Kira looked up with mock concern painting her features. "Oh, does this bother you? Hearing about the children you murdered?"
"I didn't murder anyone!" Liora's voice cracked with desperation.
"Subject eighteen," Kira continued relentlessly, as if Liora hadn't spoken at all, "male, age six, died from a silver bullet wound to the head. Single shot. Execution-style. Estimated time of death....."
"STOP!" Liora screamed, lunging toward the bars with what little strength remained in her exhausted body. "Stop it! I didn't kill them! I didn't kill anyone!"
Darius laughed, the sound harsh and mocking in the artificially bright space. "Getting testy, are we? Maybe you need another shower." Before Liora could react or brace herself, he picked up another bucket, this one steaming ominously, and threw it through the bars.
Hot water cascaded over her, not boiling but hot enough to burn. Liora shrieked as it hit her already damp clothes and scalded her skin. She scrambled backward instinctively, slipping on the wet floor and landing hard on her hip, pain radiating through her body.
"Oops," Darius said without a trace of remorse in his voice. "My hand slipped."
Liora curled into a ball, her skin burning where the hot water had struck, her wet dress clinging uncomfortably to her trembling form. The photographs scattered around her were soaked now, their images bleeding and distorting into abstract nightmares, but she could still see them well enough. She could still see the faces of the dead staring up at her with accusation frozen in their eyes.
"You know what I don't understand," Kira said, setting down her report and leaning forward with feigned curiosity, "is how you could do it. How you could look at a six-year-old child and pull the trigger."
"I didn't," Liora said, her voice raw from screaming. "How many times do I have to say it?"
"Until you tell the truth," Darius replied with casual cruelty. "Until you admit what you did and beg for forgiveness. The sooner you admit it the sooner you can face the reality."
"I can't admit to something I didn't do!"
"Then you're going to have a very long three weeks," Kira said with an indifferent shrug, picking up her report again. "Subject nineteen, female, age forty-one, pregnant, died from....."
Liora blocked out the words as best she could, pressing her hands harder against her ears and humming tunelessly in a desperate attempt to drown out the clinical recitation of horror. But she could still hear fragments of it breaking through her defenses. She could still see the photographs surrounding her like accusations made manifest. She could still feel the weight of those deaths pressing down on her like a physical thing, crushing the air from her lungs.
Someone had done this terrible thing. Someone had looked like her, sounded like her, used her face as a mask while committing these atrocities. And that someone had made absolutely sure the blame would fall squarely on Princess Liora Ashenbane's shoulders.
Why? she thought desperately, her exhausted mind circling the question like a moth around the flame. Why me? What did I do to deserve this?
But she knew the answer even as she asked the question. She hadn't done anything at all. That was precisely the point. She was nobody, expendable, invisible, the perfect scapegoat because no one would believe her protests of innocence and no one would fight for her freedom. She was completely and utterly alone in this nightmare.
By the twenty-fifth hour, Liora started hallucinating in earnest. The faces in the photographs began to move, their expressions shifting from frozen horror to active accusation. She could have sworn she saw a little girl blink, her dead eyes focusing on Liora with condemning intensity. The woman who looked like Aria Nightfang opened her mouth as if to speak words of judgment.
"Not real," Liora muttered to herself, rocking back and forth in a self-soothing motion that did nothing to soothe. "Not real. Not real. Not real."
"What's not real?" Darius asked, his voice seeming to come from far away and too close at the same time, distorted by her deteriorating perception.
"The photographs. They're moving."
"Are they?" Kira sounded genuinely interested now, like a scientist observing a fascinating experiment. "That's the sleep deprivation kicking in properly. Your brain is starting to misfire, creating false sensory input to compensate for the lack of rest. Give it another day or two, and you'll be seeing all sorts of fun things."
"I need to sleep," Liora begged, hating the weakness in her voice but unable to maintain her pride in the face of such overwhelming exhaustion. "Please. Just one hour. Just....."