the room, men who looked similar to Cipher in size carted silver crates out the door. All of them wore masks, and she understood that whatever that faint smell was, it was dangerous.
“Hey, Doc!” One of the masked men below shouted. “What’s the street value on this?”
“None of your business,” another man answered, his voice muffled and angry. “And don’t fucking call me doc!”
Not sticking around to breathe in whatever was in those canisters, she snapped pictures while holding her breath and moved along until the voices and the smell faded.
After making her notes, she continued her survey. Room after room after room yielded information. Most were quarters. One was a kitchen and mess hall. There was a communal bathroom and shower area that was surprisingly clean considering the state of the mine. The laundry facility wasn’t much but she took photos and notes anyway.
When she followed the duct along the lower portion of the horseshoe shape, she discovered the more important areas of the Splinter outpost. The first three registers overlooked a large space that seemed to be use as their logistics center. The walls were covered in digital boards and screens. Tables in the center of the room were piled with models and projections. Certain this was the most helpful intel she could gather, she took her time and made sure she was thorough gathering photos and scribbling notes.
Once she moved beyond the logistics area, she discovered the cells. The stench filling the ducts made her stomach pitch violently, and she bit her arm to keep from vomiting. She overpowered the urge to retch and slithered forward in the goo and grime until she could see into the first cell.
When she saw the naked corpse hanging from its wrists, she gasped and shut her eyes. Like a scared child, she hid her face. It wasn’t the first dead body she had seen, but it was the most gruesome.
Summoning her courage, she forced herself to look. It was a man. Or had been. A sky warrior if she had to guess. His bloated body and mottled skin made it hard to determine what he had looked like in life. He still had his sandy hair and a scraggly beard. If there were markings or tattoos on his body, she couldn’t see them anymore.
Was this the man Cipher wanted to rescue? No, she decided quickly. It couldn’t be him. Their man was confirmed to be alive only days ago. This man—whoever he was—had been dead for a long time. A week or more, if her prior exposure to death and her understanding of decomposition was correct.
It felt wrong to photograph the corpse. She didn’t like the idea of betraying the privacy of a dead man, but she was sure that the sky warriors would want to identify him if they could. Maybe he had a family, a wife and children. They deserved to know he was gone.
When she was finished, she closed her eyes and murmured a prayer for his eternal peace. She hadn’t been raised religious like the farmers in the valley, but she had always found comfort in the idea that there was a place where souls rested after the suffering of this world.
Determined not to let Cipher’s friend die like this man, she crawled as quietly as possible. The middle cell was empty, but up ahead, there was an occupied cell. The harsh bellow of pain confirmed it.
Eyes wide and stomach trembling, she reluctantly moved forward. A man was being tortured somewhere in front of her. Whatever they were doing to him must have been utterly depraved. He shouted in agony, his voice hoarse as if he had been screaming all day.
Not sure if she could stand to see what was happening, she hesitated at the grille. The idea that this man was alone and suffering gave her enough courage to finally look.
And she instantly wished she hadn’t.
Dangling by his ankles, the man had blood running down his feet and legs and dripping from his fingers. The bloodied pliers on a silver tray of horror filled in the blanks. They had torn out all of his finger and toenails.
The torturers weren’t stopping there. She watched, terrified, as his tormentors attached metal clips to his genitals and tongue. Her panicked gaze followed the cords attached to the clips. They led straight to a generator. Before she could even process what they planned to do, the monster closest to the generator flipped the switch.