Chapter 53: Fiji
Shana woke as hands grabbed her.
She started to hit out, started to fight, and then the probe lodged in her lower belly delivered a punishing shock to her lower belly and she screamed in pain, curling up on her side. She vaguely heard Cam screaming for them to leave her alone, but the pain was all-consuming and she could barely think.
It stopped, finally, and when the hands touched her again she shrank from it, her drug-fogged mind finally understanding that fight meant pain. She didn't resist as hands dragged her upright, as she was half-dragged, half-carried up the hallway and stairs that led to the main part of the house. Cam was beside her, shoved along the hallway by another guard, but Shana saw a thick pad of white gauze on her injured leg and felt a tiny measure of relief that at least the wound had been treated. Cam didn't seem to be in as much pain either.
They were pushed up the steps to the opulent library, then up into the main house, which they hadn't seen yet. Down a cavernous grand hallway with high, arching ceilings and then into a well-appointed dining room, with elegant cherrywood table and chairs and matching buffet and server. Exquisite glass and crystal lined those shelves and filled those cabinets, the kinds of dishes Shana's mother would have loved to own—and at one end of the massive cherrywood dining table Damien was sitting, calmly eating what appeared to be breakfast; scrambled eggs with fried potatoes and thick slices of toast with melted butter and jam. Shana's mouth watered at the smells.
"Don't get too comfortable," Damien said casually as the two women were shoved to a kneeling position beside his chair. "And don't look so hopeful either. I'm not giving the two of you anything to eat right now—don't want you to vomit once we get under way with the plans I have for you." He said nothing more for a long time, focusing instead on polishing off the food on his plate. It wasn't until he was finished and the butler was taking away the empty plate that he turned and gave them his full attention.
"The one thing I have not been able to figure out from either one of you is how you know each other," he held up a hand to forestall Cam's words. "And don't give me that 'we grew up together' story. There's at least five years between you two. You're in your…what, early thirties?" he gestured to Shana. "And she's in her mid twenties. There's enough of a difference that you would not have had any contact in school, so that means that you would have had to know each other once you were both adults. So. My question for you," he leaned forward, cupping Shana's chin in his hands, "Is where you would have met her. My guess is that you met while working, maybe at this Fort Wadsworth you were talking about when I interrogated you on your arrival here?" Shana kept her face impassive, trying to hide her shock. Surely she hadn't told him about Joe base, their classified work, and oh God, she hadn't told him about Cam, had she?
"But you haven't told me what I want to know. So that's the goal for today. You can make it easy on yourself, tell me what I want to know now. If you do, I'll give you something to eat, because I know you're hungry."
Shana clamped her lips shut, and he frowned. "Still stubborn? We'll see if what I have planned for you today will loosen your tongue." He didn't sound all that unhappy about it—in fact, he sounded positively cheerful. Son of a bitch. You just want to watch us hurt. Shana had to fight the urge to throttle him.
He'd turned to Cam in the meantime. "You," and there was a note of real anger, real malice, in his voice. "You orchestrated that escape. We found your hiding place in the seaside cave. We found your bow and arrows and we found the table knife you sharpened to make those bows and arrows with. Now I have a question for you. Where did you get that knife?"
"I found it washed up on the beach." No defensiveness, no anger.
He grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head back to meet his. "You defiant little bitch," he hissed. "Well, I'm going to punish you for your part in this little escape, and you're not going to like this." He pushed his chair back, gestured to one of the guards. "Take her outside. Tie her between the whipping posts and let Rosa and Hans know we're ready."
Cam made no protest as she was dragged outside. Shana tried to follow, but was prevented by the guards; they didn't let her move until Damien was on his feet and striding down the hallway; then she was pulled to her feet and forcewalked after him outside.
The day was overcast and cloudy, the clouds low-hanging with the promise of rain. Far off on the western horizon Shana could see flashes of lightning, but nothing close. Good.
Cam was already standing between two tall, upright posts set deeply into the ground, watching passively as her wrists were tied to eyebolts in the posts and the remaining rope wrapped around the posts themselves. Her face was impassive, still as a marble statue, but Shana knew from experience that it meant Cam was hiding her feelings; only Shana could tell Cam was terrified. Kennedy pulled one of the patio chairs over to face the whipping posts squarely; Cam refused to look at him and fastened her eyes to the ground instead.
And then terror closed Shana's throat as Hans and Rosa came out to the garden. Hans carried what looked like strands of barbed wire hanging from a short, fat wooden whip handle; his hands were protected by heavy leather gloves all the way to the elbow, and that sent shivers up and down Shana's spine. Rosa was carrying a lighter whip, several tails of braided, knotted leather hanging from a similar handle.
"The two of you escaped and evaded my people for three days. Now you're going to pay. Since it was Hole's fault, Testarossa will take the whip Rosa is holding and punish her friend with it."
Shana stared in horror at the whip Rosa was holding out to her, and shook her head numbly, terrified. "I can't. I can't do that, I can't hurt her!"
