After being submerged in the water several more times until his lungs felt as if they could burst, Janake asked Mill, “Are you going to start being honest with me?”
Mill tried to fabricate more information. This time he claimed he didn’t know the name of the village they were to attack but it was the one nearest to Still Creek in the sunsetward direction and that they planned attacking in probably less than ten days from the previous. For reasons that Mill couldn’t discern this lie apparently had more of the ring of truth to it and Janake brought the repeated drowning to an end. He asked for more information and Mill continued to fabricate, aiming for plausible vagueness and apparently succeeding.
Janake told him after hearing all of this, with a conspiratorial smile, “Here you were telling me that you know nothing, and yet, with the proper incentive, we find that you really actually know quite a lot. In fact, the more you tell me, the more convinced I am that you really are holding back vast stores of information.”
Janake then turned Mill vertical and had the guard remove him from the ring. Water dripped from the entirety of his body and he was breathless and tired. The cold water had aggravated the wounds on his back, which now stung with renewed freshness. The guard helped him out of the room, while Janake told him, “That’ll be enough for today. As reward for your cooperation, we’ll give you a break. But we will be back tomorrow to continue and hopefully conclude this interrogation.”
The next day when Mill was brought into the room of interrogation, Janake again tied him to a chair, but this time he tied his hands in front of him and inserted his two thumbs into a small screw press that was placed over the knuckles of both of his thumbs.
“This one is really just a variation of the head press and the knee press,” Janake said as he turned the screw so that two wooden plates were pressed snuggly around his thumb-knuckles, “The people who design these instruments of torture aren’t really all that creative. This one here will break your thumbs, if we have to continue tightening it for too long. So, if you want to retain the use of your thumbs, I suggest you cooperate. Right now I want you to tell me as much as you can about the Omnian strategy of conquest? What regions are they trying to conquer? How many soldiers do they have allocated for these missions? Is it one dedicated company or several? Are these troops active in and around Middle Park and Winter Park at present or have they returned to Sanlosslee Park? How are they in communication with Lamosa? Is there a line of communication?”
Mill gave what he thought would be plausible answers to some of these questions, but after a few sentences of hasty, stuttering confessions, Janake asked the guard to tighten. The guard reached down and gave the screw a firm twist while Janake looked away. The pain slowly rose in severity until it was at the threshold of Mill’s tolerance. The two wooden boards pinched his thumbs like the clamp of a strong jaw. Mill started to panic as the anticipation of even more severe pain overwhelmed him.
He tried to answer Janake again, tears now streaming from his eyes, but Janake wasn’t pacified, and another turn of the screw was applied while Janake cringed. Mill now screamed with pain. But the pain didn’t stop, it was steady and unremitting and only grew worse as the moments passed. His bones were nearly at the point of being crushed and Mill desperately tried to persuade Janake that he was telling the truth.
“I like that you’re talking,” Janake told him, “But I don’t like that you’re still lying to me.”
Mill made some minor variations in the fabrications he provided and to his great relief these seemed to pacify Janake, who told the guard that he could loosen it a little. Janake, though, still hadn’t had all his questions answers, and he repeated them. Mill struggled to fabricate plausible lies.
Afterwards, when Mill was deposited in his cell, he rested his body on the floor and began to cry. His thumbs were in pain and moved only with difficulty, but they hadn’t been broken. He could only barely sleep in a light doze.
He was roused from sleep by the sound of a heavy weight being pounded against the door of his cell. He was terrified of whatever it was out there and recoiled to the far end of his tiny cell, quivering with fear and crying profusely once again.
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