My eyes were open, and I deduced that this was actually happening—not a dream or nightmare. I was no longer shackled to the wall but sat on cold concrete, wearing only a thin, cheap synthetic gown. Though I was drugged and profoundly paralyzed, I couldn't care.
What I saw shattered something inside me, yet I remained powerless. Two wolves, Mimosa and Shadow, wore dog collars. Men offered them treats; Mimosa drooled, clearly hungry. When she sat, she received a treat and a pat on the head—a scene that broke me further.
In the next cell, Mariella crawled, unable to sit due to the drugs affecting her coordination. She fell to her side, tears streaming down her face. I looked to see what she saw: a tall, black-haired man in a black leather jacket and a busty redhead were kissing. He whispered sweet nothings, praising her body and beauty. He stroked her manicured fingers, complimenting her nail color.
Mariella, meanwhile, lifted her own grimy, torn hand, crying. Something was wrong, but I was too exhausted to speak to her, to tell her it was an act. A monitor showed a large room where several men—Charles, Adam, Damon—were drinking with women gyrating on their laps; their pants were open. Mariella somehow believed the tall man was Damon, but he wasn't. I was useless, weak, and unable to use the hive.
I drifted between sleep and nightmares, struggling to distinguish dreams from reality. My memory conjured vivid sensations from my past, so intense that even pinching myself offered no solace. I might pinch myself and then see Jake, confirming another senseless nightmare.
Sometimes, my nightmares mirrored waking moments: Mariella, crawling and begging for attention in a broken voice. Then, against my will, I saw Elena naked, being raped by five or six men. Their erect cocks, wet sounds, and fetid breath filled the air; I could almost feel them inside me.
Elena screamed intermittently; Katherine, also being raped, was told her pussy was so loose that they were doing her a favor. The men were cruel and vicious. After hours of rape, Elena cried while Katherine remained silent, both covered in cum and forced to perform oral sex—the men threatened more drugs if they resisted. Their assholes were also violated.
I tried to tell Mariella to stop begging, but my voice failed me; I could only grunt. I wasn't sure if I was dreaming or not, as I swear I saw Jake crouched near me, watching and speaking, though I was too drugged to understand.
Sometimes, Jake morphed into a Bruce Willis look-alike, who grew angry at my silence, yelling at someone—though I couldn't understand what about. Someone responded calmly, but he remained furious.
"Come on, Mimi, you can do this," a voice urged, pushing past the haze of drugs.
I wasn't sure if it was me, Jake, Rob, or someone else from my nightmarish dreamscapes, where drugs relentlessly dragged me down. Perhaps it was my mind's desperate attempt to escape the horrifying reality of my failure to protect my pack, the weakest among us.
Drugged and devoid of my usual rage—the very essence of my being—I was nothing. This terrifying realization was simultaneously a welcome one, a humbling reminder to maintain my humility if I ever escaped. I sat on the hard, cold, slightly damp concrete, acutely aware of the discomfort and my apparent weight loss. I couldn't recall eating anything recently, but perhaps they'd fed me.
A bizarre question arose—how does one interrogate or torture a mindless zombie? Muttering to myself, I considered the possibilities: "Well, if zombies eat brains, don't give it to them. Show them the brain, but don't give it. That might anger them, maybe even make them talk."
Then, Elena, or someone, spoke: "Mimi, they were talking about you. You're too doped up for them to ask questions or torture you."
Perplexed, I lifted my hand; it seemed normal. I certainly didn't want to eat brains. Was I a zombie or not? And I had no memory of anyone questioning me. Even if I had answered, my understanding was so poor that any answers would likely have been useless.
Mariella's voice, weary with exhaustion, cut through the fog: "I swear, if we ever get out, I'll strangle those men by their gonads—let them fuck with purple balls—"
My mind, still clouded by drugs, misconstrued her threat; I envisioned enormous purple beach balls in a bed during sex. With whom? I had no idea. The mere thought of someone penetrating me made my pussy dry and shrivel. I didn't want sex, not at all.
Time had no meaning, at least not to me. The tall man, utterly clueless about my system, had poisoned me with his concoction, scrambling my mind. For days, General Dillinger received no coherent response; his fury mounted while the man remained unnervingly calm.
I was just one of his many clients, and my bizarre reaction to the drugs was simply accepted. Despite the General's insistence, my dosage remained unchanged, plunging me further into incoherent chaos. The witches, equally displeased, glared at me. They craved my pain, my distress—but I offered them nothing.
Mariella's pain was too specific, useless to them, and the wolves and girls were similarly unsatisfied, their anger growing. They wanted something, anything. It was time to introduce another player.
I was sitting at the bottom of my cage when the entourage returned, this time dragging a male between them; he appeared unconscious. A female accompanied them—a familiar face, irritatingly so, someone I'd encountered days before on the fight club ship long before Mariella.
As the group reached my cage, a guard opened the door, and they tossed the man inside. It was Bran, beaten and unconscious, but still breathing.
The tall, blonde, curvy female sneered, "Oh, Bran was such an easy mark. All I had to do was contact him, invent a sob story, and promise I'd changed."
This was the woman Bran had brought home from the Demon realm. It seemed Bran had once again played a part in our predicament.
The blonde continued, "Oh, Bran is such a talker. He told me where you shopped, what your pack was like, and how you'd changed. He still lost it a few times, but he was trying to do better. All I had to do was talk, and he went along with my plan. You see, I lied to him—said I was married, that my husband had died. I was never married. I tried to find a sugar daddy, but no luck. So, I ended up as a sort of Mata Hari, seducing men to reveal information. Pussy is a very useful tool when you know how to use it."
