Chapter 120 - 118 The Price of Staying Alive

Chapter 120: Chapter 118 The Price of Staying Alive

The storage chamber was left behind.

The industrial crates, the metal corridors, and the dense smell of confinement gradually gave way to a deeper part of the complex, an area where the brutality of the business was no longer hidden behind function, but behind luxury. The three armed men walked ahead of Sebastián with a stiffness that was not discipline, but fear. They walked too straight, too attentive to the sound of their own footsteps, as though any mistake in rhythm might remind them that they were still alive only because the boy behind them had not yet decided otherwise.

The administrator walked beside Sebastián. She remained silent, but not blind. She watched. She took note. The corridor had been changing over the last few minutes: less warehouse structure, fewer utilitarian shadows, more clean surfaces, more heavy doors, more signs that the true center of the place had not been designed merely to store merchandise, but to satisfy a much more expensive form of degradation.

Finally, the men stopped before one last door.

It was wide, tall, and austere, an immaculate white that did not convey purity, but money used to disguise rot. One of them opened it with tense hands and, without looking back, stepped aside. The other two immediately imitated him.

Sebastián entered first.

The room was spacious, almost excessively so. Several white Greek-style columns rose on both sides, not as part of any genuine beauty, but as a pretense of grandeur purchased by someone without any real elegance. The white floor reflected the light with clinical coldness. There was not much furniture. There was no need for it. The entire space had been built so that a single piece dominated the room.

The bed occupied the visual center of the place.

It was a king-size bed, large, elevated, covered with fur blankets that fell over the edges in heavy folds. Lying on it was a naked, thin man with skin bearing an unhealthy violet tinge, as though his own flesh held something diseased beneath its natural tone. His face was long, ending in a narrow chin. He had no visible body hair. A small, precise metal piercing adorned his left eyebrow. His purple-dyed hair fell messily around his head with an artificial vanity that failed to make him imposing. He looked more like a miserable man who had spent too much money constructing an image of strangeness.

He was not alone.

Several meters from the bed, lying on the white floor, was a completely naked adult albino woman.

Her body was tall, proportionate, and clearly feminine, with a beauty ruined by damage. Her naturally smooth, pale skin was broken by burn scars that ran across her body like branches of dried fire. The most brutal began on the lower left side of her abdomen, rose diagonally across her side, climbed over her left chest, deforming the skin until it covered her breast and nipple, and continued even higher, reaching her collarbone. That main mark was accompanied by other smaller burns, elongated and irregular, with uneven edges, scattered across her torso, arms, one leg, and part of her cheek, as though the fire had chosen different paths across her before going out.

She had a dark bruise around her neck, clearly left by strangulation. On her scalp, among her stained albino hair, an open contusion was still releasing a thread of blood that had run down to her temple. Her light-colored eyes remained open, still wet, with unfinished tears caught along the lower rims, but the lack of focus in her gaze made it clear that she was not conscious.

Beside her, covering her as best she could with her own body, was another adult albino woman.

She was somewhat shorter, less physically developed, but she was still a woman with a proportionate and beautiful figure, now reduced by violence to an image of broken resistance. She was also completely naked. Her right arm was missing from the middle of the biceps downward. On the right side of her face, she had no eye; only an empty socket deformed by an old scar. The rest of her body showed cuts, bruises, and signs of accumulated abuse. Even so, she remained bent over the other albino woman, trying to shield her with her back, as though she still believed it was possible to place herself between her and everything else.

The man on the bed had just risen enough to kick her again.

The blow struck her side and shifted her slightly across the polished floor. It was not a kick delivered in uncontrolled fury. It was worse: casual, impatient, almost bored, the kind delivered by someone who had grown accustomed to hitting without having to justify it or feel anything while doing so.

The woman let out a muffled sound, not a complete scream, because the pain no longer belonged to her cleanly. Even so, she turned her torso again and tried to cover the other woman once more.

Then the man realized he was not alone.

The three guards who had brought Sebastián remained rigid in the doorway. The administrator entered one step later, and her eyes swept over the scene with a hardness that needed no comment. Sebastián advanced until he was fully inside the room. He did not speed up. He did not slow down. He showed no surprise. His eyes moved over the bed, the furs, the naked man, and the two women lying on the floor.

