The Cross
The spikes came sealed in a clear plastic bag.
Ba'al brought them over and set them down at A688’s feet. Before anything else, he looked at me and Yejin and gave the other guards their orders.
“First, attach the devices to the special execution subjects.”
“Yes, sir.”
At his command, Leviathan and Marmon moved.
Leviathan returned with a machine whose tip was rounded. It looked like the vibrator once nicknamed the “Fairy,” only the end was shaped a little differently.
“A713.”
“…Yes.”
“This is a vibrator with an AI inside. From now on it will stimulate you while also keeping you from reaching climax.”
“…Yes.”
“For an execution, this is on the mild side. Don’t give up until the end… See you tomorrow.”
“…Yes. Thank you.”
Encouragement, maybe? Leviathan tapped my cheek with something almost gentle, then hooked the machine onto the rope binding my thighs. Once it was wedged into the tight restraints, the tip began to move on its own.
And then—
Whirr. Whirr.
“Hah…!”
The instant Leviathan pressed the button, the rounded tip reshaped itself and drove into my sex. Parting the labia, the machine settled against the vaginal opening. The portion that entered was short, yet the head of the device wrapped the entire inner foreskin so thoroughly that a maddening tickle was already crawling through me.
“Nngh… nngh.”
Yejin’s face had darkened the same way. Had she already suffered this thing once? It had barely even begun to writhe, yet she already looked ready to cry. Or maybe… the Stimulation Spores had stirred.
“Here. Swallow.”
While I was still thinking that, Leviathan stepped close and pushed a pill between my lips. I didn’t know what it was, but I took it. My throat had been hardened by endless training and by meals themselves; I could swallow a pill dry without trouble.
The problem was the quantity.
“Gulp… mmph! Hah… ugh… kngh…”
“Two more.”
“Yes…”
Ten pills in total. I gulped them down one after another under Leviathan’s relentless hand until my stomach felt unpleasantly full. Worse than the fullness was not knowing what I had just swallowed.
The question did not last long.
“Ahk… nngh… nngh!”
Heat blooming through my body. Fire rising near my heart. Blood racing faster, a thin fever spreading everywhere at once. Only then did I understand the drug.
“…After I took it, heat just flooded my whole body. I figure it’s some kind of aphrodisiac. They actually released a female sexual stimulant for people with sexual dysfunction—looks like that one.”
“Ah… you mean ‘Exlemer.’”
The pill from Yejin and Ruia’s conversation. The same symptoms as Exlemer, the pill that forced arousal into existence.
“Nngh… ah… haah… nngh!!”
I looked across at Yejin to confirm. She too had swallowed the pills and was already struggling, twisting her legs together and shaking her head left and right exactly the way she did under severe stimulation. I would be the same. Especially when Leviathan playfully grabbed and shook my breasts—the humiliation of how fast the arousal climbed was almost worse than the touch itself.
“Nipples standing straight up. Inmates really do react fast.”
“Hah… nngh…!”
I wanted to protest that it was because of him, but I couldn’t. I had already set body and mind down. In this life of confinement I owned nothing of my own; defiance or refusal toward a guard simply did not exist. Show even a little of that and… solitary. I did not want that risk again. The memory of being trapped and surrounded by those rutted Male Dogs rose up and stopped me cold.
“Nngh… nngh!”
The lewd handling of my breasts. In the outside world it would have been sexual assault I could report at once. Here, having surrendered every human right, no such protection existed. I could only endure. Absolute obedience to a guard was required.
“All right. Then the condemned needs to be prepared too, doesn’t she?”
“…Mmph? Mmph…”
Once the preparations for Yejin and me were finished, Ba’al picked up the plastic bag from the floor and drew out the spikes inside. They were huge—thick enough that their size registered even from a distance. What was he going to do with those?
A688 was bound less thoroughly than we were. No ropes forcing her legs together; only wrists and ankles. And the place she was bound to was a cross.
