A tortured cry pierced the darkness of the cavern. Mangled walls flashed with red light. A man wearing power armor embedded with red crystals dragged his captive across the ground.

“You will tell me where you sent it,” The captor thrust the man against the wall and held him by the neck with one hand. “Or your family dies.”

The captive, a man entering his old age, pried weakly at the hand on his throat. He gasped for air several times before he spoke. “I tell the truth. I promise! I don’t remember touching it!”

“Then you must also not remember that this place is full of security cameras, five of which saw you take our priceless work of the last year and stash it in a container. Then you gave it to our supply chain who has since then not returned to fulfill his agreement.” The captor extended his right arm to the side. A long, red-glowing triangle fizzed into existence, extending from the armor’s knuckles.

The old man eyed the blade with terror, his mouth curling into a frown. His feet kicked at the wall he was pinned to. “No… no!”

“Oh, yes,” the captor sneered. “The command has been sent. Your relatives will be dead within the hour. Their time is over, but you still have a choice.” He angled the glowing weapon at the man’s face. “Tell me where the crystal is, or you are going to join your relatives a lot sooner than you planned.”

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The man scowled at his captor, grunting and groaning against the growing grip pressure. Finally, he narrowed his eyes and spit on his captor’s helmet. “Even if I knew, I would never tell you. If my family’s gotta go because of it, then so be it. Their sacrifice is not in vain, and I at least had people to love, unlike you. You’ve got nobody, and if you keep this shit up, you never will.”

The man in the armor hung his head and lowered his free arm. The energy dissipated into the darkness. He chuckled. “You know, for a ‘last words’ speech, that was pretty good. It’s a shame we can’t be friends, doc.”

He looked at his free hand. The fingertips each became surrounded with a red glow made up of dozens of transparent intersecting shapes. “A damn shame.”

He grasped the top of the man’s balding head, causing him to cry out in pain again. A dull red energy pulsated from the man’s skull into the captor’s fingers. After a few seconds of wailing, the man went silent. Then his body went limp. The other man let it crumple to the floor. Burn marks ringed the scalp where the fingers had touched.

He used his armor’s internal computer to analyze the extracted memories. The scientist had remembered most of the last day, but when the computer found the requested chunk of time, the visuals were extremely blurry and the audio was nonexistent. The captor looked down at the body. He really hadn’t remembered.

The reality he feared had come to pass. For the first time in a very long time, he would have to return to the daylight.

And he was not going to come back empty-handed.