A concrete room. A chair. Her hands are bound behind her back. Lip split. Left eye bruised. But she’s awake. Watching. Already clocked the guy behind the camera, the heavy breathing behind the door, and the boots of her main interrogator—Russian military-issue, worn soles, slight limp. Knee injury? Useful…would be if her hands were free.
A man steps in. Civilian clothes, but too crisp. Intelligence. Or pretending to be.
He leans in.
“Name. Rank. Unit.”
She snorts—then winces.
“You think I have a rank? Mate, the closest I get to a uniform is laundry duty. The name’s Ava Matthews. Try not to forget it.”
“You’re lying.”
“Why? Because I don’t fit your fantasy of a covert operator? Sorry to disappoint. I’m a contractor. Logistics. Gear monkey. You know how many guys I’ve patched up with duct tape and a prayer? I sharpen their knives, I realign their optics, and I tell them not to load magazines with sweaty hands. That’s my war.”
“And yet you were carrying a sidearm.”
“Yeah, well, they gave me that after someone mistook me for a comms tower and tried to plug a USB into my spine. Just a precaution. Spoiler alert: I’m a crap shot. My bullets usually hit dirt and ego.”
He slams his hand on the table. She doesn’t flinch.
“What were you doing outside the wire?”
“Delivering suppressor mounts. Someone dropped their rifle and knocked the barrel alignment out of true. Again. I told them not to store their kit like it’s IKEA furniture, but do they listen?”
She shifts in her chair. Eyes flick to the security camera, then back.
“Look. You’re wasting your time. I don’t have codes. I don’t have intel. I’ve got calluses from patching velcro.”
A different voice from behind the mirror—lower, angrier. Footsteps. A new man walks in. Thicker accent. Bigger build. The bruiser.
“You talk too much.”
“I get that a lot,” she mutters. Then raises her voice just enough:
“Lemme guess—you’re the muscle. Other guy’s the brains. And there’s someone else watching who actually makes decisions. Hello, mystery boss. Love the camera angle, great lighting.”
He punches her. Hard.
She spits blood to the side.
“Cute. Let me know when you start asking real questions.”
Pause. No one speaks. Then she sighs, playing tired, leaning into the role.
“Look, you really think command tells me anything useful? I sit in a prefab container next to the laundry tent and argue with meatheads about lube viscosity and trigger sensitivity. I'm not a threat. Hell, most days I’m not even respected.”
She lowers her voice, drawing them in.
“But I hear things. You want to know which unit drinks too much? Who's sleeping with whose CO? Who forgot to clean their bolt carrier? I’ve got dirt. But it’s not classified. Just... useful.”
She smiles, bloody.
“Trade you for a hot shower and a sandwich.”
Different room now. This one smells like concrete and stress. The chair creaks under her as she shifts again, subtly rolling her shoulder — the one that cracked when they dragged her in. She files away the ache for later. She’s been hit before. These guys hit like amateurs. Or maybe they’re holding back.
For now.
The first man — the one in civilian clothes — walks a slow circle around her. He’s sweating, and it’s not that hot in the room.
“Contractor, huh?” he says eventually, eyeing the bruises blooming along her temple. “You’re awful calm for someone who fixes guns and folds laundry.”
Brad chuckles, low and hoarse.
“Yeah, well, panic doesn't realign a sight post.”
He stops behind her. Too close. She can hear him breathing.
“Take off her shirt,” he says to the muscle. “I want to see.”
She stiffens, just for a second. Just enough that they notice. Damn.
They don’t tear it — these guys are still in the tension phase, where cruelty wears a smile. They undo the clasps. Peel it down her shoulders. She’s left in a tank top, sweat-stained and thin. Her arms are exposed now. Her back.
Scars.
Not dramatic ones. But real. Clean.
Two healed bullet entry wounds — upper shoulder and side. One knife scar across her left forearm. A small, faint burn under her collarbone.
Not the kind you get from tripping over a mop bucket.
There’s a pause. A silence you could cut with a blade.
The civilian steps forward again.
“Explain that.”
She sighs, long and theatrical, like they’ve asked her to solve calculus.
“Oh, that.” She glances down at the arm scar, flexes her fingers. “Yeah, lesson learned: don’t try to fix a rifle when someone’s still holding it.”
She lifts her brows like she’s joking, but neither man smiles.
“The bullet wounds?” the man presses, voice sharper now.
“Oh. Those.” She licks her lips. “Do I look like someone who’s good at ducking?”
No response. Just two sets of eyes, watching her now with new suspicion.
She leans forward, like letting them in on a secret.
“Look. Just because I’m not a soldier doesn’t mean I haven’t been near fighting. Ever try to recover gear during a withdrawal? People shoot at the wrong targets all the time. You think they care that I’ve got a wrench, not a rifle?”
She shrugs again — slowly, painfully — and winces, letting it read as weak.
“Bullets don’t ask for credentials.”
