Chapter Four



A Small Discrepancy




 "Uh Sir, we might have a problem." Captain Darcy, turns to the young officer that has just spoken with an expression of patience being rapidly exhausted. This has been one hell of a day, who could have known that some of the rioters would be walking suicide bombs.

 He had already lost three men and a dozen more won't last the night, despite the best medical care, their souls are just too damaged by the psionic fires those damn flayers had set loose. People were gonna fucking pay for this "What the Hell is it now Cheevers?" He runs a calloused hand across the corduroy scars that cross his iron gray buzzcut.

 "It's transport 17 Sir, she logs a full load of thirty six, thirty five from the Central Square disturbance and that case that Baylor and Cloon caught, possible incubus at the Clyde Medical Facility. She just locked into bay 3, we've got a major weight discrepancy and the scanner reads only two life forms in the box."

 Officer Cheevers pauses eyes wide, frightened, but the captain has no time to indulge in guessing games. "Spit it the hell out boy, what else?" The young officer gulps. "Except for a weight discrepancy of two-four-oh kilograms, the scan shows.....It shows the rest of them.... They're dead Sir, they're all dead." The kid looks slightly green, the captain is already half-way to the elevators, calling his liege men about him, this is just what the fuck he needs today.

 Every moment of the elevator ride to the intake bays is well used, by the time they have arrived they are fully armed and armored. An elite squadron of modern knights, keepers of the Emperor’s peace. A core group of seasoned warriors, highly trained and well armed,  killers. By the time the captain and his squad arrive at intake bay 3 they are ready for battle.

 The cavernous bay has been cleared except for transport 17 which is locked securely in it's landing cradle, Detectives Baylor and Cloon are in one far corner filling in the Mage containment squad with everything they know so far about the day's pick-ups.

 The captain wastes no time distributing his men in equal ranks on either side of the locked down transport, a Haz-Mat team is already in place taking a variety of scans and readings on the transport's interior.

 "We've got a thread-cam in there now." The lieutenant in charge of the Haz-Mat team is already reporting as the captain approaches, never once lifting his eyes from the small green monitor in his hands, his salute is a quick inclination of the head. "It's a fucking mess in there, it looks like they were run through a goddamn sieve. We got two live ones. One’s conked out in the back, adolescent humanoid male looks like a smallish fourteen, pretty healthy under the mess. He's in deep r.e.m. sleep. The other one's right by the doors, human male approximately nineteen, nasty shape, life signs are crazy low."

 The captain sighs, rubs his eyes hard for a moment, a single thick blue vein pulsing at his temple, he is not having a good day. "What about dweamer levels, we got any surprises waiting in there?"

 "Nope, all scans say the show's over, dweamer levels are still pretty high, but decomposition rate indicates that all the activity is past-tense. Oh yeah, the imp says the young one's some kind of squirrelly lycanthrope, some form of Darklands magic, not anything he's dealt with before. That's it so far." The lieutenant's eyes are glassy and distant again, fixed on the glowing screen, his mind is with the imp, exploring the carnage in the box.


 “Darklands?” The captain says softly under his breath, now this is really getting interesting. "Alright then, we all heard the report. Haz-Mat says we got a Vic and a Bogey in there, so in we go." It is time for action and the captain is fully alive now, his movements are electric with anticipation.

 "Gaylen you pop the lock, Llandro your taking point. Za'ander and Kelse, I want you ready-steady, if that kid starts going wolfy on us, I want your best stuff." The two mages nod quickly, the lenses of their gas-masks winking greenly, the ungloved tips of their fingers are alive with cold magical fire, they are ready. "All of you know the drill, keep your eyes open and your heads DOWN! Now Move, Move, Move!"

  What takes place next is an example worthy of textbooks, an intricate ballet of clockwork movements. The doorlock is disabled, the heavy bolt slid back and the doors flung open, a high intensity sodium vapor spotlight and nineteen laser sights are trained into the transport's hold, nineteen muzzles like unblinking black eyes, peering into the light shredded gloom. 

