This chapter contains graphic violence, nerve-level vengeance, and characters who skipped the whole "morality is gray" debate and went straight to "if you decapitate kids to impress someone, you die."
If you're here for light banter and happy endings, you took a wrong turn three chapters ago. If you're here to watch methodical justice dismantle three monsters molecule by molecule— Welcome to the lab.
Proceed with clinical detachment. Or popcorn. I won't judge.
The lab was quiet when she walked in. Taz was at the far end, sorting instruments, tagging vials, cleaning scalpels without looking at them. He didn't look up when the door opened.
Skylar didn't say anything at first. She just rolled the metal case inside, heavy wheels clicking softly against the concrete. She looked like hell—burnt sleeves, grease on her face, tired eyes. She'd been gone for a week. No explanation. No calls. Just gone. She stopped at the table.
"Surprise," she said dryly. Taz finally turned. His eyes fell on the case. She opened it. Restraints. Custom. Matte black. Reinforced joints. Integrated sensors. Some for the walls. Some for the ceiling. Every piece designed with intention. Every edge sharp, functional. Clean work. Her work. He stared for a long time before speaking.
"You built these for me?"
She shrugged. "You needed better."
His hand hovered above one. He didn't touch it. Not yet. His voice dropped.
"How did you know how to build them?"
Skylar leaned against the table, arms folded.
"I built my first restraint system when I was fifteen," she said. "Made it out of car parts and hospital trash. Neuro-responsive. Crude as hell. But it worked."
Taz didn't blink.
"Someone found it," he said.
She nodded. "Posted the schematics on a dead forum under a fake name. Some professor tracked the IP, showed up at a shelter. Said I had no business wasting my brain on survival." He didn't respond. Just picked up one of the restraints, turned it in his hands, studied the wiring, the precision of it. Then he looked back at her.
"You rebuilt my entire system."
"I didn't touch your tools."
He nodded once. That mattered. Skylar closed the case again. "They're ready."
Taz dropped the restraint into a duffel bag and zipped it shut.
"I'll get the drugs."
—
They went down together. Not as a team. Not as friends. Just as two people who understood what came next.
Micah, Hunter, and Tyler were still strapped to the old restraints. Twitching. Sweating. Somewhere between panic and exhaustion. One of them whimpered. Taz didn't speak. He walked to Hunter, pulled his arm out, exposed the vein. No hesitation. Ketamine. One clean injection. Hunter's body went slack within seconds. Micah tried to fight, but Skylar already had the monitor up. Neural readings confirmed sedation threshold. Taz injected the second dose. Silence. They set to work immediately. Skylar cracked the case open again and laid the components out. Taz removed the old restraints, piece by piece, while she held the mounts and braced the joints. He drilled into concrete. She caught the dust before it hit the floor. No words. Just efficiency. Seven minutes later, the room looked different. Colder. Smarter. Alive. Skylar handed him the last ceiling restraint. He clicked it in, tested the motor, adjusted the resistance.
"Perfect fit," he muttered.
Skylar wiped her hands on her sleeve. "Of course it is."
Together, they began to move the bodies. It wasn't torture. Not yet. It was precision. Preparation. A shared craft. And neither of them needed to say anything more.
They came to slowly, the way all sedated men do — confused first, then panicked. Hunter groaned low, his head rolling against concrete. Micah stirred next, ankles already tugging reflexively against the restraints. Tyler's eyes snapped open with a gasp, then widened as he tried to move his arms — and couldn't.
The new restraints were silent, seamless. Fixed to the wall at calculated height. Ankles spread, weight perfectly distributed, no pressure points to lean into. Their muscles burned instantly from the unnatural angle — by design.
Skylar stood in the corner, arms crossed, watching them like test subjects. Taz was kneeling beside a steel cart, selecting tools. Not blades. Not yet. Diagnostics. Monitoring systems. Small electrodes. Measured pain.
"Wha—what the fuck—" Tyler's voice cracked halfway through.
Skylar didn't answer. She stepped forward and tapped a key on her portable interface. The restraints on Micah's left leg adjusted by two millimeters. He screamed immediately.
"You're calibrated now," she said flatly. Micah thrashed. The system tightened again — automatically. It had learned his rhythm in under a minute. Hunter was breathing fast. "You—you can't—" he started, but stopped when Taz looked up. Not angry. Not amused. Just looking.
"You killed two children," Taz said. "Stripped them. Beat them. Cut them. Raped them."
His voice was level. Not accusing — just factual.
"Left their bodies like garbage," Skylar added, almost bored.
"We were drunk," Tyler snapped. Skylar tilted her head. "You decapitated them."