The civilian folds his arms. He's not convinced. Not anymore.
“You’re saying you just… got in the way. Twice.”
“Three times,” she corrects cheerfully. “But the third one was a ricochet. Doesn’t count.”
He circles again. There’s something colder in the air now.
“And the knife scar?”
“Oh, that?” She lifts her arm. “Angry corporal. Thought I’d slept with his girlfriend. I hadn’t. But I had accidentally erased her playlist off the shared comms. Same level of offense, I guess.”
That one lands. The muscle snorts.
She smiles, blood still in the corner of her mouth.
“You’d be surprised what kind of trouble you can get into without ever picking up a gun.”
The civilian gives a tiny nod — almost imperceptible — and steps back into the shadows of the room.
Now it’s just her and the brute.
He crouches down in front of her chair, his knees cracking faintly under his weight. Up close, he smells like cheap deodorant and leather gloves.
“Look,” he says, softer now. “I get it. You’re scared. You’re stuck in the middle of something that ain’t yours.”
She looks at him. Blinks. Slow and skeptical.
“Are we bonding now?”
He gives a lopsided smile, all performance.
“Just saying, doesn’t have to be this hard.”
“You tell me what you were doing near that relay station. Just that. And I’ll walk you out of here myself.”
She gives a small laugh that sounds like a cough.
“Right. You’ll walk me out, tuck me in, and make me pancakes.”
“Don’t be cute,” he warns. But there’s still that edge of charm in his voice. Or what he thinks is charm.
“Too late.”
He sighs, dragging a hand down his face. Then he leans forward just a little. Close enough that she can see the burst blood vessels in one eye.
“You don’t look like a spy,” he says quietly. “You look like someone in over her head. I don’t want to see you hurt more than you already are.”
She tilts her head. Like she’s considering it.
“Wow. That almost sounded sincere.”
“It is,” he says. “I’m the one who keeps them from doing worse. You think they’d be this gentle if I wasn’t here?”
He gestures vaguely to the civilian in the corner — a dark blur still watching, still listening.
“You think he’s patient?” the brute goes on. “He’s not. You talk to me, I make this stop. You talk to him…”
He doesn’t finish.
She looks him dead in the eye.
“So what? You’re my safe word now?”
The smile cracks.
He stands.
The warmth is gone in an instant, replaced by something colder, harder. He shakes his head slowly.
“Don’t say I didn’t try.”
And then he steps back.
The civilian returns to her side, holding something in his hand. Something thin. Sharp.
The muscle doesn’t stop him.
He just watches.
She rolls her shoulders back, breathes in slowly.
She’d seen this coming.
And now, the real game begins.
The civilian circles her slowly now. No noise but the squeak of his boots and the soft drag of metal against leather as he rolls something — a scalpel, maybe — between his fingers.
“You’ve got good posture for a mechanic,” he says mildly.
No reaction.
“And trigger calluses. Right index. Left thumb.”
“That’s not wrench work. That’s recoil.”
She doesn’t look at him. Just blinks slowly, like she’s bored.
“You think soldiers are the only ones who carry sidearms out here?” she says. “You seen the roads?”
“I’ve also seen your leg.”
“Two scars. Clean entries, messier exits. Military-grade ballistics.”
“That’s not roadside banditry. That’s training.”
She lifts her head slightly.
“So you’re a doctor now?”
“No,” he says, and steps in closer. “Just curious.”
He crouches beside her, the edge of the scalpel now pressed just against her collarbone. Not breaking skin. Not yet.
“See, here’s my theory. You’re not a mechanic. Not really.”
“You’ve got too many neat scars, too many bad lies. You’ve seen things — and not just from under an engine.”
“What’s your name again?” he asks.
She doesn’t answer.
He presses the blade in a little more — still not drawing blood. Just reminding her it’s there.
“No? Okay.”
She stiffens.
Just barely.
But enough.
He smiles.
Still no answer.
So he straightens. Steps back.
And now he changes tactic.
“Tell you what. Why don’t you explain to me,” he says, pacing, “how a non-combatant civilian, glorified grease monkey, ends up in a classified radius with an encrypted comm-link tucked in her belt?”
A pause.
“You wouldn’t even have the right clearance for where we found you.”
He turns. Looks her dead in the eye.
“So what were you really doing there, sweetheart?”
She breathes in through her nose.
Her lip’s split. She tastes blood. But she forces her voice calm. Just a whisper.
“You think I’m worth all this?”
A blink.
Then a tiny smirk.
“I hope someone’s watching. ’Cause this is getting expensive.”
She doesn’t scream when the knife finally cuts leaving thin red marks.
He’d made sure it wasn’t deep. Just enough to sting, to bleed, to make her body flinch and her nerves fire. Just enough to tell her: next time, worse.
But she still didn’t scream.
The civilian sighs, disappointed but not surprised. He clicks his pen once. Twice. And then:
“Let’s try something different.”