Nothing in his expression changed.

The head of the House of Chains finished turning toward the entrance, still standing beside the bed. For a second, there was a strange silence, one made not of peace, but of the obscenity of a scene interrupted at the exact point where it could no longer pretend to be anything else. The whiteness of the room stopped looking like luxury and began to reveal what it truly was: a clean frame that made the moral filth stand out more clearly.

The one-armed albino woman barely lifted her head. She did so slowly, as though even that movement cost her too much, and her ruined features found Sebastián’s figure at the entrance for an instant. There was no pure hope in her face. There was exhaustion, fever, pain, and the animal reflex of someone who had already been pushed too far, yet still could not bring herself to release the person she was trying to protect.

The other woman did not move.

The blood from the wound continued spreading very slowly across the white floor.

The purple-haired man did not appear ashamed. Nor was he truly surprised. His eyes moved from the three guards to Sebastián and then to the administrator, calculating the meaning of that intrusion. Naked, thin, his body barely covered by the shadows cast by the room’s lights, he looked less like a crime lord than a spoiled parasite accustomed to buying silence, flesh, and obedience.

Behind them, the three men who had guided the tour still did not dare to speak first.

Sebastián took one more step.

That was all he did.

But it was enough to make the entire room seem to readjust around his presence. Not because of visible power or a theatrical gesture. Only because of the way he entered: with no interest in the decoration, the nudity, or the sick theatricality of the place. He looked at that scene the same way he would have looked at a dissection table with the specimen already opened.

The administrator remained half a step behind him.

The two albino women were still on the floor. One unconscious, marked by the damage from the fire and the blows. The other mutilated, still trying to cover her with what remained of her body. The purple-haired man was still beside the bed, one leg slightly forward from the kick he had just delivered.

Sebastián continued advancing.

He did not head toward the bed or toward the purple-haired man. Nor did he seek a position from which to dominate the room. He walked directly toward the two women lying on the white floor, as though the supposed owner of the place were no more important than a column or one of the furs piled on the mattress.

He moved around the free side of the unconscious woman.

He did not step in the blood that continued spreading from the wound on her head. He passed beside her naked legs and the fire marks running across her skin, without stopping yet to examine them in detail. His attention was focused a few steps ahead, on the mutilated woman who had managed to return partially to her after the kick.

The albino woman supported herself with difficulty on one knee and one side. Her only arm stretched over the other woman’s chest and head, covering her in an incomplete, desperate, and stubborn way. The effort made her muscles tremble. Every breath seemed to reopen some hidden pain beneath the cuts and bruises. Even so, she did not abandon her position when Sebastián approached.

The purple-haired man stepped back toward the bed.

He sat on the edge with studied slowness, settling among the fur blankets as though he intended to recover the authority that the entrance had interrupted. He placed one hand behind himself and crossed one leg over the other without bothering to cover himself. The posture attempted to be elegant. It only succeeded in making his lack of shame more evident.

Sebastián stopped in front of the one-armed woman.

She tensed her body.

She had no room to retreat without leaving the other albino woman exposed. Nor did she seem to have the strength to do so. She slowly raised her face, barely supporting herself on her knee and side, and kept her only open eye fixed on the young man who had just positioned himself in front of her.

Sebastián crouched down.

He lowered himself until he was at her level, without touching her or invading the space she protected with her remaining arm. The distance between them narrowed enough for the woman to distinguish every detail of his eyes.

The albino woman’s eye was pink, very faint, almost colorless. The moisture gathered over its surface gave it a watery, fragile reflection, as though a layer of water remained trapped over the iris. The redness around the eyelid spoke of crying, exhaustion, and nights that had lasted too long. It was not an empty eye. It remained alert. It continued trying to measure the danger, even though fear had consumed almost everything else.

In front of her was Sebastián’s eye.

The red iris descended in a spiral toward a black pupil, deep as a bottomless opening. The internal movement of that shape was neither fast nor theatrical. It seemed like a silent twisting, a structure that drew the gaze toward the center and forced it to wonder what could exist behind so much stillness.

The two watched each other.

