Empire's Mercy

Nearly an hour later, a guard approached Lena in the witness chamber. “Special press pass approved. You may observe the post-execution processing. For documentation purposes only.”

Lena followed on unsteady legs. The stench hit her like a wall—charred flesh, cooked blood, urine, feces, and ozone. The three hooded, strapped bodies slumped grotesquely in the chairs.

The removal process was laborious and undignified. Nurses and technicians worked methodically. They first unbuckled the heavy leather bondage hoods. When Sarah’s hood was peeled away, Lena nearly vomited. Her mother’s face was a ruined horror: empty, burst eye sockets leaking cooked fluid, nose still trickling blood, mouth slack around the guard. The same devastation marked Elena and Mira.

The chest straps were loosened last, revealing deep purple bruises and burns where the leather had bitten into breasts and torsos. The thick diapers—now grotesquely swollen, blackened, and leaking—were cut away and discarded, exposing the women’s burned and soiled lower bodies. The corpses were lifted onto gurneys, mostly naked except for the lingering marks of restraints.

Lena watched as the bodies were wheeled to an adjacent autopsy room. Technicians performed thorough examinations to evaluate the new chair system’s effectiveness. Scalpels opened what remained of chests and skulls. Notes were taken on heart rupture, organ liquefaction, the conductivity of urine-soaked diapers, and the precise degree of eye and brain destruction. “Excellent thermal spread through the pelvic region,” one recorded clinically. “The hood design successfully contained all ocular rupture.”

Lena stood in silence, reflecting on the final moments. They died in total darkness and isolation, eyes boiling and bursting inside those suffocating hoods, urine boiling inside them, every nerve on fire. My mother—who gave me life—ended as a broken, diapered thing, convulsing in her own waste while the electricity cooked her from the inside out. The denial, the fear, the unimaginable pain in those minute pauses between cycles… no one should ever suffer like that.

After the autopsies, the ruined corpses were hosed down roughly. Technicians then fitted each body with a fresh, clean adult diaper—“standard procedure for transport and cremation,” they explained. The mostly naked bodies, still bearing the deep strap marks, burns, and surgical incisions, were zipped into body bags and sent to the crematorium.

As the ovens roared to life, Lena turned away. The Empire had perfected its horror. She would make sure the world learned exactly what “new and improved” really meant.