Eyeing him for a good couple of seconds, the figure jumped over him, landing squarely over him, causing their crotches to touch ever so slightly, supporting herself with her knees. The mask, now more visible, was a weird tactical mesh of several materials and dark monochromatic colours, with the eyes covered with two dark lenses. Like a predator, she approached his face and sniffed him. Small jolts of electricity ran through his spine, his blood pressure rising not only due to the danger present, but due to her movement, her slight touch, tempting, alluring. Rising again, she removed the piece covering the mouth area, revealing a brightly red, lush, delicious set of lips. And looking down on him, while straddling him, those succulent lips opened to give way to her voice.
"D'awww.. Was hopin' you were goin' to be more fun, love." She spoke, caressing his sides and tentatively touching Hall's crotch with her behind. Another twist, another turn. The voice was clearly Libertonian. Texas. Houston. And in the recesses of Hall's mind, it rang familiar.
"Now I got to make you get dust'd." Those lips grinned. He remembered the grin. The voice. The small quirks in the vocabulary. Hall gulped as images of the headlines, the reports and the death flooded his brain.
"S-silver..." Hall spoke meekly. His voice was not his own any more, for it was gripped with fear. Those lips lost the grin and claimed a smile. A soft smile. Welcoming him.
"Hmm yes.. I love when you boys tremble." She got close to his face and licked his ear lobe, biting it. Hall was getting slightly aroused with the foreplay and fear that filled his mind. "I love when you boys quiver.. Hnngh." Her hand groped his manhood, and the fear increased and decreased at exponential rate, imitating a roller coaster. She got up and grinned.
"What I want, bub.. T'is simple.. I want.." Her hand grabbed with strength and a small dose of pain flooded Hall's head. "Everythin'."
Hall couldn't say a word. For now he knew how the men and women that died in her hands felt. Powerless. Aroused. And not caring. A good way to go.
But unexpectedly, Hall's vanity returned to the throne of Byzantium despite having its nose cut off, and filled him with new determination. He figured it out -- or so he thought. What the person was doing to him and saying became irrelevant, and a feeling of hope, and even power, replaced it.
"You are here because I stole your employee and had her tell us your secrets. You needn't worry, she hasn't done it yet. Titanium is currently in the medical bay, already barely alive. You may do with her whatever you like, just don't let it look like I am involved. Would you like a reward too?"
A wicked grin appeared in those lips, and she caressed Hall's head, ruffling his hair.
"That ain't everythin', love." She pulled something from her pocket and deftly turned herself around, giving Hall a full view of her backside. Quickly she grabbed his right hand and shoved a needle under his index fingernail, sending a tremendous jolt of pain to his brain. His scream of pain signaled it hit home.
"Nine to go. And we're only startin' bub." She shoved the needle deeper and ripped his fingernail off. The pain flooded Hall's brain, making him sweat profusely while he tried to keep himself aware in that moment that flooded his consciousness.
"I said... Everythin'. And it's everythin' I want. Your dirty secrets, yer hidden skellies in the closet. And the monsters under yer bed, love." Caressing another fingernail with the needle. "All ya got to do is burp." The lithe woman turned around again and leaned over his head.
"Give it to me, babe..." She grabbed his hair again and shoved a lustful kiss into his mouth. After a long five seconds, she got up and grinned, devilishly. Propping herself up, she got out of Hall's body and stood at his side, his mouth marred with red lipstick.
That grin, that last image that so many dead men saw, was looking at him, waiting. "An aroused man.. Pumps more blood. Makes for a better spectacle, love. And every inch.." She grabbed his hand again and shove the needle mercilessly under the middle fingernail, eliciting another raw scream of pain and more pain than he could ever imagine. "Of pain, it's felt tenfold. Because your pressure is off the roof now."
She tapped his manhood with a laugh, and pulled out a small knife. Hall's eyes opened in panic and the grin looked back at him. "Oh don't you worry, love. It's big enough for you."