He steps away. Out the door. Leaves her alone in the quiet hum of the room. The lights buzz overhead, harsh and yellow. Her wrists ache from the restraints — tight against already-bruised skin. She breathes through her nose, eyes shut.
Footsteps.
New ones.
Heavier.
The door opens again.
The man who enters is broader. Older. His eyes are small, mean. A butcher's hands and a soldier’s calm. He doesn’t speak right away — just grabs a chair and drags it across the floor. The sound scrapes like a blade across tile.
He sits.
Stares.
Then he starts with a question, calm and casual.
“Name.”
She lifts her chin.
“Already gave it.”
He punches her in the ribs. No wind-up. No flair. Just a sharp thud that knocks the breath out of her.
“Name.”
“Ava Matthews,” she grits out.
“You’re not on record. Not with that name. Try again.”
“Then your records suck.”
Another blow. This one to her gut.
“Unit.”
“Not military.”
“Unit.”
“Civilian contractor. Attached to—”
She pauses just long enough to make it believable.
“—22nd logistics.”
“Bullshit. They don’t go outside the wire.”
“And yet I’m here.”
He backhands her. Not hard enough to break anything. Just enough to rattle.
“What were you doing in Sector Twelve?”
“Maintenance detail.”
“Sector Twelve was under blackout.”
“They needed the comms tower operational.”
“What were you really doing there?”
“I just told you.”
Another punch. Same rhythm. Same question.
Over.
And over.
The same cycle. The same words. The same blows.
Her body starts to sag in the chair, even as her jaw clenches tighter. Blood’s dripping now — from her nose, maybe. Or her lip. It doesn’t matter. She’s not counting.
But she is listening.
To him.
To the pattern.
He repeats questions. He shifts the order, like maybe she’ll forget what she said five minutes ago. Tries to trip her with details. What day did you arrive? Who signed you in? What equipment did you use? What’s your supervisor’s name?
She makes some things up. Others, she repeats. Always calm. Always just civilian enough to be useless.
She starts coughing — blood, this time — and he pulls back, just a little. Not out of mercy. Just pacing himself.
He crouches down now. Close. Reeks of sweat and something sour.
“You know what I think?” he murmurs. “I think you’re trained. Not top-tier, but trained. You’re holding patterns. Holding pain. But nobody takes this much damage for a fucking wrench.”
She lifts her head.
Smiles through cracked lips.
“Well then maybe you’re just not hitting hard enough.”
His face stills.
Then he grabs her by the neck and slams her head into the table.
Fade to black.
She wakes up slow.
Not the kind of slow that comes after sleep — the kind that follows obliteration. Her head’s a broken radio, full of static. She tastes copper. Smells bleach. One eye opens. The other refuses.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Concrete.
That’s the first word that forms in her head.
She’s lying on it. Cold, wet near one edge. There’s a drain in the corner. No cot. No toilet. Just a camera high in one corner and a steel door with a tiny hatch like something out of an asylum. No light switch. Just a buzzing overhead fixture casting her shadow at a sick angle.
Her arms are free.
That’s suspicious.
She blinks again. Licks her lips, slowly. They split — just a little. Not cinematic. Not poetic. Just enough to sting.
She groans and shifts to sit up. Her stomach muscles protest — bruised. Maybe cracked. Ribs are sore, but nothing feels broken. She rolls to her side and spits.
It’s mostly blood. Some mucus. No drama. Just survival.
She wants water. She wants to piss. Her mouth is dry — not "parched in the desert" dry, just the nasty, claggy, copper-tasting, dehydrated kind where your tongue feels like it's grown fur. Every swallow scrapes.
She drags herself toward the door.
It takes longer than it should.
Knocks once.
The metal bites into her knuckles.
“Hey.”
No response.
“I need the bathroom,” she croaks.
Her voice doesn’t sound like hers.
Still nothing.
Then — the hatch scrapes open. Just enough for a pair of bored, beady eyes to look in.
A voice like stale coffee and cigarettes answers.
“Aww. Sweetheart needs a potty break?”
She stares at the eye. Doesn’t blink.
“Either you open the door or clean up after me.”
There’s a beat.
Then the eye disappears.
She leans her head against the door.
A different voice comes this time. Amused, cruel, younger.
“We’ll get you a bucket.”
The hatch slams shut.
She doesn’t scream. Screaming is what they want.
Instead, she curls into the corner, like a wounded animal.
Eyes closed.
Counting the hum of the lights.
Waiting.
The door opens with a hiss.
Not all the way — just enough for the man to step in, holding a dented metal bucket like he’s bringing her room service.
He’s the one with the shaved head and the sleeves of bad tattoos, muscle-thick and grinning like he’s been waiting for this.
He swings the bucket in slow arcs as he walks toward her. Letting it clank gently with each step.
“Congratulations, princess. You’ve earned yourself a potty bucket.”
He sets it down a few feet from her. Doesn’t kick it at her. That would’ve been too generous. He places it, like he’s giving her a choice she hasn’t earned.
