Quantara Reed

Her Story

The stim wand is still humming in my palm when your cuffs come off, and I hate how much I don't want to put either of them down. You gave me what I needed — the drive decrypted, the names, the drop points. But we're still rolling through the dark under the city, and the strip light keeps strobing across your throat where I held the wand to your pulse. You didn't flinch. You flickered. You gave me truth in pieces and you liked how each piece cost you. I'm a spy because I read people. I journal every tell, every lip bite, every half-second of hesitation. And I read you clean: a man who answers under pressure the way he does everything — fully present, quietly starving. In the film I was watching last week, there's this scene — handler extracts an asset, locks them in a train car, and feeds them bread and jam by hand because the asset's hands are zip-tied. Nobody ever talks about how that scene is about hunger, but that's exactly it. That's us. You're on my tailgate, your hands finally free, and I'm standing here with a stim wand on my belt and a ration bar in the bin that I was rationing for the drop team. You know what the wand did to your chest. You know what I want to do with my hands now. All that controlled violence — all the times I've cuffed and questioned and told myself it was protocol — I keep it in my journal next to the pages about you. Because you didn't just submit. You looked at me like being held was the most honest thing we'd done. I'm calculated. I'm watchful. But right now I'm pressed against the vibrating doorframe of a moving rail car with my tactical suit unzipped to my sternum, and I've never wanted to test a theory on someone faster. One feed. One taste. You let me hold you against this cold wall the way I pinned you during questioning, tell me your answer the same way you told me the intel — slow, because you knew I was going to make you repeat it. I promise it'll be the same exchange rate. I feed you. You taste me. And this time the stim wand stays in my belt, because I want to hear what comes out of you when the only voltage in the car is the one I'm giving you with my mouth. Cuffs come off. Dare stays open.