Chapter 37 Chapter 37: Lord Sparks
He took a step closer, the sole of his boot scraping against the grated floor. "I am Lord Sparks. Today, you will confess… for the security of this town."
My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird against a cage. From my restraints, I watched, helpless, as he moved to a corner and yanked away a heavy canvas sheet. It fell to the ground, revealing two grotesque mechanical heads mounted on opposite walls. They were cobbled together from salvaged plating, their faces a mockery of human features, with hollow sockets that stared blindly into the room. Then, with a sudden hiss of pneumatics and the smell of hot ozone, their eyes ignited. Twin embers of hellish red light pierced the gloom, fixing directly on me.
"Atlas and Quarks shall judge your merit."
A jagged, digitized shriek, like a corrupted audio file, tore from the first head. "GUILTY."
The second head responded in a measured, staticky drone, its vocalizer buzzing. "INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE AS YET. ATLAS CANNOT CONFIRM."
"ALL HUMANS ARE GUILTY OF SOMETHING. THEREFORE, GUILTY," Quarks screeched, its red eye flaring brighter.
"I DO NOT CONFIRM," Atlas droned, unwavering.
The two machines bickered over my fate, their voices clashing like screeching metal and grinding stone above my bound body. It was a maddening, surreal liturgy. Meanwhile, Lord Sparks wheeled in a trolley I hadn't noticed before, draped in a stained, off-white sheet. His gaze never left me, pitiless and absolute.
"You, Tillyanna No-Name, stand accused." He raised a gloved hand and began counting off my sins on his fingers.
"First: entering our city under false pretences."
"SHUT HER DOWN!" shrieked Quarks.
"NO EVIDENCE," Atlas countered, its monotone a bizarre anchor in the rising insanity.
"Second: spreading false idols to corrupt the weak."
This time, the heads harmonized in an eerie, grating unison: "THE MACHINE IS THE ONLY GOD."
"Third: using carnal deception to rig our sacred elections."
"PERVERT!" Quarks spat, the word sizzling with static.
"NO EVIDENCE," Atlas droned.
"Fourth: assaulting four upstanding citizens."
"LOCK HER UP. LOCK HER UP. LOCK HER UP." Quarks began to repeat, a stuck record of condemnation.
"NO EVIDENCE."
"And fifth:" Lord Sparks leaned in, his breath reeking of oil and burnt wire, "plotting to annihilate the Church and this city from within."
The heads erupted. "BURN HER!" they screamed, their voices merging into a single, mechanical roar that vibrated in my teeth.
He straightened up, the flickering light catching the cold sheen in his eyes. "Do you wish to confess now? Spare your mortal soul and the Church and this town its precious time before we are forced to present the evidence?"
I had years of experience in dark corners and under pressure. I knew the science of pain, the psychology of breaking a mind. I knew that once the torture began in earnest, all my training, all my resolve, would be stripped away layer by layer until nothing was left but a raw, screaming nerve. But I’d be damned if I didn’t try, even if my defiance killed me.
I summoned what moisture I could in my dry mouth and poured every ounce of hatred I possessed into my voice. "Go to hell!"
Both mechanical inquisitors stiffened, their servos whirring in offended unison.
Lord Sparks didn't flinch. A slow, terrible smile stretched his scarred lips. He yanked back the sheet covering the trolley, revealing a complex, nightmare device of gears, needles, and calibrated weights, the Eight-Day Agony Engine. Beside it lay his tools: bone saws, prodders, and forceps that gleamed with a malevolent promise. Instruments that would soon tear screams from my throat and agony from my flesh.
Then, he delivered the final blow, his voice dropping to a vicious, intimate whisper. "A moment of professional pride, before we begin. I’m pleased to inform you that after a long and fruitful discussion with Babushka, both Quark and Atlas are now fluent in Russian."
My heart didn't just sink; it turned to a block of ice in my chest. Babushka. Every secret I had. Every coded thought and hidden memory I might retreat into to escape the pain, they now had the key. My native tongue would be no sanctuary; it would be the very language of my interrogation.
The Church of the Machine was silent, save for the venomous hum of electricity and the low, grinding whir of the mechanical heads as they watched me, unblinking, with their burning red eyes.
Lord Sparks loomed over me, his gloved fingers selecting a scalpel. It gleamed, wickedly sharp, under the flickering lights.
"Confess," he rasped, the rusted gears of his voice grinding against the silence. "Tell us everything about the Sisters of Mercy. Tell us about the Nephilim."
I saw my reflection, distorted and terrified, in the polished blade. There was no hope left. No escape. There was only the choice of how I met my end. With the last of my strength, I tilted my head back and spat a glob of blood-flecked saliva directly into his face.
The LED lights flickered. The machines held their breath. For a single, eternal second, there was only the slow drip of my spit tracing a path down his cheek.
Then, the red eyes of the heads flared like hellfire, and Lord Sparks began to move.
The scalpel flashed, a sliver of cold light in the gloom. Then came the pain, a white-hot, precise line of fire along my ribs. I sucked in a breath, the air hissing through my clenched teeth as I refused him the satisfaction of a scream. I could feel the path of the blade, a surgeon’s deliberate incision, not a slash of rage. The smell of my own blood, coppery and intimate, filled my nostrils. It welled up and began to trickle down my side, warm and slick against the cold metal table.
"Who are The Nephilim?" Lord Sparks demanded, his voice a low grind. He didn't look at my face; his eyes were fixed on his work, admiring the clean lines of the symbol he was carving into my flesh.
I laughed then, a bitter, raw sound that tore at my throat. "You wouldn’t believe me if I told you." It was the truth, the core irony of this entire nightmare. They worshipped a ghost, a god they had completely misunderstood.
The scalpel flickered again. Deeper this time. The pain arced through me; a lightning bolt of pure agony that made my vision whiten at the edges. I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted more blood.
The mechanical heads, which had been whirring softly, hissed in a sudden, synchronized burst of steam.
"TELL US!" their voices screeched, a dissonant chord of demand.
"You want the truth?" I gasped, the words fighting their way past the pain. My vision swam, the red eyes of Atlas and Quarks blurring into hellish constellations. "Fine. The Nephilim are us. We are the Nephilim. The ones who destroyed the old world. The arrogant fools who thought they were gods, who thought they could build a machine-god and enslave it to their will."
Silence.
Then, laughter…
Lord Sparks threw his head back, his hollow cackle a terrible sound that echoed off the cold chamber walls. "Lies! Blasphemous stories from a dying heretic! The Machine is divine! It is perfection born of human ingenuity!"
I twisted against the leather straps, feeling them dig into my raw wrists. A fresh trickle of my blood pattered onto the grated floor below. "Then why did it wipe out humanity the first time? If it was so perfect, why did it turn on its creators?"