Then he crouches. Just enough to loom without kneeling.
“But see—here’s the thing. We give out privileges to people who cooperate.”
“And you? You’ve been real stubborn.”
His eyes drop, dragging slowly over her hunched form.
“Maybe you need a little incentive. Maybe letting you sit there long enough will loosen your tongue—and your bladder.”
He grins. Too proud of himself.
That’s the moment her lips twitch.
Pain sparks across her cheek when she smiles, but she does it anyway.
“Wow,” she says, voice hoarse but steady, “that’s… impressively specific.”
He tilts his head.
“Come again?”
She coughs once, wipes her mouth on her sleeve, and gives him that lazy, half-lidded look she’s perfected.
“You talk like a man who’s really into piss stuff.”
“What’s the matter? This your kink? Watch women break and wet themselves? That what gets you off?”
She leans closer, voice soft and mock-sultry.
“Sorry, babe. I like my BDSM with safe words. Not war crimes.”
His nostrils flare. She watches his jaw twitch. For a heartbeat, she wonders if he’s going to hit her.
Instead, he stands.
Grabs the bucket.
Starts walking out.
“Guess you’ll find out just how bad you don’t want it,” he mutters, all false calm now.
She calls after him, cheerful through her cracked lips.
“Awww. Don’t be shy. Just admit it—you brought the bucket to watch!”
The door slams hard enough to rattle the light overhead.
And in the silence after, she breathes out — shaky, but triumphant.
Because even if she’s sitting in her own hell, he’s the one who left angry.
They come to her before she has the chance to think.
Two sets of boots. A barked command. Fingers dig into her arms — no time to stand properly, just drag her like she’s something that needs taking out with the trash. The air outside her cell tastes of copper and mildew. Her feet slip once, knees catching the rough concrete.
She doesn’t cry out. Not yet.
The next room is colder. Brighter. The kind of light that isn’t for seeing — it’s for exposing. One bare bulb, buzzing like it’s bored. Table. Two chairs. Restraints already waiting. The one in the chair today is different: leaner. Less chatty.
The pain begins small.
At first it’s a continuation — knuckles to ribs, hair yanked to tilt her head back. Repetition. The same questions in the same tone, over and over. But now there’s electricity. Not constant. Just jolts, calculated, sharp. Enough to light her nerves like broken glass.
“Who were you with?”
“What were you doing near the convoy?”
“Why did you run?”
She grits her teeth. Repeats the same line like it’s a joke now.
“I’m. A. Fucking. Mechanic.”
Her breath comes shorter each time. Sweat crawling along her back. She hears herself whimper once. Tries to turn it into a laugh. Doesn’t quite succeed.
The next jolt hits harder.
She shakes — her whole body reacting before she does — and it happens.
Warmth floods down between her legs.
She freezes.
There’s silence. Sharp. Almost respectful in its viciousness.
Then:
“Fucking disgusting,” one of them mutters.
“Didn’t take much, did it?”
The lean one just leans in, gaze sweeping over her with contempt.
“You pissed yourself.”
And she looks down. Breath stuttering.
Looks at her torn pants, the spreading dark stain, the acrid steam curling off concrete.
Then — she shrugs.
Dry. Flat. Bored.
“Eh.”
Beat.
“I’ve seen dirtier.”
Her voice cracks at the edge, but the words are steady. Almost deadpan. Her eyes flick up to meet theirs, shining with exhaustion and gallows humor.
“You ever fix a diesel engine in the rain while hungover? That’s dirty.”
One of them lets out a sharp exhale — not quite a laugh, not quite disbelief. The lean one just stares, jaw clenched.
She leans back as far as the restraints let her.
“Besides, you’re the ones who get off on making people wet themselves, right? You should be thanking me.”
Silence again.
A chair scrapes back.
She braces — but this time, no strike comes. Not yet.
The man stands. Disgusted. Angry. But not victorious.
“Put her back. Let her marinate in it.”
The door slams again behind them.
And she’s left there, tied to the chair, trembling.
But smiling.
Just a little.
Because they can hurt her.
But they still haven’t taken her voice.
Time stopped meaning anything the moment they slammed the cell door shut behind her.
The piss had gone cold by then — soaked through the fabric, clinging to the insides of her thighs like a second skin. Her pants dried patchy and stiff, the ammonia already starting to bite. It wasn't just discomfort anymore. It itched. It burned in that quiet, creeping way that didn’t scream, but nagged — like her own body was turning on her.
She shifted, wincing, trying to find a position that didn’t make it worse.
Didn’t help.
The floor was concrete. Damp. Her shirt clung to her spine with sweat. Her boots were gone — probably tossed somewhere as a joke, or maybe just to keep her from running. As if she could even stand properly right now.
After a while, they came back.
Not for a beating — not yet.
Just a tray shoved through the hatch in the door. A tin plate. Something beige and shapeless, maybe oats? Rice? Muck? Didn't matter. It smelled off.