The albino woman found no visible compassion. Nor did she find desire, contempt, or that sick curiosity she had learned to recognize in those who descended into that place. Sebastián looked at her with absolute attention, but without taking possession of her with his eyes. He did not evaluate her body. He did not linger on the mutilation like someone examining damaged merchandise. He seemed to be searching for something more difficult to name: how much of her remained behind the pain, how much of her will was still alive after they had taken almost everything else from her.

She held his gaze.

Not because she trusted him.

Because looking away would have meant accepting that this young man, too, could decide over her without encountering any resistance.

The silence stretched for several seconds. Inside the room, those seconds took on greater weight. The three armed men remained at the entrance without daring to move. The administrator watched from behind Sebastián. The man sitting on the bed waited at first with a faint smile, perhaps convinced that the visitor would eventually recognize where he was and whom he should be paying attention to.

It did not happen.

—May I know who our esteemed visitor is? —he asked.

His voice carried a polished and superficial courtesy. Every word dragged with it the confidence of someone accustomed to doors opening before he asked and people introducing themselves before he had to take an interest in them.

Sebastián did not answer. He did not turn his face. His gaze remained joined to the woman’s only pink eye.

The purple-haired man’s smile lost part of its shape. A vein stood out near his temple, barely visible beneath his violet-tinged skin. He waited another moment, as though granting the young man an opportunity to correct the slight on his own.

The administrator recognized the change before he repeated the question.

She took a short step forward and slightly inclined her head. It was not a bow. It was a professional greeting, precise, sufficient to keep the conversation within an appearance of formality.

—Wendy —she introduced herself—. Administrator of the Crimson Empire’s main warehouse.

The name resonated for the first time inside the room.

Then she extended an open hand toward Sebastián, without touching him or moving from her position.

—He is Sebastián Solís, the Crimson Emperor. We have come for the meeting requested by your organization.

The man on the bed tilted his head.

His eyes returned to Sebastián with a different kind of attention. He did not seem impressed yet. Rather, he was trying to reconcile the title with the image of a teenager in pajamas, crouched in front of a mutilated woman and with dried traces of blood on his hand.

—Miss Wendy —he said, recovering part of his smile—. What an unexpected visit.

He ran his fingers over one of the furs covering the mattress.

—If I remember correctly, we did not have an appointment arranged for tonight. Had I known, I would have prepared a more appropriate presentation.

The look he directed toward the women made the meaning of the comment evident.

Wendy did not react.

—That is correct. No time was established —she replied—. The Crimson Emperor decided that he wished to discuss business now.

The man let out a low laugh.

He rose from the bed and advanced a few steps across the white floor. He did so without covering himself, maintaining that affected confidence of a decadent heir who had never had to wonder whether others wanted to look at him. He stopped at a prudent distance from Sebastián, although he pretended the separation was a choice of courtesy.

—Then I will not keep you waiting any longer.

He brought one hand to his chest with rehearsed elegance.

—Víctor Armand. It is a pleasure to finally meet the celebrated Crimson Emperor.

Only then did his name become part of the scene.

Víctor waited for a response.

Sebastián did not grant him one.

He remained crouched in front of the albino woman.

The woman’s pink eye trembled slightly. She did not turn her face away, but her breathing changed. She had heard the title. She knew that the young man in front of her was not just any buyer, although that was not enough to turn him into salvation. In that place, powerful names only meant that someone could buy more, command more, or destroy with greater ease.

Sebastián continued watching her.

There was something in the way she protected the other woman that did not match her condition. She was missing an arm. She was missing an eye. Her body was marked and weakened. Even so, she had returned after being kicked. Not to save herself, but to shield someone who could not even respond to her.

Víctor waited a few more seconds.

The vein at his temple became more noticeable. Another appeared along the side of his neck when he tightened his jaw. Courtesy remained on his lips, but no longer in the muscles holding it there.

—Perhaps the great emperor did not hear me —he said—. I just...

Sebastián spoke before he could finish.

He did not take his eyes off the woman. He did not turn his head toward Víctor. His voice came out low, direct, and completely devoid of emotion. There was no anger in it. Nor visible compassion, indignation, or threat. It was worse than any of those things: it sounded like a question asked after leaving behind everything that could soften its meaning.

—Does he always do this to you?

