The air in the dimly lit room crackled with a renewed tension, a fragile hope flickering amidst the oppressive despair. Just a couple of hours remained before Maarg's plan commenced, a looming event that cast a long shadow over their confinement. The sudden intrusion of Guntur shattered the fragile stillness, his presence an unwelcome harbinger of further torment. His face, usually etched with a casual arrogance, now held a serious, almost predatory look as his gaze locked onto Tara.
Before Guntur could utter a single word or take a step closer, Carla instinctively reacted. Like a cornered lioness protecting her cub, she moved swiftly, placing herself between Guntur and Tara. Carla's body shielded Tara, a defiant barrier against the looming threat. Her hand, concealed behind her back, tightened its grip on the makeshift weapon – a shard of glass, honed to a sharp point, a desperate measure of self-defense in their captivity. The glint in Carla's eyes mirrored the dangerous edge of the hidden shank.
"Still same as ever huh fire?" Guntur's voice cut through the tense silence, his words directed at Carla, laced with a mocking familiarity. It was a taunt, a reminder of Carla's fiery spirit, a spirit that even captivity couldn't extinguish.
"Why TF are you here?" Carla spat out the words, her voice low and dangerous, each syllable dripping with undisguised hostility. Her eyes narrowed, boring into Guntur, demanding an explanation for his unwanted presence. Every muscle in her body was coiled, ready to spring into action if necessary.
Guntur merely shrugged, a gesture of feigned nonchalance that only served to further ignite Carla's anger. "I was about to get on it before you rudely interrupted me," he drawled, as if his presence in their prison was the most natural thing in the world, and Carla's reaction an unwarranted inconvenience. His casual demeanor was a stark contrast to the palpable tension in the room, a deliberate attempt to unsettle them.
Then, his attention shifted once more to Tara, a cruel smile slowly spreading across his face. "Hey new girl, wanna see your husband?" The question hung in the air, heavy with menace. Before either Carla or Tara could process the words, before they could formulate a response to this unexpected and potentially devastating offer, Guntur continued, his smile widening, revealing a disturbing hint of sadistic pleasure.
Without waiting for a reply, without any regard for the emotional turmoil his words were sure to inflict, Guntur launched into a disturbing and cruel narrative. His voice, previously casual, now took on a theatrical quality, relishing in the pain he was about to unleash. He began to rant about Mark, Tara's husband, painting a grotesque picture of his supposed demise.
Guntur described Mark's supposed breakdown, his voice mimicking a desperate plea. He recounted how Mark had begged, groveled even, before Guntur, his words a desperate litany of supplication. He claimed Mark had pleaded for Tara's safety, for the freedom of the others, offering himself as a substitute, a sacrifice to appease their captors.
Each word Guntur uttered was a deliberate act of cruelty, a calculated attempt to break Tara's spirit. He embellished the details, exaggerating Mark's despair, emphasizing his helplessness. He reveled in the power he held, the power to inflict such profound emotional pain with mere words. His eyes flickered between Tara and Carla, gauging their reactions, feeding on their distress. He spoke of Mark's tears, the tremor in his voice, the utter defeat in his eyes, painting a vivid, horrifying image of a man stripped of his dignity.
But beneath the surface of Guntur's manipulative words, a subtle dissonance resonated within Tara. Something felt…off. The details were too dramatic, too perfectly crafted to elicit maximum despair. A tiny seed of doubt began to sprout in the barren landscape of her fear. Mark was strong, resilient. Could he have truly broken so easily?
Carla, however, felt a surge of pure, unadulterated rage. Guntur's smug delivery, the cruel twist of his lips as he recounted Mark's supposed final moments, ignited a firestorm within her. She could see the pain etched on Tara's face, the way her body trembled with anguish. The protective instincts she felt for Tara overwhelmed any semblance of caution. She couldn't bear another second of Guntur's venomous lies.
With a guttural cry, Carla lunged forward, her target his smug face, specifically the jagged scar that ran from his empty eye socket down to his throat – a permanent reminder of a past conflict. The hidden glass shard, clutched tightly in her hand, was aimed with deadly precision.
Guntur, despite his seemingly relaxed demeanor, was lightning fast. He reacted instantly, his hand shooting out to intercept Carla's attack. His fingers closed around her wrist, his grip like iron. With a brutal twist, he disarmed her, the splintering glass shard digging into his palm. He ignored the stinging pain, his gaze hardening into a dangerous glare.
