Chapter 6: The Interrogation
The smell of stale coffee and industrial cleaner filled Ruby’s nostrils as consciousness returned. The light was different—harsh, fluorescent, humming overhead. She was sitting upright, a cold metal chair beneath her. Her arms were wrenched behind her, the bite of rigid plastic zip-ties securing her wrists to the chair’s spine. The familiar, cool polymer was still pressed to her face—the mask. But everything else was wrong.
She was naked.
A thermal blanket was draped loosely across her lap, but her torso was bare, the air of the windowless room chilling her skin. She tested the restraints. Professional. Unyielding.
“She’s awake,” a male voice said.
Detective Marcus Allen sat across from her, his chair tilted back, a manila folder closed on the table between them. He was in his late thirties, with the weathered face of someone who’d seen too many midnight crimes scenes. His tie was loose, his sleeves rolled up. He watched her with the flat, appraising gaze of a pathologist.
“Welcome back,” he said, his voice a gravelly baritone. “We found you in an alley off Mercer. Naked. Mask on. No ID. Care to tell me who you are under there?”
Ruby stayed silent. Her mind, still fogged from whatever sedative they’d used, scrambled for footing. The alley. She’d woken there, disoriented, the mask in her hand. Thorne must have dumped her. A test? A message?
“Cat got your tongue?” Mac pushed the folder aside. “Here’s what I know. You’re the one the blogs call ‘Sexy Mask.’ You’ve been interfering with police operations for six months. Last night, you left two suspects with concussions and a third with a ruptured spleen. Vigilantism. Assault with a deadly weapon. And now I find you like this.” He gestured vaguely at her state of undress. “You in some kind of trouble?”
“I was helping,” Ruby said, her voice modulated by the mask into a smooth, androgynous hum. It felt like a lie. Helping had never left her feeling this hollow, this used.
“Helping.” Mac snorted. “You’re a problem. A dangerous, unstable problem dressed like a fetish club reject. Who are you working for?”
“Myself.”
He stood up, the chair legs scraping the linoleum. He circled the table, his footsteps slow. “See, that’s what bothers me. The costume, the theatrics. It’s not about helping. It’s about power. It’s about getting off on being above the law.” He stopped behind her. She could feel his presence, the heat of him. “What happened to you tonight? Someone get a taste of their own medicine? You look… used.”
The word hit her like a physical blow. Her breath hitched. The memory of Thorne’s weight, the clinical violation, the subsequent shameful, mask-augmented masturbation, surged up in a nauseating wave. She shoved it down.
“I have nothing to say to you,” she said, forcing the modulator to stay level.
“Yeah, you do.” His hands came down on her shoulders. They were broad, heavy. Not like Thorne’s precise, scientist’s hands. These were a laborer’s hands, a fighter’s hands. He squeezed, and the pressure was meant to hurt. “You’re going to tell me who you are. You’re going to tell me who did this to you. And then you’re going to tell me where you get your intel.”
“Go to hell.”
In one brutal motion, he yanked her backwards. The chair screeched, tilting. He shoved her, chair and all, across the short distance until her back slammed into the cool surface of the one-way mirror. The impact jarred her teeth. He leaned in, his mouth inches from the side of her masked head.
“You see that?” he growled, his voice low, for her alone. “That’s a mirror. On the other side? My captain. Two uniforms. The DA’s liaison. They’re all watching. They see a masked freak. They see a liability. They want me to break you.”
He kept her pinned against the glass, the pressure on her shoulders immense. Her bare skin squeaked against the surface. The blanket over her lap slipped, puddling on the seat of the chair. She was completely exposed to the unseen audience.
“Get off me,” she snarled, struggling. The zip-ties cut into her wrists.
“Or what?” He laughed, a dry, humorless sound. His right hand left her shoulder and traveled down her arm, over her ribs. She flinched, trying to twist away. His palm was calloused, rough. It closed over her breast, squeezing hard, purposefully degrading. “What are you gonna do, superhero? You’re nothing without your little gadgets and your surprise attacks. Just a naked girl in a mask.”
