I twitch my fingers to verify that fact. Yes, alive. Almost too weak to move, but alive.

Fuck. The rest of the memories flood in, and before I even open my eyes, I know where I am, and I know I probably shouldn’t have fought the darkness. Oblivion would’ve been better than this.

“Welcome back,” a man’s voice says softly, and I open my eyes to see Majid’s smiling face hovering over me. “You’ve been under long enough. It’s time for us to begin.”

They drag me along a hard cement floor of what appears to be some kind of a construction site. From the looks of it, it’s going to be an industrial building, and the room they haul me into has no windows, only a doorway. I think about fighting, but I’m too weak from my injuries to have any chance of success, so I decide to bide my time and conserve what little strength I have left. I’m guessing I will need it to cope with what they have in store for me.

They begin by stripping me naked and stringing me up with a rope that they loop over a beam in the unfinished ceiling. They’re not gentle about it, and the cast on my left arm breaks as they tie my wrists together and draw my bound arms up over my head. The agonizing pain in my injured arm and shoulder makes me pass out, and it’s not until they throw ice-cold water on my face that I regain consciousness again.

In a way, I admire their methods. They know what they’re doing. Take away a man’s clothes, and he immediately feels more vulnerable. Keep him cold, weak, and injured, and he’s already at a disadvantage, his psyche as battered as his body. They are starting off on the right foot. If I hadn’t put others through this myself, I would’ve been begging and pleading right about now.

As it is, my body is in a complete fight-or-flight mode. The knowledge that I’m so close to death—or at least to excruciating pain—makes my heart pound with a sickeningly fast rhythm. I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing me shake, but I can feel small tremors running over my skin, both from the cold water they poured on me in an already-freezing room and from a surfeit of adrenaline. They’ve strung me up so high that only the tips of my toes touch the ground, and with the majority of my weight being supported by my tied wrists, my wounded arm and shoulder are already screaming in agony.

As I hang there, trying to breathe through the pain, Majid approaches me, a smug smile creasing his face. “Well, if it isn’t Esguerra himself,” he drawls, his British accent making him sound like some Middle Eastern version of James Bond. “How nice of you to pay our corner of the world a visit.”

I don’t say anything, just gaze at him contemptuously, knowing that will irritate him more than anything. I know what he’s going to demand, and I have no intention of giving it to him—not when he’s going to kill me in the most painful way possible anyway.