With a swift, brutal motion, Guntur snapped the glass shard in his grasp, the sharp edges cutting into his skin. His face, previously contorted in a cruel smile, now held a serious, menacing expression. "If you weren't important, I would have destroyed you, bitch," he growled, his voice low and dangerous, the threat hanging heavy in the air. The words were a chilling reminder of their precarious situation, their lives hanging by a thread at the whim of their captors.
He released Carla's wrist, a sigh escaping his lips as if the entire exchange was a tiresome inconvenience. He turned his back on them, his broad shoulders a silent barrier. As he moved towards the door, his earlier cruelty seemed to momentarily dissipate, replaced by a strange, almost unsettling nonchalance. Pausing at the threshold, he cast a final glance over his shoulder, his one good eye lingering on the two women. "If you girls need anything," he said, his tone surprisingly casual, almost polite, "don't hesitate to ask me." And with that bizarre, unsettling farewell, he was gone, leaving behind a room thick with confusion, fear, and a fragile, burgeoning hope. Mark was alive. Beaten, broken perhaps, but alive. The fight wasn't over.
***
Guntur stepped back into his private chamber, the lingering scent of stale air and fear clinging to his clothes. His gaze immediately fell upon his younger brother, Vick. Despite his youthful appearance, looking no older than fifteen, Vick was hunched over a large table, meticulously sketching blueprints. The complexity of the designs, filled with intricate lines and annotations, seemed far beyond the grasp of someone his age, a testament to Vick's unusual intellect. The boy was so engrossed in his work that he didn't immediately notice Guntur's arrival.
Finally, Vick looked up, his brow furrowed in concentration giving way to a flicker of recognition as his eyes met his older brother's. His gaze then drifted downwards, noticing the cuts on Guntur's hand, the remnants of his brief confrontation with Carla. The bleeding had already stopped, a testament to Guntur's resilience or perhaps some form of rudimentary medical attention he had already administered.
"V! How's the progress going?" Guntur's voice, though directed at his younger brother, still held a commanding edge. "Did we find a way to reverse engineer that serum perfectly? Because I don't think we can win against the Vipers with what we currently have." There was an urgency in his tone, a clear understanding of the dire situation they faced. The Vipers, their formidable adversaries, loomed large, and Guntur knew their current arsenal might not be enough to secure their survival.
Vick looked up, his expression calm and thoughtful, a stark contrast to Guntur's barely concealed anxiety. "Are you sure it's the right thing to do?" he asked, his voice measured and even. "The Vipers are after us because we have their leader. If we can form an alliance with them, if we just returned Carla to them, we even have the new prisoners to escort her. It's the perfect solution that doesn't require any bloodshed." Vick's suggestion was pragmatic, a seemingly logical way to de-escalate the conflict.
Guntur's face darkened, his earlier anger resurfacing. "Do you really think that snake would leave us be if we returned Carla and the others?" he retorted, his voice laced with disbelief and fury. "Anyway, the woman knows too much. She will rant about our experiments to the Vipers. They will learn everything we've been working on!" The thought of their research falling into the hands of their enemies clearly enraged him. The potential consequences of Their secret knowledge becoming public were too significant to ignore. In Guntur's mind, returning Carla was not a path to peace, but a dangerous gamble with potentially catastrophic repercussions.
Guntur's attention was now fixated on a small vial he held up to the dim light. The liquid inside was a viscous, dark red, disturbingly reminiscent of blood. He swirled it gently, his brow furrowed in thought. "Say?" he mused aloud, his gaze distant, "What are the chances of success if we inject it in someone they will not turn mindless?"
Vick finally lifted his head, his eyes drawn to the unsettling scene of his older brother toying with the serum. He recognized the dark red liquid – a painstakingly reverse-engineered concoction derived from the blood of zombies, mixed with the questionable "antidote" they had procured from the shadowy corners of the black market. The supposed aim was to create a super-soldier serum, enhancing human capabilities without the dreaded side effect of zombified madness.
Vick sighed, a sound that spoke volumes of his apprehension. "Still eighteen percent chance of success," he stated flatly, the low probability underscoring the inherent risk of their desperate endeavor.
A grim smile stretched across Guntur's face. "Good enough." He swiftly filled a syringe with the ominous red liquid, his eyes then settling on the bloodied and bound figure of Mark, who lay unconscious on a table in the corner of the room. The implication was chillingly clear.
"Can you at least do your experiments outside?" Vick pleaded, his gaze flicking between the filled syringe and his intricate blueprints. "I don't want any of these blueprints to get bloodied." He knew, deep down, that his words were likely futile. Trying to dissuade his older brother once Guntur had fixated on an idea was usually a lost cause. The madness that seemed to grip Guntur in moments like these was impervious to reason.