 What tumbles out as the doors are thrown wide, is something awful. It is an atrocity that has no right to live and yet when it falls striking the hard platform, it comes to an all too horrible state of life. 

 It is the skinless, limbless, emasculated torso of a man, his jaw has been ripped violently away and below his heaving diaphragm, his organs have been scooped out as if by great claws. The tragic wretch still has eyes to roll in it’s lidless sockets and lungs enough to emit a continuous whistling shriek of agony as it’s exposed nerves grind into the rough tarmac, the entire torso twitching and heaving in helpless convulsions.

 Within the transport nothing moves except the slow landslide of bloody gore which begins to ooze and plop out onto the plazcrete landing cradle, forming a rapidly expanding pool. 

 Beyond that, luminous in the spotlight's white glare, a thin naked boy is curled asleep in a nest of tattered, blood sodden canvas and leather. His pale skin and hair encrusted with filth and gore, but his face is the epitome of peaceful slumber. Silk white lashes lie soft against his light-bleached cheeks and the tip of one thumb is caught between small white teeth, a single pearlescent droplet of whiteness sparkling on the bow of his rose pink lip. A perfect tableau of innocent death, a reaper's cherubim in repose.

 The captain and his team, case-hardened soldiers that they are, are motionless for the longest moment, stunned by the utter destruction of so many lives, so many healthy young bodies reduced to an unrecognizable stew, by the eerie beauty of the sleeping murderer and worst of all by the unspeakable agony of this thing that is still too awfully alive.

 But the spell lasts only a moment until instinct and training take over again. Two officers lift the convulsing victim, their gloves are rough but they provide just enough purchase that he does not slip from their fingers, he is rapidly carried away to the trauma team which waits in the outer corridor.

 As soon as the Vic is out of the way, six men enter the transport in ranks of two by two, the mages are at ready as the captain cat-foots forward through the sticky gore, the boy slumbering on, unmoving, unwaking, just breathing softly, exhaling in small sighs and murmurs. 

 It is not until he is prodded in the ribs by the cold muzzle of an assault rifle that Peragrine begins to stir, a tuneless humming softly dying in his throat, he stretches, yawns, blinks his great lavender-blue eyes in slow confusion, and seeing all the frightening figures around him, begins to quietly cry.

  But Peragrine's tears end almost as quickly as they have sprung forth, he knows in his heart that these men have already condemned him and he understands implicitly that he will find no mercy in these soldiers, except perhaps the luck of a speedy death.

 The arrest is as easy as anyone could possibly hope, the kid offering no resistance, he is limp in their grasp, submitting with all the shrinking grace of a hound pup anticipating a sound whipping.

   Peragrine's vision is filled with a panorama of winking bottle-green lenses and cold black rifle muzzles and a forest of gauntleted hands reaching for him.

 He is lifted by his upper arms, two officers carry him out of the transport, depositing him in a glowing circle of glyphs which has just been invoked by the mages, it has been set up on an anti-gravity sledge so that it will be easy to move him from place to place without exposing themselves to any magical shenanigans on his part. They do not bother to shackle him again.

 "I hope you know that you are in one hell of a lot of trouble young man." The speaker is another one of the anonymous helmeted cyber cops who are escorting him into the bowels of the justice building, this one comes with a set of captain's bars on his breast-plate.

 Peragrine studies his own reflection in the dark green lenses of the captain's visor, lowering his pale lashes to his cheeks as he answers in a near whisper, voice as polite as if he were speaking to a priest.

 "Yes Sir, I suppose I am. Do you know what they’re going to do to me?" He has drawn his thighs hard against his narrow chest, cheek resting on knees, arms wrapped loosely about his calves, crossed ankles guarding his naked genitalia from sight.