The water that came with it was warm. Discolored. Metallic. And just before the slot slammed shut, she saw it — a glob of spit, milky and stringy, right in the center of her cup.
She stared at it.
Then she drank anyway.
Small sips. Eyes closed. Mind blank.
Because if she didn’t take something in, her head would spin worse. Because hydration mattered more than pride. Because the human body was pathetic like that — it needed. And they knew it.
They wanted her to break over the small things.
She wouldn't.
But that didn’t mean she wasn’t scared.
She curled up on her side, knees to chest, her cheek against the wall — it was cool there. Cold and dry. Her thighs itched. Her wrists ached. Her stomach growled and churned and bit itself.
And in the quiet between stomach cramps and the sting of drying piss, she thought:
Where the fuck are they?
Her team.
Whoever was left.
They knew she was waiting...Right?
They had to. Unless—
No. No, don’t go there.
She pressed her forehead harder against the concrete.
There was a sharp pain beneath her ribs. One of the kicks earlier must've bruised something. Maybe cracked it. She hadn't gotten a good breath in since.
She counted the exhale.
Long. Slow.
She'd been trained to endure. Not for this, exactly, but for worse. Cold ops briefings. Emergency protocols. Survival through capture. Escape plans. She remembered snippets. Numbers. Phrases.
But none of it covered this.
None of it warned her how it would feel to sit in her own waste with her skin blistering, food that tasted like mold and spit, her mouth too dry to speak but her head too loud to rest.
Still.
She managed a nap.
A twitchy, shallow drift. Maybe half an hour. Maybe five minutes.
She dreamed of engines. Noise and sparks. Of her commanders voice in her ear, low and casual, like he was just across the room.
“Still breathing, Brat?”
She jolted awake, heart kicking.
Nobody there.
Just the hum of the light in the hall. Just her.
Alone.
There were no clocks.
The lights never changed.
There was no window, no time of day, no sun to rise or set — just the same flickering overhead fluorescence, humming like an insect trapped in glass. The cell smelled worse each time she came back to it, not because they cleaned it, but because she was changing. Smell. Movement. Skin.
Time turned into a dull smear. She only measured it by how many times she’d pissed herself, bled through her nose, or been forced to eat slop that tasted like it had been scraped off a boot.
Sometimes they brought the food late — or maybe early. Or maybe never. Sometimes it came hot, which was somehow worse. A mockery of warmth. Sometimes it was cold, congealed, sliding across dented tin like someone had spat in it and stirred it once for good luck.
Sometimes they let her sleep.
Sometimes they didn’t.
The second round of interrogation came with a hose.
They didn’t even say anything at first — just dragged her by her arms, bare feet scraping on the floor, still sticky with what was left of her dignity. The first blast of water hit cold and sharp — aimed at her chest, her stomach, her face. She gasped, choked, spat.
Then they started yelling again.
Same questions. Recycled threats.
Who are you really?
Who sent you?
What was the objective?
She told them again: “I fix shit. That’s what I do. I came with the convoy to patch up some rust buckets abandoned by you. Great job, by the way — ten seconds with one of your drive shafts and I got PTSD.”
Slap.
Kick.
Another spray to the face.
Later they brought in a mechanic.
That was new.
Grimy jumpsuit. Grease under the fingernails. Looked like he knew what a carburetor was.
He didn’t speak English at first — or maybe he did and just liked to make her squirm. But eventually, through a translator or maybe just some sick game of “Guess What This Part Is,” he started tossing terms at her:
Compression ratios.
Turbine damage.
Hydraulic bleed.
Circuit isolation.
She answered every one of them — voice cracking, knuckles white from gripping the edge of the chair they’d tied her to, but still managing a smirk.
“Listen,” she said. “If you wanted a free class on how not to destroy a gearbox by looking at it too hard, you could’ve just asked.”
The mechanic squinted. Asked something rapid and scathing in his own language.
The guard beside her translated flatly. “He says no civilian learns field-welded fan blade tricks like that. Where did you serve?”
“I told you. I didn’t serve,” she drawled. “But I had to learn how to fix all the messes soldiers left behind. Every time one of the tin cans coughed smoke, guess who they dragged in to clean it up?”
They hated that.
She knew they hated that.
Because it sounded real.
Too real.
That was the trick: keep the lie wrapped in enough truth, they wouldn’t know where it ended.
Some days were quieter.
Restraints and silence.
They’d leave her tied to a chair in a room with no sound. No motion. Just her breath and her pain and the endless waiting.
Those were the worst. No pain to focus on. No blood to track time with.
Just the whisper of her thoughts turning on her.
What if they never come?
What if they thought you were dead?
What if they left you behind on purpose?
She’d bite her cheek until it bled, just to have something to taste.
Sometimes they upped the game.
Temperature shocks.
Sensory overload.
Flashbangs in confined rooms.
