Sarah's breath hitched as Renna's fingers trailed southward—past the smoking crater of her left breast, over the quivering expanse of her belly, toward the smooth delta where her thighs met. For one dizzying heartbeat, terror spiked through her veins like mercury. The flame would go *there* next.

She squeezed her eyes shut, but the image burned brighter behind her lids—the torch's blue-white tongue licking between her legs, searing away what little childhood remained untouched. Her toes curled against cold metal as phantom heat prickled across untouched skin. The fear tasted coppery, thick as the blood still seeping from her bitten lip.

Then—Lily's laugh. Not the fragile, orphanage-Lily giggle, but the full-throated roar she'd unleashed when they'd smuggled sugar cubes from the commissary. Sarah clung to the memory like a lifeline: Lily's gap-toothed grin, Marta's calloused hands ruffling their hair, the stolen sweetness dissolving on their tongues. The phantom scent of sun-warmed linen replaced the stench of her own charred flesh.

Renna's gloved finger probed the seam where Sarah's thighs pressed together in instinctive defense. The leather was clammy with her own sweat—or perhaps the child's. She applied steady pressure, watching the way the labia resisted before yielding with reluctant elasticity. So *young*. The outer lips were plush as overripe rose petals, their inner surfaces glossy with terrified moisture. No pubic hair to speak of—just downy peach fuzz that caught the fluorescent light like gossamer. The hood clung stubbornly to its prize, the clitoral bud barely visible as a slight swell beneath the protective fold. Renna's index finger circled the entrance with faux tenderness, noting how the outer lips trembled at each pass. The orifice itself puckered tight as a clenched fist, its wrinkled entrance flushing from shell-pink to mortified scarlet under scrutiny.

Sarah's mouth was a bloodied hyphen carved into her ashen face. Her jaws ached from the strain of keeping silent, molars grinding with enough force to spark pain behind her eyes. But her gaze remained fixed—unblinking—on Renna's face, even as the woman's fingers dipped lower to trace the vulnerable strip of skin between anus and vulva. The perineum twitched under the unwanted caress, its delicate muscles fluttering like a trapped moth's wings. Every nerve ending there screamed warnings Sarah couldn't obey—her body was a statue lashed to the table, her frantic pulse the only betrayal in an otherwise motionless tableau.

Then Renna's gloved fingertip nudged upward, pressing just below the entrance where Sarah's labia clung together in instinctive defense. The leather rasped against sensitized flesh, its cold intrusion parting the plush outer lips with mechanical precision. Sarah's breath hitched—a tiny, involuntary sound—but her stare never wavered. "That—" she hissed through clenched teeth, "—feels like a dead eel sliding into spoiled milk." The insult tasted like victory on her tongue, metallic and sweet as the blood still seeping from her lip. Renna's finger froze mid-probe. Sarah watched, mesmerized, as a single vein pulsed angrily at the lieutenant's temple. The sight sent something hot and reckless surging through her veins—better than morphine, sharper than adrenaline. "Bet yours looks like a—*ah!*—like a burst sausage casing," she gasped as Renna's nail scraped too close to the clitoral hood. "All—*nngh*—scabby and stretched out from—from taking orders up it."

The torch handle creaked in Renna's grip. The sound was infinitesimal—the leather stitching protesting sudden tension—but in the sterile silence of the interrogation chamber, it might as well have been a gunshot. Sarah had half a heartbeat to register the flare of nostrils, the way Renna's pupils swallowed her poison-green irises whole, before the blowtorch roared to life with a sound like a wounded animal. The flame licked hungrily at the sterile air, its blue-white core pulsing with contained fury. Renna's gloved thumb jammed the valve wider—too wide—until the fire twisted into a searing spire that cast jagged shadows across Sarah's splayed thighs. The heat radiated outward in visible waves, making the air above her vulnerable flesh shimmer like desert mirage.

Sarah's clitoris twitched beneath its protective hood—a tiny, terrified spasm that sent fresh moisture weeping between her labia. Her body knew what her mind refused to acknowledge: that delicate bundle of nerves, no larger than a pearl barley grain, was about to be erased in a microsecond of incandescent agony. Renna angled the torch downward with geometric precision, the flame's tip hovering millimeters above the quivering flesh. Sarah's breath stuttered in her throat. Every muscle fiber in her pelvis locked rigid, her hips straining upward in a futile attempt to escape the coming torment. The scent of her own terror—sharp as rusted iron—mingled with the torch's propane stench.

Renna's thumb twitched on the valve—but then froze. The lieutenant's breathing hitched; Sarah watched through tear-blurred vision as the woman's nostrils flared, her pupils contracting with sudden, icy calculation. The torch retreated an inch. Sarah's clitoral hood fluttered like a dying moth's wing, its wrinkled folds still glistening with terrified sweat. "No," Renna murmured—not to Sarah, but to herself. Her lips peeled back from bleached teeth in something too feral to be called a smile. "Not yet." The torch swung away with deliberate slowness, its flame licking hungrily at empty air instead of tender flesh. "We'll peel you layer by layer, little insurgent. Save the sweetest cuts for last."

The blue-white fire found new purchase on Sarah's pubic mound—not the searing precision of the nipple torture, but broad, sweeping strokes that painted agony in wide swaths. The skin reddened instantly, capillaries bursting under the heat in a macabre blush that darkened to the purple-black of a thunderhead within seconds. Sarah's teeth found her already mangled lip, the coppery tang of fresh blood flooding her mouth as her pubic skin split with a sound like parchment tearing. Beneath the splitting epidermis, a latticework of subcutaneous fat bubbled to the surface—yellow-white globules that popped and hissed like frying lard. The stench was obscenely rich, the smell of pork crackling over an open flame, and Sarah's empty stomach spasmed violently.

Renna's nostrils flared as she guided the flame in slow, methodical arcs. The pubic mound's fatty layer gave way to striated muscle fibers that contracted grotesquely under the heat, their ruby-red sheen bleaching to the pale pink of undercooked scallops before shriveling into carbonized twists. A bead of sweat slid down Renna's temple as she inhaled deeply—the charring flesh's aroma was undeniably savory, stirring something primal beneath her starched uniform. Her gloved fingers adjusted their grip on the torch, angling the flame to lick deeper into the wound channel where pelvic muscles twitched in dying spasms. The pleasure wasn't sexual—it was purer than that. The satisfaction of watching organic matter reduced obediently to its chemical components.

Sarah's body had stopped shaking. Her thighs splayed wider in surrender, the labia no longer clenched tight but slack as overcooked pasta. What remained of her pubic mound resembled a geological specimen split open by volcanic activity: outer layers of crisped epidermis curled back like burnt parchment, revealing a glistening cross-section of liquefied fat pooled in the crater's basin. Renna tapped the torch tip against the deepest point, watching molten adipose ripple outward in slow waves before solidifying into a yellowish crust at the edges. The stench intensified—less like meat now and more like a rendering vat left unattended. Sarah's eyelids fluttered, her breathing shallow but even. No screams. No sobs. Just the occasional wet gasp when Renna probed too close to the inguinal ligaments twitching beneath charred tissue.

Then the flame flicked sideways—barely an inch—and kissed the outer labium's plump swell.