The burst of a cannon echoed through centuries of the past and the future and shook the foundations of a two thousand year old empire. Its ball sent tremendous jolts of pain throughout the Inner Wall of Theodosius. Hall's vanity might have reclaimed the throne of Byzantium, but currently, that was one of the worst places to be at. Facing capitulation, he shyly opened the small postern of Kerkoporta. The opening of the Golden Gate was only a matter of time, but the sack was inevitable.
"Stop this! Please...", he uttered humbly, like an emperor in a difficult time suddenly kneeling before a crucifix. "I'll tell you everything! Everything you want!", he almost screamed, like Judas before God. "You are an agent of Death that has come to measure my soul", he almost believed his own words, for a change. "You want me to confess you my sins before you kill me for someone's money", his hope hanged and strangled itself. "If I do so, promise me that you will tell me whose", he stated his final wish.
"Eheh..." Slowly building, her voice was almost a whisper.
"Eheh ahaha.." Now with a full crescendo, rising with madness. Her face leaned on Hall, so that he could feel the laughter in full.
"Ahahahahaahaaaaaaaaaaaaa..." The mouth laughed without restraint, logic or mind, right in front of Hall's eyes. The woman stopped laughing after a long minute of uncontrolled laughter and moved away. Turning around she wheezed until her breath was controlled. Turning around still having a small laugh, she walked towards Hall, and shoved the needle again, mercilessly, ripping the fingernail without ceremony. The pain surging in Hall's head forced the brain to shut down, causing him to faint.
Yet, pain brought him back. His face felt red and sensitive.
"Welcome back, love." That grin. That unforgiving grin of an evil child playing with a defenceless toy. Her hand was raised, indicating she had been slapping him for quite some time.
"Now, darlin'.. What I want first.. Is your sweet deals. Your machinations, yer perversions, yer sins against the people ye command and serve. Let's start with that, shinny?" She produced the needle once again and caressed his hand.. He gulped, remembering the last surge of pain.
Suddenly, she jumped once again on top of him, and pulled his nose. Both faces were close, very close. And the needle started to caress his nose.
"Ya think you can breathe from four holes in yer precious nose, love?" The grin asked.
The Golden Gate was not opened. It was broken through. Capitulation was a fact. A sack hit the table and spilled the thirty silver coins out. What was to happen with the empire Hall had built over them was on the conqueror. He coughed out a bit of pain and misery, cleared his throat and, with his voice trembling like a river bed before a torrent, he spoke, wheezing:
"...R-M... Richard Mining... my grandmother's company, after that my eldest brother's. I didn't want to study, so I had to work, but I didn't want to work either... When my grandmother passed away, my brother was in charge, and we both discovered how crookedly it had actually been run... I didn't want to work, so I started discrediting it once a month to cause damage to my brother. He started paying me monthly so I wouldn't do it any more, and I stopped. The years that came were milk and honey. This is the first one I remember, after cheating an exam. Oh, the next years were milk and honey... I got myself a ship, flew around, danced around, f***** every half-adequate c*** I could take my hands on, while under the influence of all sorts of opiates..." He coughed a bit. But he seemed to be relaxing, and even to enjoy rolling in the mud of his own memories. "Not even sure they were truly half-adequate", he said through a grin. "Tried cardamine on a party to prove myself to a girl... Probably the only bad thing that happened to me during that time.... God, I must have sniffed more orange and produced more bastards than a f****** Lord of the Liberty Rogues... Never met any of them." He was, despite all his general selfishness, covering the only bastard son he knew. "Never wanted to... Is this what you want me to speak about? Or the more recent ones? Because I'll bleed the bleeding hell out if I tell you truly everything. God, my throat is so dry... Mind lending me a glass of t... water? And please don't make me another hole to drink through..." His thirst was more subjective than real. He harrumphed again, having turned his head away from his torturer, hoping not to offend her. What he really wanted, however, was Stabiline.
The mouth grinned and licked his nose slowly, rising through the middle of his eyebrows, ending with almost shoving her dual assets in Hall's face and sighing in delight.
And the seductive voice once again ringed through the darkness.