Surely not…
It couldn’t be.
“All right. Condemned prisoner A688. Let’s see… name, Kang Seoa. Correct?”
At Ba’al’s question, A688—Seoa—nodded hard. The posture of pure submission. Answer at once, move at once, please don’t hurt me—that plea seemed to live in every motion.
It made no difference.
The moment her head dipped, Ba’al set a spike on top of her instep.
No… is he really…?
Is it actually what I think it is?
“For the record, I’m not religious. I heard you aren’t either… shame. If you’d been one of those believers, you might have enjoyed this kind of execution more. Tch. Move and your foot will tear to shreds, so stay still.”
“Nnghh!! Mmph!!”
Seoa looked down at Ba’al’s indifferent face and shook her head wildly. It didn’t last. Ba’al raised the hammer—
—and brought it down on the head of the spike.
Clang! Thunk—
“Knnnghhh!!!”
“Ugh…!”
“…!”
With a brutal impact the spike drove into Seoa’s instep. Blood welled from the wound; her toes trembled without rest under the agony. Yejin and I turned our faces away from the cruelty—only for the guards gripping our heads to force our gazes straight back toward her.
“Hmm. Needs to go deeper. Let’s see—”
Clang! Clang!
“Nnghh!! Mmph!!!! Phnnngh!!”
Ba’al hammered again and again. Each blow drove the shaft a little farther through her instep until more than half its length had buried itself inside her foot. Then he stopped. True to the rumors, he was merciless.
“That ought to do it?”
“…!! Nngh… mmph!!”
To check whether the spike was properly seated he seized her ankle and shook the foot. Only a light jostle, yet Seoa suffered so hard my own feet ached in sympathy. Tears already brimmed and spilled from her eyes. Drool poured around the gag she had bitten down on with all her strength just to endure.
“Next, the other foot…”
“Knnngh!! Mmph!!”
Only one so far. Three more limbs remained. Ba’al took another spike, gripped her opposite foot, and struck again.
Clang!
“Knnnghhh!!! …! Phnnngh! Nnnngh!!”
Harder this time. The spike punched straight through skin; blood beaded between the crushed flesh of her foot. The bright red running down her instep, the tremors racing through her entire leg—every detail spoke her pain. I wanted to look away. Leviathan’s hand locked in my hair and the glare in his eyes made it impossible. In that atmosphere of pure dread I could only watch my comrade suffer.
Clang! Clang
“Kh… khhnnngh!! Ph…!”
Hideous. And it was nowhere near finished. Just as I had feared, Ba’al drew out another spike and walked to her hands. Seoa clenched her fists, trying to hold on—until Asmode, stepping in as assistant, pressed a stun baton to her fingers. The shocked hand sprang open on its own.
In the center of the trembling palm Ba’al set the spike, adjusted the angle… and hammered.
Clang-clang-clang!
“Nngh… mmph!! Nnnngh!! Ph…! Ngh!”
A spike the thickness of a thumb drove through the middle of her palm and into the wood of the cross—exactly the image of the saints in religious texts. Where those figures had radiated holiness, what radiated from Seoa now was pure wretchedness and pity.
“Knnngh! Ngh…”
Her eyes rolled. Focus gone, pupils darting through empty air, then rolling back, over and over. The pain must have been catastrophic. Once the tears started they showed no sign of stopping. A sight truly worthy of “execution.” One hand still remained.
“Whew~ There we go. Opening up on her own now.”
“Gnnngh… mmph!”
Ba’al approached the last hand. Whether from pain or the simple collapse of will, Seoa’s final hand lay open of its own accord. The spike was placed in the center of the limp palm. The hammer drove it home.
Clang! Clang!
“Khnnngh! Khh… nnnngh! Nnnnnngh!!!!”
A few blows and the spike was seated in the cross—with Seoa’s hand, and her feet, trapped between metal and wood. Confirming all four limbs were nailed, Ba’al spoke to Marmon, who had been waiting.