 The captain's helmet snaps around to stare down at the boy again. "Damn straight I know what's planned for you, first your narrow ass is going down to decontamination, and then his most noble Lordship, Bernar Pyell. The legal representative for the Barony is going to prosecute you to the fullest extent of the Emperor’s law. After which you will likely either be executed on Court TV or you will be incarcerated in TheWarrens for  the rest of your natural life." The man's voice, though it is made tinny by the little throat speaker in his helmet, is neither sympathetic nor cruel, simply matter of fact. 





 Peragrine knows that the man has told him the truth of this matter, but somehow he cannot seem to grasp the full impact of it, as though his emotions are muffled in cotton, yet he cannot seem to feel hopeless. He almost feels as if he were still waiting for something else to happen, but for the life of him he cannot begin to guess what.

 Prisoner Decontamination Unit One is very much like one of those automatic carwashes, the ones where something like a conveyor belt takes your vehicle through a series of chambers in which it is scrubbed, soaped, rinsed and waxed, all by robotic machinery. It was specifically designed to accommodate the most dangerous kinds of prisoners without exposing  members of the staff to any potential danger.

 The room is about twenty feet cubed, with an identically proportioned chamber beyond a thick smoked glass and steel wall, at the window is a row of seats and a bank of computer monitors and keyboard controls, to one side of this is a massively thick bank vault style door. Baylor and Cloon are already there, quiet and watchful.

 The chamber beyond is walled in a baked enamel of such snowy whiteness that it shows no seams nor shadows, the lighting is ambient and seems to burst from the very pores of the room, filling the chamber with it's searing glow.

 At it's center is a stone platform approximately six feet squared and a foot in height, it is carved from a mineral of such utter blackness that it seems to swallow all the light that touches it. Set into the center of this platform is a brushed silver framework, designed to completely restrain the prisoner while rendering the machinery free access to every portion of the subjects body, it consists of a hoop thirteen feet in diameter, it's entire outer surface is deeply incised with runic spells of holding and of seeking, the better to secure the subject and to ferret out his secrets.

 The inner surface of the hoop is studded with several hundred small access ports for the flexible steel pseudo-pods which will carry out the actual examination and decontamination procedures, all controlled by the technicians in the outer chamber. 

 Peragrine is removed from the circle of suppressant glyphs by a pair of officers in full-body, level four bio-magi-hazard suits, their faces invisible behind the mirrored visors, the thick black rubber of their gloves is covered in a fine tracery work of conductive wires and has been treated with an electrically stimulated epoxy that acts like super glue when it is charged, only releasing it's impermeable grip when the current is cut off. 

 Because he is already naked there is no need for them to undress him, he is simply plucked stickily up and carried with all the watchful professionalism that might be accorded a potentially plague ridden Simian or an unexploded bomb, as they enter the inner chamber those portions of Peragrine's skin which are still clean are instantly bleached of all color by the searing white light of the chamber.

  Because he is well behaved, they are not unnecessarily rough with him as they stand him up on the stone platform, Peragrine is somewhat surprised at how warm the stone feels to the soles of his feet. 

 It is a complete shock to him when a  number of shining, liquid-steel cables emerge like serpents from the small holes in the ring and seize him by the wrists and ankles, each pseudo-pod adhering itself by thrusting itself in the form of thousands of steel threads, each only a few molecules in diameter, down through skin, muscle and tendon, to bury itself in the bone, hundreds of other thread-probes attaching themselves to the nerve bundles that control voluntary movement, allowing the pseudo-pods to take control of these functions when required. The procedure takes less than a minute and is only mildly painful.

 Without a backward glance, the technicians leave him alone in the glowing chamber. The steel cables slowly begin to contract, drawing his arms and legs taughtly outward. They lift him until he is suspended spread-eagled about four feet off of the platform, his body now as tightly strung as the cables that ensnare him.

 Another cable lowers from above, dividing itself as it descends, enfolding Peragrine’s head like a silver hydra. Cool liquid steel runs into the canals of his ears, up his nostrils, delicately insinuates itself beneath his eyelids, flowing between his clenched lips and filling his mouth and throat with it's suffocating coolness. 

