The Audit of Flesh and Bone
The ink on the contract wasn't even dry when I signaled the two guards waiting outside.
Rainier, looked at the document, then at me, his eyes wide with a fleeting sense of relief. He thought that by signing, he had reached the end of his ordeal. He thought the 'work' began tomorrow in a cubicle with a view.
He was a genius, but he was a fool. He didn't understand that a Zero-Sum Game doesn't start with a handshake. It starts with a slaughter.
"Take him to the Sub-Level Four," I said, my voice as cold as the ice in my scotch.
"Wait—what?" Rainier scrambled backward, his chair screeching against the marble. "The contract said I would work for you! It said—"
"The contract said you are my property, Rainier," I interrupted, standing up. I towered over him, the shadow of my frame swallowing his trembling form. "And I never put a new asset into the field without a full stress test. You've lied to me once. I need to know how many more secrets are rotting inside that brilliant head of yours."
He didn't have time to scream. The guards grabbed him by the arms, dragging him toward the private elevator. I followed behind, watching the way his bare feet scuffed against the floor. He looked so fragile, a white-clad lamb being led to the altar of my obsession.
---
Sub-Level Four was a masterpiece of clinical cruelty. It was a room of white tile, stainless steel, and blinding LED lights. There were no windows here. No sense of time. Just the hum of the ventilation and the smell of ozone.
In the center of the room I sat a chair that looked more like a medical throne.
"Strip him," I commanded.
"Devillione, please!" Rainier's voice broke. He fought, he kicked, he clawed, but he was a mathematician, not a fighter. Within seconds, his white shirt—the one I had admired for its purity—was torn away, leaving him shivering and exposed in the center of the room.
I walked toward him, a pair of black leather gloves snapping onto my hands. The sound was like a gunshot in the silent room.
"Let's talk about the Zero-Sum, Rainier," I whispered, leaning down so my breath fanned across his collarbone. "In game theory, for me to win, you must lose. Tonight, we are going to calculate exactly how much you are capable of losing before you break."
I grabbed his jaw, forcing him to look into my eyes. "Whom did you sell the encryption backdoors to? I know it wasn't just about the forty-two million. You were building a 'Poison Pill' for the Vilgoughvrum server. Tell me the override code."
"I... I didn't," he gasped, his body racking with tremors. "There is no code."
I didn't argue. I reached for the control panel on the arm of his chair. With a flick of a switch, a low-voltage current surged through the restraints. It wasn't enough to kill him, but it was enough to make his muscles seize, his back arching off the chair as a silent scream tore from his throat.
I watched him. I watched the way the sweat began to bead on his forehead, the way his veins stood out against his pale skin. I wasn't just looking for information; I was looking for the limit of his soul.
"The code, Rainier," I said, my voice almost tender.
"I... I'll never... give it... to you," he choked out, his eyes weeping from the sheer physical strain.
---
The next three hours were a symphony of calculated abuse. I used every psychological tool in my arsenal. I played recordings of his sister's hospital room—the sound of her ventilator, the steady beep of her heart monitor. Every time he refused to answer, I would pause the recording, letting the silence imply that I had cut her life support.
"You're a monster," he hissed, his voice raw. He was slumped in the chair, his skin pale and clammy.
"I am the man who owns the air she breathes, Rainier. Which makes me her God. And right now, her God is very, very displeased with her brother."
I picked up a scalpel from the tray. I didn't intend to use it for deep cuts—I didn't want to ruin the 'asset'—but the psychological threat of the cold steel against his skin was a powerful motivator. I traced the tip of the blade down his chest, stopping right over his heart.
"This is the Zero-Sum. Every second you hold onto that code, a second is taken from your sister's life. Every lie you tell me is a debt that will be paid in your own blood. You wanted to play with the big boys? This is how we play."
I leaned in closer, my lips brushing his ear. "Tell me the code, and I will let you sleep. I will give you water. I will even let you see her on the monitors. Refuse me, and I will keep you in this room until you forget your own name."
He looked at me, and for a moment, I saw it—the flicker of total, unadulterated hatred. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. He wasn't just a victim anymore; he was a rival.
"The code..." he whispered.
I leaned in, eager for the victory.
"...is 'Go-To-Hell-Devillione'."
The defiance was so sharp, so unexpected, that I actually laughed. It was a dark, hollow sound. I dropped the scalpel and grabbed him by the hair, yanking his head back.
"You have spirit, I'll give you that. But spirit doesn't survive in Sub-Level Four."
I signaled the guards to increase the intensity. I watched as the room became a blur of pain and interrogation. I questioned him about every line of code he had ever written, every person he had ever spoken to, every thought he had ever had about my company.
I was dismantling him. I was taking the genius apart piece by piece, looking for the core of the man. I wanted to see what remained when everything else was stripped away.
---
By four am, the room was thick with the scent of salt and copper. Rainier was no longer fighting. He was a shell, his eyes staring at the ceiling with a vacant, haunted look.
"The code," I said one last time. I was exhausted, too, but the adrenaline of the hunt kept me upright.
He didn't speak. He just moved his lips, a silent prayer or a curse, I couldn't tell.
I realized then that physical pain wouldn't work on a mind like his. He was used to suffering in silence. He had lived a life of poverty and sacrifice; he was comfortable with pain.
I changed tactics. I leaned in and unlatched his restraints. He slumped forward, his forehead resting against my shoulder. He was so cold. I wrapped my arms around his bare torso, feeling the frantic, weak fluttering of his heart.
