A MIRACULOUS JOURNEY WITH THOR AND HISSTORY — CHAPTER NINE

Thor was disregarded while Amiry Kinchell was whisked inside the bustling hospital emergency entrance. Admission was routine with pertinent data uploaded into the medical logs. After relevant questions were answered, she was transferred to a partitioned quarter. Thor pulled up a chair alongside her cot.

“It’s my fault.”

“I won’t have it. I was negligent.”

A nurse came forward, addressing him. “I’m Rogetta. What’s your name?”

“Thor.”

“Mrs. Kinchell, she’s your granny?”

“My friend.”

Amiry piped up, “Fairy godmother.”

Rogetta smiled, “I see. Thor, we need to attend to several details in private. A cafeteria is on the third floor. Why don’t you get a bite and come back in twenty minutes?”

“Good suggestion. Go,” Amiry insisted.

Rogetta reassured, “We’ll guard her while you’re gone.”

Thor stood reluctantly. “Anything you’d like?”

“Can you manage a smile?”

Thor tried to look cheerful.

“That’s a C. Fetch me an A.”

The gargantuan facility was a manifold maze of passages flooded with countless people bypassing the morose minor preoccupied with his teacher’s injury. Inattentive to mundane signs, Thor wandered the sanitized wilderness, eventually joining the congested crowd clustered round the passenger lifts. When the jaws yawned, the mouth was crammed to capacity. The human clutter expanded. A fortunate few jammed into the next yawn. The frustrated assemblage fanned out.

Claustrophobia convened. Thor became restless. Were there stairs? He noticed the blue light beyond the gathering, attracting him to elevators in a corner minus the human traffic, obscured by a prominent posting in ruby letters. Authorized personnel only. Violators will be punished. You trespass, we prosecute. One gaped automatically when he advanced. Not a plebeian passenger lift, the dingy belly beaconed for freight, except for the enticing ballad. Who’d care about a silly hop to the third floor? The arid area was deserted.

Thor passed the posting and entered, grazed the designated sensor, and stepped to the dimly-lit rear. The sliders began to shut – until gloved hands reached inside and clenched them ajar. Six officials wheeled a stretcher into the cavernous cavity, oblivious to Thor. A comely lass of ten summers with curly auburn tresses was strapped down, her hands clutching her ears, her mouth clamped shut, the pitiful case of a soundless screaming giraffe. The orderlies abutting her were accoutered like prison guards. One swiped the control panel. The ballad ended; a drone commenced. The elevator closed and descended.

With an impetuous jerk, the girl’s swift hand grabbed Thor with pleading eyes of deafening panic. The half-dozen heads darted to discover him nervously nailed to a corner behind them. The nearest aide wrenched the begging maiden’s blistering grip from his arm, shooting a sinister stare that hammered him into the impervious wall. A murky mix of repugnant reds effluxing from the sextet plastered Thor with angst, in contrast to the simpatico girl’s golden glimmer magnet. Revulsed by them, rallied to her predicament, how could he help?

The elevator jolted to a standstill on the basement level. Heads lurched forward. Sliders separated, spewing their innards bar a slender survivor. Police occluded the subterranean landing. The squad passed through the humming violet light. Thor rushed to the control panel and brushed the third floor sensor, but the condescending circuit snubbed him. Frantically he prodded every floor in succession, while the stretcher with the prone female rolled along the corridor lined with steel doors toward the black hole that buried her unknown fate.

The sneering elevator slammed shut like a Venus flytrap. A yellow light blinked. Thor spotted an imager ogling him from above. Behind rasped a jeering jangle. Revolving at the jarring sound, he saw the rear of the elevator suddenly open. He hadn’t suspected orifices at both ends. Imposing sentries blocked the exit with deadly, drawn weapons pointed at him. Their seas parted for stocky soldiers who advanced with aimed arms. 

The stern lieutenant stated, “Hands on your head. Come with us.” 

Flies ask no questions stuck in the web of a spider. The image of a giant tarantula would be better apt. This fly had accidentally roved into the realm heretofore mantled in the penumbra of his minuscule existence. Glimpses of tyrannical hell were no longer fleeting. Scoffing at the stationed sign, he had voyaged across the line. Thrust into the maelstrom of the despotism he and his companions had deplored, the jeopardized juvenile was now but a pathetic pawn speared on the playing field of a treacherous chess game.  

The motto was divide and conquer in the shrewdly stitched scheme of the rooted regime ensnaring Thor. Efficacious tools of tyranny welded the world into uniformity. No shared knowledge flitted across manipulated bureaus of cultivated isolation distilling man into the ossified ocean of obeisance. If fragments grew savvy to each other and cumulative employees garnered overall strategies, unrest would blossom and ensuing chaos would plow the garden of plotted society. With State ethos intact, insular soldiers knew a solitary fact – Thor was guilty. Multifarious shiftment in his preliminary deployment slashed the slimmest sliver of humanity threading him with his perfunctory handlers. Crime and punishment were not their affair. Once shuttled to their successors, he was washed from their craven claws calloused with the sterile soap of dehumanization.   

Interpolated between elastic-gloved military fore, aft, and lateral, the lanky lad was led along a prolix passage tracked by looming security scanners. Trailing escorts trained their firearms on the insect who had meandered into their midst. Stinging questions soured Thor’s stride. The portentous post, couldn’t he abide? He’d been tutored to toe the line. So why didn’t he heed that stupid sign? He hit the pedal to brake his turbulence. Room had run out to whine and pine. He could scarce afford reflection.

Thor was ushered into a well-lit, windowless compartment which featured a platoon of gloved guards decked in beefed-up combat fatigue, boots, and helmets. Vying for attention behind them was an ebony-colored, wrought-iron table rammed against the wall. Elaborate flourishes on its elegant top were obscured by an assortment of buzzing bronze containers and a single ornate gold tray. An unmarked door highlighted the far side.

The patrol departed, leaving Thor with the new bunker battalion. Under the protective auspices of counterpart sentinels targeting their captive, the tactical team interacted with him.

“Strip,” the commander instructed.    

“What?” asked Thor. 