 It feels like drowning, his body burning up its oxygen reserves with increasing rapidity as panic dumps adrenalin into his system. He would struggle if he could, but his muscles are not his own now, they are controlled by his tormentors. He would scream or implore with his eyes but they are not his own either.

 It is just as he begins to faint that tiny passages in the pseudo-pods begin to dump clean cool air into his burning lungs. The air is also laced with a very mild narcotic gas, it renders him fully conscious but filled with a sense of calm and well-being.

 Detective Baylor leans his broad furry forehead against the smoky glass window watching as the boy is rendered fully passive, he makes a very stimulating sight, his fragile body helpless in the chamber's liquid steel bondage.

 He's always had a taste for the little skinny ones, makes him want to have them call him Daddy, and there's nothing in the world like a really narrow pelvic girdle to grip your cock when it knots up.

 Baylor darts a casual glance at his little partner, Shan is busy at the monitors, discussing the readings they are taking of the boy's vitals, brain waves, dweamer levels etc. etc.

 He knows that Shan does not approve of his sexual tastes, but then there's a lot of shit the little guy doesn't approve of. Sweet people the Simians, but they definitely seemed to have a universal stick up their monkey butts.

 His yellow-green eyes swivel back to the boy, he is being sprayed with a needle fine mist of sterile water as a number of cables suction away the moistened accumulation of blood and flesh fragments, leaving long swathes of clean, light-bleached, white skin.

 All of it will be carried away to holding tanks where it will be separated, analyzed and categorized to be stored away as evidence in the suspect's upcoming trial.

 Two more pseudo-pods have emerged from the area below the boy, they lift slowly like thin reptiles, scenting their way up the boy's skinny legs and stopping at his crotch.

 One of the cables extends a very thin probe, inserting it into the slit at the tip of the kid's prick, it's goal is to climb the urethra all the way into the boy's bladder, the contents of which it will drain into yet another container for analysis.

 The other pseudo-pod is poised at the exposed crack of the kid's narrow ass, Baylor watches as it begins to swell to about one and a half inches in diameter. A quick glance at Jerry, the techie in charge of the internal scans rewards him with a grin and a wink. Well, hell, the tech boys got to have their fun too.

 As the blunt thickness of the cable noses it's way between the boy's round buttocks, it pauses a moment at the crinkled little hole, spraying it with a sterile lubricating gel, then nudges forward, forcing the tight ring of muscles to open to it. When it has entered to a depth of about five inches, the end swells to almost double it's original diameter, locking it into place for what comes next and making a very snug if decidedly uncomfortable fit. 

 Peragrine's body is again becoming a landscape of sensations, he cannot see or smell, taste or hear, but he can feel. Thus all his powers of perception are directed to tips of his nerves.

 The cold unyielding texture of the cable which fills his mouth, stretching his aching throat as the dead-wolf's cock had. The strange tickle he feels deep in his bladder, as if he needs to urinate but cannot, and the swollen pulsing of the thing which fills his anus.

 It feels nothing like a prick in him, at least nothing like the dead wolf's, this thing is blood-warm not clay cold, it is smooth as glass and yet cruelly precise in it's choices of where to stretch him. A light electric pulse is directed at his prostate gland causing his slim penis to achieve it's full five inches in a matter of seconds, his testicles wrinkling up tight against his body.

 His mind is dizzied with a sort of humiliating pleasure as a rush of warm water is sent deep into his bowels, it contains enzymes and surfactants that loosen and liquefy every fragment of waste they encounter in his intestines. Even as the fluid forces it's way slowly up the full length his bowels, it is being circulated, siphoned away to distant collection units and replaced with fresh liquid. The result is a gentle tidal sensation that is in direct contrast to that of the nozzle which has begun to stretch even more cruelly the entrance of his poor abused bottom.

