Jolynn opened her eyes to see… nothing. It was totally and completely pitch black. She couldn’t even tell if she was standing, sitting or laying down. She smelled nothing, felt nothing but she could hear... breathing? A slow rhythmic sound reached her ears and it was hard to tell where it was coming from. “Hello? Who’s there?” she spoke to the air boldly.

Wracking, throbbing all-encompassing pain shooting throughout her entire body was the near instant answer she received. Jolynn felt like she was on fire and being electrocuted at the same time. The pain lasted for a long time, but when she regained functionality Jolynn figured it had to have been less than a minute.

“Answers none. Questions us. You speak. We listen,” a very strange voice spoke. She couldn’t quite tell if she was hearing the words or feeling them or even having them echo directly in her brain. The breathing sound continued near her, and she tried turning her head to see what direction it was coming from. It seemed to sound closer when she turned to the left, so she kept her head in that direction.

“Understanding, you?” the voice seemed to ask her a direct question.

“No. I don’t understand. Where am I? Who are you? Why did you kidnap me?” Jolynn asked the questions quickly, hoping to get at least one of them answered. Within seconds of speaking, the fiery-electrical pain shot through her again and she screamed. Long moments passed again before it ended.

“Understanding, you?” she was asked again.

“Yes,” she panted, not wanting a return of that pain. She had been through many fights and battles but nothing equaled the sheer ferocity of that pain. “Yes, I understand. You… you want to ask me questions, and I answer them. Right?”

“Understanding,” was the only reply she got. The breathing sounded further away, and was replaced by something else. Footsteps? Jolynn couldn’t be sure, but a voice broke the silence and a single light lit a small area at her feet.

“You will have to excuse my friend. A bit over eager to cause pain and force the subjects to succumb. The subject in this case being you, of course,” this was a different voice, a male voice and not too deep in pitch.

“Yes, of course. I gathered that much,” Jolynn replied. With the single light, she was able to see that she was neither sitting, nor standing but was lying down. If you could call her current position lying that is. She was nearly three feet off the ground, and had no visible means of support. No wires, no ropes, nothing that she could see keeping gravity from working.

“Good. You catch on quick. It’s that quick wit we are hoping to utilize. Now, I know you probably have a lot of questions you would like answered. I’m here to tell you, that none of them are so save your breath. You will remain alive and pain free, as long as you tell us what we need to know. Have I made myself clear?” he spoke slowly, authoritatively, almost as if he never had to repeat himself and everyone was inferior to him.

“Not really. Could you go over the part where I get all of my questions answered again please? I seemed to have missed that part,” Jolynn quipped.

“No. It seems as if the first two lessons weren’t learned very well. Third time should be the…charm,” he spoke firmly and only paused on the word charm for a second. Jolynn filed this tidbit away, just before she was consumed by the absolute pain again. Her screams echoed in the room for long minutes even after the pain stopped.

When she was able to focus and control her eyes again, she looked down to her feet where the light shone. The man had stepped closer to it, and she could see him shifting and shuffling in place.

“Are you back with us?” he asked.

Out of breath, she replied, “I’m here you bastard. What do you want?”

He must have smiled because his voice changed subtly, “Good. Still feisty as ever I see, but you won’t keep that for very long. We just want some information, easy enough to give to us and then we’ll be on our way. Your fate though is much worse. Oh, I could let you keep some hope of escaping, of making it back home to see your friends and loved ones but I prefer to break my prisoners completely,” He stopped smiling and continued talking, “You are to be executed and dumped where no one will ever find you. The only control you have at this point in time is the nature of the execution. I haven’t fully figured out what your choices are going to be but I have chosen the categories: Quick and mostly painless, very excruciating and long or slow and painful.”

Jolynn stared at the lit area, and noticed she was seeing part of the man in the light. Left arm, left hand, hip and the top half of his thigh were well-lit, completely covered with a blue cloth that had white trim, and he liked to talk with his hands or at least with his left hand. She couldn’t even begin to guess what his right hand was doing or its placement. She saw him turn his left hand over, palm upward and his fingers curled inward like he was inspecting his fingernails.

“Which of those categories are left for you to choose from will depend entirely on the amount of cooperation you provide to us,’ He continued during her inspection of the man, “Who knows? I may even allow two of those categories to stay and give you a choice within them.” He seemed to shrug because his hand moved up and down in what could be interpreted as that motion. “So, let us see… You only know you have been taken away by us but you don’t know who we are. You probably aren’t aware of how long you have been unconscious and in our possession, and you definitely don’t know what our purpose is. All good things for us,” he started to laugh, “but very bad for you.”

Jolynn hated being toyed with, and having her emotions played with, “ENOUGH! Tell me what you want to know, ask me your questions so I can tell you to take a flying fecking leap and you can try to kill me already!” Jolynn yelled. “Whatever you want to know, whatever your purpose is here I’m not going to be a part of it. So FECK OFF!” she continued.

“Wow. That was almost impressive,” he sarcastically commented, “Just shows me how much,” he paused, “work I still have in front of me. Might as well get to it.” He turned so that the light was no longer shining on the left side of his body. “Since I’m such a forgiving soul, I’ll give you this tiny bit of information: We have had you in our possession for nearly a week now. It took some doing to go undetected but the surrounding alien armada provided us some much needed cover. While we were floating around Rubi-Ka like so much space garbage, the rest of us were able to locate and kill all of your friends, your loved ones and especially your girlfriend. I wanted to do her personally but I had you to focus on so that pleasure went to another.”

Jolynn thought she heard the footsteps again, like they were receding but the total lack of sound made it extremely difficult to tell. When he spoke again, the placement of the voice had not changed.

“Start thinking about the Dust Brigade, Miss Jolynn. That is the information we are going to be asking you about,” he calmly stated, “but not yet. For now, I will leave you to your own devices and to enjoy the ambience of your surroundings.” The single lamp then turned off and Jolynn was back in total darkness.

For the first time, in a long time, her heart was gripped with an icy coldness. She recognized this feeling. It was fear. The tears started to stream out of the corners of her eyes uncontrollably as the fear started to consume her. Just before the sobs completely took over, she was able to croak out one word in a soft whisper, “Perin.”