The liquid keeps coming in a slow, steady line, unaffected by anything I do. It reaches the line and disappears into my vein. The change is immediate and wrong, like something inside me has been switched off one piece at a time. Strength drains without warning, my limbs losing all urgency while my body sinks heavily into the mattress beneath me.
The room begins to sway around me while my mind still fights long after the rest of my body has stopped obeying. Cain blurs first, then the walls, then even the hard edges of the bed start melting out of focus.
The masked man is the last thing I can still see clearly, standing over me while the rest of the world melts into a blur of white, and right before even his outline disappears completely, a warm, amused sound reaches me through the haze.
“Close your eyes, kitten. The nightmare starts when you wake up.”
Chapter 22
Sierra
The sound of chain scraping metal drags me awake before I understand anything else, harsh and grating above my head, followed by the sick pull in my shoulders that turns awareness into pain so fast it steals the rest of the breath from my lungs. For one confused second I still expect the hospital bed beneath me, the straps, the white ceiling, the drugged heaviness pinning me down. Instead, there is nothing under my body except cold air and the violent strain of my own weight hanging from my wrists.
My eyes open to a dim room, lit only by a few industrial lamps fixed high overhead, their weak light spilling across grey brick walls that rise far above me before disappearing into shadow.
There are no windows, no ordinary furniture, no sign of daylight, and nothing around me except concrete floors, steel fixtures, and too much open space.
Terror slams into me so violently my vision smears out of focus. I try to scream, but the gag kills the sound instantly—thick fabric wedged painfully between my teeth until my jaw throbs.
I lunge upward on instinct, trying to rip my hands free, and the chain snaps tight with a vicious rattle, pain tearing through both of my arms hard enough to make my entire body jolt. My wrists are shackled above my head, attached to a heavy hook running along a metal rail fixed into the ceiling. The kind of machinery built to drag weight from one side of a room to another.
God. I’m hanging from it like cargo.
My bare feet scrape desperately against the floor beneath me, but the restraints keep all the pressure locked painfully in place. My body swings slightly from the movement, naked skin hit by the cold air of the room, and the realization of that lands almost as violently as the restraints.
They stripped me completely. There is nothing left between me and them, not even the thin hospital gown I woke in before. Every bruise, every mark, every inch of me is exposed under the lights.
My pulse pounds harder as I force myself to look around, and off to my right I spot a large circular tank—industrial and waist-high—made of metal with rust eating along the rim. It is wide enough to fit a body inside with room to spare, and the surface of whatever fills it catches the weak light in dull ripples. The room is too dark to see clearly, but it looks like water, filled nearly to the top, and the sight of it sends something cold crawling slowly down my spine.
I keep looking around until I spot them several meters away, where a black leather sofa sits in the middle of the room facing me. Cain is stretched across one end of it with one arm along the backrest, sleeves pushed to his forearms, looking perfectlyat ease, like he belongs here. Beside him, the masked man sits lower in the leather, dressed entirely in black, his face hidden behind the balaclava except for the eyes fixed steadily on me.
Neither looks surprised that I’m awake. Neither moves to help me. They watch with the calm attention of men waiting for a show to begin.
I thrash again, harder this time, fury overpowering every other instinct as the chain jerks across the ceiling track with a harsh grind of metal. My shoulders feel like they’re being pulled apart, tears burning instantly into my eyes, but I keep fighting because doing nothing feels worse.
Cain looks me over, then exhales softly, the sound dangerously close to a laugh. “There she is,” His tone stays smooth and controlled, making my skin crawl instantly. “I was starting to think you’d sleep through the fun part.”
I choke another scream into the gag and lunge toward him as far as the chain allows. The effort only sends my body swinging helplessly in front of them like a puppet on a string.
The masked man’s laugh rolls low through the room. “Still got fight in her.” His attention drifts over me slowly, unhurried and invasive. “Looks even better like this.”
My stomach turns so sharply I nearly retch around the gag.
Cain rises from the sofa and crosses the concrete floor without a trace of urgency, his hands loose at his sides, like the sight of me hanging from the ceiling is some long-forgotten show he’s finally getting to watch again. When he stops in front of me, I try to recoil, but there is nowhere to go except the useless sway of my own body.
“You know,” he says, tilting his head while he looks at me with that same calm expression he wore in the car, “most peoplespend a long time asking what they did wrong.” His eyes lift briefly to the restraints above me before settling back on mine. “You skipped straight to fear. Good.”
I shake my head violently, rage and terror blurring together while muffled sounds vibrate uselessly against the gag. Behind him, the masked man leans forward with his forearms on his knees, watching every movement I make.
“Give it time,” he says. “People always break eventually.”
Cain’s mouth curves faintly, but it’s the tank to my right that keeps dragging my attention back between breaths, the still surface of that liquid catching dim light each time I swing. I don’t know what it’s for, but something deep in my gut tells me I’m going to find out.
Cain watches me for one long second, my skin crawling under the weight of it, like he’s cataloging every reaction I fail to hide, before heading back toward the sofa with that same unnerving calm. He reaches for the low table beside it, lifts a crystal bottle, and pours whiskey into the waiting glass as if this were any ordinary night.
The masked man rises while my attention follows Cain, and I only realize he has moved when heavy footsteps fade somewhere behind me. For a few strained seconds all I hear is the soft clink of glass, the creak of leather as Cain settles back into his seat, and the chain above me shifting each time my body sways.
Then the footsteps return. I turn sharply toward the sound, and the moment I see what he is carrying, every muscle in my body locks. It’s mirror nearly the size of him, tall and framed in dark metal, its base scraping across the concrete as he drags it closer. He moves without hurry, handling it with the same ease as everything else, like this moment was planned long before I woke up here.
