Food was delivered to my room morning, noon, and night. A decent helping of a balanced meal of meats and vegetables. I had no room to complain regarded my treatment. I had a beautiful room, clothes, food, and a job… if you could call it that. Ghost would summon me every morning and I’d accompany him to the Red Rooms. The same endless Red Rooms my brothers are locked up in. The same Red Rooms I will save them from, and all I have to do is be an obedient pet. Easy enough. I’d go with Ghost daily to watch as he oversaw torture or interrogations for Demetri. It’s never a normal interrogation if Ghost is called in. He’s the final line of defense, acting as agonizing torturer or reaper. I’ve seen my fair share of death, of crying crumpled bodies pleading for life, but I admit Ghosts methods even make me flinch. He’s quiet, so quiet, those skull eyes locked on the victim as he burrows into their mind until they’ve gone insane. Until they blurt out all the information they can muster and beg for death. After each room id hand him a towel. He’d wipe the blood from his mask and his leather jacket and look me over as if looking for something behind my eyes. Fear maybe? Did he want to see the terror on my face at what he had done. The indifference? The adrenaline? While fear did flicker in me at each new creative way North bore into his next victim what I truly felt was numb. A dull nothingness. Like my beating heart was slowly turning to stone. Not cold as ice or burning with flames but stone. An unmoving, unfeeling rock in my chest. The days began to blend, the meals turned to ash in my mouth, and Ghosts looming gaze and torture chambered screams became nothing but a revolving door, a rotating fan, a ticking clock. A repetition of dead movements with no where to go but circles. After the first month I stopped eating, I couldn’t bear the taste of sute in my mouth. Perhaps it was guilt or maybe a self sorry depression that made my head a more painful place to live than those red rooms but it was hell all the same. I went three days with out food, not being dumb enough to skip on water as Ghost landed us both on the patio of his skyscraper apartment. I began to walk to my room in silence as I usually did as I felt a pair of eyes on me.

“Skyler.” My eyes turned to Ghost as he looked me over before sitting on the couch. “Come here.”

His tone is clipped and unbudging as I step toward him. I stand in front of the sofa as he looks up at me. Despite my gaze looking down on him he still incapsulates all the power in the room. With both hands sprawled out on the couch, with one leg over the other. He tilts his mask at me in curiosity. “I admit you’ve surprised me.”

“Sir?”

“With the Red Rooms, I’d assumed you’d be indifferent. Raised around the torture and screaming Id assume I’d be just another day in the life for a Kingston.”

I clear my throat, “It is, sir. I don’t mind accompanying you.”

“You follow because I ask you to. Because of our… deal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And pray tell, what would you do if I asked you, not as a command, but as a simple question. Would you still accompany me to carry out my… work?”

“I’ve sworn my loyalty to you-“

“Skyler.” My heart skips a beat as his tone clips. “Tell me, you’ve acquired my curiosity.”

I mulled over his question in my mind, debating how much to tell. I shouldn’t tell Ghost my thoughts but the loneliness this role has brought out makes my tongue loose.

“I don’t care about the people you’re ordered to kill. They are strangers and I’m glad of it, but- but every time I watch you slit another throat or make them scream all I see is-.”

I stop myself as a pang of sadness sets inside me.

“See what Skyler?”

“You were once ordered to kill a boy. North Carter. You wouldn’t remember his name or his face, he was just another job for you and it’s the only reason I can stomach standing here. But everytime I see you torment them I sont s