"Don't rightfully known what on the seven hells that made ye think..." Her hand grabbed one of his fingers. Hall bit his own lip preparing himself for the pain he was already getting used to.
"Ye can ask for anything..." She playfully pulled one of his fingers and got off Hall's body, kneeling at his side. Licking her upper lip, she looked his finger and looked at Hall with a grin. Opening her mouth she proceeded to lick it, playing with it, and well, making Hall conflicted inside once again.
"Did it hurt, pretty boy?" She kept playing with that specific finger, making Hall's mind have some very suggestive thoughts.
"Now now.." Her hand signed and waved a negative. "Don't be that happy yet, love.. 'Cause the holy deed comin' out of your pretty mouth ain't done yet.." That grin once again. It was tiresome. It was deadly. It was delightful.
"So.. Last time, before I decide to remove yer eyelids.." That mouth started to lick his finger again. "Where do ya keep yer secrets?" And then the sucking. Hall eyes and breathing clearly stated the level of exhilaration he was going through. That pretty mouth, red all over, opened again, with that tongue aimed at more pleasure.
That came with a hard bite. A crunching sound. Blood. At first, Hall could not comprehend. His mind was in another universe for the first two seconds. But the pain surged forward, and exited through his mouth, without filter, without limits. And her hand moved to muffle it. Tears streaked of his eyes, with the pain.
And that woman, that beast, rose up when his voice was nothing but a whimper, with blood in her mouth and then she spitted the gnarled remains of his left ring finger, hitting the floor with a sickening noise. Now that grin was bloody, was manic, was evil and was looking at Hall, driving that woman's point point home.
"This little piggy went to the market.." She said, and caressed Hall's head.
The walls came down. The numerous edifices crumbled back into the ground they were built from, and all the statues sank into the sand along with what they glorified. All the verdant vegetation dried out into dreary dust and everything was bared. Like the civilization before the Apocalypse, Hall lay a bare man before his judge. All the style, symbols and swagger were as transparent as the hissing of the Snake. Everything became literal (except the bareness of Hall's body itself, but that could change quickly, having the figure's pace in mind). All Hall stood on was broken, so he fell. Although he was still alive, he was expecting that to change soon, and if it did, he wished it to happen quickly and painlessly.
"...Desk...", the shocked soul whispered between its widely open lips, while he wheezed, as if fighting to keep that soul inside. "...Laptop..." His glaring eyeballs that kept dizzying around, looked right behind the figure.
Only one suspect would ask for that kind of secrets -- a foreign intelligence service. He knew that the Reavers once used to work for Gallia. He had underestimated Gallia. He thought he could trick the mightiest state in existence, but he had not foreseen that they had a Reaver of their own too to do the "delicate" work for them. All of it could have been avoided, he thought, had he listened to the wire that morning. Now they will find out about what his plan truly is. He was done either way, as an enemy, or as a traitor.
He closed his eyes and drew a breath, prepared to breathe out the password, and nothing else ever after.
A grin, bloody, followed by two slight less caressing slaps in his cheeks, both to wake him up as to confer the sense of dread and powerlessness.
"There, there, bub. Wasn't that hard.. Was it?" The sound of her footsteps walking towards the desk, where the small laptop laid. Ready to be pilfered for secrets. Ready to be open like a book. Ready to tell the tale of Hall. Some couple of uneasy seconds passed in silence, each one of them more disturbing than the last. Hall's breathing was ragged, like the testament of a man broken.
And her voice, like a goddess talking down upon her charges loomed.
"Securities, traps, the kinks? Any of it, love?" Her hands removed a small device from her suit and she scanned the laptop. Nothing came up and she frowned.
"Love? Am I gonna to hurt you a wee bit more, or are you gonna make me a happy woman?" The voice slithered through his mind with promises of pain, each syllable a token of a demon.
"...Alea iacta est...", whispered the surrendered wannabe dictator to the saviour of Bretonian parliamentarism. "Type alea iacta est...", he referred to the password. Queen Carina's picture stood firmly above him.
He had rolled the dice too, but lightning does not strike twice at the same spot.