Illya was cold. He was cold, and in so much pain. His entire body felt knotted up, held rigid, tortured and in pain. And then he remembered. He remembered being tied in that warehouse, his arms lashed above his head, his hands numb with lack of blood flow. He remembered someone cutting the rope that strung him up, and falling to the ground like a sack before they laid into him for the last time. They had already tortured him, and understood that they would get nowhere. Now they simply wanted to kill him.
He had spent a long time withdrawn into himself, trying to suppress his reactions to pain and indignity, but now he realised it was time to act. He had hung there for so long, been subjected to agony for so long, that it had started to feel like a way of life. Now, when he hit the floor like so much coal being dropped from a lorry, the sudden cold, the jar of pain through his body, reminded him that he was still alive, and that he still had some modicum of say in what would happen to him, if only he could manage to fight.
His shoulder joints screamed pain at him. His ribs, his right hip, his right leg, were all aflame with pain. In his time as an U.N.C.L.E. agent he had learnt that there were many types of pain. There was the sharp, encompassing insistence of broken bones, a pain one could hardly learn to push away. There was the sudden sting of whipping, which was gradually replaced by the ceaseless throb of the developing welts. There was the dull ache of bruising that only really made itself known when one moved or touched the affected area. There was the hot, throbbing sting of cuts and burns. Then there was the short, nervy jolt of electric shock that stung the area to which it was applied but also sent the whole body through a horrifying moment of paralysis. There were places on the body where electric shock was tolerable, and places where it was not. This time they had applied it to both.
He had tried, this time, to keep his pain to himself, but all of those methods of inflicting pain had been used on him, and he had heard himself cry out, had heard himself whimper. He had felt the hot stinging flow of urine down his leg, but so far he had managed to keep his bowels closed, thank god. There had been no offers of toilet visits, no food, just the occasional cup of water held to his dry lips, at which he had sucked like a newborn, trying to keep from showing his gratitude for that one act of kindness. It wasn't kindness, he knew. It was necessity. Until they decided to kill him, they would keep him alive. A simple formula, and one into which pain did not enter for them.
But now things had changed. He sensed it in their attitudes as much as read it in the fact that they had cut him down. He lay nervelessly on the cold concrete floor, taking some comfort in its cool against his many wounds. His urge was to try to get up now, try to make a break for it, but that would be stupid. There was a still a guard watching him, a man who thought he was unconscious, and if he tried to attack him now with his arms like rubber and in so much pain, he would simply flail at him like a windmill. The attempt would be laughable. They probably would laugh, and just string him up again, and then he would have no chance.
But the attempt would have to be finely balanced. He knew the atmosphere had changed. They were just waiting for word from the top, he was sure, before they put a bullet through his brain and ended his suffering.
Illya very much didn't want his suffering to end. He was in agony, yes, but he still preferred life over death.
He lay very still, and waited. When his eyes were open he had seen that it was dark beyond the warehouse windows. It was night. People got careless at night. Night watchmen rarely enjoyed their duties, much less Thrush night watchmen like the one left with him. He needed to wait until the time was right, until that darkest hour just before the sun started its relentless track back up to the horizon. He needed to not fall asleep, exhausted as he was. They hadn't outright denied him sleep, but hanging from his arms with broken ribs and a pounded body wasn't his first choice of bedroom arrangements.
But it happened anyway. He lay there, cheek on the ground, thinking of other things. It was so easy to let his mind drift. How much nicer it would be to be sitting in his apartment with a book in his hand. Maybe with a guitar… It unwound him to sit there gently strumming, mostly classical pieces, occasionally folk. His mind, almost always busy, would focus first on the chords, on the placement of his fingers, and then on the music, on each reverberating note. He could let his eyes rest on the New York skyline outside his window, and let the music drift him…
He snapped awake, holding in a gasp. He must do nothing to let the guard know he was conscious. There was no warm apartment any more, no soft music. He could feel the cold concrete under every jutting bone. He could smell blood and sweat and stale urine in the air. His stomach was clenching on hunger. His lips were dry. And his arms… The initial agony had gone, but he needed to move them, he desperately needed to move. But he must not.
He opened his eyes enough to see it was still night, and then let them drift closed again. He waited, resisting the screaming imperative to move his aching arms. Apart from the damage to his wrists from the rope that was still knotted around them, and his shoulders from the hanging, his arms had largely escaped damage. He hoped that would be his greatest asset. That, and the element of surprise.
Time stretched so thin and so quiet he swore he could hear the ticking of his guard's watch. He risked opening his eyes again just enough to gauge the light through the windows. He could see the Thrush man sitting there on a wooden chair, his feet loosely apart, arms crossed over his chest. He wasn't asleep, but he wasn't alert either. He had a revolver, but it was loose in his right hand. On the floor beside him were Illya's wallet and communicator pen, removed from him at the outset but not taken away, because they told them nothing they did not already know. He still had a few coins in his trouser pocket. That fact felt so ridiculously mundane that it made him want to laugh.