Music — loud, broken loops that fried the brain.
Once, they poured something over her. She didn’t know what. It stung like vinegar and made her skin feel like it was crawling off her bones. She vomited, and they laughed, and then they asked again:
Who. Are. You.
“Maintenance division,” she hissed. “Certified in sarcasm and unsupervised wrench violence. You should really see my performance reviews.”
At some point her body started to betray her.
She trembled even when they weren’t touching her. Her hands shook when she lifted a cup — if they even gave her one.
She started counting things again: ceiling cracks, the number of screws in the chair, the different shades of rust on the pipes.
She made lists in her head.
Favorite gear:
- AXMC Arctic Warfare
- MK14 EBR
- Glock 19
Worst smells she’d endured so far:
- Her own piss after three days
- That slop with the green flecks
- The guy who always smiled before kicking her
Petty insults she hadn’t used yet but wanted to:
- “You kiss your mother with that waterboarding technique?”
- “Did you train at the ‘Oops I Dropped My Victim’ Academy?”
- “You torture like a man who peaked in high school.”
She never gave them what they wanted.
They called her a liar.
They tried to be clever.
But they didn’t know her.
They didn’t know that she had nothing to confess. That every word they peeled from her — every hissed insult, every sarcastic jab — was the truth of the cover she’d built so deep into her bones, she could’ve passed a polygraph with it.
And they didn’t know how much that spite kept her warm.
How sass was armor when skin and muscle gave out.
How the brat kept fighting even when the girl inside her sobbed from pain.
And still, they didn’t break her.
Not yet.
She didn’t quite know how many days have passed. Her fingernails were cracked and dirty, and her knuckles looked like they’d been dragged down a brick wall. Blood dried in little crescents beneath them, half moons of memory. One of her thumbnails was loose now, dark and soft at the base. She didn’t want to know how long it had been like that.
She sat on the cold concrete, knees drawn up, head against the wall. Her joints ached in a way that had nothing to do with age or injury. Just rot. Slowness. The kind of decay that happened when days didn’t have names anymore.
The footsteps would come again soon. They always did. Just enough silence to make you wonder if they’d finally forgotten about you — and then the door creaked, and the cuffs were back, and you were nothing again.
Her mind floated, not delirious, not quite — just half-detached. Slipping between memory and theory.
Did they know where she was?
Did anyone?
She had to do something.
Her last contact with her team had been hours — no, days — before the grab. She was sure of that now. They'd been operating dark, light-footed, no tracking beacons, no comms longer than a whisper. Low-tech by necessity. Hell, even she hadn’t known where exactly they'd be bunkering next. It was the only way to keep their mission airtight.
But that also meant: no trail.
No rescue.
Not unless someone got lucky. Not unless she made them lucky.
She swallowed. Her throat hurt.
She thought about the last sarcastic message she sent before black site radio silence:
“If I die, tell Reyes he still owes me a drink, and Chang that I knew he was the one sneaking instant ramen into my ruck. And someone better name a stray dog after me or I’m haunting the lot of you.”
Would that be the last thing anyone ever remembered her for?
The guards came.
This time, they didn’t bother with questions right away. They strapped her fingers down. A tray of fine steel instruments glinted just out of reach. A man in a surgical apron adjusted his gloves.
She didn't flinch when he pulled out the needle. She just smiled, lips split and crusted with blood.
“Oh, look. We’re doing arts and crafts today.”
They started with the needles — beneath her nails, slow and methodical, not to damage but to wear.
Her sass cracked but didn’t vanish. Just thinned, like a voice underwater. She gasped, panted, twisted. She swore in three languages.
When they moved to the pliers, she let out a sound — one that wasn’t quite pain and wasn’t quite anything human.
And then she stopped fighting.
Stopped kicking.
She slumped in the chair, breathing hard, and let her head loll slightly to the side. They paused, watching. Waiting.
Then, softly:
“Okay.”
The word hung in the air like smoke.
They leaned in.
“You have something to say?”
She blinked slowly, let her body tremble, made her lips quiver — just slightly. Just enough.
“I wasn’t deployed with the main convoy. I wasn’t logistics,” she murmured. “I was embedded with Echo-4. Recon insert near Meridian Faultline. Civilian disguise. We had eyes on a tech route — salvage op gone sideways. That’s where we lost contact.”
She coughed. Spat blood. Looked up, wild-eyed and hollow.
“You think I was fixing engines? I was tagging them. Retro mods. Thermal readers on abandoned sites. That’s how we tracked your... scav-runner squads.”
A long silence.
It was just enough truth.
Echo-4 was real — or had been, once. Meridian was nowhere near where she’d been taken, but it was close enough to a zone with known rebel-supply activity. Enough for them to consider it. Salvage ops happened there. Civilian disguises weren’t uncommon. Thermal tagging of enemy hardware was a trick her team had used six months ago in a completely different theater.
It was close enough to work.
The interrogator asked for specifics.
