Chapter 398: Removing the poison.
[Warning, There is GORE.]
There was no warning.
His fist struck the side of Andrea’s face with enough force to snap his head against the support beneath it. Blood sprayed across the pale medical cushion. The monitor leapt into frantic noise.
Andrea gasped.
Thomas caught his jaw and turned his face back.
"You do not speak about Sylvia."
Andrea’s pupils struggled to focus.
Thomas struck him again.
Bone gave beneath his knuckles.
Outside the glass, the physician shouted something Thomas could not hear.
One of the guards moved toward the chamber controls.
The other caught his arm.
Thomas noticed.
He noticed everything.
He simply did not care.
Andrea coughed blood onto his own chest. "You think this makes you strong?"
"No."
Thomas’s hand closed around the suppression collar.
He tore it away.
The locking mechanism ripped free from the frame with a metallic shriek, taking strips of adhesive and skin with it. Andrea screamed, but nothing answered him.
"You should have stopped when Arion warned you," Thomas said, entirely devoid of emotion.
He drove his fist into Andrea’s ribs.
Once.
Twice.
The third impact broke something deep enough that Andrea’s scream collapsed into a wet, breathless sound.
The medical frame rattled beneath him.
Thomas had killed men before.
He had killed quickly with blades, firearms, broken furniture, battlefield debris, and his own hands. He knew exactly where the human body failed. He knew how much pressure shattered a throat, how sharply a neck had to turn, and how deeply a blade had to enter before resistance ceased.
He knew a dozen merciful ways to end Andrea Vale.
He used none of them.
Andrea twisted uselessly against the restraints as Thomas drove another blow into his abdomen.
Blood spilled from Andrea’s mouth.
"Commander!"
The physician’s voice reached Thomas faintly through the sealed chamber door as someone overrode the disconnected intercom.
"He cannot answer questions if he is unconscious."
Thomas looked down at Andrea.
The man’s breathing had become wet and uneven. Every attempt to draw air shifted the broken ribs beneath his skin. His eyes opened and closed without properly focusing, but fear still lived inside them.
"Well, he does not know anything more than what he has already told us."
Thomas glanced down at his shirt.
A few droplets had struck his wrist, but the black fabric of his uniform remained clean. He rubbed his thumb across the pale cuff, checking carefully for red.
Nothing.
He did not want Sylvia to see him covered in blood.
"Crown Prince Arion and King Otto gave me permission to do whatever I wished with him," Thomas added.
The physician went silent.
Andrea choked and lifted one trembling hand toward Thomas’s arm.
The movement was so weak that it might have been a plea.
Thomas raised an eyebrow.
Then he swatted the hand aside as if removing an irritating insect.
Andrea’s arm struck the frame and fell limp.
Thomas looked through the glass at the physician, the guards, and the technicians gathered beyond it.
"If you have a conscience, take a break."
No one moved.
Thomas turned his wrist and looked at the clock mounted above the observation window.
The red numbers changed with a soft electronic click.
"I have debts to settle here," he said. "No one in this room can fight a dominant alpha, and I do not intend to be interrupted."
The physician stared at him through the glass.
Thomas’s expression did not change.
"You have one minute.
For several seconds, no one seemed to understand that he meant it literally.
Then one of the technicians stepped away from the console.
The youngest guard followed almost immediately.
The physician remained.
Thomas watched the clock.
00:56.
"You cannot expect us to leave a patient," the physician said.
"He is not your patient anymore."
"He is alive."
"For another fifty seconds."
The physician’s face tightened. "Commander Lancaster, whatever authorization you believe you were given—"
"I do not believe anything."
Thomas kept his eyes on the clock.
00:44.
"I was told that Andrea Vale was mine once the interrogation was complete. The interrogation is complete."
Andrea made a wet sound.
His cracked lips moved several times before a word emerged.
"Monster."
Thomas adjusted the restraint across Andrea’s chest, pulling it tighter so the man could no longer writhe away from what was coming.
"No, I’m just a man fed up with your schemes. Just so you know, people were already planning your death."
00:35.
The second technician left.
One guard remained beside the physician, his posture rigid and his face carefully blank. He had fought under Thomas before. He knew what the stillness meant.
00:24.
The physician touched the chamber control.
The remaining guard caught his wrist.
"Don’t," he said quietly.
"He is murdering a restrained man."
"He told us to leave."
"That does not absolve us."
"No," the guard said. "But entering will only put another body in the room."
The physician looked at him in disbelief.
Thomas did not.
His attention had returned to Andrea.
00:15.
Andrea began pulling against the restraints.
There was no strength behind it now. Only panic.
His ruined hands slipped against the leather and metal. His heels scraped the floor beneath the tilted frame.
"You need me," he gasped.
Thomas said nothing.
"I know more."
00:10.
"No, you don’t."
"I can remember."
00:08.
"You have remembered enough."
"I can give you names."
00:06.
"You gave me Claudia’s Palace."
"I lied."
00:04.
Thomas’s gaze sharpened.
Andrea saw immediately that it had been the wrong thing to say.
00:03.
"No," Andrea whispered.
00:02.
"Please."
00:01.
The minute ended.
Thomas reached toward the monitor and switched off the remaining alarms.
The room became quiet except for Andrea’s ragged attempts to breathe.
Thomas removed his jacket and folded it carefully over the medical tray.
He rolled his sleeves once, stopping below the elbow.
Andrea watched every movement.
"You said you were not going to kill me," he whispered.
Thomas placed one hand against the center of his chest.
"I said not yet."
Andrea’s eyes widened.
Thomas drove the heel of his palm downward.
The sternum cracked.
Andrea screamed.
The sound tore itself apart inside his damaged throat, becoming a choking, bubbling cry as Thomas struck him again; bone broke inside.
The frame shook beneath the impact.
The physician turned away from the glass.
Thomas did not hurry.
He knew the human body too well for haste. He knew where cartilage joined bone, where ribs protected the organs beneath them, and how much force was required to break through without crushing what he intended to remove.
Andrea thrashed against the restraints.
Thomas caught the broken edges of the sternum.
Andrea understood what the man was doing to him, and his expression changed completely.
"No!"
Thomas pulled.
The fractured bone separated with a wet crack.
Andrea’s scream ceased because there was no breath left to carry it.
Blood flooded across his chest, hot against the cold air of the chamber. It ran over Thomas’s hands and wrists, but he leaned slightly back, protecting the clean fabric of his shirt.
Andrea’s body convulsed.
His eyes remained open.
Thomas reached into the ruined cavity.
For the first time since entering, something moved across his face.
Curiosity.
His fingers closed around the beating heart.
Andrea’s back arched against the frame.
The monitor struggled to interpret what remained of its rhythm.
Thomas tightened his grip and pulled, the tissue tore, and the heart came free into his hand.
Andrea’s body jerked once.
Then stopped.
The line on the monitor flattened.
Thomas stood over him with the heart resting in his palm.
It was smaller than he had expected, red, slick, and definitely human.
For several seconds, he simply looked at it.
Blood ran between his fingers and struck the floor in slow, heavy drops.
Thomas turned the organ slightly, studying it beneath the sterile light.
"It isn’t dark," he said.
No one answered.
Thomas’s brow furrowed faintly.
"I expected it to be."
Behind the glass, the physician stared at him in horror.
The remaining guard did not move.
Thomas looked from the heart to Andrea’s face.
Without arrogance and hatred animating it, there was nothing remarkable left. Andrea looked like any other dead man. Pale. Empty. Reduced to the form he had always pretended himself superior to.
Thomas gave the heart one final examination.
"Ordinary," he concluded.
He let it fall.