"Thirty-seven hours," she said aloud, making it a promise to herself and to the ghost of Aria Nightfang and to the child who had just left. "I can last thirty-seven more hours. And then I'll be past this phase. And then I can start fighting back for real."
Ghost-Aria was still standing in the corner, and for just a moment, probably just another hallucination but meaningful nonetheless, Liora could have sworn she saw the apparition nod in approval or acknowledgment.
The music started again with renewed intensity. The lights blazed with blinding brightness. But Liora stood her ground, refusing to collapse again.
Because she'd just seen what was really at stake in all of this. And she would die before she let the real killer get away with what they'd done. She would fight with every breath remaining in her body.
Thirty-six hours and forty-three minutes to go.
The forty-eighth hour arrived like a death sentence with all its terrible finality.
Liora had barely survived the sleep deprivation, her mind fragmented into disconnected pieces, her body trembling with such profound exhaustion that even breathing felt like an enormous effort, her hallucinations so vivid and overwhelming that she could no longer distinguish between what was real and what her deteriorating mind was creating. Ghost-Aria had been joined by ghost-children, dozens of them now, all staring at her with those same accusatory eyes that seemed to pierce through to her very soul.
When Veyra returned with two other werewolves, both carrying what looked like medical equipment, Liora knew with sinking certainty that phase two was about to begin.
"Strip her down," Veyra ordered with clinical detachment. "And strap her to the chair."
Chair? Liora's foggy mind barely registered the word or its implications when Darius unlocked the cage and hauled her out with rough efficiency. She was too weak to fight back, too exhausted to resist as they ripped off her ruined dress without ceremony, leaving her in just her undergarments, and forced her into a metal chair that had been wheeled into the center of the penthouse while she'd been unconscious or hallucinating.
Leather straps secured her wrists, ankles, and chest with practiced efficiency, pulled tight enough that she couldn't move at all, couldn't even shift her weight. She was completely immobilized, helpless in ways that made her previous captivity seem almost merciful.
"What are you doing?" Liora slurred, her head lolling forward as she struggled to maintain consciousness.
"Sensory manipulation," Veyra said with the same clinical detachment a doctor might use to explain a medical procedure, attaching electrodes to Liora's temples with careful precision. "We're going to stimulate certain neural pathways, make you experience things that aren't real. See things. Feel things. Until you can't tell what's memory and what's manipulation, until reality itself becomes questionable."
"That's... that's torture," Liora whispered, horror cutting through her exhaustion.
"Yes," Veyra agreed simply, without shame or hesitation. "It is."
The first jolt of electricity made Liora's entire body seize violently, muscles contracting beyond her control. Pain exploded through her nervous system, not from the electrical shock itself, but from something deeper and more terrifying. Her mind suddenly flooded with images that weren't hers, memories she'd never lived: running through a dark forest with a gun in hand, screaming faces illuminated by muzzle flashes, the sound of children crying in terror, the overwhelming smell of blood and gunpowder...
"Stop!" Liora screamed with every ounce of breath in her lungs. "Stop! Those aren't my memories!"
Another jolt sent more false experiences crashing through her consciousness. More images that felt real despite being impossible. Her hands, except they weren't her hands, they were someone else's, pulling a trigger. A woman falling in slow motion. Dark hair spread across the ground in a pool of spreading blood.
Aria. That's Aria Nightfang. Did I, did I kill her? No, no, these aren't real memories, they're planting them, they're manufacturing false experiences, they're...
"Confess," Veyra's voice came from somewhere far away, distorted and echoing. "Tell us what you did."
"I didn't..." Another jolt cut off her protest. More false memories crashed through her mind like waves against rocks. More blood. More death. More guilt that wasn't hers but felt increasingly real.
Hours blurred together into an endless nightmare of electrical stimulation and manufactured memories. The procedure continued relentlessly, each pulse feeding her brain experiences that felt increasingly authentic despite their impossibility. Liora's consciousness fractured under the assault, splitting into contradictory pieces. She was herself, but also the killer. She was innocent, but also guilty. She was...
"Make it stop," she sobbed, her voice breaking. "Please, please make it stop."
"Confess," Veyra repeated with mechanical insistence.
"I can't confess to something I didn't do!"