An Illustrated Story: Abused War Captive

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story to be continued...

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The general arrived unannounced, flanked by guards in unfamiliar uniforms—black, crisp, smelling of disinfectant. His boots crushed the sand deliberately as he surveyed them like livestock at auction. "Stand," he barked. The girls scrambled upright, chains clanking. He paced the line, pausing to tilt a chin up with his baton, examining eyes, teeth, the span of hips. Camryn kept her gaze on his collar button, the brass winking in the sun. "Twelve," he said finally, tapping her shoulder. "You will serve science now."

They were marched in shackles toward the landing area and herded into iron cages on a submarine docked in secret beneath the island’s eastern cliffs. The air smelled of brine and diesel, the floor vibrating with each groan of the engines. Camryn pressed her cheek to the cold metal bars, watching the ocean swallow the last sliver of daylight through a porthole. The girl next to her—small, with a crescent scar above her eyebrow—whispered, "Unit 731." The name slithered between them, damp and terrible. Someone retched in the dark.

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After several days, they arrived at the research facility. The lab wasn’t what she expected. White tiles. Bright lights. The scent of formaldehyde clinging to everything like a second skin. Soldiers in sterile masks strapped her to a steel table, buckles biting into her wrists. A man in a white coat leaned over her, his breath fogging his goggles as he adjusted a needle’s flow rate. "Observation begins now," he said in clipped English. The liquid burned as it entered her vein—a slow, creeping fire that made her muscles seize. Her back arched involuntarily, tendons standing in stark relief. The scientists murmured approval, scribbling notes.

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Electrodes followed, cold discs pressed to her temples, her sternum, the inside of her thighs, within her vaginal opening... The first jolt came without warning—a white-hot lance through her nerves. Her scream died in her throat as her jaw locked. They watched her pupils dilate, recorded the erratic spike of her heart on their machines. "Increase voltage," someone ordered. The next surge was worse, her body convulsing like a marionette with cut strings. Saliva dripped from her lips. She tasted copper, ozone, the sharp tang of her own terror.

Needles came next—long, gleaming things plunged deep into muscle groups. Her thighs, her forearms, the tender flesh between her ribs. They left them there, winking in the fluorescent light, while she shuddered and whimpered. A scientist leaned close, adjusting a needle's depth with clinical precision. "Fascinating," he murmured as her pulse fluttered beneath his fingertips. The pain wasn't localized; it radiated outward in concentric rings, each breath sending fresh agony through her punctured flesh.

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The electrodes returned, this time attached to the protruding needles. The charge arced through her like liquid fire, muscles contracting so violently her hips lifted off the table. Someone grabbed her jaw, forcing her mouth open to observe the convulsions of her tongue. She couldn't scream—her vocal cords were paralyzed—but tears streaked sideways into her hairline. The machines beeped erratically, pens scratching frantic zigzags across graph paper. "Subject's threshold exceeds standard parameters," a voice noted, almost bored.

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Days bled together in the antiseptic glare. They tested her limits—how long she could endure electric currents before losing consciousness, how much blood they could draw before her pulse became thready, how many hours of sleep deprivation before hallucinations set in. The scientists never touched her sexually; their violation was colder, more clinical. One particularly gaunt researcher would stroke her hair absently while adjusting an IV drip, murmuring, "Shhh, good specimen," as her vision tunneled.

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The end came without ceremony. A masked orderly unstrapped her wrists one morning, avoiding her sunken eyes as he muttered, "Phase complete." They didn't bother bandaging the needle tracks or electrode burns. Two guards hauled her limp body through the white corridors, past glass-walled rooms where other women writhed on tables. One still had surgical staples glinting along her bare scalp. The submarine's hold smelled of vomit and rusted metal—only two girls were loaded into the cages.

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Lea's breathing was audible three meters away—wet, labored, punctuated by hacking coughs. "They made us breathe it," she whispered when the engines drowned out the guards' footsteps. Her fingers curled around the bars, knuckles showing old cigarette burns. "Covid42—they'd watch us through the glass as our lungs turned to jelly." A rattling inhale. "Forty-eight coughed up chunks by day three. " She sobbed, “None of them made it.” In the dim red emergency light, Camryn saw the Filipina's lips were cracked blue, her collarbones standing sharp as knife edges beneath translucent skin.

The submarine lurched, slamming Lea against the cage door. She didn't whimper—all her pain responses had been burned out months ago. Instead, she grinned crookedly, exposing gums that were too pale. "They called me *resilient specimen*," she mimicked in a high-pitched voice, before dissolving into another coughing fit. Blood speckled her palm. Camryn pressed her own forehead against the icy metal, remembering how Lea used to braid coconut fronds into crowns for the village children before the war. Now her fingernails were gone, dissolved by whatever chemical cocktail they'd tested on her tear ducts.

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The cook was the first to notice them—a wiry man with tattooed knuckles who smelled of fish oil and gunpowder. He lingered by their cage during meal deliveries, watching Lea's shallow breathing with something almost resembling pity. On the third night, he slid an extra rice ball through the bars when the guards weren't looking. Camryn caught his wrist before he could withdraw. His pulse jumped beneath her fingertips, but he didn't pull away. She understood the transaction before he spoke. His eyes flicked to Lea's unconscious form, then back to Camryn's chapped lips. "*Yasashiku,*" he murmured—*gently*—as if that mattered now. The galley smelled of rancid grease and stale sweat. Rust flakes drifted down from the ceiling pipes as he took her against a stack of flour sacks. She counted rivets in the bulkhead while he groaned into her neck. Later, he smuggled strips of dried fish into her folded hands. Lea woke long enough to swallow a piece before vomiting bile onto the floor.

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Camryn recovered first—not yet completely healed from her wounds, but enough to kneel. Eventually, Lea was also strong enough to use her feminine charms to barter sex for food. The guards took notice . That night, a lieutenant with a chipped front tooth hauled Lea into the battery room. The submarine's pulse throbbed through the deck plates as Camryn pressed her ear to the door, hearing Lea's ragged coughs intermixed with the man's grunts. He returned her wrapped in his own jacket, reeking of cheap liquor. Inside the pockets: hardtack and two squares of chocolate still warm from his body heat. Lea's split lip curled as she passed half to Camryn. "Tastes like victory," she rasped. The chocolate dissolved into salt and copper on Camryn's tongue—Lea's blood or her own, she couldn't tell.