Thank you all so much for your reviews and for your interest in the story!
This chapter contains some disturbing scenes, but I don't think it's anything too graphic.
Chapter II
11 days. That's how long Booth had been missing. Not that he could really keep track of the number of days anymore, the day-night cycles somehow blended together in a haze of pain and confusion.
"Seeley Joseph Booth, Master Sergeant, date of birth..." he felt the stick hit his soles again and again and gritted his teeth hard. He wasn't going to give them the satisfaction. "Seeley Joseph Booth, Master Sergeant, date of birth..." He just had to hang on a little bit longer, until his buddies came and freed him, until the rescue team made its way through the desert to sprig him from this hell-hole.
"Wakey wakey sleepyhead!" the kick to his already broken ribs pulled a loud moan from between his lips, before he could focus enough to clench his jaw. 'He wasn't going to give them the satisfaction'
Seconds later his body registered the cold and the sounds outside. The smell was also not right, not right for the desert. And the mid-western accent of his captor...
"Get up you son of a bitch!" another kick to the ribs had him curling his whole body protectively over them, not that it did much good when the same foot pushed hard on this back landing him with a thud on the dirt floor. Pain shot up from about everywhere in his battered body. Dirt floor...earth...not Iraq. The last... 'how many days'? came back in a flash - distractedly opening his door to a man in Army uniform, his mind still too much on the case they had just wrapped up to notice the uniform was a fake until it was too late, the needle stabbed in his leg and the blur starting to cloud his mind and slow his body, the deeply-engrained, automatic response to fight, fight, kick, punch and then the searing pain of the knife in his thigh, the dizziness, the blackness.
He woke up in this place, a small basement in a cabin in the wilderness – he could assess that much in the first couple of days. He could also assess, although the realization came much later, that escape on his own was going to be extremely difficult. 'Not impossible, nothing is impossible, Bones showed him that, Bones will...'
He felt the hook being attached to the cuffs on his wrists and his body uncurled painfully from the floor as he was lifted up. They tied his hands in front of him for this particular thing, so they could hang him from the ceiling, feet barely touching the ground. His abused muscles screamed in protest as his captor hooked the other end of the chain on a bolt on the wall.
The bucket of cold water hit him in the face, momentarily cutting off his breathing. Or was that because he knew by now what came next? In the same fashion as in the last days he felt the wires being attached to his body and then the shocks started. His body arched as the current passed through him, every single fiber in his muscles in agony. He grunted from between clenched teeth, his body jerking wildly. Again. And again. He wasn't going to scream, he would never give them the satisfaction of hearing him scream. Just as he felt the blessed blackness starting to encompass him a while later, another bucket of water was thrown in his face.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk, agent Booth. No passing out now. Where's the fun in that? Do you think I was allowed luxuries like that in prison? In the prison YOU put me in?" his captor was leaning close to him, a rough hand grabbing his jaw. "Do you know what happens to child abusers in prison? DO YOU? Oh, sure you do, you took pleasure in mentioning that before you threw me in there!" a punch to the face followed each statement.
Booth's head rolled forward as he spit blood on the floor. "You...bastard...kept your son tied up for days...and tortured him..." another punch to the gut effectively stopped his words.
"Tortured him? Apparently you don't know what torture means, which is why I'm attempting to educate you on the matter! I merely disciplined him – and who are you to tell me how I'm supposed to raise my son? Or your precious law? A bunch of bleeding hearts telling me how education should be" he spit on the floor, demonstratively. "Where was your law when they abused me in prison? When they shoved their... but it's always better to show you, isn't it?"
A nauseating wave of panic swept over him. No, he couldn't mean...that.
"No..." he couldn't help the word from making its way out. "No..."
His captor laughed. "No? So that's all it takes to break the big bad Ranger / Agent?" he swept his eyes slowly over his half naked body and Booth couldn't suppress the shiver.
"But no worries, I'm not that way inclined. Although..." he grabbed an empty beer bottle from the table and affectionately caressed it "...there are always other ways"
The panic intensified. 'Can't breathe, can't breathe...please God...They'll come for me they always do they won't give up they don't leave people behind the Rangers the Bureau the squints Bones...BonesBonesBones...'
The small touch of the beer bottle to his hip brought forth the last bits of adrenaline he had, and with a superhuman effort he grabbed the chain above him and lifted his feet high from the floor, kicking his captor hard in the face. He flew back into the wall, disoriented. That lasted only for a few seconds, and his eyes darkened dangerously. He got up slowly, wiping the blood from his mouth.
"You really think you can stop me? That's pathetic!" he leaned closer towards Booth and enunciated every word carefully. "The only way out for you is death. And you're not getting that until you beg for it, do you hear me? You beg me to kill you and maybe I'll grant your wish. Maybe." he turned to leave but changed his mind. "Oh, and in case you still hold the idiotic hope someone will come for you – my cousin, who went to...fetch you, is not in the system. No way to identify him, do you hear me? No way to find you" he unchained the cuffs and shoved another needle in his prisoner's arm before slowly locking the door behind him.
Booth's whole body twitched, the shivering so bad his teeth chattered. The cold floor beneath him seemed to finally drain the last of his hopes. Rational thought had long since abandoned him, 'What would Bones say?' being replaced with a cold despair. 'No way out no way out'. The drugs in his system made thinking difficult, the haze setting heavily over him. 'No one is coming no way out'
The next time the agony of another electrocution session enveloped his body he screamed.