Perhaps they had found it inconvenient to feed and imprison so many—or perhaps it was their basic interrogation policy—but the fact was that the Bressian civilians and captured FORCE troops had been found flayed open and pinned down on steel trays like frogs in a biology lab, their organs bathed with nutrient fluids, arms and legs efficiently amputated, eyes removed, and their minds readied for interrogators” questions with crude cortical comtaps and shunt-plugs jacked directly through three-centimeter holes in the skulls.

Dan Simmons // Hyperion