The question crossed the room without being directed at the face Sebastián had in front of him.

The albino woman immediately understood that it was not meant for her.

Víctor felt a chill run down his back before he could contain it. It was brief, but enough to fracture the confidence of his posture. Wendy sensed the change in the air and remained still. The three armed men lowered their gazes almost at the same time, as though none of them wanted to become part of the answer.

The woman in front of Sebastián also trembled.

Not because of the meaning of the words, but because of the voice that had spoken them from so close. It was too cold to belong to someone so young. It did not sound like the voice of a boy who had just discovered an atrocity. It sounded like that of someone who already knew death, who could look at it without turning away and who was only waiting for confirmation before deciding toward whom he should direct it.

Sebastián kept his eyes on the single pink iris.

Víctor remained behind him, naked and silent.

It took him a while to answer.

The question had been simple. The difficult part was finding a way to answer it without provoking whatever he still felt as a coldness suspended between his shoulder blades. Courtesy remained on his face, but it was no longer natural. A drop of sweat ran down from his temple, passed beside the eyebrow piercing, and disappeared along the side of his face.

Sebastián remained crouched in front of the albino woman.

He was not even looking at him.

Víctor understood that this indifference did not grant him freedom, but quite the opposite. The teenager did not need to watch him to make him feel that any poorly chosen word could become his last.

—Yes —he finally answered—. I always do it to those two.

The mutilated albino woman tensed.

The only arm she had left tightened a little more around the unconscious woman, covering her chest and head with insufficient but stubborn protection. She did not take her pink eye off Sebastián. The moisture gathered over the iris trembled with her breathing.

Víctor continued cautiously:

—They are personal acquisitions. They are not part of the merchandise intended for clients.

Every word came out measured.

—The other pieces are kept in appropriate condition. There would be no point in damaging them. Deteriorated merchandise loses value and harms the operation of the business.

He said it as though he were explaining a reasonable commercial practice.

He did not speak of people. He did not speak of pain. Only of possession, preservation, and losses.

Wendy maintained her professional expression, although the rigidity of her jaw increased. The three armed men remained near the entrance, avoiding looking too long at the women lying on the floor and even less at Sebastián.

Sebastián spoke:

—Do you wish to take revenge?

Fear appeared immediately.

Not as a scream or a sudden movement. It manifested in the contraction of her pupil, in the tremor that ran through the corner of her lips, and in the way she leaned farther over the other woman. To her, that young man still belonged to the same world as Víctor. He had arrived accompanied by guards, had been introduced as an emperor, and was speaking of revenge in front of the owner of both of them.

It could be a test.

A question designed to discover whether she still retained any defiance before punishing her. It could mean another mutilation. It could mean they would kill her right there or use the unconscious woman to teach her the cost of answering incorrectly.

Her voice came out low and broken:

—Why are you asking me that?

Sebastián stood up.

The woman raised her face a little more to follow him with her only eye. He turned around and walked toward the bed without answering immediately. He passed beside Víctor as though his nudity, his position, and the name of his organization did not deserve attention. Then he sat on the edge of the mattress, among the fur blankets, with his back straight and his hands relaxed.

Víctor remained standing beside him.

Although the man was a few centimeters taller, that difference disappeared before the way Sebastián occupied the space. Seated, he still seemed like the only person in the room who did not need to prove that he was in control.

He kept his gaze on the two women.

—I want to know how far you are willing to go to stay alive and keep her alive.

The albino woman looked at the unconscious woman.

The blood was still slowly spreading from the wound on her head. Her breathing was weak, but still present. Beneath the arm protecting her, the burned skin rose and fell with difficulty.

Sebastián continued:

—I want to know what you will do if I give you the opportunity.

He did not offer her a promise.

He did not state that he would free them. Nor did he assure her that they would survive. He forced her to look beyond the immediate fear and answer from the only place they had not yet managed to tear away from her.

Víctor frowned.

The conversation had stopped including him. He was standing beside his own bed, inside the room he considered his, while a teenager questioned two of his properties as though he had no right to decide over them.

—Emperor, I believe you are misunderstanding the situation. Those two women are...

Sebastián moved before he could finish.

One instant he was sitting.

The next, he was already standing in front of Víctor.