Illya let the adrenaline surge, blotting out pain, blotting out fatigue. This was his one chance, and he couldn't blow it. He moved in one swift burst, like a snake, uncoiling from the floor at at the man in the chair so fast that he had knocked him over backwards before the Thrush man knew he was coming. He heard the man's head crack onto the hard floor and saw his eyes roll back until only the whites were showing beneath half-closed lids, but he didn't stop to see if he were unconscious or dead. He didn't care. He just scooped up the revolver, stuffed the wallet and communicator into his pockets, and ran.
He didn't expect to get away without anyone noticing, and he didn't. As he heaved the warehouse door open he heard a shout from behind, and the crack of a shot. His right arm exploded in pain and the gun dropped from nerveless fingers, but adrenalin was still doing its job. He slipped through the gap and dragged the door shut, anything to delay them. Grabbing the gun in his left hand, he ran.
Illya had spent plenty of time in London, often coming down here on the train during his studies at Cambridge. He had enjoyed the cosmopolitan atmosphere, the night life, the galleries and museums. It was different to the stuffy atmosphere of Cambridge, more like the England he had expected when he arrived on its shores. But that didn't mean he had a clue now where he was or where he was going, because they had moved him across town after he had been captured. He was somewhere near the river, or a river; he could smell it in the air. But that told him very little, so he took advantage of the dark, of the lack of street lights in this scrubby area, and lost himself in narrow streets. If he didn't know where he was, maybe they wouldn't know either.
After a while he slowed to a walk, reasoning that he would be quieter, that he could make better decisions. He could hear no one in the area. Perhaps they had assumed he would make for the river, trusting to its dark waters to slip him away. He continued on, seeing that it was growing lighter now, that he was reaching an area of wider streets, of houses with gardens.
It was only now that the adrenalin started to ebb and the pain burst over him like a sudden downpour. His heart was thudding in his ears. He touched his left hand to his right arm and felt the slick of blood that was soaking his sleeve. Suddenly his body betrayed him. He felt the flood of faintness washing over him. He took a step, another step, but there was a screaming in his ears and he could barely see through the jazzy fluorescent lights in his eyes. He needed to get somewhere safe, concealed. He couldn't just faint here, not here in a suburban street, flat on the pavement.
He fainted.
The first thing he was conscious of after that was a woman's voice, a touch on his cheek. He came to in a surge of adrenalin, jerking upwards, grabbing hold of what he found before blood loss and pain sent him flailing back to the ground. Instincts were there before rationality, telling him that the woman was no Thrush agent. But where was he? It was light, daylight, and he was exposed. Couldn't go to a hospital, they would be searching the hospitals. Had to get under cover, had to get somewhere safe…
His world was a blur, but he was aware of her, her hands on his body, gentle but professional. Somehow he gleaned that she was a nurse. She smelt like a nurse, like the nurses that clucked over him in the U.N.C.L.E. infirmary whenever he was laid up. He could sense safety, even while his nerves jangled relentlessly at him that he was in danger. He slipped away again, woke up long enough to stagger from the car – he was in a car? – and in through a door, before he lost himself again, and fell.
And now here he was, cold again, on a floor again, consumed with pain. The adrenalin started to rush into his limbs, but he quelled it and listened to his rational mind. This was not the same floor. Not the same place. There was carpet under him and a covering on top of him, even if it wasn't keeping him as warm as he would like. There was something soft under his head, and even though he was in pain, the pain was different. It was not the kind of pain one felt from injuries just inflicted. The stiffness and soreness spoke of time passed. But by god and all that was sacred, his arm hurt. It hurt so much that to even think of moving it brought tears to his eyes.
He drew in a long breath, allowing himself to relax and assess further. Although there was still the bitter taste of vomit in his mouth, there was no scent of urine any more. He could still smell the iron tang of blood. His hair still felt lank, greasy and filthy, but his face felt clean, his body felt clean, and – he was naked. He realised that now. Under the coverings he had been stripped of all his clothing. That was not an unfamiliar sensation either. He was quite used to medical professionals cutting off his ruined clothes and throwing them into a bin for incineration.
Above him there was an artexed ceiling, a light bulb hanging down from it with a savage looking modern glass shade. The bulb was lit, glaring into his eyes, making him realise through all the other pain that he had quite an overwhelming headache. The walls were close around him, papered with something green-patterned from the last decade. There was a scent of cigarettes in the air.