 The portion of the pseudo-pod which is just inside his bottom begins to exude additional tentacles, like stubby little fingers which prod and stretch his bottom with increasing roughness, forcing him wider and wider open. So too has the cable which fills his mouth, it pulses and grows, continuously feeding him air but also stretching his jaw and throat to obscene proportions, the surface of it which is within his mouth and throat is pulsing rhythmically as if it were sliding in and out.
 

 The cables which wrap his head begin to sprout a fine mist of silver threads each of which enfolds a single hair of his scalp, lashes or eyebrows, following the shaft of each to it's very root.

 Once this measure of protection is in place, the chamber is filled with a series of concentrated pulses of ultraviolet light, which painlessly renders the first layers of his epidermis into a fine white ash, destroying even the fine downy hairs that sprinkled his arms and legs.

 A needle fine spray of sterile water rinses away the ash leaving Peragrine's body as smooth and clean and achingly tender as that of a freshly washed infant. 

 The thick, twisting and prodding intrusion in Peragrine's aching bottom suddenly delivers a series of painfully sharp electric shocks to his prostrate, causing his taughtly straining penis to explode into an agonizingly intense orgasm.

 His testicles feel as if they are emptying themselves completely, he can feel rope after rope of semen washing upward to be siphoned away by the liquid steel catheter that has invaded him, it is an ecstatic agony of pleasure that grips his entire being.  The semen he sheds is whisked away to yet another distant laboratory for a full battery of analytical tests

 "Wowwie-zow! Would you take a look at this shit, it's off the fuckin' charts!" Attica, the tech in charge of monitoring magical and psionic readings is astounded at what he sees. "This kid's whole chakric-dweamer system is hard-wired into his pain/pleasure center. Like a fucking star-whore with balls!" 

 Having no clue as to the impact of what he has just said, the tech is mystified to see Detective Baylor leap away from the viewing window and cross the room to Captain Darcy's side, the two of them speaking in quiet urgency, heads together, for several long moments, their faces both deadly serious and yet dancing with excitement.

 The rest of the officers and technicians in the room are very quiet now, Detective Cloon regarding his partner across the room with golden eyes made immense by the sudden expectant tension in the room.

 "If it's true, do you have any idea what this could mean to our careers." Baylor's whisper is a pulsing imperative, but Darcy still unconvinced. "Look Jack, just because he looks a little bit like one of them doesn't mean that he is. I mean seriously, do you understand the odds against it?"

 "Good, galloping, Goddess of the Hunt, look at the clues! Darklands magic, that hair, those eyes, he turns into a tantric fuck-machine at a drop of the hat. You know what he is!"

 Darcy runs a restless hand over the bone-deep scars of his scalp again, then looks around at the assemblage of his co-workers and supplicants in the control room.

 "Okay, I am hereby placing a level five security cap on this case! This situation is now Imperial jurisdiction, I want your oaths of silence sworn on the Imperial sigil before you leave the chamber. You all understand the penalties for non-compliance." These people have no doubt of the penalties, they are ugly in the extreme and not to be risked lightly, none of them will speak of what they have learned, or even of what they suspect.

 "Well then, we have some D.N.A. comparisons to run, let's get to work." He slaps his hands sharply together, breaking the spell of silence that had overtaken the room, the control chamber becomes a hive of activity once again, within a minute the results are in.

 "The match is a hundred percent Sir, with the exceptions of sex differentiation and the unidentified lycanthropic strain, the samples are a genetic match to the target file." Baylor's broad muzzle becomes one great toothy grin, his yellow-green eyes snapping with inner light. “He’s also got some very interesting pheromonal properties in his sweat and salivary glands. Looks like a passive sexual attractant, likely to make him smell like a bitch in heat to a broad spectrum of mammalian species.”

 Detective Baylor gives a shark-like grin at the sound this last comment, he likes that very much. Damn but he has some plans to makes concerning that kid, not the least of which is fucking his brains out.

 Captain Darcy's pleasure over the discovery of this little windfall is more suppressed, his mind busy going over the political possibilities that this boy represents.

