1
Ryker
The worst part of Hell? Hard to choose. The isolation? The screams of my men echoing off the walls? The ever-changing schedule, designed to keep us all off balance, never knowing whether it was day or night? The God-awful scraps of food infected with maggots or dotted with mold? The smell?
Not the pain.
Pain can be controlled. I learned to ignore the physical blows. The blades. The cigarettes. The troughs of dirty, parasite-infested water they’d shove my head into until I was seconds from passing out. Electricity and fire are the hardest, but most times, I could at least dampen the agony of ten thousand volts shooting through my body or flames charring my skin by sending my mind somewhere else. Somewhere quiet and warm with no walls where nothing is out of my control. My safe space. I’m there now. On the beach, in the sun. Waves lap softly at the shore, and birds fly overhead, their white and gray bodies graceful as they arc through the sky.
Until I’m yanked back into the depths of the dark, cold caves under the mountains. Blindfolded, I hold my breath, listening for footsteps. For the jingle of keys or the scrape of a boot against stone.
On my knees, my hands tied behind my back, I fight the dizziness. I don’t remember the last time I ate, and the only water I’ve had in the past twenty-four hours was licked off the walls of the hole in the ground they just pulled me out of.
“Tell us what we need to know, Ryker. Then we can treat your wounds, send you back to your family.” The head interrogator, Kahlid, leans close enough I can smell the garlic on his breath. “We do not want to hurt you, my friend. But you must understand. We have no choice.”
The punch to my liver sends pain exploding across my back. I start to fall, but the noose around my neck stops my descent, choking me, and I gasp for breath, wheezing until Kahlid grabs my chin and forces me back up to my knees.
“Tell us, Ryker. Why were you in the mountains? What were you searching for?”
In fifteen months, I haven’t said a thing beyond my name, rank, and every curse word I’ve ever heard—and some I invented just for this place. Pretending I don’t know anything…I gave that up after the first week. One of my men was so delirious before he died, he told them we were all Special Forces. Sepsis had a hold of him, and he didn’t know what he was saying. Hell, he thought he was talking to me. But I was gagged and bound a few feet away, watching as Kahlid ripped out his fingernails one at a time.
“Go fuck yourself,” I manage, my throat raw and my tongue so dry it sticks to the roof of my mouth. “Quit wasting my goddam time.”
The tip of the knife slices just under the blindfold, a scant millimeter from my eye. Blood drips down my cheek, splashing my chest and soaking into my threadbare t-shirt. What’s one more scar? I already look like Quasimodo.
The door opens with a screech of metal, and I hear Dax breathing. He’s getting worse every day. Weaker. He can’t walk. Fuckers broke his leg two weeks ago, and though they set it—sort of—with a makeshift splint and some dirty rags, it’s infected, and the forced inactivity has driven him half-insane.
“Watch…the leg…asshole,” he growls. Good. At least he’s still got his wits about him today.
“Over there,” Kahlid says.
I hold my breath and listen, trying to get a sense of where they’re taking him, what they’re doing. The last book I read before we found ourselves guests in the worst accommodations Yelp has ever seen was all about tricking your brain into remembering a shitton of information.
I catalog everything. How Kahlid’s footsteps sound different from Basheert’s. The limp that marks Hamid’s walk. The sweet odor on the guards’ breaths after breakfast and how it differs from the garlic they eat for dinner.
Despite being blindfolded anytime they pull me out of my cell or the hole, I have a map of this place burned into my brain. The room we’re in…it’s twenty feet by thirty feet. Along one wall, there are hasps sunk into the rock they can tie or lock us to. The ceiling is low. The door, lower. If I don’t duck, I hit my head every time.
I never duck. Can’t let them know what I know.
Two sets of hands grab my arms and haul me to the center of the room. I’m a big guy—close to seven feet tall. Before…fifteen months ago…I was close to two-ninety. But now…I’ve lost at least fifty pounds.
Kahlid pulls the noose over my head, and I swallow hard. I can’t stand the sensation of anything around my neck anymore. Not after the hundreds of times they’ve choked me until I’ve passed out.
“Take off the blindfolds,” Kahlid orders.
Fuck.
I blink against the dim lights.
Dax hangs from his wrists against the far wall, trying to balance on his one good leg. The left half of his face is bruised and bloody. Fuckers beat the shit out of him yesterday.
“Sergeant Holloway. Welcome.”
“Fuck you.” Dax spits in Kahlid’s general direction.
“We want to offer you medical care, Sergeant. Dash.”
Dash. Shitstain hasn’t once called him by the right name.
