Word Count: 563

She slept in fits and starts.

If it could be called sleep. In truth, she'd never slept so poorly in her life. She slipped into semi-consciousness in those moments she was left alone, only to be jolted awake again as soon as the next agent stepped through the door. Some were kind and waited until the feel of their presence dragged her back into wakefulness. But most were forceful, shaking her awake or barking at her until she jumped and blinked her eyes open.

They spoke to her as if she were a lesser being, and perhaps and their eyes she was—a foreigner from another world come to inhabit their own. Some spat at her. Most glared. Many lashed out with kicks or punches even when she made no effort to antagonize. In the eyes of the younger ones and of the newest Lieutenants, she would occasionally see traces of restrained fear, yet she never heard it in their voices. They shouted at her, swore at her, sneered their hatred and scoffed at her threats.

They kept her chained and caged. Like an animal. Or some sick manner of pet.

“What is your name?” they would ask. Every last one of them.

She did not know whether they meant “Ganymede” or “Paris.”

She would tell them neither.

“Go to hell,” she would say instead.

The more tolerant officers glared. The more impassioned took to slapping her.

“Where do you come from?” they would ask.

“I come from Earth,” she would say.

“You lie. You are not of Earth.”

“If you think you know so much about me, why don't you tell me where I'm from?”

She earned herself another strike.

After the first dozen she stopped feeling the pain. Her face grew numb from it. Her skin tingled and her head throbbed with each beat of her heart, but it was nothing compared to the constant fatigue and the weakness in her limbs.

And the hunger and thirst. They gave her only enough food and water to keep her alive.

She sat on the floor of her cage with her arms chained to one of the bars at her back. When she did not sleep she stared listlessly forward, listening to what few sounds made it to her prison—muttering beyond the door, and screaming further off.

The screaming was irregular. Constant for stretches at a time, sharp and piercing or pitiful and low. It was all too real, too lifelike for her to convince herself otherwise. In the dreams of half-wakefulness, the screaming brought brutal images to the forefront of her brain. Then the screaming stopped and there was nothing but silence.

She imagined death had come.

She did not know what had become of her allies, or what sort of tortures faced them. She would ask, but no one would answer.

“How is it that you have come to protect your starseed from corruption?” they would ask.

“Where's Valhalla?” she would respond.

“What manner of magic is this?”

“I want to see Valhalla.”

“What is your name?”

“I SAID GO TO HELL!”

They left her then, slamming the door with such finality she sometimes worried it would never open again.

So she sat and she slept and she wept in the darkness.

She feared the cage would become her grave.