“You heard him,” the second in charge barked. “Do as you’re told. Off with your cloth.”

“Why?”

“Standard operating procedure. We talk. You peel. Butt naked. We won’t ask again.”

The pigmentation-shy youngster felt palpably vulnerable as he shed his apparel under their scornful scrutiny. While he disrobed, the lead procured from one jar twin pairs of glowing orange and purple striped gloves, tossing a set to his second. Their specially-crafted fabric played an integral role in shielding police who apprehended prisoners bearing tactile influence, a rare but venomous trait that led to escape. Touching detainees without them was taboo. Caution was the prime policy when engaged in physical contact.   

Both guards snapped into place their doctored, double gloves, raising the tension, heightening the hum. Thor’s heartbeat accelerated. Throughout the ordeal, his singular succor was the sagacious stash of the pendant back at the Institute. His garments were snatched and unceremoniously dumped into the largest pot. When the smallest canister was uncovered, he became dizzy, oscillating unsteadily until it was capped. Five whirring balls of copper light were retrieved and stretched across the elongated tray forming thin rings. The peculiar lucence replicated the character of a solid metallic chain in its mannerisms.     

 “Don’t move,” the central guard growled, dangling the longest ring aside the immobile youth’s cervix. The coil smacked Thor’s pallid skin, noosing his neck. When the devious double-gloved hands withdrew, the calculating collar automatically compressed, ruthlessly digging into his flawless flesh. Buttoned and branded by this simulated badge of burden, Thor grimaced.

  With methodical deftness, the dual dominators alternated wrapping wrists and ankles in identical fashion, unperturbed by his pallor. Sharp nausea surged when the fifth and final yoke clamped. His eyes clouded. Seizing his epidermal extremities, the completed closed circuit of the competing alien current neutralized his own. Electric jolts that were kicked into gear induced subservience with the tingling efficacy of an odious truth serum, while the meshed power blocker circuitry nulled his natural abilities. Fluttering lids flushed his vision, but what had fled? Zapped were the menacing hues emitted by the grim guards. The minatory manacles had barricaded his aptitude for auras.

Thor couldn’t grasp how light and sound, so holy to him, had pivoted to the profane in bowing for them. Sensory shaving from the severing straps outweighed his physical shearing. He had not felt stark naked until then. How could they emasculate him like that? What did they actually know about him? He was going to find out, he reckoned. Fortifying adrenaline vanquished his vertigo. The denuded toothpick teen stood taller, his wits intact, astutely galvanized by his sheer impotence.

The vigilant vanguard stiffened in alertness to his innervated plucky posture, an aberrant behavioral reaction to the ringed acquiescence which took effect straightaway. His wrists were gruffly shackled behind his back. Cuffs cohered by grazing the inexplicable copper coils together which instantly gleamed tangerine. Thor winced. The far-side door creaked open.   

“Move,” the lieutenant intoned like the crack of a whip.

Through the threshold that led to a recondite route absent traffic, Thor strode lithely betwixt the nucleus of dual-gloved enforcers and flanking formation, who avoided direct contact. The rear convoy aimed their weapons at the undaunted lucid leopard who moved with majestic fluidity, fleeced of fur which had hitherto blurred his grace. Clipped wings did not crimp his agile feline gait, antithetical to the cramped, military-stilted march beside him.

Thor’s body language posed no pinch of saddling self-betrayal gaining velocity. The eye of the State is upon you. His parents’ caveat clattered in his ears. Be careful. Don’t draw suspicion. What an imbecile he’d been, from his idiotic antics in Amiry’s class to the puerile prank boarding a prohibited transport. Don’t forget you’re monitored. His pubescent snowball of unfolding calamity, girdled in a series of blatant blunders, abruptly crashed against this cage of catastrophe at journey’s end. He stared at the bleak blue lettering on the intimidating steel door entitled Styx. Rank raptors would employ any instrument to orchestrate control over him. Once you’re prisoner, your life is forfeit. Mental forte, his sole provision, could not be embroiled in inner strife or he would surely lose his life. Brace yourself; they won’t be kind. Was there a trap door he could find? His disciplined mind cinched his seat belt.

There’s no reprieve, no pardon, no parole. To what degree could he possibly flee? Where to procure a panoply? As the troop paused in the rainbow light cast by the glittering gateway, the stirrups kicked into Thor’s side. He closed his eyes to glide inside a mental portal. Propelled beyond thought into pastures permeated with pure energy, self-deprecation was gagged. Lifting his lids from these parcels of plenitude, harmony pervaded heart, mind, and body. The automated door of the grim reaper swung inward, beckoning his prey. I have no fear, the emboldened boy mouthed, ferried across Styx and descended into the diabolical domain of Hades.

Dubbed in arcane crypts, the infamous inferno was as proximate to the netherworld as could be reached in the living world. Relegated to an elite corps of insiders sworn to secrecy, its mention beyond shuttered borders of the confidential cabal was met with a swift boot off the planet. No loophole was in place for a parachute. In synch with the slogan, Extract from the mind what you fancy to find, nowhere on the globe was as glacial. The electric-prompted truth serum thrived on deprived degrees. The colder the climate, the quicker the extraction. Clumsy evasion was a bygone relic. Eliminated were belabored hours, unseemly days, maladroit months, and protracted years. Information demanded could not be denied; ne’er had susceptible subjects defied the rigors of the rings. Dunked in the crisp cauldron of carnage, the poor deplumed groveled within minutes or were classified immune.

The antiseptic arena obliterated Thor’s sensibility. The onslaught of arctic air avalanched his besieged breath into vapor. Terrible trembles racked his beleaguered body. His heart pounded zealously. The sickening smell of sulfur suffused his lungs. His tongue was singed with the putrid taste of acid. His head throbbed from the hum he heard. After motioning their hapless quarry to the unnerving navel of microscopic barrenness, the phalanx abandoned the broadsided boy in the buff, barred from the role of tribunal witnesses. Morale would take a hit, instigating psychoses. The thickly-padded loathsome lair, insulating bitter blizzard and muffling blood-curdling screams, was dim save the shivering figure stamped in spotlights of freezing adversity.

