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Shifting his eyes off to the side, he could see nothing beyond the bright beam of interrogation light that was shining down on him. Everything was darkness, and he gave up trying to penetrate the illumination shield. As his lids fluttered, bits and pieces of what had been done to him over the course of hours came back to him, and he started to choke, his throat spasming, his lungs pulling down bodily fluids instead of air—
“Now, now, let us not get agitated.”
Gus moaned as his head was gently repositioned on the pillow that was now damp. With his airway straightened out, his respiration got a little easier, but a rolling dizziness made the darkness around him spin.
“I…”
“You are what, Dr. St. Claire?”
His eyes tracked the inquiry to the right and he blinked in an attempt to get his pupils to function better. The man who had worked on him was just a dim shape on the edge of the light, looming as a promise of more pain.
“Done…” Gus coughed weakly. “I am done.”
“I would imagine you feel that way. And I must tell you that I, too, am almost finished with you. Indeed, you will find that I am a male who must complete things.”
There was a soft crackling, like a fire made with damp wood, and even though Gus’s consciousnessdidn’t immediately identify what it was, his body knew. His body spoke.
“No…God, no…”
“There are ways to make this easier on you, my friend.”
Gus forced his protest out through teeth that chattered. “No… just kill me…”
“It is better that you die naturally. As a physician, surely you understand the ethics of it all. And I think you’re close. I have not had the formal training you have, but experience tells me much.”
A flickering of blue entered his sightline, the charge of electricity dancing in between two contacts on a handheld device, the energy eager to be set free along different channels.
Like the water molecules inside a human being.
Tears burned in Gus’s eyes and stung the open wounds on his face as he started to weep. He was so exhausted that the agony in his body wasn’t something he felt, it was all that he was. No more skin, muscle, and bones, no blood, no marrow. Just the terrible pain.
“Now tell me about that house. How do you get in.”
It was the same question. For hours. Six words. Followed by five words. And he had answered, God save them all, he had—
“I… told… you everything.”
“Yes, you have.”
“Why… are you still doing this—”
“I like to be sure.”
No, the man liked to inflict pain. It was as if he snorted suffering as a drug. Even now, Gus could feel something transpiring between them, a draw. A sucking—
“The card… is in my… wallet—”
Every time he answered, with each instance of capitulation, he lost another part of who he was: Even though his reply was the same, the concession was an endless pit, the shame a new slice on flesh that had yet to be breached.
“Yes, the card. Tell me more.”
The Taser, or whatever the hell it was, was applied to the thick meat of his upper thigh, and Gus screamed as the biggest muscles in his body contracted, the locking-up so vicious he knew for sure his leg was going to snap in half—
“There, there, Dr. St. Claire.”
As that voice registered once again, he realized that the weapon had been removed from his quadriceps. The pain remained.
“Tell. Me. More.”
