The deep cell was entirely soundproof. It was a perfect, ten-by-ten cube of seamless adamantine, buried nine levels beneath the primary Ministry complex. It possessed no windows, no aetheric scrying nodes, and absolutely no connection to the central intelligence registry.
It was an off-the-books black site. The kind of room designed for people who were never meant to exist again.
Lyss Myrvalis stood alone in the center of the cell, staring at a small, stainless-steel table.
She reached out with a trembling, scaled hand and adjusted a kinetic-scalpel, moving it exactly two millimeters to the left so it sat perfectly parallel to a bone-saw. She checked the alignment of the truth-serum vials, ensuring the labels were all facing precisely forward.
It was a careful, obsessive display of hyper-organization. The neat, perfectly parallel lines of the interrogation tools on the table were a desperate physical manifestation of the control she was entirely lacking in her own mind.