The eye of the State is upon you. Thor could not see a soul, but sensed hostile orbs. Restore your sentience. What was set into the springy floor beneath his feet? Touched by his toes was circular grating with holes reminiscent of a shower drain. His skin crawled. Fight the fright. The rows of spaced grills were obfuscated by the egregious glare frosting him. Unlike other light sources, he felt no radiance from the cruel luminance. Accost the frost. Baleful beings were waiting for an indication of his character. Thor did not demur in demonstration. He wanted to be the first to blink. Combat the cold. This would be his initial illustration of resistance, his pioneer line of defense, and the premier penury he had to conquer. Smart with precision, in command of his vision, he would blast enemy derision. His finely-tuned acumen fastidiously circumnavigated his flexible frame from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, primed for privation he expected to meet. Inordinate acuity terminated his violent tremors. The minor feat dispensed major satisfaction. Still and stoic he stood, throwing down the emblematic gauntlet. Both he and his watchers knew it.

From the adjacent heated chamber that spied on Thor, formidable officials congregated in front of the predominant one-way panoramic window, silently studying their captive. Though routine was the processing machine, the solemn adversaries corresponded in captivity, enthralled by their prisoner’s punctuated pulchritude. Poised beyond his years, the lissome leonine lad was a veritable alabaster Adonis in the austere luminosity, which accentuated the garnet highlights of his ruffled ebony hair, lush sinuous lashes, and viridescent eyes glittering like emeralds. Fascinating was the pearl luster of his pale nude skin. His native beauty blazed ethereal, lacquered by the grotesque brilliance. No other had resembled divine nor paraded adroit bravado bathed in the brisk draconian glacier.      

Remarks sundered the monopoly of silent fixation.  

“The shield’s activated.”

“Split the binding.”

Assent was unanimous.

Not privy to the discourse, but to the aftermath, Thor heard a crackle behind his back. The strictures holding his hands hostage deliquesced. Though still subjugated by the luminous manacles returned to their copper color, he could freely flex his stiff arms. Outstretched in relief, they skimmed a sleek invisible wall. He poked the durable barrier. It sparked with a pop and shrank, then sprang forward, behaving like conforming foam molded to cushion and contain, not meant to maim, as was the ductile floor, bouncing a tad where he toyed to tread. He curiously fingered the gnawing light band constricting his wrist. Teeth-biting spikes brutishly sank into his skin to induce retching. Sucked into a soup of acute nausea, he let go and vomited. The grinding emetic claws vanished. His queasiness dissipated.

The State voice of varnished vivisection rang out in the wretched winter wasteland. “A force field cocoons you. There’s no prescription for escape, and tampering with your trinkets is not wise as your tinkering has evidenced.”

Self-preservation is primal. Sonic syllables chiming their humanness customarily reduced bellowing shorn sheep, disarmed by the obsequious truth rings, to the state of bleating lambs scrounging to be snatched from the ghastly pen of glaciation. Not Thor, a rambunctious ram who dynamically disdained what he deigned capitulation. His parents’ foreboding echoed. Once you’re prisoner, your life is forfeit. If his life was forfeit, he’d dictate the terms. There’s no reprieve, no pardon, no parole. There’d be no mercy, so why ask? He scorned that temptation. Would they force him to freeze to death for the derelict deed of accessing a petty elevator? No justification could warrant this despicable abuse. Mute and motionless, the statuesque teen spurned the crass climate coating him, arms passive at his sides, firm feet planted wide apart should strength deplete or stamina depart, his stony visage unreadable, exuding that he was unbeatable.

Thor’s flint mask didn’t fool his sheltered assailants. The prim perimeter sheen of the stately sphinx couldn’t belie an impacted interior. How could he know the chains of light girding his extremities vacuumed his vital signs coupled with tabs kept on a cornucopia of cerebral functions? On parade and aloof in the observation booth, erratic heart rate, slatternly blood pressure, and labored oxygen level strutted conspicuously. Reaped was the whole gamut of emotions and reasoning. Measured were love, hate, joy, sorrow, anger, calm, fear. Calculated was intellect. Bracketed feelings were more trenchant than conveyed thoughts. His pulse could be tapped to perfection. Notes were consulted, comments were made, the volley concealed from Thor. Discussing data at their leisure, they watched him with pleasure for a weakness, the time to strike.

“Charismatic character. Outstanding class of caliber.”

“Coy cucumber. Precociously poised.”

“No meek minor. Militant. The makings of a wildcat.”

“Acts much older than thirteen, this bellicose boy.”

“Wired for combat. Contumacious.”

“He’s young, still fresh, an amateur. Could this portraiture be premature?”

“How does he buck the sound in the air?”

“Or the light in his eyes with the cast of its glare?”

“Or brave the cast-iron cold?”

“The circuit’s fallacious.”

“Not the case. The system’s working, but he’s immune as well as pugnacious.”

“An inchoate iconoclast outside the scope of indoctrination.”

“An abomination befitting the name of Thor.”

“An inauspicious forecast. Domestication stakes its claim.”

“Unlucky for him, the dictum’s plain. Noncompliance calls for rain.”

“It’s decreed he’ll bleed until he’s tame.”  

They shuddered as though a snippet of frost had seeped from the iniquitous inferno into their cozy confines.

Thor, crated in cold, yet clothed in conviction, stood stout in stature. Suddenly, he broke his vigil, shaking hands and feet to nullify the numbing nuisance of the wilting weather. The investigators caught the counteraction of dwindling endurance. The venal voice of satin suffused with saccharin struck.

“We know you’re distressed, Thor. The climate is standard protocol.”

At the utterance of his identity, the juggernaut juvenile resumed his rigid stance to spite their frigid air.

“We don’t wish you harm. You help us; we help you. Mutual cooperation, mutual benefit, joint profit, propitious result. We ask a few picayune questions; you talk and out you walk. Don’t make it tougher; you needn’t suffer. Understand?”