Tears of pure, white-hot fury burned behind her eyes. But beneath the fury, something else stirred, cold and slick and terrifying. The hyper-awareness from the mask kicked in, detailing the texture of his palm, the pressure points. And deeper, a conditioned response triggered. Her body, trained by Thorne to conflate violation with inevitable release, betrayed her. A traitorous pulse throbbed between her legs.
Mac felt her nipple harden under his palm. He stilled. “You have got to be kidding me,” he muttered, disgust and a dark curiosity warring in his tone.
“Don’t,” she breathed, the word cracking.
His hand moved lower, skimming over her stomach. She bucked, the chair legs rattling. “Stop fighting it,” he said, his voice dropping to a vicious whisper. “They all think I’m interrogating you. Asking hard questions. They can’t hear us now. This is just between us. Let’s see what you really are.”
His fingers pushed through her pubic hair, delving down. She clenched her thighs, but he used his own knee to force them apart, pinning her legs against the chair. His fingers found her. They were dry, intrusive. He rubbed roughly, a cruel parody of touch.
“Fucking wet,” he spat, amazed. “You’re actually getting off on this.”
“I’m not,” she sobbed, humiliation flooding her. But her body was screaming otherwise, slick and ready, the damnable conditioning shortcutting every nerve. Thorne’s programming was online, interpreting the aggression, the helplessness, the public display, as precursors to the required peak.
“You’re a liar.” He worked a finger inside her, then two. They scraped, ungentle. It hurt. It also sent a jolt of electric shame straight to her core. Her hips gave a tiny, involuntary jerk. “There it is. That’s the real you. Not some hero. Just a cunt waiting to be used.”
He fucked her with his fingers, the pace brutal, the sound obscenely loud in her enhanced hearing. The mask painted the sensation in ultra-high definition: the stretch, the friction, the exact point of rough contact. She could hear the faint murmur of voices from behind the mirror, a cough, the shuffle of feet. They were watching. They saw her naked, splayed, being fingered by a detective. They saw and did nothing.
The coil, the same one Thorne had wound so tight, began to spiral. She fought it with everything she had, biting her tongue until she tasted blood, thinking of galactic redshift, of event horizons. But her body was a separate country now, with its own laws. The pleasure built, a crushing wave of degradation, inseparable from the violation.
“Come on,” Mac grunted in her ear, his own breath becoming ragged. He was hard; she could feel the press of him against her bound arm. “Show them. Show them what you are. Come for the nice men watching.”
His thumb found her clit, pressing a ruthless circle. The combined assault was too precise, too overwhelming. The orgasm ripped through her with a silent, seismic violence. Her body bowed against the restraints, a strangled gasp ripped from her throat as convulsions wracked her, clamping down on his invading fingers. It was long, and shocking, and utterly soul-destroying.
As the waves subsided, leaving her trembling and utterly hollow, Mac slowly withdrew his glistening fingers. He held them up in front of the mirror, a grotesque trophy, before wiping them on the thermal blanket.
He righted her chair, pulling it back to the table. He sat down heavily, adjusting himself. His face was flushed, his eyes dark with a mix of triumph and self-loathing.
“Subject appears… cooperative,” he said loudly, for the benefit of the observers. Then, quieter, to her: “You’re broken. And now I know it.”
Ruby hung her head, tears dripping from beneath the mask onto her bare thighs. The aftermath was worse than Thorne’s lab. This was the real world. This was the justice she had believed in. And it had just fucked her harder than the monster.
Mac opened the folder, pulling out a form. “We’re holding you as a Jane Doe. No lawyer until you give me a name.” He stood to leave. At the door, he paused. “For what it’s worth,” he said, not looking at her, “whoever did this to you first… they did a thorough job.”
The door clicked shut.
Ruby was alone with the hum of the lights and the ghost of her own compliance. She stared at her reflection in the one-way glass—a naked woman in a red mask, bound, used, and utterly defeated. The face in the mask stared back, a silent scream in an empty room.
From the other side of the glass, unseen, the Captain lit a cigarette. “Jesus, Mac,” he sighed, rubbing his temples. “Was that necessary?”
Mac didn’t meet his eyes. He was washing his hands at the sink in the observation room, scrubbing hard. “You wanted her broken, Cap. She’s broken.”
