When Benjamin looked down at his chest, there was a hole there.
A large, gaping, smoking hole where his sternum used to be.
The edges of the wound were charred black, the flesh cauterized by the heat of that yellow beam, and through the opening he could see the raw pink of his regenerating organs knitting themselves together in a frantic, desperate dance.
The pain was searing, and it lanced through every nerve in his body with each heartbeat.
He tried to stand by pushing himself up with his hands, his muscles screaming in protest, and his legs trembling beneath him.
But the whips found him again.
Several of those black lengths stabbed into his shoulders, thighs, forearms, and his calves.
They pierced through muscle, sinew, and pinched against bone, holding him in place against the cracked oak with the efficiency of a collector mounting a butterfly to a display board.