The tight-lipped teen was taciturn. He was boiling in anger from his inhuman freezing, and bogged down by the confrontation of an overpowering premonition which gummed him in a glue of inertia. His indignation that this brutalization was meted out to the multitude who wandered from the dictates of the satanic State outranked the complicity of the cold coercing him to cede to their behest. He recognized his summons into the presence of an evil virility, faced off with forestalling his presumptive death or sentence to servitude while he foraged for another option. The foreboding was another matter, a gut feeling that cooperation would be synonymous with apostasy. At stake was not only his life, but his soul. No explanation was offered to anchor him. He operated on blind faith in himself. They could bare his body, but not penetrate the cut crystal of his interior citadel.      

”If articulation is difficult, use your body as a signal. Exercise your head or hand, gesture your preference to gain our attention.” 

Thor remained soundless and motionless.

“Don’t you want to can the cold?”

The impassive minor kept mum.

“Intransigence has a consequence. If you refuse to communicate, we’ll pursue your acquaintances, Amiry Kinchell for starters.”

The appellation stabbed Thor’s heart. He flinched to repel the docile alien mood draining his resistance into rendered obedience induced by the tingling electric rings, but promptly regained comportment. Nonetheless, his duly-noted twitch gave him away. How quickly he’d been knifed by what they considered the overture of an abstruse weakness, his inborn nexus to the host of humanity, his oneness with every living being. His prescience persisted. So that’s how those inhumane play this indecent game, turning his humanism upon its heels to demoralize him, his loves and passions recruited to imbrute him. Strengths would be vivisected, then alchemized into an Achilles’ heel. They had already clipped his powers; his core would now be routed to their advantage, his words twisted to trap him in a travesty, the slightest movement of his body magnified toward his demise. 

The inexorable razor blade voice carved copiously into Thor’s breaking breast.

“Good. You remember the gracious, elderly woman you accompanied to the hospital. One of your teachers, isn’t she?”

The embattled boy did not budge in his staunch immobile bearing. Neither did the mobilized digging. The hum thumping his head intensified, as did the luminosity; his skin sparkled like sequins. The binding copper rings darkened to crimson. Deeper delved the execrable shovel abrading Thor’s exposed frame.

 “We view educators as accomplices who aid and abet your insubordinate conduct. You want to put that dainty patient through this?”

The stalwart stripling was an unflappable stickler.

 “Imagine her in your place, injured and fragile. How far will she fare, that aging wisp of a brittle woman? Think carefully, Thor. Her fate is in your hands.”

Thor’s slovenly vital signs bore no attachment to his immutable projection. With glassy eyes, he appeared in a trance. Daring the den of debilitation, his deviant discipline displayed not the tiniest hairline crack. Muscled into group formation, the edgy inquisitors were authorized to raise the stakes and sling the arrow into Thor’s heel. Their jobs were on the line.

“Have it your way, but you won’t have to imagine it. Let’s be frank and forgo formality. Don’t kid yourself, Thor, and don’t underestimate us. We’re not bluffing. The rule of law familiar from your schooling, regulations defined by your tutelage, customs adhered to by society, mores blanketing the land, axioms seasoning the variegated hues of your taffeta territory, these policy proprieties are not at play in this razor-edged turf upon which you perch. We have the power to haul in the entire spectrum of people you’ve met over the span of your thirteen years. Your recalcitrance is a wrecking ball that threatens to demolish your precious orphanage brick by brick and smash every single occupant. 

“Carefully consider the weight of your actions. If you don’t reply in ten seconds, you’ll observe Amiry Kinchell die exactly where you’re standing in ten minutes. She’ll be the first but not the last. In succession, you’ll witness a patulous procession of countless cohorts waving your flag plucked and frozen in blunt, brute force without lag, until none remain that knew you. Your hopes will dash with lives you trash. Your youth will wither, you’ll fast grow old, as legions you’ve touched turn to cold. No virtue will be extolled for the ages, but funereal whispers void of praises recited by saintly sages, garnered then groomed into prized pages leaked by pariahs. Broadcast from watchtowers as a warning, these scathing annals of ignominy will mushroom through history alongside vandalized victims entombed in vulgar vaults sabered with your insignia. Yours will be a grim legacy wreaked in havoc, steeped in grubby graveyards of devastation unless you act. This is not academic. It’s fact. Beware the countdown. Your clock’s ticking.”   

Thor’s portals brusquely sparked to life, startling them with a disturbing look not of expected loathing or hatred, but a panther’s unnatural pity. They veered in dismay, involuntarily receding from his eerie image in the window. He had seen this moment of inevitability. Primed for his personal suffering, he was not prepared to succumb to their sea of iniquity. For others to suffer on his behalf was intolerable. Stolid notes rose from his sturdy lips to lambaste the ethics of their fiendish federation.

“What a mockery of morality you make. My teacher committed no crime. She is not an accomplice. Is this your sanguinary creed, to satiate your thirsty coffers of vampire bowels with lifeblood and blistered bone hewn from murdered corpses of the iced innocents?”

Forced to match the pert prelude to a seamless psyche impenetrable, the vindictive voice of vilification mingled with molasses retorted, “What an eloquent misnomer. Blood sport our credo? No, Thor. Yours. You’re the bloodlust monster in our moral midst, mustering a malicious manifesto of inglorious murder. Bravery begets no medals here. Don’t be reckless; better fear, or you’ll slaughter that spectrum you hold dear. Procrastinate? Contemplate? Ruminate? Those days are gone. Don’t demur. Be ethical, cooperate, or strip your confederates and seal their fate. A modicum of manners can rescue the lofty league aligned with you from terrifying tablets of torment. Answer basic questions, none will be destroyed, and you’ll be released. Comprehend?”

“Cooperation isolates my head on your guillotine block?”

“Your concord exculpates your associates. Their sanctity is guaranteed by your palatable privilege to spare them bloodshed. That we swear. Henceforth, you’re the measly morsel on our meager menu.”

Thor quivered, reminded that this wasn’t the lone time he was mounted on a menu, but this was worse. The Calamity Cannibals craved his corporeal organs; the pernicious State craved his spiritual organs.      

“Fire away with your inquest.”  