My drugged mind conjured the image of my pussy as a screwdriver—or some other tool, devoid of pleasure. This had a profound effect; I could alter my body and perceptions with my mind, so I essentially shut down my lust and enjoyment of sex, viewing my pussy merely as a tool to be used only if necessary.
Since I didn't need to use it, it remained dormant. This thought caused my hormones to plummet, impacting my physiology, as hormones are essential. However, the drugs had left me highly suggestible, or perhaps lacking control over my reactions and thoughts. Consequently, whatever entered my mind, I conjured a version of it happening to me—not everything, but something, with resulting consequences.
Mariella's sanity fluctuated depending on the amount of drugs she and others were given; it was a terrible situation. I sat looking at Bran, barely thinking, unable to formulate an escape plan. My mind was a disaster; regaining any coherent control would be difficult, and even then, it would be tenuous at best. I didn't know what to do except sit, look around, and drift in and out of the nightmare-filled haze into this harsh new reality that seemed to drain all hope.
I had no idea what they planned for me, but my state reverted me to my former, fearless self. My mind was devoid of fear, as the drugs suppressed my rage and other emotions, including fear. Thus, there was no distress, no fear, no worries, only a paralyzing nothingness and inability to act.
I felt almost disembodied, as if I were watching myself from outside: sitting on the floor, staring blankly ahead, unresponsive as someone approached my cage, shoved something at me, or spoke.
Alternatively, I saw Mariella crawling, a new dose of ketamine and other drugs dissolving her fragile grip on reality and replacing it with a cold, desperate feeling of worthlessness and abandonment by Damon.
Or I saw wolves, collared and panting like dogs, struggling—less and less effectively—to shapeshift as the drugs eroded their identity. Or I witnessed the repeated rapes of Elena and Katherine, listening to their rapists cruelly mock their bodies and degrade their sexuality.
I was utterly helpless. I tried to connect with the hive—my perception, a different kind of perception enabled by the hive—but I couldn't understand or utilize it, not yet. I didn't curse my memory; I knew I'd recall these visions, even if I couldn't comprehend them now.
My mind was blank, the space where my rage had been now a gaping black hole, and everything tumbled through my mind like a hurricane. I was weak, no longer the leader of the resistance, the alpha female, or even myself, Mimi Salvatore.
My mind was in an unprecedented state, draining my resources and my time—a funny concept, considering I once told Damon that time is merely a human construct to make sense of the world. I hummed a Finnish song under my breath, "Who Discovered Love?", a tune I used to sing often.
Bran stirred, opened his eyes, and uttered something—a string of curses, perhaps—but my vision blurred as the drugs took hold, triggering another wave of nightmares and silencing my soft humming.
This profound breakdown altered my mind, eroding the strong defenses I'd built against my killer instinct, and my darkness mercilessly gnawed away by the drugs and the shouting nearby.
Someone called me a monster, a killer without morality, triggering a cascade reaction. Part of my mind began to accept this; to be a monster without morality, darkness was needed, and oh, it was more than ready.
Mariella, mewling pitifully in her drug-addled state, crawled nearby. Bran sat watching me cautiously, hesitant to approach, unsure of my reaction—which could be nasty and swift. I couldn't even predict my own actions; my mind was a jumble.
Sitting in the darkness, listening to Bran's breathing, I felt the urge to hunt, a sense that someone needed me to hunt. The memories of my hunts across Australia flooded back, fueled by my shattered mind, intensifying my need to hunt. As this primal urge combined with my darkness, it grew stronger, but it wasn't yet time; I was too drugged, too weak.
The darkness had seeped out slightly, craving full release, but its carefully constructed containment held. Even my willpower was slowly eroding these defenses. I was uncertain what I would become: my darkness was unleashed, but the rage was absent. I might paint the scene red at my leisure, or perhaps something else entirely.
My darkness, no longer content with imprisonment, began exploring my mind. It found the Hive, seeping into it and its bonds, infecting the men within. In response, their darkness rose, and the party, the orgy, devolved into a frenzy as their cruel sides awakened, presenting so many delectable victims, stupid bimbos ripe for the taking.
Trapped in a powerful spell, even my merging darkness proved insufficient to free them. Instead, my darkness found allies, inspiring them to inflict their vengeance on the bimbos.
Humans possess an astonishing capacity for enduring pain; careful, steady treatment, avoiding pushing them too hard, is key. Rarely do humans possess methods to escape or alleviate pain; while some might shut down, this usually requires a strong constitution—a quality the bimbos lacked.
Noticing a change in the men's behavior, they temporarily shut off the monitor, informing Von Herringberg, who ordered them to replay the footage in a loop, showcasing the men engaging in sex and drinking, instead of torturing or slaughtering the women.
Unsure what went wrong, he dismissed it as the witches' fault; they were the ones who wanted the women tortured and broken. He instructed one of his men to inform the witches of this development, leaving them to their own devices.
He wouldn't beg them to stay, holding his bigoted belief that witches were inferior and belonged in cages, but money talked, and he acquiesced. In his limited worldview, this was a mere inconvenience, further proof of the fickle, unreliable nature of supernatural beings, easily swayed by base desires and devoid of morality.
Unbeknownst to him, the true perpetrator, whose darkness had influenced the men, sat in one of his cages. He saw her as weak, a mere husk, her rage extinguished. He could now allow his clients to do with her as they pleased.