Word Count: 484

She felt the starseed as it passed through her, like a cold lump of ice sliding down her esophagus and into her stomach.

Moments after the Captain left, once the door slammed shut and she heard the lock turning, Ganymede pushed herself up and crawled across the floor. She went to the far side of her cage, hovered there on her knees and the one hand attached to a throbbing, broken wrist. The other hand she brought to her mouth, stuck her finger inside, and reached to the back of her throat.

She gagged but nothing came up. The starseed came to rest like a cold pit in her stomach.

She tried again with similar results. The third time she spent a while drying heaving, but that was the extent of it. She felt nothing rise. Tears dripped from her face onto the floor of the cage. She cried her grief into the ground—loud, hysterical sobs that shook her whole body. She brought her hands to her hair and screamed, so loud and shrill all that could compare were the shrieks of the poor girl whose starseed she'd consumed.

The pain started soon after. A dull ache in her stomach became severe cramping. The cold that had her shivering turned into white hot heat, radiating from her stomach out to other areas of her body. Her fingers and toes tingled, then went numb. Her chest tightened and constricted until she could hardly breathe. She ached all the way down to her bones. It was a pain that throbbed with each beat of her pounding heart.

Then the nausea came; the room spun around her, teetering precariously before her vision blurred. She felt ill and placed her finger in her mouth again, but still nothing rose.

Ganymede moaned miserably. She wept until she could not distinguish whether the pain in her chest came from the starseed or her own crying. Her anger and her hatred were like two phantoms looming over her shoulders, but stronger than that now was her misery. Her defeat. For days she had kept her head high. She'd felt pride. She'd not felt hope, but she'd still had her confidence.

They wouldn't break her, she'd told herself. They could come at her with everything they had in their arsenal, every weapon or torturous design, and she would hold her head up through it. Perhaps she had not faced the trials in store for her with dignity, but she'd shown them the extent of her perseverance all the same. Nothing they could do to her would tarnish her spirit. No amount of torture would dampen the fire that burned so bright in her eyes.

Until now.

Now she broke. Now she gave in to the agonizing despair.

And as a feverish sweat broke out along her brow, her despair dragged Ganymede down, down, down into the darkness.

Closer to death's welcoming arms.