“Do you understand the cause of your capture?”

“Do you?”

“You think we don’t?”

“Why are your elevators poky?”

Mild mirth seized the consortium, but mixed reaction ranged from admiration for his spunk to resentment for his audacity. The hospital elevators were notoriously sluggish by reputation, but Thor’s truism was an admission of guilt. Clearly, he knew he’d dodged the public and used an interdictive transport. His blatant defiance of authority was a threat to the ballast of the recreant republic.  

Hemmed with honey, the evocative voice responded. “You give us undue credit. We’re not liable for pedestrian lifts… only the freight ones. The restricted freight elevators, to be specific,” accentuated the alluring voice. “You admit your trespass of one brought you to this terminus?”

“I do not.”

“You don’t?”

“I don’t.”

“Then explain how you landed here.” 

“My destination was the cafeteria. The elevator was hijacked to this terminal.”  

“You admit you violated an off-limits elevator?”

“Why hamper hospital lifts? Shouldn’t they help, not hinder patrons of patients?”

“Let’s reiterate. We ask the questions; you answer them.”

“Am I not?”

“Questioning a question is not an answer in our vernacular.”

“It is in mine.”

“Our rules of engagement are in operation, not yours. Make no mistake, or our deal is off the dish. We’ll resume under that precept.”

Their opprobrious behavior incited Thor’s contempt. “We won’t.”

“What?”

“Our deal lacked that term. If you choose to digress and not progress, then strip, adorn these excoriating rings, and tackle me face to face. Level the playing field, and I’ll cede to your parochial rules of engagement. You decide going forward, new terms or old.”

Sugar shellacked the spiny voice that retreated from the stumbling block. “We’ll cede to the old, Thor. Let’s continue our dialogue. You admit you saw the post warning penalty of punishment?”  

“I saw a sign.”    

“You admit you deliberately disobeyed that sign?”

“I do not.”

“How not? Explain.”

“I was impulsive, not deliberate.”

“Do you accept culpability for your impulsiveness?”

“I’m s-sorry,” Thor professed in a stammer. “Is that what you want to hear?”

Crossfire converse inside the cold conniving cave of congress was diffusing Thor’s pillar of prowess that had reigned with his stubborn silence. As his opponents’ whipping waxed, the tide of his verve waned. The sloth of ice sliced at the seams of stamina supporting him. Caught off guard, he choked on the poignant concession, which spiked a nerve and spun out of orbit. He wouldn’t be stretched out on this concourse of corruption had he not careened from the common crowd.

The veiled voice of the vitriolic vice capitalized on the contrition of its vernal victim. A bombardment of leading queries chipped at Thor’s sabotaged strength, snagged by the solicited sermon serving the State. 

“We want to hear the truth. Tethered to that tenet, you are sorry?”

“I am.”

“You speak candidly?”

“I do.”

“Your apology is heartfelt?”

“It is.”

The measured minor acquiesced to the grilling with quavering vocalizations, his vehicle void of vim. His teeth chattered the affirmatives; his blitzed body trembled sporadically.

  “Excellent. Facile, wasn’t it? We’re done except for the penalty phase. Sentencing should be expeditious predicated on your punctual confession. Oh, since you acknowledged culpability for your impetuous infraction, you’ll voluntarily yield to your punishment, right?”

The voice of inveigling syrup cast a spell seductive in the saturation of frost. Regardless, Thor balked at the critical contrivance.   

“What’s my punishment?” he asked, his headstrong resistance resurfacing.

“Answer the question.”

“Answer mine.”

“You’re on record stating you were sorry. Did you mean it or not?”

“I meant it, but what’s my punishment?”

The prosecutors could see that, underneath Thor’s stonewall exterior, his promenading vital signs were attenuating. Jointly with the vested voice of the hammerlock State, the stranglehold chill moved in on the kill.

“There are no buts. Being sorry doesn’t commute your crime. Sorriness signifies consent to readily perform unconditional penance.” Heaped hypnotic, the viscous voice of vitiation slowed. “This is the crux, Thor. It boils down to one question. Are you truly repentant? If so, prove it. Denote your penitence. Bow to our court of judgment willingly. Gamely atone for your sin. Concede to your penalty. I repeat, are you truly repentant? Yes or no?”

Thor’s defiance faltered as his paroxysms proliferated. At the pivotal point when his energy ebbed to a novel lassitude, he succumbed to the insidious quiz, submitting to an unknown sentence with a loll of his languid head.

“Enunciate, Thor,” came the caressing command of the venatic voice.

A violent shooting shudder ricocheted his lethargy. “Yes,” he rasped.

The sated interrogators applauded Thor’s unequivocal surrender to their superior will. Plowed, pliant, and prosaic, the subdued stripling was no longer perceived as a peril to the imperium. Lathered in a lulling largesse was the vile vaunt of the victorious viper.

“Bravo. Prudent response. We appreciate your accord. Remorse for your crime and compliance to our court punishment bestows us latitude to be lenient. We grant you impunity. You’re being discharged.”

Thor was surprised. “I’m free to go?”

“Almost. Before you depart, we have one mere menial question.”

The veneered voice of the villain halted briefly. Thor’s intuition was tripped by trepidation.

“How did you access the forbidden elevator?”

Thor was relieved at the mundane probe, dismissing his dread as invalid.

“It opened. I entered.”

“That we know. What we don’t know is how you breached a proscribed transport. That is our inquiry.”

Thor was stumped. “I didn’t breach anything. The doors opened and I entered.”

“How did you open the doors?”

“I didn’t. They opened automatically.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Why impossible? That’s what happened,” Thor insisted, penned in perplexity and paranoia. Torpor in the wintry tonnage exponentially escalated his puzzlement.

“The doors open to authorized personnel. Shut is access otherwise. Are you authorized personnel?”

“You know my status better than I do. You tell me. Am I?”

“No, you’re not. That’s the paradox facing us. The doors remain locked to the unauthorized, to the public at large, including you. So we’re asking again, how did you do it?”

Corralled by confusion, the turbid teen grappled to understand the trend of their quest.

“How did I do what?”