One of the uniforms shifted uncomfortably. The DA’s liaison, a prim woman in a suit, looked pale. “The methods… they’re problematic, Detective. If this gets out—”
“It won’t,” the Captain interrupted. He looked through the glass. “She’s a vigilante. A terrorist, for all we know. No one’s going to question her word against all of ours.” He took a long drag. “Book her. Anonymous. See what else she knows.”
In the interrogation room, Ruby finally lifted her head. The hollow feeling was crystallizing into something else. Something cold and sharp and infinitely dangerous. They thought she was broken. They thought she was just a body, a conditioned response.
They had no idea what the mask could really do. Or what a brilliant, humiliated astrophysicist, with nothing left to lose, was capable of building from the ashes of her own shame.
She focused on the mirror. On the vague, shadowy shapes she could just perceive through the enhanced optics. She memorized their positions. She listened to the receding footsteps.
Not yours, the thought came again, but it was different now. It had edges.
It had plans.
It had plans. But first, there was the booking process.
The digital camera flash was a bright, painless void. Her fingerprints, taken electronically, felt like a theft of her very geometry. The words “Jane Doe” were typed into a system with a clatter of old keys. No one removed her mask. It was treated as part of her—a bizarre, stubborn tumor. They issued her a faded orange jumpsuit, coarse against her skin, and led her through a series of buzzing steel doors. The air grew thicker, smelling of bleach, stale sweat, and something else: a low current of unspent violence.
The holding cell was a concrete cube. A stainless-steel toilet bowl, without a seat, stood in one corner. A bench was bolted to the opposite wall. Three women were already there. They looked up in unison as the door clanged shut behind Ruby. The guard’s footsteps faded away.
“Well, look what they dropped in the trash,” said the largest one, her voice a nicotine rasp. She stood up, rolling thick shoulders. Her name, “Reyna,” was tattooed in gothic script across her neck.
Ruby stood still, assessing. The mask fed her data: heart rates, micro-expressions, the tension coiled in their legs. Reyna’s was elevated, aggressive. The shorter woman to her left, chewing a thumbnail, was nervous but eager to please. The third, leaning against the wall, watched with detached curiosity, a predator calculating energy expenditure.
“The fuck is with the mask?” Reyna stepped closer, invading Ruby’s space. Her breath smelled of processed meat and mint. “You ugly under there? You a freak?”
“I’m just waiting for my lawyer,” Ruby said, keeping her modulated voice low.
“Ain’t no lawyers in here, baby. Just us.” Reyna’s hand shot out, not to hit, but to grab a handful of jumpsuit fabric at Ruby’s chest. She yanked her forward, off-balance. “Let’ accidentlyait’s see what you got.”
The nervous woman moved, pinning Ruby’s left arm. It was fast, practiced. Ruby could have broken the hold—three precise pressure points, a twist of the hips—but the memory of Mac’s fingers, of the watching mirror, of Thorne’s smug eyes, froze her. Resistance felt pointless. The conditioning whispered that struggle was just the first act of the same sick play.
“Hold her the fuck still,” Reyna grunted.
Ruby’s back hit the cold concrete wall. The third woman sauntered over, her hands already at the zipper of Ruby’s jumpsuit. “Pretty thing, I bet. All clean.”
The zipper tore down. The coarse fabric was peeled from her shoulders, pushed down to her waist, then ankles. She stood naked again, the air of the cell raising goosebumps on her skin. The mask felt heavier than ever.
“Damn,” the third woman whistled. Her fingers, cool and probing, traced the curve of Ruby’s ass. “Fresh meat. No track marks. Nice skin.” She squeezed a buttock, hard.
“See?” Reyna leaned in, her face inches from the mask’s eye-holes. “Told you she was a freak. Likes to be looked at.” She grabbed one of Ruby’s breasts, squeezing the flesh in a brutal mimicry of Mac’s grip. “You get off on this, mask-bitch? Huh?”
Ruby turned her head away, eyes closed behind the polymer. She recited the periodic table in her mind. Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium…
Reyna’s other hand slid between Ruby’s legs. Her fingers were thick, callused. She didn’t probe, just pressed the heel of her hand hard against Ruby’s vulva, grinding in a rough, circular motion. “Bet she’s already wet. They’re all wet for it.”