A silence fell. Heavy. Dense. Micah sobbed. The restraints read the muscle contractions and responded — subtle, but firm. No escape. Taz moved to a panel embedded in the wall and flipped a switch. Small lights activated around the ankle mounts. The floor underneath them began to warm slightly — just enough to simulate fever.
"They'll hold for days," Skylar said, watching the screen.
"Longer," Taz replied. "They'll break before the system does."
Hunter closed his eyes. "Please... no more."
Taz didn't look up from the cart. He selected a needle, checked the dosage without haste, then finally responded:
"Polite. Shame that wasn't your approach the night you decided to decapitate two thirteen-year-old girls to impress my boss." Shame that wasn't your approach the night you decided to decapitate two thirteen-year-old girls to impress my boss."
Then he inserted the first needle. No rush. No drama. Just chemistry and consequence. Hunter's body jerked slightly at the injection point — a shallow reflex from a nervous system not yet aware of what was coming. Taz watched the muscle contract, then release, noting the twitch with clinical detachment. The ketamine would set in fast.
And the restraints didn't just hold. They remembered.
Taz placed the first electrode along Hunter's inner forearm, just above the radial nerve. The skin twitched under the contact. He tapped the console beside him and watched the waveform respond.
"Baseline's weak," he murmured. "Either the ketamine's still too fresh, or he's just got a poor nervous system. Disappointing."
Skylar adjusted the restraint angle on Tyler's right shoulder. A soft whine signaled internal rotation. Tyler grunted, teeth clenched.
"Muscle group C resisting," she noted. "Want to stimulate or escalate?" Taz glanced at her like she'd asked whether he wanted tea or coffee. "Escalate, obviously. Let's not coddle the murderers."
He applied a second electrode to Micah's thigh. The screen blinked green.
"There we go. At least one of them reacts properly. Congratulations, Micah — you win the 'functional pain response' award."
Micah whimpered. Skylar's mouth twitched. Taz flipped another switch. A controlled pulse surged through the system. Not enough to cause damage — just enough to light the nerves on fire. Hunter's back arched half an inch, then locked. Tyler gasped, eyes wide. Micah screamed.
"All readings nominal," Skylar said calmly.
"Of course they are," Taz replied. "You built it."
He leaned slightly to check Hunter's heart rate monitor. It was climbing fast, irregular.
"Shall we log this under 'mild regret' or 'spiritual awakening'?" he asked, almost conversational. Neither of them answered. They didn't need to.
Micah broke first.
"Finally," Taz muttered. "Was starting to think they were just decorative."
It started as shaking — a full-body tremor that the restraints registered as muscle fatigue. The system tightened automatically, shifting tension away from the joints and into the long muscles of the back. He tried to speak, but it came out as a wet gurgle, half sob, half scream. Taz leaned in. His tone didn't change, but his eyes lit up with the kind of quiet enthusiasm reserved for science fairs and autopsies. "Good. Let's see what his brain does under sustained panic." He adjusted the pulse width by half a millisecond. Barely a touch. The result was immediate. Micah's chest convulsed, not enough to stop breathing — just enough to remind him how fragile lungs really were. Hunter began crying silently. Not begging. Not speaking. Just leaking fear. Taz didn't even look at him.
"Micah's brain just switched into full survival mode. His fear response is overriding logic. Classic amygdala override."
Skylar raised an eyebrow. "So… he's not thinking. He's just reacting." Taz didn't smile. "Exactly. No reason left. Just panic. It's perfect."
Taz tilted his head. "Speech centers are degrading. Either that or he's trying to sing opera. Hard to tell at this point."
He tapped the display. "Give him three more minutes. Then I want to test long-term memory interference under multi-sensory stress." Skylar adjusted the environmental controls. The temperature dropped by one degree. A low hum activated from behind the wall — subsonic frequency, just below human perception. But their bodies would feel it. Always the body first. Tyler was next. His breathing shortened. He vomited. Taz didn't react.
"Note that," he said calmly. "Fear-induced emesis. Disgusting, but classic. Let's hope he didn't eat dairy."
Tyler whimpered — high-pitched, sharp — then screamed as the ceiling restraint rotated his shoulder joint three degrees. Skylar didn't look up. "Rotator cuff tension maxed. Want to push it?"
Taz tapped the screen. "Give him one more. Let's see if it triggers the vagus nerve. Maybe we'll get lucky and he passes out." The system adjusted. Tyler didn't pass out. He thrashed hard enough to reopen one of the old injection sites. Blood smeared against the restraint. The sensors recalibrated instantly, shifting his weight distribution. Taz whistled under his breath. "Smart system. Smarter than him, anyway."
