Chapter 2: The First Mark
The salve had worked. That was the first thing Anya noticed upon waking in the predawn greyness of her cell. The deep ache in her muscles was a manageable throb, not the seizing agony she’d expected. The cool gel had smelled of mint and something chemical, and it had seeped into the bruises, blurring their edges. It felt like a betrayal, this small mercy. It made yesterday’s trials seem like a legitimate lesson, not just brutality. She hated that.
She reported to the mat at 0500, her body moving with a new, grim familiarity. Geralt was already there, sipping water from a plain metal canteen. He looked at her, his gaze scanning her posture, the way she held herself. He gave a slight, approving nod that felt worse than a reprimand.
“Follow,” was all he said.
He didn’t lead her to an open mat. He walked towards the center of the vast training floor, to a raised dais she’d noticed but avoided looking at yesterday. It was a stage. On it sat a single piece of furniture: a bench. It was upholstered in black vinyl, worn smooth and shiny in patches. It had sturdy legs and unmistakable, angled supports for knees and wrists. It looked clinical and utterly obscene.
A low hum of activity continued around them, but Anya felt a pocket of silence envelop the dais. Cadets did not look directly at it. Instructors gave it a wide berth. It was the heart of the room, and everyone pretended it wasn’t there.
“Up,” Geralt said, his voice devoid of inflection.
Her feet were blocks of cement. The cold from the polished concrete floor leached up through her thin soles. She stared at the bench.
“Anya.” Her name, from him, was a command. “Now.”
She climbed the two shallow steps onto the dais. The vinyl of the bench, when her fingers brushed it, was cool and slightly tacky.
“The objective today is not pain tolerance or physical control,” Geralt said, his tone the flat, instructive drone he’d used with the staff. He walked around the dais, not looking at her, addressing the air. “It is psychological acclimatization. The dismantling of a specific kind of shame. The body’s responses are physiological facts. Heart rate, respiration, skin conductivity. Shame is a story the mind tells about those facts. We edit the story.”
He picked up a tool from a small, wheeled cart she hadn’t noticed. It was a flogger. The falls were long, thick strips of black leather, neatly trimmed. It wasn’t the cruel, biting thing she’d imagined. It looked heavy. Practical.
“Remove your tunic.”
The air in the massive room didn’t change, but to Anya, it vanished. She couldn’t draw breath. Her hands, at her sides, clenched into fists.
Geralt waited. He didn’t repeat the order. He didn’t threaten. He just stood, holding the flogger loosely, his blue eyes on a point somewhere past her shoulder, giving her the fiction of privacy in this exposed, mirrored place.
The seconds stretched. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird. She thought of Richter’s cold smile. She thought of the word ‘efficiency’. With fingers that felt numb and clumsy, she found the hem of her standard-issue grey tunic and pulled it over her head. The cool air touched her skin, raising goosebumps. She folded the garment, a pointless, automatic gesture, and set it on the corner of the cart.
“Position yourself over the bench. Knees on the lower pads. Wrists in the cuffs. Do not fasten them.”
Each word was a precise step into a nightmare. She moved, the vinyl cold against her knees through her fatigues. She leaned forward, her torso settling onto the padded slope. She placed her wrists into the wide, padded leather cuffs. They smelled of old sweat and disinfectant.
“Good.” His boots sounded on the dais as he moved to stand slightly behind and to her left. “The first stimulus is the postural exposure itself. Note your breathing. Note the urge to cover up. That is the story. Observe it. Then let it pass.”
She was trembling. She couldn’t stop it. The mirrors around the room reflected her back, pale and vulnerable, the line of her spine, the sharp angles of her shoulder blades. Dozens of Anyas, half-naked and strapped over a bench. She squeezed her eyes shut.
“Open your eyes.” His voice was closer now, a low murmur near her ear. “Watch. You need to see there is no monster here. Only a process.”
She forced her eyes open. In the mirror directly ahead, she saw his reflection. He stood poised, the flogger in his right hand, his face a mask of focused detachment. He looked like a technician about to calibrate a machine.
