Ch.212Your Time Is Gonna Come! (5)

#212

No one volunteers to be the first to raise their hand for electric torture.

Dexter couldn’t help feeling tense every time sparks flew from the jumper cables in the man’s hands.

“At first, just a little taste…”

As he said this, the man giggled while turning the dial to adjust the voltage.

‘Why is he enjoying this so much?’

There’s a saying that to become an expert, you need to be obsessed with what you do, but the man in front of him just seemed insane.

When Dexter showed no signs of tension or fear, maintaining a composed demeanor, the man holding the jumper cables addressed him.

“The General is extremely angry because of you. Hehehe… Nothing to say?”

“…What is there to say.”

He could have immediately said something like “I’ll kill you if I see Olivia,” but he deliberately held back.

It was clear that if he stood defiantly in front of the torture device, the man would increase the voltage, making it more painful for Dexter.

‘Better to just get through this.’

Dexter stared at the man with a hardened expression and said nothing beyond his initial response.

“Do you see that camera in front?”

In front of Dexter was an office chair, and on that chair sat a small camera.

“The General is watching you through this camera. Specifically, he wants to see you crying and suffering in pain… how should I put it? He wants to see you desperately clinging to life before eventually begging me to kill you instead.”

“…What sick taste.”

“Let’s just say it’s a hobby only those with power can afford.”

The man giggled in response to Dexter’s criticism.

‘It really is sick taste. What, he wants me to desperately cling to life and then beg to be killed? Is he crazy?’

While internally cursing the General, Dexter kept a close eye on the man’s actions.

Unaware of Dexter’s thoughts, the man attached adhesive electrodes—the kind used in hospitals—one by one to Dexter’s chest.

Then he let the wires connected to the electrodes hang down and giggled.

‘Why does he keep laughing? Is he an idiot or a sadist?’

“The electric torture I’m going to perform has five levels in total.”

“……”

“Level 1 will be painful. But everyone who’s been through electric torture easily endures it.”

Dexter listened to the man’s sudden explanation with suspicion while remaining vigilant.

“From Level 2, you’ll start screaming. Naturally, weak people spill information freely from this level. They don’t want to suffer anymore.”

‘He talks too much.’

“Level 3. From here, even so-called experts raise both hands and feet in surrender, and some would sell their own wives. Still, there are crazy ones who don’t talk.”

The man giggled and then stared at Dexter, holding up four fingers.

“Level 4. By this point, some make up information that doesn’t exist, or they’re prepared to die. At this stage, I’m not torturing for information anymore.”

With gleaming eyes, the man looked at Dexter, smiled, and slowly made a throat-slitting gesture.

“I just find this moment entertaining.”

‘This guy really is a psycho.’

Dexter clicked his tongue internally.

‘Someone like him must have worked at a torture-specialized agency and got fired for being excessively cruel.’

The government wouldn’t tolerate torturing innocent people, but judging by his step-by-step explanation, he clearly had extensive experience.

When Dexter showed no reaction and just stared at him, the man giggled again.

“Level 5… well, can you endure until Level 5? Or will you die before that?”

‘I’ll put a hole in your head before that.’

As Dexter gritted his teeth internally with a hardened expression, the man turned around and spoke.

“Well then, let’s begin now.”

The man bowed his head toward the camera, then crossed the jumper cables once more to create a spark.

-Crack!

“Hehehe. Very good, very good.”

‘Psycho bastard.’

Dexter looked at him with disbelief.

At the same time, in Jupiter’s captain’s quarters.

Sitting on the luxurious sofa in the captain’s quarters, Olivia was watching the monitor while drinking liquefied Negative from a wine glass.

Dexter Hughes, who had gone beyond being detestable to becoming someone she loathed, was hanging from the ceiling, about to be subjected to electric torture.

Fortunately, she had received news that an unidentified drone was detected by patrol drones.

She immediately ordered the unidentified drone’s signal to be traced, and they found a wireless signal in the nearby mountains.

Eventually, they found them.

Dexter Hughes’ group had been hiding, watching the base.

‘Foolish Dexter. Did you inherit your great-grandfather’s genes strongly? He really did love women.’