“You’re a bright boy, precocious to a fault. Do you expect we’ll buy your flabby far-fetched phantasm that the doors opened without effort on your part?”

“I’m telling the truth, not selling a lie. The doors opened, and I stepped inside. Groundless is your feeble fantasy. Do you expect I’ll buy your lunacy?”   

“We believe you’re telling the truth. The doors opened, or we wouldn’t be having this chat. Our question is, ‘How did you force them open?’ Come clean, Thor. Fess up. What did you do? Spit it out.”

Thor’s foresight came to a clearing in the complex crypt of conspiracy. Ludicrous was their pretext or not? Had he inadvertently circumvented their security system, a faculty freshly unveiled? Though unsure of his possible skill, he was positive their nuanced inquisition had been camouflaged in trite trivialities to trick a concession of couched capabilities. The gusty revelation whipped up a haunting visceral draft that compounded the cubicle chill. Prescient phrases soaked in tribulation reverberated. Once you’re prisoner, your life is forfeit. There’s no reprieve, no pardon, no parole. Prospect of discovery moved him beyond measure. Terror of encagement enraged him. Rampant adrenaline reinvigorated the ransacked ram.

The fervid fighter was addicted to freedom, so essential his uncompromising loyalty, he would die in this penury before admitting an ability. Not death did he detest, but summerless servitude stitched with the purgatory of wintered despair did he despise. Cast down was the conundrum in the fading fog, foreshadowing the desinence of his odyssey. He spied the signpost of sorrow ahead. Not slated for survival, the oracle read. At hand lay the bottomless pit that couldn’t be navigated, not if he stuck to his sworn cardinal ideals. There was no weathering the stewing storm seeking to sweep from the shimmering shore the smoldering sewage the State scanned as Thor, but there was somber solace. This was to be a solo swan song, not shared by those he cherished, who could be bartered to suffer and perish for the sake of extorting his confession. The pliable pupil turned pugilistic. At all cost he trothed to fight their smoke screen of duplicity.  

“I did nothing.” The emphatic bee of boldness in his brassy timbre stung the winnowers whittling him.

“Your candor is courageous, but your caper won’t pass muster. We can’t release you until you answer honestly.”

Thor’s remonstrance was croaked with obstinance. “I have answered honestly. Why quiz my veracity? Where’s your proof to the contrary?”

“You may believe you did nothing. We’re willing to accept the premise that you rigged the doors unwittingly. Just stipulate to the possibility, and we’ll let you go. Where’s the foul in that?”

“What possibility?”

“That you hacked the doors.”

“Not possible. What of your hijackers? They had a trigger. They were authorized. Answer me that. Your doors malfunctioned or were activated by them.”

“Specious claims, Thor. We won’t accede to obduracy.”

“I won’t accede to your fallacy, a masquerade of absurdity. Unfounded is your crimination. Prevarication or fabrication, take your pick. Either way, a lie won’t stick.”

“Be safe, be sensible. You’ll be rewarded once you abide. Simply submit and out of here you slide.”

“Your gambit won’t pass muster. Mendacious claims of release won’t beguile me, nor will I kneel to spurious assertions. What you concoct is a mirthless comedy. I will not submit to insanity.”

“Don’t be swayed by caprice. Your folly will turn to tragedy. Listen to us; we supplicate. Comply or hazard your hardship to skyrocket.”     

“Baseless is your rant. You can’t prove my guilt. Your evidence is scant. Damned be your sham. Innocent I am, yet condemned with this meritless, merciless chill. Your conjured climate lusts to kill. Inflict what you will on your Faustian bill. I won’t recant my statement. I admit nothing. I submit nothing. I did nothing.”

Entrenched in tenacious turf, Thor pondered the backlash of the treacherous tribunal. He was about to glaciate. Could they further castigate?

The voice of voracious vandals vented its vituperation. 

“Your volition, Thor, not ours.”

Thor heard an overhead drone, distinct from the ever-present horrible hum. He glanced upward as a gentle sprinkling commenced. The compound of glitter and buzz lacked substance, until a searing drop sizzled on his shoulder, staggering him. Gentleness merely defined the free-falling fluid descent that gleamed on his refined skin, not its caustic collision. Light and slow, but relentless, drop after daggered drop dripped down his writhing bare flesh, penetrating his pristine pores in pelting, piercing needles of intractable fire sibilant upon contact. Simultaneously frying and freezing, Thor’s bruised body convulsed uncontrollably. He managed to stifle a guttural scream. Had he failed, the sound would have been stentorious, the sound of his defeat, the sound of his captors’ triumph.

“Permit the possibility. Say yes, Thor, and stop the rain.”

Drenched in demonic pain cruelly calibrated to drive him insane, Thor benched the vapid vixen voicing his name. A greater affliction he couldn’t presage. Alas, he erred, not sheltering his verdant gems of vision at the onset of the pluvious plague. Plural parasite projectiles plummeting him proffered no pittance of pity. His velvet eyelashes committed treason, manipulated by the misty maleficence. Multiple missiles tragically infiltrated their unguarded goal. Yanking his emerald jewels from their optical sockets would have been a merciful kindness in comparison to the jagged fury cascading down his delicate corneas, sharply escalating Thor’s anguish. Tightly clamping tainted lids was pointless. Blinking them rapidly was equally otiose. Rubbing them was worse than futile. In scarring seconds, the burning boy was blinded. Plunged into nigrescence, bereft of balance, he lurched.

“Reclaim the light. Nod. You have the capacity. Restore your sight. Give us an indication. Incline your head.”

The goo that gushed from the vexing voice of virulent vantage glazed Thor with the thickest ire. Robbed of sight, but robed in the might of an inner light, he forayed forward. Dismissing the dire umbra in his desolate dungeon of drastic demoralization, the undeterred votive valiant struggled to regain his equilibrium. Amidst the harshest, unmitigated deluge of dispatched droplets designed by the debauched democracy to dragoon him, the wiry, wobbly warrior woefully clung with unwavering ardor to his crucial cause of liberty. How he and countless disenfranchised were heinously treated scorched his psyche. Emotion he had suppressed bubbled in a fountain of paregoric fortitude. The empowered tensile teen burst the pertinacious blaze broiling his frozen flesh. Despite decay from frost and fire, Thor’s spasms ceased. Rebuffing the arctic abyss of atrocity, the mutilated minor summoned the stamina to stand erect, his flame rekindled, his stability returned, his lineaments lifted, his head held high.

