>>16501902With a flick of a switch, it was as if the Emperor himself had ripped the traitor open and poured molten metal into his veins. Every muscle inside his body tensed to the point of injury, the entire flabby, unimpressive form of the traitor bucking up and down on top of that chair. The lumaglobe above flickered, sputtered, died, and then lighted itself again.
After what seemed like aeons the Inquisitor flipped the switch off. The man flopped down into the chair, whimpering around that rag, his entire body covered in sweat. Reaching up to loosen the top button on that worksuit, the Inquisitor began to speak, as if lecturing to a hall filled with initiates.
"You know...we used to outsource this sort of thing to the feral and death worlds of the Imperium...places like Catachan, Cretasis, Davin...but what we found that such places, while having the necessary sort of...moral compass for such workings, lacked the high-tech tools to make the exercise more than just...well, an entry in a medicae slate. Pulling fingernails, lopping off limbs, that sort of thing. All very counter-productive, you see..."
The Inquisitor motioned to that sputtering lumaglobe, cracking a sardonic smile. "But here...we have a constant and stable flow of electricity. Here, you can flip a switch and it stays on so long as the nuclear plants at the base of the hive are maintained..."