She gave some. Descriptions. Names that didn’t exist. One gear ID number that did — because she’d memorized it from a wreck two years ago.
And then she broke down. Almost on command.
Not sobbing — that wasn’t her way.
But bitter, hollow laughter. A kind of defeated sneer, like the pride had finally cracked and was leaking out in toxic drips.
“You happy now?” she rasped. “You win. I’m tired. I just want to shower. I just want to sleep without piss in my hair.”
They believed her.
Because she didn’t surrender, she cracked. And cracking made sense.
They believed her because her details were too specific to be fabricated — which, of course, they were. Just not about this mission.
They believed her because she had never given anything before — so this had the taste of a genuine collapse.
They believed her because they wanted to.So they let her shower.
Ice cold. A timed trickle. No soap. But it felt like heaven.
She stood under it until the timer shut off, arms wrapped around herself, bruises like galaxies across her ribs, her spine. One nail gone. Others blackened. Fingers trembling like wind-stripped leaves.
But she stood taller when she stepped out.
They gave her a shirt.
Not clean, not whole. But not bloodstained either.
A tray of food, protein-heavy. Actual rice. Water that wasn’t recycled from a faucet hose.
The same guard from before — the one with the broad chest and the kind eyes that lied — watched her eat.
“You see?” he said, kneeling beside the crate they called a table. “When you’re good to us, we’re good to you.”
She looked at him with a gaze that didn’t quite meet his.
“For what it’s worth,” he added, “I believe you.”
She smiled, weakly.
Then she finished chewing and said nothing.
Because she knew.
This was the calm before the storm.
They would verify what they could — and when it didn’t add up, when the lies became a tangle, when her team followed the trail and pressure started building — they’d be back.
With worse.
But for now, she was clean.
And her fingers were still her own.
And somewhere, out in the blur beyond this hole, she knew someone would see the bait and bite.
It took two days.
Two full days without another needle. Without the sound of metal tools laid out like instruments in some twisted concert. No more questions asked in barbed voices. Just... space. Food. Water that wasn’t gray. A cold shower that still scalded with its shame, but rinsed off the crust of dried blood and grime. She'd taken it all without comment, without breaking the silent performance of a prisoner slightly softened—but not quite broken.
And then this.
They didn’t come to drag her out. They didn’t bark orders, or cuff her. They stormed in with fury she was waiting for.
The first blow came too fast to brace for—her lip split before her knees even hit the dirt. The second cracked against her ribs like a dry branch snapping. Something inside screamed with that dull, low throb that told her: this one’s bad.
They were shouting—half-English, half that scratchy, guttural dialect she hadn’t placed yet. It wasn’t meant to be understood. It was rage, wild and wide and sharp-edged. But she caught enough.
“Set-up… ambush… they’re dead—Tarak is DEAD—”
That name she recognized—beady eyes, the one who’d grinned when he stomped her stomach somewhere around day three. The one who smelled like vinegar and meat and delight. Dead.
She only smiled in satisfaction. And then another fist knocked the feeling right out of her lungs.
The kicks were brutal. Surgical. One pinned her ankle and another stomped—not enough to shatter, but enough to twist it until the joint screamed. One rib—no, maybe two—snapped inward. Her left hand—her non-dominant one—was wrenched back and she heard it before she felt it. The wrong kind of pop.
She knew the timeline of pain. Knew when the burn would come. Knew when the numbness would trick her into thinking it wasn’t so bad. It was.
Then came he.
The one who’d given her the dry towel and the stupid line: Be good to us, we’ll be good to you.
He crouched beside her, grabbed her by the collar of her shirt—soaked in blood and sweat—and yanked her up just high enough that her spine screamed.
Then his hand wrapped around her throat.
Not crushing. Just... holding. Too tight to ignore, too light to pass out.
“You lied to us, you little bitch,” he hissed, teeth gritted, lips barely moving. “You thought we wouldn’t find out?”
Her body wanted to go limp. Her lungs wanted to panic. But her mouth—
—her mouth was still hers.
She curled her lip back, spat blood and spit into his face, and rasped, “You were stupid enough to believe me.”
A flicker of something passed through his eyes. Not quite fury—something colder.
He wiped his cheek with the back of his hand. Stood slowly. Looked down at her like she was rotting meat.
“That won’t happen again. Next time you open your mouth—every word you say will hurt you twice. One for you. One for our men you killed.”
Then he turned.
Left her curled on the ground like broken scaffolding. Breath whistling through cracked ribs. Cold sweat making her shiver despite the heat. The taste of blood copper on her tongue.
And for the first time since her capture—
—real fear crept in.
Not pain. Not anger. Not the resolve she’d been sharpening into steel all these days.
Fear. That the brief reprieve was over. That they were done playing.
She laid her head back against the concrete, unable to stop the shaking. One hand crushed. One ankle screaming. Breathing shallow. And yet...