“Double-check the weight load and the positioning.”
“Confirmed. All set.”
“Good. Then raise her. Lucifer and I will handle this place—everyone else, return to posts.”
“Understood.”
Once Seoa’s limbs were secured, Ba’al kept only himself—the self-proclaimed executioner—and Lucifer, and dismissed the rest. Leviathan released my head.
“Heh. Stay sharp.”
“…Yes.”
Whether advice or a sneer aimed at a wretched inmate, I couldn’t tell. Leviathan tapped my cheek once more and walked back the way he had come.
Now only the three of us inmates—me, Yejin, and Seoa—and the two guards, Ba’al and Lucifer, remained in the execution ground.
Ba’al took out a terminal, the same model Leviathan used to contact Control.
“Execution ground. Preparations complete. Notice of execution commencement. Raise the inmates.”
Confirmation complete. Raising inmates. Fixed at 5 m height. Good work.
“Good work.”
The moment their exchange ended, the three of us began to rise—more precisely, the crosses we hung from rose. Height-adjustment mechanisms must have been built into the floor. The pillars extended, lifting the crosses higher and higher.
“Nngh… nngh.”
“Ngh…!”
“Phnnngh…! Mmph!!”
The machinery left us suspended high above the ground. Five meters, they had said. Hanging in empty air with only the bindings at wrists and ankles for support filled me with a sick unease. And one of us was far worse off.
“Mmph! Ph… nnnngh!”
Seoa’s face was bloodless. She stared downward, trembling like an aspen leaf. Acrophobia? Even without it her condition was catastrophic—hands and feet spiked through, body hanging at height. The footrests were so steeply angled that virtually her entire weight rested on the spikes driven through her flesh. Would she even hold together without tearing?
We hung beside her, yet her state looked so dire I could only feel pity.
“Fuck… these bastards are insane. Hey. A688. You okay?”
“Nngh… mmph…!”
“Hah—this is bad. Looks like she’s got a fear of heights… Hey. Just close your eyes. Shit… if she blacks out it’ll be even more dangerous…”
Yejin must have been thinking the same thing; she voiced her worry while staring at Seoa, then turned to me.
“Nayoon.”
“…Yeah?”
I answered carefully, afraid the guards below might overhear. Luckily they seemed busy with their own conversation. Maybe talking like this was all right for now.
“Haa… the drug’s going to hit hard any minute… Anyway… earlier… that sundome thing or whatever… you looked like you knew what it was. Do you?”
“Ah… that.”
As expected, Yejin had no idea what sundome meant. I summarized it for her as tightly as I could—only a sentence or two—but her expression darkened by the second.
“Crazy… they feed us Exlemer and then do that…?”
Yejin had already tasted the drug’s power. She bit her lip, dreading what was coming. Her face looked even darker than it had in the early days after Leviathan’s choking torture had broken her into obedience.
We never got to finish the conversation.
“You condemned up there. No chatting. I’ll slap next-cycle Demeanor Penalty Points on you so fast. Looks like you’ve still got energy to spare—let’s see how long that lasts. Heh heh.”
Lucifer’s chilling warning from below was bad enough, but worse was the vibrator that chose that exact moment to start buzzing against my sex.
“Kya… nngh… this… fuck… so… hah…!! Already… if it does this…!”
“Ah… ahh……! U… uuh…!”
The vibration began and the drug already soaking my body surged. Within seconds heat flooded every inch of me. Moans tore free on their own; ragged breath seemed to hang visible in the air before my eyes.
And then—
“Ah…!”
“Kh…!! Hey… you…!!”
The vibration cut out at the most ambiguous possible moment. Only then did I truly understand what sundome torture was.
This was…
“Hnn… nngh!! Wh-what…!”
A torment worse than hell itself. An act fully worthy of the word “execution.”