Tyler gasped. "Why—why are you doing this?"
Skylar replied without inflection. "Because you cut the heads off two girls who never got to turn fourteen. You raped them with your two buddies. You took turns. You laughed. You took pictures and videos and you did it for hours."
Taz nodded thoughtfully. "Also because your blood pressure just hit one-seventy over one-hundred. And I want to know how long you last before the optic nerves start pulsing."
Tyler sobbed, incoherent. His body twitched again. Another recalibration. Another quiet note from the machine.
Hunter was shaking now — not in panic, but in anticipation. He knew he was next. Taz didn't look up from the tray. "You can relax, Hunter. We're not savages. We work in sequence." Then he held up another needle. "Besides, I saved you a special batch." Skylar glanced at the interface, brows lifting slightly. "You made a custom mix?"
Taz smiled faintly, the only real expression he'd shown in hours.
"Of course I did. It's called professional pride."
Hunter had been quiet the whole time. No screaming. No begging. Just silence — the kind that pretended to be control. Taz didn't buy it. He walked over, set the tray down, and studied the way Hunter's fingers twitched every four seconds. A suppressed tremor. Fear, dressed up as discipline.
"Still holding out," Taz muttered, almost curious. "Let's fix that."
Skylar adjusted the interface. "Baseline calibrated. He's masking it well."
Taz gave a soft nod. "Which means he knows exactly what he did. That makes it easier." He placed the first electrode along the nerve cluster just beneath Hunter's clavicle. Hunter flinched, lips pressed tight. Taz looked at him calmly.
"You were the one who started it, weren't you? The first to touch them. The one who said, 'let's see how far we can go.'" Hunter didn't speak.
Taz tapped the interface. "Let's find out what your body says."
A low pulse ran through the restraint. Hunter jolted — just a little. The system logged the spike. Breath rate, heart rate, pupil dilation. All climbing. Skylar leaned closer to the screen. "He's trying to disassociate."
Taz almost smiled. "Let's bring him back." He activated the second input. A sharper signal — enough to ignite the nerve endings in the spine.
Hunter gasped. His body locked. Then came the first sound from him: a broken, involuntary sob.
"Welcome back," Taz said quietly. Then he leaned closer, voice colder now.
"You held her down, didn't you? While the others took their turns. You made sure she couldn't move."
Hunter shook his head, weakly.
Skylar didn't look up. "She bit through her own tongue trying to get away from you."
Hunter cried now — no more silence. No more control. Taz noted it clinically.
"First crack. Took longer than the others. But it always breaks."
Skylar stepped forward. Taz didn't say anything — he just moved aside. He knew the look in her eyes. It wasn't fury. It was decision.
She checked Hunter's restraints, adjusted the angle of the shoulder mounts by three degrees. The system read the change and synced accordingly. Hunter whimpered. Skylar activated a new routine — not Taz's, her own design. A staggered electrical sequence that traveled across the nerve paths in unpredictable pulses. Not more pain — just smarter pain. The kind that made your body doubt itself.
She didn't speak for a full minute. Then she said, low and steady, "They were thirteen."
Hunter tried to look away. He couldn't. Skylar tapped a key.
"They couldn't even drive. But you made sure they wouldn't even turn fourteen" She adjusted the frequency.
"You held one of their wrists so tight, you fractured the growth plates." She stepped back slightly, watching him convulse in quiet jerks. No screaming. Just failure.
"One of them was smaller than me," Skylar added, almost under her breath. "And you split her open like it meant nothing."
Hunter let out a sound — part sob, part choke. Skylar didn't react. She just reached for the next setting. And for the first time since they started, Taz didn't look at the monitor. He looked at her.
None of them died screaming. Not because it didn't hurt — it did. The restraints made sure of that. But because, by the time death came, they were already hollowed out. Broken from the inside. Minds shattered. Bodies reduced to nerve and breath and silence. Tyler went first. A sudden seizure, a sharp exhale, and then stillness. His eyes stayed open. Micah followed twenty-three minutes later. No struggle. Just a slow, uneven spiral into cardiac failure. Skylar monitored the waveform, recorded the exact moment his heart stopped. Taz didn't look up. Hunter was last. He fought the longest. Not physically — that had ended hours ago. But mentally. He clung to the edge until the system found the right sequence and peeled it away.
When his breathing stopped, no one spoke. Skylar powered down the restraints. One by one, the system released them, metal limbs retreating like a finished machine. No glory. No anger. Just conclusion. Taz cleaned his tools. Skylar stood still for a long time. Then she said quietly, "We should burn the bodies" Taz nodded. "No graves. We'll dump them in the ocean some time"