Sitting in Jupiter’s captain’s quarters—essentially Howard Hughes’ legacy—Olivia looked at Howard Hughes’ portrait hanging next to the door.

It was an oil painting of a young Howard Hughes with what Olivia considered a ridiculous mustache.

“Your legacy will become a means to destroy the Earth you cherished so dearly.”

After saying this, Olivia swallowed her next words.

‘Don’t you think your great-grandson should know how much I suffered because of you?’

In the monitor, the jumper cables in the man’s hands were approaching Dexter Hughes.

Then they touched the electrodes.

-Crackle!

[Kuhuk…!]

Dexter Hughes began to writhe, but being suspended from the ceiling, he couldn’t escape no matter how much he struggled.

What is the psychology of someone who knows that inescapable pain follows despite struggling to avoid it?

‘It’s unbearable…’

But when she thought of herself not as the victim of torture but as the one inflicting pain, her feelings were different.

Literally, it was ‘electrifying.’

[How does it feel? Hm?]

[……]

On the monitor, Dexter Hughes merely looked down with his teeth clenched, letting out pain-soaked groans.

The man in front of Dexter was a professional torture technician.

As the man had kindly explained to Dexter, he was a CIA agent.

He had spent time at Guantanamo Bay, becoming skilled at extracting information by torturing countless terrorists and criminals.

As Dexter had guessed, he had been fired from the CIA a few years ago for his excessively cruel torture methods and induction processes, and by chance, he came to work under Olivia.

‘Any information, when entrusted to that man, would come out easily…’

But could he make Dexter Hughes, who constantly interfered with her work, declare defeat?

Olivia became curious about that.

[You’re holding up quite well? If you had been my colleague at the CIA, I might have even praised you.]

[……]

However, there was still something unsatisfying.

Dexter Hughes was only showing reactions of enduring pain, otherwise keeping his mouth shut and his head down.

It seemed like a firm decision, as if Dexter Hughes was determined not to show his expression to Olivia.

‘Can he make such a decision even when soaked in pain until death?’

Even if the same blood flowed in them, it was an unforgivable act.

‘As much as I received.’

Olivia drank the liquefied Negative in one go and stared at Dexter Hughes in the monitor.

‘Shouldn’t you experience it too?’

* * *

‘How many molars have I broken?’

Dexter was checking his teeth with a tongue that wouldn’t move well.

His throat was rough, and the taste of blood was slowly spreading throughout his mouth. From the moment he started smelling burnt flesh from his body, Dexter glared at the man in front of him.

“Did I say that earlier? That it would have been good if you had come to the CIA.”

As the man had predicted, Dexter was enduring for quite a long time.

He was already approaching Level 3.

Under electric torture so strong that an ordinary person might have already died, Dexter was merely enduring the pain.

There was only one reason Dexter was enduring the electric torture.

‘This bastard doesn’t give me an opening.’

He wanted to kill the man who was so skilled at administering electric torture that he could make him lose consciousness at any moment.

But the opportunity hadn’t come yet.

“Congratulations to you.”

“……”

“You’ve been given the chance to taste Level 4, if only briefly.”

“…You crazy bastard.”

“Thanks for the compliment.”

The man giggled and savored Dexter’s insult despite it.

‘Well, when a torture subject curses, it’s just like a reward.’

It was a mistake.

At times like this, he shouldn’t have shown a strong reaction.

Dexter swallowed the pain he felt throughout his body and pulled on the chains restraining him.

He had felt the ring loosening and shaking whenever he thrashed about from the torture.

‘This could be my chance.’

If he thrashed a little more, if he endured a little longer, an opportunity might come.

‘I’ll really endure it.’

Just as Dexter was steeling himself, the man turned the dial on the machine to increase the voltage.

-Whirrrr…!

As soon as he raised the voltage, a high-frequency sound emanated from the rapidly spinning machine, and seeing this, Dexter cursed internally.

‘This fucking bastard, really.’

He seemed to be raising it randomly rather than moderately.

‘I’ll endure it somehow, through sheer will and toughness.’

The man brought the jumper cables to the electrodes on Dexter’s chest once more.

The strong electric shock was felt as soon as they made contact.

“Kuaaah…!”

