The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 6: Tidal Cove]

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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The Countess stirred, gingerly rotating her shoulder and neck where Wrath's brutish fists had done some damage, before the scrabbling of steel claws on concrete were audible in the intermittent darkness. The clacking shifted in pitch as her fingers met, then smashed, through a porcelain sink. She scooped up the pieces, flashing bone-white in the flickering pulse from beneath the door as it strobed across the floor. The shards were swallowed up, ground to powder upon the vicious teeth; the dust assimilated in the slag as the other hand busied itself probing, plucking and generally teasing out the buckled cogs and warped pins.

Downing those too, the Countess stood with a more leisurely roll of her head, and tried the door. It didn't open, but anybody not in a wild panic could've figured eventually it opened inwards. The lack of a doorhandle also may've worried lesser folk, but the Countess just jammed her talons in there and pried the thing open.

The pulsing light wasn't coming from the next room, which was a dead-end hallway leading to three tiny cells, one of which the Countess had appeared in. The pathetic bulb which hung at the corridor's end was dim, but persistent.

No, the strobe was, in fact, coming from the door opposite the Countess' - so bright it was unsatisfied with scarring the retinas of its own room's inhabitants and went muscling its way into others. Either way, it was bright. A nagging feeling of familiarity with this place failing to disappear, the amalgam examined three dials by the door, fingering a grate which amply covered a slit in the thick steel. The first two dials were set pointing perfectly up; the last one scaled down to zero (though all were unmarked, and their colour had faded with age). Curious, the Countess flicked the hatch and peered into the awful excuse of an intimate dance club, before twisting the first dial to its high setting.

Oh, she thought, as her lenses scrolled out of the way, the actual sensors emitting a huff of ash before they reconstructed themselves, that one's brightness. Ducking forward and flicking that to a smoother blend of dark and light, she twisted the next dial, this time using a little more discretion. Through the gaps, the Countess saw the pulse's frequency increase, melting into an epileptic blur. She toyed with the dial for some time, stopping only when a strained moan could be discerned above the constant flicker-click of the strobe light.

The Countess lowered the levels to something more manageable, and managed to discern a prone human form. Studying it for a long hard moment, she reached out, placed her fingers upon the final dial, and slowly turned it up.

At first there seemed to be no change, but about one third of the way up the prisoner's demeanour changed. He struggled up into a sitting position, finally turning to the door, seeing the inhuman eyes staring back. His sleepless, emaciated features pleaded at the Countess, who simply kept raising the level. The man's look of desperation morphed into horror, and the strains of the torturous song finally greeted the Countess. It was an unmelodious, grinding piece whose inane, drawled lyrics of love and environmental responsibility were at awful odds with the mad, monochrome scene playing out in the cell.

The Countess raised the volume until the man's sobbing and screaming couldn't be heard any more. She shut the hatch with a snap, and departed the grim little corner as she tried to find her way out of the walking tour reconstruction of the prison.

Steel feet clattering down a carefully confident path, the Countess finally pushed open a barbed-wire topped fence and stood beneath... well, it wasn't concrete. A ceiling, located an indeterminate distance above whose only qualifier was "very high up". Still, she recognised it.

The museum. The amalgam had been allowed to tread these hallowed grounds on less than three occasions, and each had been a twistedly delightful day to remember. It was with a little smirk the Countess realised, of all the weapons of cruelty and torture displayed in the Controller's extensive collection, the most torturous thing for the Countess was to have her too busy to savour it.

Snickering quietly with admiration for her master, the amalgam strolled with practiced grace down the center line, avoiding attracting the attention of any animatronic robots. As she passed an exquisite display of the final stages of Chinese Bamboo Torture, the first green shoots peeking through the victim's midriff, the Countess skittered and seized the clamp. She planted her feet a little more securely, ready for a fight, when,

“Hey, Countess. Don't bother to say anything...”

The amalgam had the good sense to not, as the twitchy Acacia finished her tirade.

“If you see Holly, shank the bitch me for me, will you?”

There was a moment of contemplation as the Countess considered divesting herself of this simpering facade for the first individual to take her seriously. Before she could offer the scientist a six-talon salute, she had sprinted off. The spider-woman gently placed the clamp on a display stand, and looked around for the right exhibit. A dank, medieval dungeon, a chopping block, and a coveted millstone in its backdrop. Concentrating pointedly on a few deep switches and gear shifts, a passable imitation of the Controller's voice intoned from the steel-trap jaws.

"Go and find some guests to entertain. I'll take care of this one."

The executioner appraised the machine, nodded, and stumped off with his axe. Wasting no time, the Countess scurried over to the whetstone and set it in motion, wincing a little as the inner edge of her index finger sharpened to a scalpel-sharp edge. The process was far from pleasant, and left her whole hand feeling rather raw and numb by the time she'd finished. Looking round the display, the spider shuffled forward, resting a solid foot on top of the condemned's skull and leaning over, slicing a clean line of red down the length of his spine. Beneath, as the Countess peeled back the exterior, it was not flesh and bone but steel and circuitry. The metal looked especially appealing the the clockwork surgeon, who was scoring gently across the ribs to facilitate their extraction.

Three ribs later, the condemned robot had quit struggling, and the Countess finally spotted Thane observing the procedure from some ways off. She waved a claw, and waited for the Old One to approach.