slight tremor across her whole body showed just how close she was to breaking. Oh, not everyone’s mental breaking showed up physically. However, she was a Scion-based cape. Literally not doing anything as she was regardless of her situation was driving her crazy as her Shard pushed her towards action at an ever escalating fashion.

She stared at me with her wild eyes, looking for any deception. Had she been seeing hallucinations already?

“Y-You’re real,” she muttered as she blinked but it was off. She blinked but her eyelids closed individually.

“I am real.”

She jumped at me.

I didn’t let her touch me. Letting her touch me would be against the spirit of this … torture. I disappeared and reappeared elsewhere, and she let out a gut-wrenching scream that only delighted me. The girl who tortured Taylor screamed and that made me happy.

“LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT-!” she screamed as she lunged at me again and again and again and again, and I silently dodged it all.

She tried everything. She tried to throw objects from around the room, she tried to use her power, and even tried to phase through the wall, which only resulted in her getting zapped.

It was then that I realized why she was as “stable” as she was. By using pain in the electrical cage made to keep her in, she kept herself as centered as she could despite the crippling isolation.

It was … a resolve I could appreciate.

In people I liked.

In people who irritated me and mine, it was a nuisance.

She glared up at me with a trickle of blood running down from a burn on her forehead.

I stared back down at her imperiously.

“You are … weak.”

She snarled at me, but when I glared, she flinched and looked away. She knew fully what our relationship was. I was the warden and she was the prisoner. She understood and kept her face down.

I could make her life worse, and even unstable as she was right now, she knew better to push me. I wasn’t like the PRT or villains.

I didn’t need to touch her to make her beg for mercy, and having to do that would be the absolute worst for her.

I was still tempted to leave her be. She’s been in here for a little over three weeks now. I could leave her here for a bit longer.

“Do you want out?”

“... Yes.”

“How badly?”

She trembled. I had her at her absolute worst while still retaining her sanity. The only reason she wasn’t Second Triggering was probably because her current situation was nothing like her original Trigger.

She glared at me again, but didn’t meet my eyes. Her eyes remained firmly on my lower tentacles.

“And what do you think will let you get your … pseudo-freedom?” I asked with a drawl.

She didn’t know.

“I don’t know.”

“Huh. Humility. From Shadow Stalker. I never thought such a scenario would come about,” I chortled. Yes, I was playing this up. I wanted her to feel worse. I wanted her to grovel like a beggar.

She hurt Taylor. She obviously hurt someone else over in PRT’s bunker, so whatever it was that she did, she did something stupid even after being given her stupid philosophy’s ideal environment… except she hadn’t taken it. For all of her talk about predator and prey, she bowed her head, joined the PRT in their bunker, and then acted out like an idiot.

Sophia Hess, I have already concluded, was an idiot, and like all idiots, she thought herself better, stronger, and more knowledgeable.

I couldn’t force her to educate herself. Education didn’t work like that.

No, if I was going to use her thanks to Taylor giving me a free hand on how to deal with her beyond “making her feel like I did,” then I needed Sophia to be … a lot of things. I wanted to break her down and build her back up.

It would be a venture, an investment even, to see if I could selectively alter a person as quickly as I can.

Sophia was almost ready.

“Tell me, Sophia, what do you want more right now?” I crooned as I crouched down. “What would you trade away to finally step out of this cell?”

She finally looked up at me, and I knew I had her.

I grinned. “I can make any pact you make with me, for your freedom, a lasting reality,” I said slowly as I altered one of my tentacles into a mechandrite. The end of the mechanical limb opened up, and a single pinpoint needle popped out. “Brain implants, nanites in blood, and even implanted bombs… I can do a lot of things beyond just being a tentacle monster. I’m not the government. I’m not a good person. So I’m asking you, Sophia; is your freedom worth a brain implant keeping you leashed? Is it worth nanites in your bloodstream that you have no idea what their functions are for? Are you willing to bend the knee to this monster for even just one minute outside these walls among other humans?”

Then I stood back up and leaned away. “If you don’t want to answer, then that’s fine. I’ll just leave you here for another three weeks.”

“NO!” she shouted. Her wild eyes grew frantic and she scrambled forward.

And then began kissing my feet.

“Anything! I’ll do anything!”

I reached down.

And grabbed her by her disheveled hair. She let out a pitiful yelp as I pulled her back up.

“If I told you to beg Taylor for forgiveness?”

For a moment, she looked completely incapable of understanding the words I just said. And then … madness.

She broke right then and there, because she valued her freedom so much that begging Taylor Hebert was in the cards. When her own mind registered that, her entire worldview just broke because she had become prey and Taylor had become predator.

She sagged and stared up at my blankly, her eyes glazing over.

Her mouth opened and closed, and finally, she answered as whatever will that kept her remotely sane cracked, broke, and left a shell waiting to wither away to become a husk of the person she once was.

“... Yes.”

I cooed. “Wonderful. Let’s go see her.”