River was cold. Her skin held a fine layer of perspiration that chilled as soon as it rose to the surface. The air in the room around her was freezing on purpose; they wanted her to be uncomfortable. Her lips had turned blue and her face white and she was shivering. But River wasn’t sure if she would say she was uncomfortable. River wasn’t sure if she was anything.

It had been six hours and forty-seven minutes since she had been taken from the front foyer of her home. Since she had seen Simon knocked unconscious, with a small trickle of blood falling from the reopened wound on the back of his head. Since her father had told her everything would fine; since he had told her she was going back to school where she could be with her friends and learn. Since her father had told her lies to make himself feel better. Since she had started to again feel real pain.

The physical pain she had been confronted with at the Academy had not really changed since she’d started there almost three years ago. Truth be told, the tactics were all a little rudimentary. First it was sensory deprivation: darkened rooms, white noise; then it moved on to climate variants: too hot or too cold, like now. Then they would branch out into weapons and tools. Sharp objects, blunt objects, hard objects, soft objects; gases, drugs, fire, needles; it would run the gamut of sensory and pain experiences. River had known that from the moment she’d known the soldiers would take her. The physical pain was something she could prepare for and although her body would give out under the strain eventually, she could withstand for longer than most of their other subjects. Which made her their favorite guinea pig. Because not only could they devise new ways to torture her body, but while she was alert, they could find new ways to torture her mind.

That was something they had improved upon, even in the year she’d been away. They had of course, immediately opened her skull, probing into her brain with their tools, severing synapses and overexposing