 Being a knight in direct service to the Imperial house, he is far more familiar with the background of the boy's family and far more aware of the consequences of this discovery if it is not handled with the most extreme care, this is an all or nothing proposal.

 Vadiim, the witch-king of the Atrian Darklands, is the despotic monarch of a small continent, on a small planet, in a distant arm of the spiraling galactic empire.

 Outwardly he is simply another planet-bound vassal of the imperial court, but in truth, although he is condemned by his own nature to be forever a prisoner of his wintry lands, he is in fact a key player in the game of empire.  

 Vadiim is the father of the entire star-whore breed, over the eons he has fathered thousands upon thousands of them. His daughters are in almost every leading house of the empire, even the Emperor himself has more than a dozen in his personal household, and at least a hundred attached to his greater court.

 They are intoxicating bed-partners, pliant and exciting, skilled im many erotic arts, and the average lifespan among them is several century's. Imagine a concubine with the fresh face and form of a sixteen year old girl, and the skills of a centuries old whore.

 But they are also distressingly expensive to contract, even for the wealthy. The services of one of the snow-haired creatures can easily equal the cost of a dozen men's lifetime incomes.

 They come with only two stipulations on what can be done with them. The first being that they cannot marry, for each of them is married to her father at her first menarche and will remain so until death.

 The second is that every last one of them is sterilized before ever she comes from out her father's house. Or so it would seem, for they never become pregnant no matter how long their tryst. 

 The witch-whores breed with none but their own father, their breeding time being past before they are sold into luxurious bondage to the houses of power. It is said by many that Vadiim lies with dozens of them every night, filling their nubile bodies with his incestuous seed, feasting on their blood with the tenderest of kisses.

 It is his tradition to give only those who will remain always by his side the gift of his blood in return, making of them an even more powerfull conduit for his power.

 One very defining detail about the house of the vampire witch-king Vadiim, is his lack of male heirs. There has never been even a rumor of a living heir to the Darklands throne. So the only plausible explanation for the boy is that one of the daughters must have slipped the noose unsterilized. He makes a mental note to pull the kid's birth records and start putting this puzzle together.  

 The electrically stimulated orgasm thunders on and on. Pulse after pulse, crash after crash, until it's feel as if it’s tearing him apart, he has gone far beyond the point of pleasure, now it just hurts. 

 Finally, after what feels like an eternity, the stimulus is finally stopped and he can almost relax. But it doesn’t last, the silence that envelops him is shattered by a voice.

"Can you hear me Mr.Harker?" The voice is female and impatient, it seems to come from everywhere at once, deep inside his skull. "Mr.Harker? I don't think he can hear me." 

 "Yes Ma'am, I can hear you." To his surprise he finds his throat has been freed of the invasive liquid metal, he is still encased in it, but his mouth and throat are at last free.

 "What? Oh good, how are you doing Mr.Harker? My name is Hart, Hart O'Hannon, I'll be representing you at your trial." He can hear papers rustling in the background and realizes that she is speaking to him through a microphone. "Now we have a lot of things to discuss Mr.Harker, the first being your plea. Now the first thing we will be doing is to enter a plea of not guil...."

 "Did my father hire you Miss O'Hannon? May I please see him?" He cannot help the sob that begins to constrict his throat at the thought of being returned to the man who raised him.

 He is suddenly, desperately homesick, wanting only the mindless simplicity of school and home. To have no greater concerns in his life other than the regional fencing competitions this summer and getting the grades, that will allow him to enter a good college. He would even be satisfied to be screamed at by Alison during another one of her frequent fits of temper. 

 "No Mr.Harker, I was hired by your contract holders, the Elysium Club. They would like to get you out of here and back to work as soon as possible." Work? What the hell was she talking about? "Um, Ma'am, I'm not sure what work your talking about, I don't work for that club."