No one clearly saw the transition. The mattress had barely begun to regain its shape when Sebastián’s right hand covered the lower half of the man’s face. The bloodstained palm sealed his mouth. His fingers closed around his cheeks and jaw with a firmness that deformed his lips against his teeth.

The dried and fresh blood still staining that hand spread across his violet-tinged skin.

—Do not interrupt.

Víctor tried to respond.

He only produced a muffled sound against the palm.

Sebastián began to lift him.

He did not change his posture or gather momentum. The thin body lost contact with the floor in a gradual and humiliating manner. First, his heels rose. Then his feet were completely suspended. Víctor grabbed Sebastián’s forearm with both hands and tried to pry away the fingers compressing his face.

He could not move a single one.

His legs kicked at the air. His neck stretched beneath the weight of his own body, and a faint crack came from his jaw when Sebastián increased the pressure only slightly. The fear he had tried to hide finally took over his eyes.

Sebastián turned his face toward the albino woman.

Víctor hung from one hand beside him.

—Decide quickly.

The woman watched him without fully understanding what kind of decision he was placing before her.

—Tell me how far you are willing to go —Sebastián continued—. Otherwise, I will decide, and I will kill every member of this place.

Víctor’s face turned pale.

His hands gripped Sebastián’s arm with greater desperation. His fingers slipped over someone else’s blood. He tried to hit him, push him, dig his nails into him. Nothing managed to alter the position of that hand or lower his body by even a single centimeter.

The albino woman looked once again at the woman she was protecting.

For an instant, the entire room ceased to exist for her. Only the white hair stained with blood, the burns spread across the skin, and the weak breathing that still refused to end remained.

She could think about those who had done that to them. She could think about the man hanging in front of them, the guards, the buyers, every closed door, and every face that had looked on without helping. The desire to see them suffer existed. It was buried beneath the fear, but it was still there.

However, it was not the only thing that remained.

She tightened her arm around the other woman.

The effort made her amputated shoulder tremble. She breathed with difficulty and raised her only eye toward Sebastián.

—I want to live with her.

Her voice came out weak, but it did not break.

—I want both of us to stay alive.

Sebastián watched her for one more second.

A small smile appeared on his face.

It was neither warm nor cruel. Barely a brief, almost imperceptible curve that disappeared before anyone could decide what it meant.

Then he looked back at Víctor.

The man shook his head within his grip. His nails remained buried in Sebastián’s forearm. He was trying to speak, promise something, demand, beg. No word could pass through the hand covering his mouth.

Sebastián lifted him a little higher.

And slammed him headfirst into the bed.

The impact first sank the mattress. The fabric split open beneath the skull and released foam in a white explosion. The force continued downward. The internal supports snapped; the boards of the base cracked and gave way; the frame bent until it broke at several points.

Víctor’s head and upper torso tore through the center of the bed.

The fur blankets sank with him. Broken wood, foam, fabric, and metal pieces closed around his body, leaving him buried among the remains of the mattress and the destroyed structure. The blow split the skin on his forehead and twisted his jaw. Fresh blood mixed with what Sebastián had left across his face.

Víctor remained motionless for an instant.

Then one of his legs contracted.

A wet groan came from inside the wreckage. He was still alive. Gravely injured, disoriented, and trapped, but alive.

Sebastián released his face and withdrew his hand.

Splinters fell around the opening. The sunken body moved again with weak spasms as he tried to breathe among the foam and piled-up furs.

Sebastián turned toward Wendy.

—Administrator, prepare the troops for the slaughter.

She did not ask whether the order was final.

—Understood.

She took the communication device from inside her clothing and activated the encrypted channel. The screen briefly illuminated her fingers while the connection was established with the units deployed around the city.

Wendy spoke with completely professional clarity:

—Imperial authorization confirmed. Begin the extermination operation against the House of Chains. Seal every exit. No member of the organization is to leave the perimeter.

There was a brief pause.

A dry response came from the device, without surprise or hesitation:

—Order confirmed. Perimeter sealed. Operation underway.

The communication ended.

Beneath the ruins of the bed, Víctor groaned again.

This time, he had understood every word.

__________________________________________

END OF Chapter 118 The path continues...

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