Then the first Voice. “Naughty naughty, Rangan. But we’ve figured out how you’re holding up against us.”

What?

Then his shirt was being tugged up, and something cold and hard was pressed into his side and then

AGGGHHGHG!

Electricity coursed through him. His body jerked again, spasming and straining.

AGGGHHGHG!

They shocked him a second time. A third. Garbage scrolled across his mind’s eye as Nexus nodes were disrupted and Nexus OS suffered critical faults. The serenity package failed with the rest of Nexus 5. His shield against fear was gone. Sweat beaded on his brow instantly. His pulse raced again, his stomach knotted up inside.

“Pulse jumping,” the woman’s voice said, emotionless. “Suppression eliminated. Clear to proceed.”

No. Oh no. No no no no no.

Then the wet towel was on Rangan’s face again. He held his breath, instinctively, terrified now, and they punched him. He gasped as the air left him and he couldn’t breathe couldn’t fucking breathe and when he could he gasped in again – but it was water not air, choking him, filling up his nose and mouth and lungs and he was coughing it out, his whole body convulsing and his arms and legs pulling so hard he was cutting himself on the straps and the water kept coming down and he couldn’t breathe and his heart was pounding and he panicked and tried to breath harder and oh my fucking God I’m going to die.

Then the water was gone and he was coughing and coughing and thought he was going to puke into the mask and the towel and then finally sweet air between the coughs.

“You like that, Rangan?” the Voice said. “Because I can keep doing this all fucking day.”

Fuck you.

He tried to say it through the fear and the water in his lungs but all that came out was a long fit of coughing. The Voice laughed. Rangan gasped for air. He reached through his terror for some witty insult and they punched him again and the air rushed out of his lungs and when he sucked back in it was only water and he was fucking drowning again and please God, please, fucking God, please motherfucking God.

And then he was coughing, and coughing, and coughing and then he retched and the awful chocolate drink they’d been feeding him came back up with the sick taste of bile and he was drowning in his own fucking chocolate puke.

They ripped off the towel and mask and he retched and convulsed again, puking to the side into a bucket and squinting his eyes against the intense white of the bright, clinical room. And before he could turn his head to see, finally see, the face of the Voice, the mask was down over his face again, smelling of chocolate and bile.

He lay there panting for a while, the vomit buying him a reprieve.