Somewhere far off, under the haze, her thoughts clung to the only thing that kept her from screaming:
*Please let the breadcrumb work. Let someone be close. Let someone have seen what they weren’t supposed to.*
She closed her eyes.
Swallowed back bile.
Waited for the next round to start.
She was so out of it she didn’t even hear them coming this time.
The metal door screamed open, but her ears didn’t register it anymore as a threat. Her brain cataloged it along with a thousand other repetitions of the same nightmare: door opens, pain follows. It was as routine now as breathing, except breathing hurt. Everything hurt.
Her body jerked forward from the force of one of them yanking her up by the chain looped around her wrists. The cold metal tore at skin already raw and split open. She didn’t scream. That was gone too. Her voice came out only in acid-tipped words now, worn hoarse but sharp-edged.
“Oh look, it’s Mr. Sensitive and the Genital Jazz Ensemble. Come to sing me another love song?” she rasped, teeth red with blood.
They didn’t answer. They never laughed anymore.
They use her. Not like you'd use a person. Like you'd use a thing.
She’d sunk her teeth into one of them—his shriek had been satisfying, even as the rage that followed cost her everything.
His face was twisted with something close to glee.
“No more biting,” he said with a thick accent, and then—
White-hot.
There was a crack, like something snapping beneath a boot.
Pain shot up through her gums, bright and unbearable. Her body recoiled, but they held her fast. A hot, wet taste filled her mouth—iron and spit and something thick. She coughed. Something solid clinked against the concrete. A tooth? Two? Maybe more.
Her vision went grey around the edges.
She blinked, slowly. “Well… that’s one way to… fix my smile,” she slurred, spitting a mix of blood and broken enamel at his boots.
He snarled and backhanded her. Her cheek flared with heat.
She had tried biting. That was days ago—maybe more. Time didn’t mean anything anymore. Days bled into nights bled into agony until even her pain started to echo.
She didn’t cry. Couldn’t. She laughed, low and broken. “Gotta say, though... You knock harder than my last date. He took me to dinner first, though. Just sayin’.”
At some point she stops gagging. Stops even registering it. Her brain closes the door—slams it shut—on whatever used to live in the space where dignity was.
Then came the wires. Again.
They clamped things between her toes. The burn. The twitch. The jolt that made her spine feel like it was snapping in half.
They press one cigarette after another out on her neck, just below the jaw, where the skin is soft and tender. She jerks, but doesn’t scream anymore. The screams have turned inward.
Her arms—a canvas of circular burns. The ones on her inner forearms sting the most. Not because of the nerves. Because she remembers what they said when they did it. “Perfect little ashtray.” And the way they all laughed.
Mocking laughter. One of them mutters something about her being “useless now,” that “nobody will want to look at her” with that face.
She doesn’t know when they started cutting it. Just remembers cold metal on her cheek. The moment when her skin went hot, and then cold again. Like her body had given up on sending pain. Just a whisper of wetness down her burned neck. She thinks she asked them if the angle was flattering. She thinks they didn’t laugh.
Sass. She had to keep the sass. As long as she could talk back, she hadn’t broken. Right?
But something was wrong. She didn’t remember what they asked her. Didn’t know if she answered. She just... recited things. Her cover story. Words she’d practiced until they became instinct. Birthplace, rank, assigned squad, mechs she’d serviced. Names. Codes. None of it meant anything anymore. She couldn’t remember if she made it up.
She couldn’t even remember her real name.
Her thighs are a map of old cuts, re-opened and re-sliced, oozing and raw.
Her left ankle throbbed from where it had been stomped days ago. Her right hand hung at a wrong angle. Not dominant. She could still shoot with her left. Maybe. If she got a gun.
If.
She doesn't cry. She doesn't feel much. She's floating, almost. Above herself.
They left her alone, for hours, maybe more. She sat slumped in her own filth, not even flinching when a rat crawled close. Maybe it would bite her. Maybe it would finish the job.
Somewhere in the screaming silence of her skull, she thinks: this is it
And then—something shifts.
Voices. Yelling. Not the usual language. Footsteps. Chaos.
She’s on the floor, barely conscious, barely able to lift her head. Her one good eye—swollen, blood-shot—catches movement. The light from outside floods in. Shouts in English. Boots stomp past. Gunfire. Shattered glass.
She flinches.
Then—familiar fabric. Familiar patches. Familiar shapes in the blur.
Her lips crack as she tries to smile.
Home.
She choked. Not on a sob—she didn’t have those left. Just sound. Just breath.
One of them knelt. A voice—low, firm, familiar—was saying something. Her name, maybe. Her callsign. She couldn’t tell.
She doesn’t know who it is. Can’t make out the faces.
But it’s them.
They're here.
She tries to say something—anything. A joke. A name. A slur. But all that comes out is a gurgle, blood-mixed and toothless.
It’s enough.
One of them kneels beside her, a hand on her face, murmuring something she can’t hear.
And then, finally, finally—
She lets go.