"You win this round, Rain" I whispered, my voice thick with a sudden, dark possessiveness. "You kept your secret. But look at what it cost you."
I held him there in the silence of the vault. I could feel his tears soaking into my expensive silk shirt. I didn't feel pity. I felt a surge of triumph so potent it was almost erotic. He was broken, but he was mine.
"You will stay here tonight," I said, pulling back to look at his ruined face. "Not in a bed. In the cage at the corner of the room. You will sleep on the floor, and you will think about the Zero-Sum. Every time you close your eyes, you will see my face. Every time you breathe, you will remember that I allowed it."
I dragged him to the small, reinforced cage in the corner. It was barely large enough for a man to sit in. I shoved him inside and locked the gate.
"Tomorrow, we try again," I said, looking through the bars. "And tomorrow, I won't be so patient. The game has only just begun."
As I walked out of the room and the heavy steel door hissed shut, I checked the monitors in the hallway. Rainier was curled into a ball on the cold floor, his hands clutching his torn shirt.
I smiled.
He thought he had won because he kept the code. He didn't realize that by surviving the interrogation, he had just proven to me that he was worth every bit of the obsession I felt for him.
The Zero-Sum Game was no longer about money. It was about the total, absolute ownership of Rainier Callisten.
And I was the only one with the keys to the cage.
---
The room was a vacuum of morality.
I sat in a velvet armchair I had moved into the interrogation suite, sipping a glass of water while I watched Rainier tremble. The LED lights were humming at a frequency designed to induce migraines. I had stripped him of his clothes, his dignity, and now, I was stripping him of his silence.
"Let's try a different equation," I said, my voice cutting through the mechanical hum.
"You are obsessed with balance. You think that because you signed that paper, your debt is a static number. But in this room, I am the one who controls the variables."
I walked over to the steel chair where he was bound. I didn't touch him with my hands—I used a cold, silver stylus to trace the lines of his ribs. He flinched, his skin crawling away from the metal.
"You have a sister, Vicky don't it?" I whispered. I watched his eyes flare with a desperate, animalistic terror.
"Currently, she is in a private suite at St. Jude's. The cost of her care is twelve thousand dollars a day. If you don't give me the decryption key for the off-shore accounts you hid, I will have her moved to the general ward of a state hospital by dawn. Do you know what happens to girls like her in state wards, Rainier?"
"You wouldn't," he choked out, his voice a dry rasp. "The contract... the contract says you provide for her."
"The contract is a piece of paper I can burn," I snarled, grabbing his hair and forcing his head back.
"I am the law in this tower. I am the judge, the jury, and the executioner of your future. Now, give me the key."
"I... I can't," he sobbed. "If I give it to you, I have nothing left to bargain with."
"Correct," I smiled, and it was a soundless, predatory baring of teeth.
"In a Zero-Sum Game, you are not supposed to have anything left. You are supposed to be a zero."
I turned to the console. "Initiate the Subtraction protocol."
The room darkened, and a holographic display appeared in front of Rainier's face. It showed his bank accounts, his digital identity, and his family's remaining assets. One by one, I began to delete them.
"That's my mother's pension," he screamed, struggling against the restraints until the metal bit into his wrists, drawing thin lines of blood.
"Gone," I said, tapping a key. "Subtracting the house deed. Subtracting your academic credentials. Subtracting your very name from the national registry."
I watched him crumble. It wasn't just physical pain; it was the erasure of his existence. To a man who lived in the world of data, being deleted was a fate worse than death.
"Please! Stop! I'll tell you!" he wailed, his spirit finally snapping like a glass rod under a hammer.
"Speak," I commanded, leaning in.
He whispered the code. A string of twenty-four alphanumeric characters that represented the sum of his defiance. I entered them into my tablet. The screen turned green. Access granted.
I had stripped him of his last weapon.
But I wasn't finished. Cruelty, once tasted, is an addictive wine. I wanted to see him truly broken—not just compliant, but hollowed out.
I unlatched the restraints. He fell to the floor, a heap of pale skin and bruised pride. He didn't try to run. He just lay there, staring at the white tiles as if they were the only reality left.
"You're a good analyst," I said, walking around his prone body. "You've given me exactly what I wanted. But a tool that tries to stab its master needs to be put away in a dark place until it learns its purpose."
I dragged him by the arm toward the corner of the room, where a reinforced glass cage stood. It was a three-by-three-foot box, designed for 'observation'.
"Inside," I ordered.
"Devillione, no... please, not in there," he pleaded, his hands clawing at the tile.
I didn't listen. I shoved him inside. He had to curl into a fetal position just to fit. I locked the electronic seal.
"You will stay here for the next twelve hours," I said, looking down at him through the glass. "You will have no light. No sound. Just the memory of what happens when you try to play a game against me."
"I hate you," he whispered, his face pressed against the glass. "I will kill you. One day, I will find a way to make you zero."
I laughed, and the sound echoed in the sterile room. "I look forward to it, Rainier. But for now, remember this: in the Zero-Sum Game of our lives, I am the only one allowed to win."
I turned off the lights. The room plunged into a terrifying, absolute darkness. I walked to the door, the hiss of the pneumatic seal the only sound in the vault.
As I walked back to my office, my heart was racing. I felt more alive than I had in years. I didn't just have an employee; I had a masterpiece of suffering. And tomorrow, I would bring him up to the penthouse and show him the world he would never touch again.