Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.
The question whether Chance was worth all of this was still lingering in Ilsa's mind when she woke up the next morning. It intensified and developed nagging persistence during breakfast (Guerrero insisted, once again), when she could hardly sit up because the muscles in her upper body burnt with every move. Swallowing was a problem, too – her throat was raw as sandpaper from crying and throwing up. Foreseeing this, had Guerrero had ordered scrambled eggs and other stuff that would slid easily, but still…
After such an incident like last week's, where Chance had… God, Ilsa hated even thinking about it… Anyway, after such an incident most women would have kicked the idiot's ass and walked away. Or at least not answered his phone calls for a week or something like that. But they would surely NOT have devised a complicated and, as it turned out, bloody painful, plan to examine the background of said incident. His inner motivations.
To be honest, right now, while Guerrero was strapping her to the bed again and giving her another dose of thiopental, this time setting up the catheter on her right arm because the vein on her left arm was already in the process of narrowing, she didn't give a damn about Chance's inner motivations.
But there was also that extra knowledge part. That disturbing extra knowledge part she hadn't been aware of she had till the meeting with Winston. The part she hadn't mentioned to him, Guerrero, or - of course not - Chance. The part she was convinced she needed to shed light upon at all costs. To help Chance. To protect Chance.
Or at least so she had thought – before the vomiting and the electric shocks… Now, after yesterday's trip through the first few circles of hell, the Is he really worth all of this? didn't leave her alone anymore, rang in her mind like the stroke of a gong in a Buddhist temple during silent meditation.
To her great relief, Guerrero didn't set up the car battery again. Instead he placed a rather large tumbler (20 ounce maybe?) where the battery had stood. A sight a lot less threatening!
Well, at least until he dropped a small white pill into it and added a little water… The pill started hissing furiously.
"What is that?" The small monitor that was attached to Ilsa's pulse oximeter started showing high peaks in rapid succession again.
"Yesterday you learned how to keep quiet under the influence of thio. But sometimes that isn't enough. You need to tell the interrogator something or the next step of your interrogation will be torture. As I told you, lies are more complex than the truth and it's very hard to form complex thoughts when drugged with that stuff – thus thio's reputation as a truth serum. Nevertheless it is possible."
He retrieved a cardboard with a schematic drawing from his trolley bag and placed it in front of the TV. "Today you'll learn how to think complexly despite the drug." He pointed at the drawing with a pen. "This is a house. On the first floor you can see three circles next to each other. Those are light switches. They're connected with a light bulb up on the attic, that's the single circle right underneath the roof. You can't see the light bulb on the attic when you're on the first floor. It's your task to find out which switch is connected to the bulb. You may only go upstairs once to check. How do you do it?"
"What is in the glass?", Ilsa asked.
"You'll find out, shouldn't you be able to answer the question. You've got three hours." He put an alarm clock next to the tumbler, then paused for a moment. "There is no try and succeed way to focus under thio. But most people think of a familiar place. They imagine walking around in it, concentrate on where the different pieces of furniture are located, the pictures on the walls, the carpets… It helps them reorganize their thoughts."
With that, he retreated to the armchair by the window, leaving Ilsa to herself. From time to time he checked her vital signs, but that was it.
The clock was a wind-up alarm clock and its ticking grew more and more nerve grating the emptier the fluid bag on the pole became. Ilsa tried to follow Guerrero's advice and called up the memory of the house she had spent her early childhood in, but the noise of the clock cut through it like a hot knife through butter. "Maybe I call someone to help me?", she asked tentatively.
"No helpers are allowed. Just you", Guerrero replied, got out of the armchair, walked over to the nightstand and poured some more water into the glass.
Ilsa understood – the more unsuccessful attempts, the more water in the glass. And in the end he would make her drink all of it.
Her mind was slowly turning into a whirlwind of pictures.
She tried it with a different memory. This time she recalled the mansion in the Tuscany where Marshall and she had spent their honeymoon. They had been so happy there, Marshall had bought it afterwards. But the image was blurry, kept shifting. One and a half hours passed, then, more out of despair than anything else, she dared to utter: "Maybe if I drill a hole in the ceiling that separates the first floor from the attic so that I can see the light bulb?"
"No tools", Guerrero said and added more water.
Ilsa was getting panicky. Fast. The ticking of the clock, combined with the leather restraints that rendered her completely immobile, drove her crazy. Besides that the glass was already damn full, her swirling, spinning, tumbling mind produced all sorts of horror scenarios what effects the white pill might have and she was running out of time. Part of her actually wished the car battery back.
Maybe buildings didn't work for her? She pictured Chance's face instead. She was doing all this for him, after all. So maybe if she concentrated on his blue eyes, the thin lines around his mouth when he smiled, the tiny scar on his chin… "The light switches look very close to the window", Ilsa observed, studying the picture carefully. "What if I went outside, looked at the light bulb through the attic's window and at the same time flipped the switches by reaching through the first floor's window?"
"Nice try, boss." Guerrero filled the glass to the rim.
Ilsa wanted to scream. Is he really worth all of this? echoed in her mind like thunder in the mountains.
At this very moment, when she was on the brink of telling Guerrero she had enough and wanted to go home – IMMEDIATELY – her mental image of Chance started changing. Instead of his face she could now see his complete upper body half. Shirtless. Ilsa let out a groan. If there had ever been an inappropriate time for lusting after Chance's muscular chest, it was now. Damn drug.
Then her imaginary Chance started moving. He turned so that she could see the side profile of his face. And the tattoo on his shoulder. His tattoo. Her eyes followed the curved lines of the greenish dragon, all the way from its snout, along its wings down to the tip of its tail. She could see every detail of the creature, as if he was really standing right in front of her.
"We're talking about conventional light bulbs here, aren't we?", Ilsa asked. Guerrero didn't correct her. "Conventional light bulbs give off heat – the glass warms up if you leave them switched on for a while." Merely sixty seconds were left on the clock. Ilsa took a deep breath. It was all or nothing now. "So I would do the following: I flip the first switch and wait for fifteen minutes. Then I turn it off again, flip the second switch and go upstairs. If the light bulb is on, it's the second switch. If the light bulb is warm but not on, it's the first switch. If the light bulb is cold, it must be the third switch."
Guerrero walked over to the nightstand and turned off the alarm. "Congrats, boss."
Ilsa let out a deep sigh of relief. The mental image of Chance winked at her before it disappeared.
Maybe he was worth all of this after all.
A/N: I did not invent the riddle with the house - it's from a psychological test to measure creative thinking (which I failed miserably). It was hard to describe, I hope it's not too confusing. Thank you, jackattack and veniceit, for leaving comments on this fic! Every single one is cherished!