Marauders marveled at mind over matter, but showdowns of will had no place on their exigent platter. Duty-bound with marching orders, they had no inkling of the ballast of this unseasoned recusant who had taken the bait and fortuitously strayed from the stable to be netted in their cross hairs. They knew the elevator could have been triggered by the sentries that followed upon Thor’s heels, but no disclosure would he be afforded. Aggressors were drilled to ensure those trawled were tested in the hopes a buried treasure would surface that the ministry could conscript. Required to measure the malleable metal of their run-of-the-mill offenders, it was apparent the hooked fish flopping in their dragnet bucket was no tepid, tender, timorous tadpole.

Pared to the pith in the enervating inferno, crispy critters cowed like stranded deer caught in the headlights, but no flummoxed fawn was the unflustered Spartan mettle of Thor, burnished like silver in the sweltry sun. Plucked of plumage and ripped of resources in the clammy corral courting attrition, the untamed spunky stallion, forged with sterner stock of luciferous steel, stampeded the gate and would not be bridled. Leveraging his herd to lasso him was a botched ploy by the bungling wranglers. Their systemic snafu spurred his sterling charge.

Thor’s gallant fling of valor versus their ferocious flogging was an effrontery to his accusers. Calcified in courage, his uncommon guts and grace blew a smokestack of felony in their face. He did not seem born of the human race. The prior premise that his intrepid will had been neutered was nixed. Not in the mainstream, the troublesome teen flaunted a criminal tributary of polluting contumacy. His was the fierce-fomenting, insurgent-tinged water that bludgeoned bulky boulders and razed mammoth mountains. Sowing rugged rows of sassy seed rife to metastasize with alarming anarchy, his resilient rebellion could rupture the status quo.    

Tabled was Thor’s germinal infraction as was covert pursuit of cloaked contraband attributes beneficial to the administration. Dipped into doubt was his dicey existence. If the malignant minor could not be roped, could he be permitted to flourish? Threats to national security demanded extermination of epidemic entities. Not the mightiest moon could eclipse the surly sun of the surreptitious State. Recycling his engine would be posthaste coalescent to their prurient taste. His battery would be drained. His blood would be drawn. His organs would be harvested without waste. They could not let succeed his incipient zealot breed. The verdict evinced no sign of strife; germane was the law to revoke his incorrigible life.  

Nevertheless, bloated bureaucrats, beset in bromides, were baffled by his bizarre behavior. What drove his modus vivendi to collude with their modus operandi decreeing his desiccation? Why decide to hitch his hide and lock the latch to doom this ride with a dank damsel of death designated as the demented driver? No maniac meltdown was manifest in his motley machinations. Not a mote of madness marred the meticulous manual monitoring his mosaic mansion. His mischievous mantra held imperative mesas they could not climb.

The rattling, ravenous rain was congealing on Thor’s glistening skin, caked in the corroding cell of slime. His silky smooth porcelain sculpture, exhibiting exquisite marble features chiseled by a master Michelangelo, virtually glowed by beauty pressed profound. His sketched exterior became encapsulated in etched ice. Despite his confiscated sight, the malignly-mauled lad marveled at the mesmerizing metamorphosis. Laced in limpid lyricism, he slid his frosty fingertips across a crystalline-encrusted arm. How beauteous the ice must be, this wanton wastrel ravishing me, the cadaverous creature I can’t deny, a malevolent maiden by which I’ll die. Would those he loved know the poetic verity of his pellucid sacrifice? What footprint on the terra had he left? Would it warrant a footnote in the manuscript of man? Would there be a fitting epitaph? What of his body, would it be dismembered? Would he even be remembered?

Wondering, watching, and waiting for a crumb of concession, the wordless wolves faltered in fascination, feasting upon a resplendent transfiguration. The fearless dignity he displayed resolutely withstanding abject agony rendered Thor in a pantheon unworldly. He would be better suited on Mount Olympus than a mortal on this sphere, which was why he drew a slew of suspicion with his stunning spectacle of shining opposition. The trenchant talons that gouged his savory sight had no dominion over the oyster harboring the polished pearl of his inner eye void of vilified values. Benighted though he be, lensed he was with a moral compass coated with integrity.

The stricken stripling strained against the gory glut of mounting toxic entropy to thrust his chin higher with stellar nobility, until gravity gutted his mobility. Numbed legs lost bearing and buckled his carriage, caged in the concrete crucible of corrosion. He sank to his battered knees, which hit the slick, sleet surface with a soft thud.

Seeped with soothing sympathy was the viscid voice of the vicious vulture.

“Lower your head, Thor. You can do it. End your ordeal. Show us a sign. A little nod. Save yourself.”

The adolescent buccaneer’s gutsy riposte to the rapacious regime was a paragon of regal valediction. The titanic vessel christened Thor was not their prey to pirate, plunder, and pilfer, but his property to pilot. Gracefully mooring his elastic back keeled in an arch above his anchored knees, unfurling sails of outstretched arms tilted toward the firmament, the moribund mariner steered the uplifted countenance of his heavens-headed hull squarely into the source of the torrential tempest. The debilitating drizzle of a diabolical, decadent reign torpedoed the nooks and crannies of precious cargo stowed in the orifices of his gaping mouth, nostrils, and ears. Mastering the helm in the squalid tsunami, the sightless, sinewy sailor tightened the deck screws to castrate the mutiny of his contorted crew and cross another river, this one the rigors of the Rubicon.