It was so strong that his mouth opened involuntarily despite clenching his teeth.

“This scream!”

The expression of the man bringing the electrically charged jumper cables to Dexter’s chest was one of ecstasy.

“Electric torture really is the best!”

At the moment when the man’s laughter and Dexter’s screams mixed and echoed throughout the room.

Dexter shook his body violently.

Partly because he couldn’t bear the pain, but also because he was hoping the restraining ring would come loose as he thrashed even more forcefully.

‘Come loose!’

-Shake shake.

“Wahahahaha!”

‘Come loose!’

-Shake shake shake.

“Wahahahaha!”

‘Please come loose!’

-Shake shake… creak.

When an unnatural sound came from the ring securing the chains, the man who had been laughing maniacally momentarily removed the jumper cables from Dexter’s chest.

“Wait a minute…”

While the man hesitated, Dexter grinned.

“You bastard!”

Dexter grabbed the chains and lifted his lower body.

Then he placed both feet on the ceiling and pulled on the ring.

-Crack!

The ring came loose from the ceiling.

The man still couldn’t respond to the sudden turn of events.

This was his chance.

As the ring that had been supporting him came loose, he was about to fall to the floor due to gravity.

“Hap!”

Dexter half-turned in mid-air and landed safely.

His hands and feet were still bound, but Dexter used that to his advantage.

Grabbing the long chains binding his hands, Dexter swung them forcefully from left to right.

“Whoa!”

The man barely avoided the chains, but Dexter wasn’t simply trying to attack by swinging them.

Dexter rotated the chains several times and then launched them toward the man’s neck.

The man couldn’t block the chains due to the synergy of their weight and the velocity generated by the rotation.

Like a hunting tool used by indigenous people called a “bola,” the chains wrapped tightly around the man’s neck.

“Kuk, kukk. Wh-what is this.”

And as he pulled the chains strongly in that state, the man lost his balance and fell to the floor.

The man, who fell along with the chair on which the camera was placed, tried to pull at the chains wrapped around his neck to loosen them, but they wouldn’t easily come undone as they were intertwined.

Watching the suffering man, Dexter grinned and searched through the man’s pockets.

Then, finding the key to the locks restraining him, he freed his hands and said:

“Well, let me give you a question.”

Dexter grabbed his slightly hoarse throat and cleared it.

“What am I going to do to you now?”

“Wh-what?”

“Option 1, beat you to a pulp.”

With those words, Dexter tore the man’s clothes.

However, he focused on tearing the lower garments rather than the upper ones.

After tying the man to the chair that had held the camera using the chains that had bound him, he removed the disposable electrodes from his chest and attached them to the man’s groin, then continued:

“Option 2. To save electricity, I turn off this machine and prepare to go home.”

“…What?”

Dexter picked up the jumper cables from the floor and turned the dial on the machine.

-Whirrrr…!

The machine began to emit a strong high-frequency sound as if it might break down, and it even started to vibrate intensely.

It was Level 5, the maximum output the machine could produce.

“…!”

“Your reaction is different from before.”

The situation had reversed.

Dexter crossed the jumper cables.

-Bang!

Instead of the “crack” sound heard until now, a “bang” sound was heard.

Feeling a strong shock that seemed to flick his hands, Dexter chuckled and then said to the man:

“Our friend. Congratulations, you’ve won Level 5.”

The man trembled at the thought of the pain he was about to endure and said:

“At this rate… we’ll all die!”

“We’ll all die?”

Dexter slowly approached the man and said:

“Only you will die.”

Dexter applied the jumper cables to the electrodes connected to the man’s groin.

-Cracklecracklecrackle!

“Mr. Tesla, are you watching?”

“Aaaaargh—!!”

“Your alternating current experiments have come to this.”

It was a nonsensical joke that had nothing to do with Tesla’s alternating current experiments.

Ignoring the man’s screams, Dexter grabbed the camera on the chair and spoke into it:

“Olivia.”

Dexter grinned.

“See you soon.”

Dexter smashed the camera forcefully on the floor, breaking it, then kicked down the door and went outside.

The man’s agonized screams echoed outside the room.

‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’

The ancient law had always been right.