[CLASSIFIED NOTICE – LEVEL RED]The following file contains records of human rights violations, including graphic violence and exploitation committed by hostile actors. Review is restricted to cleared personnel only. Proceed with caution.
12:25
Mitali's voice cut through the red-room air like a blade. "We know all about you, Liora. We know everything — your funding, Phoenix Company."
Liora's smile barely moved. Her voice was soft, almost indulgent. "You don't know anything, girl. Money isn't the only thing I supply to Phoenix."
"Because of you", Mitali spat, fury raw in her throat, "I lost my friend."
Liora rose and crossed the room slowly. When she reached Mitali, she leaned in close and slapped her across the face — a precise, theatrical strike. Her fingers closed on Mitali's jaw and pulled her in until their faces nearly touched.
"You seem to forget who's in charge here," Liora said, low and cold. "And I don't like it when people yell at me."
She shoved Mitali back and flicked a hand toward a guard. "Take her back to the cell. She'll entertain the workers at night."
A guard seized Mitali and dragged her from the room while Sohel watched the expression on her face harden like flint.
"You come with me," Liora told him.
She pressed a palm to the wall beside her desk. A seam slipped, a panel sliding aside to reveal a glass walkway. Liora stepped through; Sohel followed. From here the factory spread like a living organism: a vast floor with hundreds of figures moving in mechanised lines, assembly belts glinting, and the air thick with fumes and fluorescent light.
"People fear chemical warfare," Liora said, gesturing with careless cruelty as they walked. "But traditional warfare — the slow kind, the one that reshapes bodies and minds — that's far more efficient."
She stopped at the walkway's intersection and looked down. Rows of workers, hundreds of them, wore matching desert-camo clothes like the ones Sohel and Mitali had been given. They moved in silence, faces hollow, hands working in perfect rhythm.
"Only those who've lost limbs to an explosion or had half a face ripped off understand the need," she continued. "They understand real pain. So I make a painkiller for the battlefield — an upgrade on Dr Ito's neurological chips. One that blocks pain receptors before they can register in the brain. But more than that, it lets us steer behaviour. Neural paths rerouted. Motor cortex controlled. Do what we tell them – no argument. And I sell it. Branded, packaged, and marketed as entertainment. People will pay to feel nothing."
"So you enslave them with bliss?" Sohel said, voice flat.
Liora laughed, a soft, fast sound with no warmth. "You joke, Sam? There's no competition. Not at our scale. We'll sell these chips as devices — entertainment, enhancement, relief. And with the flip of a switch, a nation of consumers is an army."
She moved along another lane of the walkway, pointing down to where a separate line stamped out shells, casings, and rifles. "And here we manufacture the tools. The bigger the army we can make, the more weapons we sell — feed two markets at once: demand and supply."
Sohel's eyes were on the people below. One worker collapsed without drama; he fell like a felled puppet. Two guards yanked him away by the feet as if he were trash. No one glanced up.
"The workers get breaks?" Sohel asked; the question was forced from him.
"Five minutes every three hours," Liora said. "Water and toilet — if they're lucky. Drink too much, and you have to pee. You slow down. Fewer outputs. Fatigue kills some; they simply don't wake. Lee brings replacements. Homeless, addicts, slum dwellers; there are always candidates. Twenty a day from Yazd and Kerman alone."
Sohel's jaw worked. "Fucking disgusting."
Liora shrugged, serene. "Profitable. The old slave trade reinvented. You know the history — colonisers turned people into labour. I'm not starting anything new; I'm scaling what's always existed. I give the half-dead purpose, food, shelter, and pleasure. I sell that happiness back to the living."
She paused, her gaze moving to Sohel like a predator focusing on the final moment before the strike. "You know why I'm telling you this? Because I'm ready. After years, I can get my revenge. And you, Sam… you're useful."
Sohel felt a chill run through him. He wasn't hearing this for confession — it was recruitment.
Below, another worker went still. The guards hauled him out like a broken machine. The rest kept their heads bowed.
"Come to my office," Liora said, and they returned to the red room. She sat, pressed a switch on the desk, and the wall behind her became transparent. From the chair, she watched the factory like someone watching their favourite film.
"Sometimes I watch them work from here," she said. "It's satisfying."
She turned to Sohel with a smile that did not touch her eyes. "Now, to business. I am running low on raw materials. The war makes imports difficult. I'm reverting to old methods. Smuggling. We've secured a shipment in Jabol, but Jabol is a war zone. I want you to go there with Lee tomorrow and get the shipment."
Sohel's mouth was a dry line. "Why me?"
"Undead", Liora said simply, as if the word explained everything. "You survive things others don't. You can walk into danger and come back. Lee will be your escort. Bring the shipment back. Do it cleanly, and there will be an incentive."
She folded her hands on the desk. Her voice slid smooth as oil. "I think an undead can make a good mercenary."
The offer hung there — an ultimatum sloped in silk. Sam — Ghost, Major, or whatever they called him — understood the doorway Liora was offering. Pull the lever and become her instrument, or refuse and watch whatever calculus she favoured fold him into ruin.
He could hear the machines below, the soft clatter of lives manufactured into goods and weapons. He imagined Mitali in a cell used as a threat, his team fractured, the war's machinery humming on.
Sohel replied, his voice cold and rough, "Fuck… you."
Liora's eyes lit with rage but only for a second. She forced the anger down and pressed a button on her desk. A door opened on the other side of the glass walkway.
Two guards shoved a young woman inside, fully naked, stumbling under the fluorescent glare. Her body shook with humiliation, arms crossed over herself, but the guards struck her down with their rifle butts, forcing her to crawl forward.
Liora spread her arms as if showing off an art piece. "I call it the walk of shame. The workers love it."
Two more women were pushed in after her, equally stripped, equally broken.
Sohel's voice cracked through his teeth. "Who are they?"
"No one special," Liora said softly, almost kindly. "Just girls from an SNA unit sent after me last month. There were twelve of them. Now only these three remain." She smirked, eyes glinting. "After a few walks of shame, when they lose their charms, we hand them over to the workers."
Sohel's hands tightened into fists. "What… did you say?"
Liora's tone was casual, playful. "The guards throw them straight into the living quarters. The workers drag them off, do whatever they want. You know what I mean. It's a nice way to keep morale high. Oh, don't look at me like that. We're not monsters. We give them proper burials afterwards. It's a pain to clean them before the burial, though."
Sohel whispered, his whole body trembling, "Fucking monster."
A cruel smile stretched across Liora's lips. She pressed the button again. Another door opened with a heavy metallic groan.
Her voice turned mocking, gleeful. "Oh, Sam… Look, look. It's your girlfriend. So beautiful. I bet the workers will go crazy when they get their hands on her."