The voice of the siren did not forecast Thor would lash himself to an eternal mast. The spry, splendid seafarer was steadfast; the bile of bureaucracy could not get past. No perfidy would he allow to prostitute his pious vow. Varicose veins popped their violent vengeance. Mangled muscles in a muddle bulged their mordant morass. Torched tongue and thrashed throat bemoaned their throttled lifeboat. Looted lungs lacking oxygen lamented. Ocular orbs belched outraged blood from crushed, capsized capillaries. Heaving heart hastened in horror to hoist the jammed jetsam of harpooned organs heisted overboard. Foremost beyond the wrenching portrait of visceral cruciation was the torrid testimony of pathos tipped to his persecutors no monitor could elucidate. Unilateral, unconditional forgiveness spilled from his lacerated jade portholes laden with compassion.

No thunderbolt of acrimony did the lucent lionhearted lad hurtle, nor tincture of blame did he blast at his bewitched oppressors. Their template of imperial force, clocked with contrivance, could not prevail, stymied by his impregnable ironclad code. Planted in probity, he could brook to a point perforce, but not further float. How could they have mapped from the outset, the course of his inviolable river fluxing in the fullness of freedom? It would rather run dry than be bottled by a dismal dam of degradation with its cesspool stench of cultured coercion. Thus were his blighted, but bounteous waters tinted with amnesty absent animosity for their inveterate ignorance. No recrimination for their transgression sullied his spirit. His guileless forbearance granted no grudge nor accusation. Verily, he forgave their intolerance of his quintessence.  

Squandered was Thor’s clemency on sociopathic hearts of stone lacking humanity lost long ago. Cognizing the jettisoned juvenile was on the brink to be extinct did not rumble implacable rocks beyond redemption. What quaked their earth in epic proportions was his gritty tenacity, not deigned a virtue, but branded a vice. He was an obscene book they raided, the preface read with a consensus of dread. His herculean heroism did not stir a scrap of sympathy to spare his harrowed life from the blood-baking basin, but provoked undiluted savagery to annihilate the outlaw who agitated alarm. His seismic silhouette of magnanimity was a recipe for heresy that roused their heathen hostility. His consummate compassion invoked their primal fear to foreclose and smother to an end what their odium failed to comprehend. He’d be a foe bewailed forever, never to befriend. Termination of his tenancy in the landscape of the living topped the barbarian priority on their mercurial agenda. Crafted with cunning, poured with contempt, compulsive was the cutthroat cocktail in unison sent.

 A sublime icon of august rapture, the brawny boy bore the brunt of bibulous brutality to drink from the poisoned chalice with inebriated embrace. Transforming the tart truncheoned shards of toxic evisceration into a sanctified libation of liberation, Thor immolated his volant vessel with brash aplomb, skillfully repressing the urge to cough the consecrated elixir of newfound escape from hell. Bewildered blood pressure tanked. Hacked heart rate screeched. Befuddled breathing sputtered.

Still he suckled the brocaded bosom of self-destruction blemished with bitterly baneful misery. Rankled knuckles on icy hands clenched his turbulent ticket and parched passport to the silver-lined isle of sovereign salvation. The saucy, scrappy seaman was a tapestry of invincibility as he scuttled his sunny, summer ship beneath winter waves of preferred autonomy. He cleaved to his gruesome death of deliverance from perdition, awash in ascension to paradise. His shocking asphyxiation showcased no defeat. He gladly spent his corporeal self to save, not sell, his sacred soul. His shafted choir of vital signs sang that song in a shrill-belted ode of spelled-out specs to the tuned-out team, their sights set to snuff him.

The executioners neither spoke nor moved, enchanted by the undiminished celestial splendor of the denounced daredevil dictating his disciplined demise rather than station his surrender. No archetype to his thanatos theatrics was featured in the unprecedented footlights of their psyche. Not a slice of submission was cameoed. They couldn’t breach the bunker of his unorthodox brain. His noble stature, in transfixed show, proclaimed to the goliath government what he demanded they know. The apotheosis of purity would not be desecrated by enslavement. 

Feral was the fizzling flame of the luculent lad that flickered. The polished prowess he exerted to endure the excruciating torture was patent in the taut protrusion of striated muscles and mired veins, trying to foil, but failing to flee, his foisted fatal missive. Methodical techniques of metered dehumanization had never failed to commandeer a spic-and-span laundry of succinct servility, until a spanking bare bones boy teemed with obstreperous temerity, not slavish timidity, to pulverize his predators’ magnitude turpitude. His mind-mastered body saluted his strenuous independence from their tyranny. Requisite for radical retrain were the parameters of prescribed pain due to Thor’s impeccable rectitude alongside his preternatural off-the-chart endurance. Dead or alive, he had won – and none mistook that death was imminent. The monitor disgorging his destitute vitals shrieked, but did not jar the tarnished antagonists out of their morbid reverie.

Enshrined in crystallized exultation, the titanium teen slipped into a succor of blessed unconsciousness. In that same moment, a strident ex cathedra timbre domineered the pitiless adjunct to contradict the assassins who had passed lethal judgment.   

“Release the boy at once! Get him out of there! Hurry! Save him! He’s not to die!”

As Thor’s wisp of bankrupt breath bailed out, overlords intervened. Did compunction in retrograde rush to the rescue? Had the cavalcade of clemency crept with scruples and qualms into the elite corridors of executive echelons? Hardly. While the warfare was waging onstage between the riveting renegade and his raucous rivals, a ruckus was raging offstage in raunchy rooms riddled with rancor by potentates on the prowl to distill essences recondite from entities elusive. Dredged up by a hierarchal magnate was an obscure statute of prohibition slating suicide as a symbol of sedition in this truth-to-power situation. Thor’s overt odyssey to freedom through martyrdom, in conspicuous defiance of the empire, was tantamount to treason. The brass could bury the brazen boy as a newly-pegged pathogen, but banned was his supreme election to brandish his body as a sacrificial lamb sainted in death. Overseers rarely rescinded a verdict, and never as fettered with floundering flotsam as the truculent teen. Obeying the order, the booth of buzzards scrambled to salvage the marooned minor adrift in suspended animation, but they were too late to resuscitate. His butchered breath had jumped ship and capitulated. No hope was there of his revival. Above the din flapped the wings of the hearkened seraphim kneeling en masse to pay homage to him.