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| - The prison block remains, as ever, an uninteresting place. The cells themselves are empty--the only remarkable thing, most of the guards don't even know about: a completely dark room at the very end of the corridor, often mistaken for a maintenance hatch by casual visitors. But today the silence has been interrupted: the figure of Chairman Wilhuff Tarkin enters, escorted by a small squad of black-clad guards. He nods wordlessly at the prison guards and approaches the little black room. There is a special cell in some prison facilities, a cramped little box of a chamber, reserved for the most violent, the most troublesome of prisoners. Solitary confinement. Barely enough room to let an adult human stretch out, it lacks any form of comfort, no cot, no light, no sound. Finer details of how someone survives in such a place are best left to the imagination, but there is a reason most prisoners do not stay in such a place for long. A few days, perhaps, for the most hardened. However, an unnamed person, listed only as Number 8525852, has taken up permanent residence there, it seems. Of course, in the eerie silence, one could wonder if anything exists there at all. The door opens, casting a harsh light into the little black room, and allowing sound into the previously silent area. Wilhuff Tarkin smiles coldly. "I think it is time we took a walk, #8525852." He nods at a man at his side. "Bind her legs. We don't want her to get any ideas." It is the smell that comes first - that tangy, sweet mixture of rank flesh, a pinch of something rotting, and a teaspoon of vomit - rushing out the moment the door is opened. As the light slowly peaks into the small room, it reveals the source... the human pretzel of number 8525852. The faint illumination traces the twisted lines of remaining limbs, uneasily contorted in their bound state (some warden must have thought it better to never release the bindings), wrist and ankles rubbed raw, bloody. A hideous creature, this prisoner. Decrepit, malnourished, with patches of discoloration on the head, where hair is trying to grow back, and spiderwebs of dried blood and fading bruising. From the state of the cell - filthy - the wounds are probably self-inflicted. Trays of food are pushed into a stack in a corner, bottom ones discooled and rotting, yet, closer to the top of the pile, growing progressively empty. Desperation forces action. At the sounds, the prisoner lets out a small groan and shifts away from the light. "I hope you are enjoying your stay," says Tarkin. "It has been too long since my last visit. I have been a touch ill as of late. I apologize. I know how much you enjoy my company." "Shhh!" 8525852 hisses a raspy order. "I.. can't hear them... too loud." It bares teeth, a small crescent of white against the darkness and pushes its body further against the corner it had been inhabiting. Not able to raise a hand to shield its remaining eye, it simply burrows its head against the durasteel. "Too loud. Too loud." Tarkin smiles and turns away. "Euphemia Bellamy is dead. I thought you might be interested in knowing." He clasps his hands at his back. "No glamor. Just one shot from a sniper and it was all over. An insignificant life, and now, an insignificant death." "They.. they... said I should eat them... Yes, they told me... It would be okay, yes..." the prisoner rants in a raspy whisper. Dried smears of blood decorate the corner walls, indicative to the movement of its head along them. "Who? .. Oh!" The one-eyed ghoul turns to Tarkin, looking somewhere beyond him, into the light. A ring of sickly yellow surrounds the grey iris, and there, a flicker of something... yes. Clarity! "... Euphemia? Ah... Tar-kin." It attempts to sound like a melodical greeting, as if it does it often. "Again? You told me that.. last time! Yes! Everyone was dead." The smile grows wider, skin stretching on bone. "Everyone!" "Some of the others, as well. Draven . . . not quite everyone, of course. But enough. I daresay they won't be coming for you." Tarkin turns back. "I wonder what you are going to talk to me about today," he says. In the dim light, the prisoner's face is full of shadows formed by the elevations and hollows of the bones, dried rivulets and smears of old blood enhance the topography, almost inhuman. The sole eye narrows, then. "Not.. a hallucination?" The realization is a slap in the face. Somewhere underneath the growing madness, the Imperium's Lady Admiral glares. "Tarkin." Rem grates out through clenched teeth. And, as per her usual repertoire of casual greetings, "Frag you." "Good morning, #8525852," says Tarkin with a smile. "Glad to have you back with us. Have you been well?" He frowns as if only just noticing her appearance. "You haven't been taking care of yourself very well at all, have you?" Careless. Carelessness won't do. That's what got her into this mess, it won't be what gets her out. Not her own, anyway. Rem lets her limbs slack, leaning back against the wall. "I wouldn't... have minded a bath." Her voice comes out a rasp, muscles of the throat tense and uncooperative. "It passed ...the time. How long?" Days, nights, such things don't exist in the darkness. "Time is such a relative thing. Long enough for your self-proclaimed Mediator to perish to a lone sniper. Not long enough for your insignificant rebellion to be destroyed, but we have taken some important steps towards victory. Now I would like you to help us take a few more." Tarkin makes a gesture at his guards, two of whom step forwards. "I don't believe you." It is with great effort that Rem manages the whole line without pausing