“The impact will be measured. It will sting. It will cause a flush. It will not cut or bruise beyond the superficial. The purpose is to associate the sensation with instruction, not with terror. Ready?”
She couldn’t speak. She gave a microscopic nod.
The first stroke fell.
It was a crack that echoed more in her mind than on her skin. The sensation was a broad, hot bloom across her upper back, followed by a delayed, deep sting. She jerked, a gasp ripped from her throat.
“Note the shock,” he said, his voice still that calm, unbearable murmur. “The body’s alarm. Now note it fading. Watch.”
In the mirror, she saw the reddened stripes appear on her skin. They looked dramatic, angry. But the pain was already dissolving into a warm, throbbing heat.
“Again,” he said.
The second stroke landed just below the first. This time, she was ready for the sound, the initial bite. She still flinched, but the gasp was quieter. The heat spread, merging with the first.
“Your body is learning the pattern. The rise, the peak, the fade. It is a wave. You are not drowning in it. You are observing it.”
He continued. A rhythm established itself. The crack of the falls, the bloom of heat, his low, analytical commentary dissecting her every reaction. He didn’t praise her for not crying out. He simply noted her decreasing flinch response, the gradual slowing of her breath.
“The shame story,” he said, pausing, the flogger resting at his side, “is that this is a degradation. The edited story is that this is a neurological recalibration. The stimulus is neutral. Your narrative is the variable.”
Another stroke. This one landed lower, across the crest of her hips. A new kind of sting, sharper. A sound escaped her, a small, choked thing.
“That sound,” he said, leaning in slightly. His shadow fell over her. “That is a physiological response to surprise. A release of breath. It is not a sob. It is not a plea. Do not label it as one.”
He was dismantling her, piece by piece. Not her body—her interpretations. He was offering a new, cold vocabulary for her own experience. It was somehow more invasive than the leather.
“Now, the next phase.” He put the flogger down. She heard a soft rustle. “I am going to place my hand on the center of your back. The purpose is to assess muscle tension and skin temperature. That is all.”
His bare hand settled between her shoulder blades. His palm was warm, dry, and impossibly large. The contact was so simple, so devoid of violence after the flogger, that it was jarring. Her skin prickled under his touch.
“You are holding tension here. In the trapezius. Deliberately release it.”
She tried. The muscles felt locked.
“Breathe in. Hold. Now, on the exhale, let the weight of your torso sink into the bench.” His hand pressed down gently, firmly. “There.”
Something in her back unlocked. A tension she hadn’t even been fully aware of seeped away. It felt like a defeat.
“Good.” He removed his hand. The absence of his touch felt like a new sensation. “That is the end of the drill.”
He stepped away. She heard him returning the flogger to the cart. She didn’t move. The heat in her back pulsed in time with her heartbeat. The exposed coolness on her skin was now just a temperature, not an indignity.
“You may get up.”
She pushed herself off the bench, her movements slow, stiff. She reached for her tunic, pulling it over her head. The fabric whispered over her sensitized skin, a new layer of sensation. She faced him.
His expression was unreadable. He picked up his canteen, took a sip. “Report to Station Three for flexibility training. Dismissed.”
She turned to go, her mind a static hum.
“Anya.”
She stopped.
He wasn’t looking at her. He was wiping down the bench’s vinyl with a cloth from the cart, a mundane, cleaning-up gesture. “The story you tell yourself about this,” he said, his voice so low it was almost lost in the gym’s ambient noise. “That’s the only thing they can’t actually control. Choose a useful one.”
She walked off the dais, her legs steady. The eyes of the other cadets and instructors seemed to slide over her, not seeing her. Or seeing only another subject who had completed a drill. The mirrored walls showed her reflection—a girl in grey, her hair mussed, her face pale but composed. The red marks on her back were hidden now. They were just data.
She moved toward Station Three, her body operating on auto-pilot. The ghost of the flogger’s heat mingled with the memory of his hand, a clinical pressure. He was right. It had been a process. A terrible, degrading, horrifically logical process.
And the most dangerous part was, she understood it.