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“You might be too much of a badass to let everybody know you’re in pain. But not everyone’s like you, Psycho. Maybe we’ll listen to someone else’s pain instead. Fellas, grab him.”
Two of the soldiers standing guard on my cell rush into the room and remove me by force from my corner. They jam a bag over my head to keep me from knowing where they’re taking me. I’m dragged out of the cell by my arms; they don’t care that I don’t stand up. My body’s dragged down several halls before I’m deposited in another room.
De Trolio yanks the bag from my head. Sight restored, I look around, expecting torture devices and other instruments of pain.
Instead, I discover I’m in an empty room. Just me, De Trolio, a chair, and a glass pane that stretches several feet wide across the wall—a two-way mirror.
I glance up to notice how closely De Trolio’s watching me. He’s waiting on my reaction, trying to see if I understand.
My breathing’s slowed. The situation’s an unknown.
My instincts tell me something’s happening. Something that’s so much worse than anything else that I’ve experienced so far.
Then I hear it. On the other side of the two-way mirror. The door opens and several pairs of footsteps thud into the room.
There’s a man’s voice.
“Should we tie her down?”
And a woman’s scream. “No… please… NO!”
My body goes still at the sound. Yet the opposite happens with my heart. It speeds up inside my ribcage. I stare at the glass pane as ice-cold dread fills me.
It breaks through my composed, emotionless facade. Shows through on my face.
De Trolio spies my reaction and laughs. “Therewe go. Finally something to break down Billy Badass. Not so tough now?”
On the other side of the wall, the guys who have brought Delphine into the room yell at her to shut the fuck up. Their grunts and shuffled footsteps follow along with the rustle of bodies.
Is she fighting them? Struggling to get free?
SMACK!
“I said shut the fuck up!” one of them barks.
“DELPHINE!” I push myself up from the chair and rush toward the glass pane. “DON’T FUCKING TOUCH HER!”
My good fist and my broken one collide with the two-way mirror. Pain is of no consequence. I bang on the glass, caught up in a fit of rage, cracking my knuckles open, then smashing them into the glass even harder. If I have to break through this glass pane and concrete, then so be it—I’ll tear this fucking wall down with my bleeding fingers—
“Restrain him!”
The soldiers who brought me in grapple me to the floor. They dig an electric cattle prod into my ribs, another device I’ve become familiar with in my captivity, and send electric bolts through my body.
I’m not done struggling. I fight and grunt against them. Delphine’s name leaves my hoarse throat.
De Trolio steps over me and flicks a switch on the wall. The lights in our room dim and the glass in the two-way mirror transforms.
It’s no longer showing us our reflection. It’s showing us the other room—Delphine and the men who’ve brought her in.
I freeze mid-fight, this time my heart doing the same in my chest. I’ve stopped breathing.
Keeping track of time has been impossible while captive, but it’s already felt like years have gone by. An eternity since I’ve last seen her.
Phi.
Only a few feet away.
Close enough that it feels like I can reach out and touch her. If not for the wall and glass that separates us.