for a strained breath. Despite relaxed appearance, the cripple's eye darkens with rage. The approach of guards makes her whole body tighten with unease, a knot of skeletal limbs. "Leave ...me alone." A hissed threat, the jaw muscles suddenly very prominent under clammy skin. "Somehow I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request," says Tarkin. "Now, these gentlemen?" He smiles thinly, gesturing at his guards. "They are quite offended that you are so very . . . uncooperative. Here you are, not even fully human, and you continue to call me a liar and refuse to assist us. They would very much like to see you cooperate." "I'd like... to see you... dead," Rem snarls, though it comes out a rough croak, "but we can't... all have what we want." The good hand balls into a fist, tight and bone-white. Guards are spared a simmering look, a casual measuring of their size, but the woman's attention remains arrested, determined, unwavering, on the Moff. Guard A aims a savage kick at one of Rem's shins. Tarkin shakes his head. "If you do cooperate, we might return you to a normal cell. Clean you up. You may eventually even pass for human in a dim light." He shakes his head. "Otherwise, I'm afraid we will have to terminate you. We would rather not have you be a continued drain on our food supplies. It seems such a waste to give food to a prisoner when we could just throw it away." Rem takes the kick with a low groan, burying her face into the rough fabric of her jumpsuit to not give them the satisfaction of hearing her cry. Face contorted in agony, the relief of bones and muscles so much more obvious, the prisoner spits out, "Do it!" A challenge, fueled by madness and blinding pain. COMBAT: Tarkin wields his BlasTech DL-50 Blaster Pistol. Tarkin nods his head and holds out his hand to the guard on his left, who hands him a blaster pistol. He puts it against Rem's head and puts his finger on the trigger. "You have approximately ten seconds to save your life. I suggest you start talking quickly." There is a beat. Then he begins counting down. Click. A faint sheen of sweat glistens on the face and stubbly head in the low light. Soundless helplessness is visible in her features. Tick. Tick. Seconds stretch of aeons. Another down. Is it five now? Four? A bead of red moisture rolls down her forehead to the deep crevice of the hollow eye socket. Two.. One. The remaining follows the length of the blaster, up the hand, to Tarkin's face. Not enough time to read the bluff. Tick. Rem's mouth drops open. "... I talk too much... for my own good." A faint whisper. "Then speak quickly," says Tarkin. "I grow tired of asking questions--and I have an answer a fraction of an inch away." His finger begins to tighten. "Speak! Now!" he raises his voice. As commanded, Rem speaks, babbles, mostly nonsense, delusional. Bits and pieces of things from the past. Corellia's nice this time of year, the Viceroy is quite a smoker. These durasteel walls get very hot, sometimes, and humid. The conditions on Mustafar were better. That's not the answer he's looking for, but the Moff never did specify. Logic, faced with death, seems trivial. Click. "Tell me your secrets, your strategies, your deployment, everything, now," he says. "I do not have the time for this. One more word of nonsense and you will be a footnote in the record books of history. Unremarkable, meaningless, forgotten. Tell me what I want to hear or your deluded ramblings will be your last words." In battle, one prepares for death every day. On the battlefield, in combat. Staring down the barrel of a blaster, in a bleak dungeon, in the middle of enemy territory, however, is not something one prepares for. Tears join sweat in clearing a path through the blood and other filth on the woman's face, little rivers of white. "Too long..." Rem gasps. "Away too long. Alderaan? Paxo? What... is there to say... that you don't... already know!" She chokes back a sob, fighting to keep her face impassive. What does she know, indeed, after a month of this? Between deep breathes, a soft hum escapes her throat. "Perhaps you should have considered that possibility before you decided to remain silent this long," says Tarkin. "You have ten seconds. If you have not started saying something useful by the time I am finished counting, they will be your final ten seconds." "I don't know.. what you want to... know!" Rem's eye is wide, darting wildly. The press of durasteel against skull doesn't seem to improve her memory. She makes those ten seconds count, low alto breathing out a timeless old melody, painfully off-key: "Brace up, Corellia... stand firm and tall, No one... shall subdue you, you'll never fall..." "You fell long ago, Rem Dolor," says Tarkin humorlessly. "Corellia would never take you back. You betrayed your home. Tonight, Corellia avenges herself." After only a moment's pause, he pulls the trigger, then returns the pistol to its owner and stalks out of the cell. The song continues, the woman's eye falling closed. A resignation, unavoidable fate she willingly accepts. "Go your own way... and let none... hold you back, .. for your future..." Click. "calls you ever... ever... on-n..n..." The final note hangs in the air, stale and stagnant, like the stench. In the hollow pad of booted feet out of the cell, a faint, dull thud, then silence. This leaves the cell in a moment of silence, broken by the sound of Tarkin's guards making their way out of the cell, leaving the body for the janitorial staff. After a moment one of them breaks the oppressive hush that has fallen over the prison cell by asking, "So! Anyone hungry?"
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