He finally turned his head on his stiff, aching neck. And then he saw her, the woman who had appeared in glimpses, almost in his dreams, it seemed. She was sitting beside him in this ordinary suburban hallway, her back slumped against the wall and her head resting on her knees. Beside her was a half-drunk cup of tea, and the end of a cigarette stubbed out in a cut glass ashtray.
He sighed his relief almost silently, looking at her shoeless stockinged feet and her sensible knee-length skirt and the cardigan that wrapped her sleeping arms. Her hair was brown, and not cut in the latest fashion. He couldn't see her face, but this was certainly no Thrush agent.
He cleared his throat a little, hesitant to wake her but also feeling deeply in need of some kind of human contact beyond his recent experience. If he stayed here in this bizarre scenario of lying naked and injured in an oppressively domestic suburban hall he might start to think he was dreaming.
She woke so quickly at the noise that she knocked over the half cup of tea.
'Oh, bloody nora, wait a moment, I shall have to clean that up,' she flustered, still evidently half in dreams. Then her eyes focussed, she looked at him, and smiled. 'Oh, hello,' she said.
Illya tried to smile but his face hurt. He could feel bruising all down one side and around his eye from a particularly vicious blow when he had given what they had judged to be too acerbic a response to their questioning.
'I – think I have a lot to thank you for,' Illya said, realising as he spoke how much his throat hurt, roughened by the cries they had forced from him with their torture.
'Oh, give over,' she told him.
She didn't look much above forty, and her face was pretty, if not beautiful. Whatever the current magazine fashions, Illya decided that he liked her.
'You have saved my life,' he continued.
'Well,' she smiled again. 'Well, there's no denying that, I suppose. Listen, do you think you can make it up the stairs? There's a bed up there with your name on it, and my hallway's no hospital.'
'I – can try,' Illya promised, the lure of a soft bed warring with his knowledge of how badly it would hurt to move.
'Come on then, chuck,' she said, peeling back the blankets.
As the chill hit his skin Illya felt himself flush. He was, as he had thought, entirely naked. The woman noticed his embarrassment.
'Nothing I haven't seen before a hundred times,' she assured him. 'I've given men better looking than you sponge baths in my time. Come on.'
'You certainly know how to flatter a man,' Illya murmured, not unkindly.
He lay still for a moment, focussing his thoughts on how he would do this. His right leg ached and throbbed, but it wasn't broken. There was something wrong with his knee, he thought, but not a break. It was his arm that was the real trouble, but he would have to ignore that and do what must be done.
Carefully and slowly he started to sit up, noticing with disapproval as he did that his head started to swim.
'Are you ready, love?' she asked him.
He closed his eyes, concentrating hard on not fainting or vomiting.
'Give me a moment,' he muttered.
Then he started to stand, her warm arm around his back supporting most of his weight. The pain in his knee flared and his arm screamed pain as well, despite the splint he now realised was holding it stiff. The fluorescent spots were starting to dance in his eyes again, his ears were singing again. But he put one foot in front of the other, all concerns about his nudity now firmly at the back of his mind.
He had climbed mountains with more ease than this single flight of stairs. By the time he reached the top his heart was pounding and his teeth were gritted against the insistent spasms of his stomach. He could taste acid in his mouth. But he saw the bed through an open door and made for it like a drowning man. He had never felt anything as beautiful as those crisp white sheets that received his body and the blankets that covered him.
'There, now,' the woman said, sitting heavily in a chair near the bed, breathing hard herself. 'Better?'
Illya kept his eyes closed for a few moments longer, the bed rocking beneath him. Then he nodded, and managed, 'Thank you.'
He noticed then that her clothes were still smeared with rust coloured blood. His blood.
'You need a doctor,' she said, turning back the blankets briefly to look at his arm and slightly readjust its position at his side. He grimaced through the movement. 'I can't deal with the kind of wounds you have. You need IV fluids, you need antibiotics, you need surgery on that arm. I may be a nurse, but I'm not a miracle worker.'
'Oh, I think you have performed miracles today,' Illya assured her, but it was time to stop with pleasantries and turn to business. 'Listen, I had a pen in my trouser pocket...'
'All your personal items are downstairs,' she assured him. 'But I had to burn the clothes, I'm afraid, and I don't have a shred of men's clothing in the house.'
Illya shook his head impatiently. 'But the pen – '
'I'll get it,' she promised him, turning towards the door. 'I looked in your wallet,' she said as she left the room. 'I know who you work for. I've heard of U.N.C.L.E.. You do fine work, you know.'
Another layer of anxiety left Illya's mind. It wasn't always easy to explain his profession to civilians. He grasped at the pen when she returned, and she dropped the rest of his personal effects on the side table with a clatter. The pen was all he was concerned about for now. He pulled the end out with his teeth and managed to set it into communications mode. Then he said eagerly, 'Open Channel D.'