::FOUR::
I’d be willing to bet even money that it doesn’t matter how long their prisoner is alive for, once he reaches where they’re taking him. As long as he shows up alive, even if it’s barely, they get their full payout. Fucking mercs. I don’t know if I hate these ones more because of the mess they’ve left this man in. Left to bleed, and wheeze past a bit, and try to stay on his feet. Or if I hate them because it could so easily be me lying there, battered bloody with a bit in my mouth.
Seems not quite all the fight has gone out of the prisoner afterall. Not that it’s going to do much for him. Except get him hit again. The big merc in front of him slams him again into the wall, the fist…….
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…….arcs down. I can see it coming, out of the corner of my good eye, big as a ham. The left side of my face explodes in a nauseating purple wave of pain. Not a damned thing I can do about it, strapped to this chair, either.
They don’t ask subtly. Know it won’t do a damned bit of good. Hell, these are the guys that trained me to resist interrogation in the first place. There’s no drug they can give me that will make me talk. It’s one of their big fears. That one of their fighter pilots will go down, and talk. So they’ve trained me well. Subtle doesn’t work. So they’ve gone old school on my ass.
Keep asking, over and over and over. “Where are the fucking files, Adams!” Even their questions aren’t subtle. Hell, they’re not even original. Everybody here knows what the dance is, we’re just shuffling through the routines, because that’s what’s called for. They know it’s not the questions that are going to break me. It’s the beatings, and time, that will break me. Something tells me they don’t believe they have the time. We’re well past the cat and mouse stage here. I’m not some damned civilian that they can scare with their talk of prison, and authority, and damage to my reputation.
Asking the hard way is the only option they’ve got. And they’re asking hard. Picked me up outside of a bar, after a payoff, hit me with a tranq dart. Not before I took a nice clean swipe at the guy who’s pounding my face into a new and unrecognizable shape. I don’t know where they’ve got me, or how long I was out for, before they got me here. Doesn’t exactly have an official feel about it. Not quite military. Something else, something a little more private.
The room is glaring bright, disorienting. The light itself becomes a weapon to them, when you’ve been hit enough. White light has a weight all it’s own, and I can feel it pressing me into the chair, into the floor, even more than the blows are. Go with it. Shut down. Go to that place in my head where nothing can reach me.
A part of me knows they won’t kill me, even without hearing the muffled commands barked between the three, maybe four, men in the room. They don’t dare kill me. If I die, those very files they are asking for in an increasingly hysterical tone, will go public. There isn’t a one of them that won’t burn for it. So they ease off. Not all the way, just enough to make sure they don’t kill me.
I can hear a chair being scraped up, the sound screaming into my head with an agony all it’s own. The other men have pulled back. Not all the way, just a little, like they’re waiting. When his voice comes, it’s clipped and soft, almost effeminate. Out of place with this room, with these men. With a woman strapped to a chair and battered bloody. As he continues, however, I can see that a lot of people have ended up where I am on his say so alone.
Without even being able to see the other men in the room any more, I know that they are afraid of this man. That he’s been sent here to break me, where others couldn’t. To say what’s supposed to frighten me into giving up the only thing that’s kept me alive so far.
“You have something of ours, Ms Adams. Something we would like back.”
“…fuck you…” My voice is broken, the sounds hard to form up properly when your mouth doesn’t work right any more. It’s not really an eloquent answer, but I’m not an eloquent person. He fussily moves some papers around on his lap.
“We can protect you, from any charges you will face, for the atrocities you took part in. We can see to it that you spend your prison time in solitary, where you will be safe from the other prisoners.”
It’s not so much a laugh, as a bubbling of blood. They’re going to protect ME from charges. Atrocities is the right word though, about time these bastards started using it. He leaves out the part where every single one of them would be lucky if they only got to spend their time in prison.
That being said, I have no intention of being sent to a military prison. They would, in time, find a way to break me. There’s only so much beating a body can take, a mind can take. If they break me, then these bastards get away with all of it. If I die here, I might finally get to sleep at night, one last time. Can’t see my way out of this, only one thing left to do.
The wad of blood and at least one broken tooth splatters across his eye, and runs down his nose. His face twitches, you can actually see that connection snap. He’ll kill me now, and I’ll never have to go to prison. Seems it might turn out all right after all. He waves to the man standing next to me. Willing him to do something unpleasant to me, while he wipes my blood off his face.
The fist…..
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arcs down…..
I feel the blow as though he’s hit me, instead of this lump of broken meat in front of me. I can feel everything in me grow cold, the stillness before death. Watching the blood pour out of the prisoners mouth, his lips cut and torn by the bit. The scent of blood in the air, feeling the blood pulse in my ears. The sound any fighter, any soldier, would know well. My pulse slows, time itself draws out.
The skinning blade rests, hidden, in my right hand, an extension of my arm, my will. Time to dance.
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