I stood over him and let the silence thicken. The room smelled of cold and metal. Karo lay there like a statue, ice from his neck down to his toes, only his face free to move. He’d been half awake when I slapped him. Two of his teeth had already gone. I was sure that was enough to wake him up.
He blinked, eyes narrowing as the shock and pain rolled through him. "Who....who are you?" he managed, voice raw.
"No need for you to know that," I said softly. My tone was quiet, and that made it worse. "I’ll ask the questions. You will answer. If you don’t, I will seal you in ice and break you into pieces."
His pupils darted, looking for a way out. I watched them move like a hunter watches a rabbit sniff the air. Then I snapped my fingers.
His left leg crumbled.
Not like bone breaking, no gore, no mess, but the ice itself fractured cleanly into a hundred small cubes, and his leg was gone where the ice had been holding it.
He howled, the sound tearing the frozen air. The pain made him scream like a thing that had never known such suffering.
I leaned in, letting my voice be calm and flat. "Oh. I thought you wouldn’t feel the pain," I said.
He gagged on a curse, tried to swallow, and forced his jaw to move. With clenched teeth and a voice that came out like stone grinding, he forced the question again. "Who are you?" he spat.
I raised my hand, ready to snap again, to take more. He saw the movement and blurted, "Wait, wait! Please, please wait! What do you want to know? Tell me, please!"
I watched him for a long beat then I asked, "What are the Ferans doing in this part of the galaxy? What is your plan?"
He blinked, panic and ice fighting across his face. Then silence swallowed him. Maybe he thought if he stayed quiet I would go away. Maybe he thought his pain could be a shield.
I poked his left hand. The moment my finger touched the ice that encased it, the wrist shattered into a scatter of small cubes. He screamed again, louder this time, the sound high and brittle, the cry of someone learning what limits his body had. The room felt smaller with his voice in it.
"I have two more Ferans," I said. "So I am sure at least one of you will tell the truth."
The shriek broke into ragged breaths. Then, like someone waking up from a worse dream, Karo answered.
"We’re... we’re just here for research," he said, voice thin. "We can’t break to the next rank. We came to live hard lives, to finish quests, to climb. That’s it. We seek hardship. We seek trials. We want to rank up."
I let a cold smile touch my lips. "Oh." I reached into my storage ring and pulled out the fourth map, the one with the empty mark at the edge of the system. I held it in front of him where he could see. The black cross stared back up at him, bright and accusing.
He stared at the map like someone seeing a ghost. Confusion smeared across his face, but no change in his voice. He looked at me, a question rising in his eyes.
"Are you not aware of this?" I asked.
He shook his head. "No," he said. "I don’t know what that is. We weren’t told of that place."
I tilted my head, considering. "I think you’re lying," I said. The words were soft, but not soft enough to be kind. "So I will take your other hand and leg as well and then preserve you. There are no Ferans on my world. You will make a good attraction."
I moved with the same slow certainty I always used when I wanted someone to understand the meaning of the moment.
I snapped my fingers. The right leg shivered and then fell into tidy cubes, like someone chopped an ice sculpture into pieces. He screamed again, an animal sound this time, and the room trembled with it. He started throwing deaths of words at me, curses and promises and threats that meant nothing in the face of the quiet I kept.
"You will kill me?" he shouted between breaths, anger now taking the edge of his pain. "Kill me, and the Ferans will come. They will destroy your world and everything on it!"
I listened, letting the threat hang between us. People always swore such things in the heat of pain. It was a sound of pride, not of strategy. I looked at him, then shook my head slowly. "No," I said. "If you die, you tell no one. If you live, you give us answers and we learn where they are."
He spat and then coughed. Rage colored all the lines of his face now.
I reached to his other arm. Another snap, this time his right hand fractured clean and scattered into cubes, the sound like snapping glass. He screamed, louder and longer, and at last the pain forced him to plead more clearly.
"Please," he breathed, eyes wet with something hotter than ice. "Please—don’t—please—what do you want? I’ll tell you everything. I’ll tell you anything."
I could have torn the rest of him apart, but I didn’t. I shook my head and let the choice sit between us like a blade.
Then I turned my will upward and melted a neat hole through the roof with a single breath of focused heat. The ice hissed and dripped away, falling in slow, glittering beads. I folded through the gap and jumped to the first floor.
The man there was frozen solid on the floor, a perfect statue of ice. He’d been meditating when I hit the house; now he sat motionless, veins of frost running over his hands. I stepped forward and settled down cross-legged in front of him.
His name was Anjee. I tapped the ice on his cheek with two fingers. The frost shivered, then slid away like a film, and his eyes snapped open.
They were clear and fierce. For a breath he stared at me, then his gaze sharpened as he took in the surroundings.
"Hi there," I said, smiling. "I made sure you could hear the screams. So I’m going to assume you already know I’m no friend. Let’s not waste time. Tell me: what are you doing in this part of the galaxy, and what are the Ferans planning?"
He blinked. His jaw worked, a small tremor across his face. He tried to move, just the smallest muscle test but every motion stopped under my hold. I had tethered his body and the Essence around him; nothing moved unless I let it.
I sat quiet and let the pressure grow. The silence stretched on for nearly a minute. Finally he spoke, voice low and rough from cold and fear.
"Can we... make a deal?" Anjee’s eyes did not look away. They did not plead.
I raised an eyebrow, curiosity sliding over suspicion. "Oh?" I said. "What kind of deal?"