Page 42 of Oath

The suit closest to me cocked his head, studying me like I was a specimen under glass. Still no questions. Still no demands. Just observation.

They’re measuring me.

Not for weakness. Not for pain tolerance. For something else.Response time. Reactions. Behavior under stress.

They weren’t trying to break me.

They were profiling me.

That realization landed harder than the last jolt. They weren’t sadists. This wasn’t about pleasure. They didn’tenjoyit.

That made them dangerous in a whole different way.

I swallowed hard, working moisture back into my mouth. “Y’know,” I said, breath shallow, “most people at leastpretendto get off on this part. You guys really need to work on your bedside manner.”

No response.

Of course not.

But one of them—taller than the rest—finally stepped forward, something in his hand. A towel. He draped it over the spigot above me, cutting off the water.

The silence grew heavier.

I could hear my own breathing now, uneven and tight. My heartbeat in my ears. Somewhere above, maybe through a vent or behind a door, a distant hum—machinery? Air system? It barely mattered.

They were going to start talking soon.

I wasn’t sure if I was more worried of what they wanted to know—or how much they already did.

Yet, despite all of that, they still didn’t ask anything. In fact, they left. No announcement. No closing remarks. No whispered threats or final looks. Just a slow retreat of footsteps. The sound of the door hissing shut.

Then the lights went out.

Total black.

Like the kind of black that isn't just absence of light, but a presence all its own. Thick. Suffocating. Heavy on the chest. I blinked reflexively, but it made no difference. I might as well have been blindfolded. Buried alive.

And the silence?—

The silence was worse.

No water dripping. No buzz of overhead lights. Not even the hum of cameras. Even the earlier sounds of machinery weregone. Leaving nothing.

A perfect, engineered nothing leaving me alone with only the sound of my harsh breathing.

My arms burned, ropes biting into skin gone raw. My shoulders trembled with fatigue. Every nerve in my body twitched like it hadn’t gotten the message that the shocks had stopped. Ghost currents. Phantom pain. I could still feel that last jolt sparking in my molars.

The silence continued to creep in through the cracks.

It got in my head.

Tick, tick, tick.

Shock, breath, twitch.

Weight, rope, sway.

Where are they?