Beryllium, Boron, Carbon…
But her body, the treacherous, engineered thing it was, responded. The grinding friction, the public humiliation, the sheer helplessness—it was a familiar script. A slick heat welled, betraying her. Reyna felt it.
“Fucking knew it,” she laughed, the sound ugly and triumphant. She shoved two fingers inside without warning. The stretch was dry, painful for a second before Ruby’s own lubrication offered its humiliating aid. “She’s so fucking ready. Listen to that.”
The wet sound of the thrusting fingers was obscenely loud. The nervous woman giggled, her grip tightening. The third one leaned in, her mouth latching onto Ruby’s nipple, biting and sucking.
Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine… The table shattered.
Pleasure, sharp and unwanted, lanced through her. Her hips gave a jerk. A choked sound escaped the mask’s modulator. It wasn’t the engineered, overwhelming wave from the interrogation—this was cruder, dirtier, a jagged sawblade of sensation dragged from her core by rough, expert hands.
“That’s it, cunt. Get your little freak-off,” Reyna panted, her own excitement palpable. She pumped her fingers faster, curling them. Her thumb found Ruby’s clit, rubbing in time with her thrusts. “Come on. Do it for us. Let’s see the mask-girl squirt.”
The orgasm built not as a wave but as a fracture. It broke her from the inside, a splintering rush of shame and raw physical release. Her knees buckled. The women held her up as she shook, a silent scream locked behind her clenched jaw, her cunt pulsing around the invading fingers.
“One down,” the third woman muttered, releasing her nipple with a pop.
They didn’t stop.
They rotated. The nervous one took a turn, her touch hesitantly cruel. She seemed fascinated by Ruby’s responses, pinching her skin, slapping her inner thigh, then rubbing her clit with frantic circles until another, smaller climax was torn from her. Ruby’s breaths came in ragged sobs.
The third woman pushed Ruby onto her knees on the cold floor. She presented her own cunt, the coarse hair scratching Ruby’s face. “Lick,” she commanded, fingers tangling in Ruby’s hair.
Ruby resisted for a second. A sharp slap across her ear, ringing the enhanced auditory sensors, made her vision blur. The taste of salt and musk filled her mouth as she was forced to obey. The act was less about the other woman’s pleasure and more about ownership. Ruby serviced her, mechanically, while Reyna knelt behind.
“This pretty ass is begging for it,” Reyna grumbled. Ruby felt a spit-wet thumb press against her anus. She tensed. “Relax, bitch, or I’ll make it hurt.”
The thumb pushed in. The burn was immediate, intense. Ruby cried out, the sound muffled against the woman in front of her. Reyna worked the thumb in and out, then added a finger alongside it, stretching the tight ring of muscle. The dual violation—mouth and ass—was complete. Her world narrowed to pain and the crude, relentless rhythm.
Reyna switched, replacing her fingers with her own slicked cunt, grinding against Ruby’s ass from behind, humping her with grunts of effort. The stimulation was blunt, indirect, but it was everywhere, relentless. Another orgasm was scraped from her, leaving her trembling and void.
Time became a smear of touch and degradation. They used her hands, her mouth, the space between her thighs. They made her come until the convulsions were weak, dry things, until her nerves shrieked with overstimulation and her muscles were liquid. Finally, they let her slump to the floor, a heap of sweating, trembling limbs.
Her orange jumpsuit was tossed on top of her. The three women returned to the bench, laughing quietly, talking about commissary. The fluorescent light hummed its eternal note.
Ruby lay on the concrete, smelling of sex and other women. The cold seeped into her bones. Every part of her ached, stretched, felt fundamentally altered. The mask’s HUD flickered, low-power warnings ghosting at the edges of her vision.
Plans. The word echoed in the hollowed-out vault of her mind. It was just a syllable now, stripped of meaning. But deep beneath the exhaustion, in a substrate her conditioning couldn’t reach, a single cognitive process kept cycling. An analysis of locking mechanisms. The frequency of the guard’s foot patrol she’d counted on the way in. The chemical composition of the industrial cleaner she could smell.
It wasn’t a plan yet. It was a fossil of a thought. But it was hers.