 Her next words pretty much laid out her entire position on the matter. "Look Mr.Harker, I really don't care what your arrangements are with the association that holds your contract. I'm here to keep you alive and out of prison, what you work out with your contract holders afterward is of no interest to me." Snippy and impatiently businesslike, she has blithely crushed any hopes Peragrine might have had of returning to his old life. "Besides which, I have made several attempts to contact your father to get some background on you and I was told that he and your sister have gone off-planet quite suddenly. He didn't even give notice to his employers, therefore I very much doubt that he will be returning. So, can we get down to business now?"

 She didn't even give him the opportunity to answer as she launched into a long string of low Demonic legalese. Demonic in it's high, low and middle forms, being the official language of the barony. She informed him of the long string of mostly murder charges against him and the terrible consequences that awaited him if he was found guilty and not lucky enough to be sentenced to death. She pauses once in a while, just to make sure he is listening, at which times he say's yes Ma'am and no Ma'am in all the places she wants to hear it, then roundly ignores her.

 Just follow my lead, she says. Do what I tell you and everything will be just fine, she says. Just plead not-guilty and then shut up, she tells him. Don't worry we'll get you back to the club safe and sound, she says. Bullshit, he decides.

 “Don’t worry Mr. Harker.” She says, sounding very confident in herself. “We’ll have you in and out of court in a flash.”

 "Court!" Peragrine's body immediately begins dumping adrenalin into his system. "Why am I going to court so soon?"

 "For your information young man.” She sounds annoyed now. “In the case of outlaw slaves such as yourself, the average length of time between arrest and prosecution is generally five to fifteen hours, so you’re just about in the middle."

 Oh yes, the contract, I'm a slave now. Not for me, the right to a phone call, nor the right to council, though a charity may take pity. Perhaps one of those organizations run by old, blue haired ladies who specialize in the protection of abused slaves and household pets. I guess I'm lucky to have that lawyer from the Elysium, they own me now, fuck. "Oh." It was all he could think to say. 

 Gentle as an outgoing tide, Peragrine can feel the liquid-steel pseudo-pods withdrawing. Out of his ears, from beneath his eyelids, out of his sinuses. The heavy pressure that filled his bowels and belly flowing away, slowly his weight comes to rest on his own legs, but he has no strength and sinks to his knees. Strong hands lift him to his feet, everything is blurred and indistinct, focus returning only very slowly.

 Their are four men around him, two in slave's gray jumpsuits, they are clearly prisoner trustees, two are armored officers with wicked looking shock batons at ready, faceless behind their emerald lensed gas masks. The trustees are directed to dress Peragrine in a jumpsuit that closely matches their own, however, his is marked with a triple helix on the shoulder, the symbol for magus. It is the very smallest uniform in stock and yet it hangs on Peragrine many sizes too large.

 He makes a sweetly comical little figure, nearly lost in the gray puddle of jumpsuit which one of the trustees thoughtfully rolls up the sleeves and cuffs of so that he won't trip. He guesses they don't get many mage criminals as small as him, he is given no shoes.

 Once dressed he is half led and half carried out into the hallway and down several high traffic corridors to a long bank of recovery rooms. These rooms are mostly used for prisoners who are undergoing extensive questioning, and need a little extra attention like replacement blood plasma or perhaps finger re-attachment, whatever it takes to get a confession.

 The room is small, about eight feet squared, walls, floor, ceiling and door, all cream colored plaz-steel with two black circles on one wall. The corners are rounded as if the room was molded as a single unit, which in fact it was. As were the two items of furniture it contains, one being a low wide bunk and the second being a rather creative combination of sink and toilet. The toilet was one of those high-tech units that first sprayed you clean with waterless disinfectant and then used a high intensity stream of warm air to dry it so they didn't have to provide you with toilet paper, actually it was kind of cool, at least you never had to worry about getting poopy fingers. Peragrine however had no use for it as he had utterly nothing in his digestive system, a fact which he was now beginning to distinctly feel.  

 They left him alone, he was not sure for how long, for he fell fast asleep the moment he lay on the bunk, he did not dream and he did not rise again until they came for him.

  