Kennedy smiled. "Perhaps I can change your mind. See the whip that Hans is holding out?" Hans brandished the barbed-wire whip. "If you don't whip Hole with the whip Rosa is holding, Hans will whip her with the barbed wire. Your choice."
"Shana…" Cam's voice was rough with fear. "Shana…please. Please don't let them hit me with that one. Please, it'll hurt less if you do it, Shana, please!" Naked terror in her voice now.
Shana reached for the whip, took it in her hand. The weight felt unfamiliar, and what it represented, pain and anguish for Cam, was even worse. She dropped it. "I can't. Please, I can't." They won't really whip her with that barbed wire, no one could do that to another human being. They're just doing that to scare us.
"Shana, please!" Cam screamed, pleading, but the guards were yanking Shana back to where Kennedy was sitting calmly in the patio chair. There was an eyebolt set into the concrete, an attachment point to tie down the furniture, perhaps, but they used it this time to lock Shana down; after locking a leather-and-metal collar around her neck, they clipped a heavy chain to the collar and tethered the other end of it to the eyebolt, shoving Shana to a kneeling position next to Kennedy's chair.
"If you would, Hans." Kennedy smiled in quiet satisfaction. "Start whenever you're ready. I confess I was hoping to see Testarossa whip her friend, but lacking that, seeing her in agony as you whip the skin from her body will be…stimulating."
"He's just saying that to scare us," Shana said defiantly, confidently, to Cam. "He's not actually going to do it."
Kennedy laughed. "How touching. Come, Hans. Start with five. I want all the guards to try whipping her by the time we're done. She gets twenty."
And Hans raised the whip and struck.
Shana's scream of horror blended with Cam's howl of absolute agony as the whip thudded into her back. Hans swung with sufficient force to bury the barbs into Cam's flesh, then yanked the thongs of the whip—the wires—downward by the handle. As he did so, the barbs tore bloody gashes into the scar tissue that partially covered Cam's back, until they finally pulled free with a flick of the handle; then Hans raised the whip again.
"No!" Cam screamed in agony. "No, please, don't, you'll kill me, please…" The pain of the blow had driven her off her feet and she sagged now, unable to stand. "Please, please, I can't take it, please…please!" her pleas rose into a shriek of panic as she saw Hans raise the whip again.
The barbs buried themselves in her flesh again, and this time when Hans pulled the whip free a ragged strip of scar tissue followed, torn loose by the barbs. Shana threw herself forward, unmindful of the chain locked to the collar around her neck until she reached the end of it."Stop!" she screamed, unaware of the tears that flowed down her cheeks. "Stop, please!" Her cries were drowned out by Cam's screams as the whip tore her back again.
Shana threw herself at Kennedy's feet, sobbing. "Stop it, please, tell him to stop. You want me to whip her, I'll do it, okay, I'll do it, just please please, tell him to stop. I'll do it, I'll do whatever you want me to do, just make him stop, please, he'll kill her!"
"Whatever?" Kennedy held up a hand to stop Hans in the act of delivering another blow. "You'll do whatever I want?"
Shana nodded vigorously, sobbing as Rosa handed her the whip. Shana wanted to drop it in revulsion, but she knew the pain caused by the knotted leather thongs wouldn't hurt nearly as much (or cause as much physical damage) as the barbed wire stripping the skin from Cam's back.
"Sh-Shana," Cam was shaking, her eyes glazed from shock caused by the three strokes she'd already taken, but her voice was steady. "Thank you… Just please get it over with…"
Blinded by tears, Shana swung. Her first stroke barely brushed Cam's back, but the thongs touching the bleeding, ragged flesh wrung screams from Cam's lips.
"Harder!" Kennedy's eyes were lit up in sadistic glee as he leaned forward. "Hit her harder or I'll tell Hans to hit her again!"
"No!" Shana swung again, crying, her tears mixing with the rain that was now starting to fall. "No, I'll do it, please, oh God, Cam, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"
She had no idea when her legs finally gave out under her, and she fell to her knees crying, the whip falling from her limp hands. Cam had passed out at some point during the whipping; her body now hung limply from the ropes around her wrists, blood mixing with the rain now streaming in rivulets down her body. Shana, lost in misery, sick with horror at what she'd done, what she'd been forced to do, barely noticed when Kennedy grabbed her arm and hustled her inside. Her last glimpse was of Cam, hanging unconscious and bleeding.
She barely noticed the opulence of Kennedy's suite. Numb with horror and self-loathing at what she'd done, she barely felt them shove her to her knees on the plush carpeting.
I whipped her. I hurt her. She was my responsibility and I hurt her. On top of everything else they've done to her, I had to go and hurt her too. She felt hands on her arm, slipping a needle under her skin. Drug me. Go ahead. Maybe the knowledge of what I did to her won't hurt so much. Numb, miserable, she ignored the hands injecting two more needles in her arms.
Rosa smiled as she stepped back. "Double dose of oxytocin, as you requested," she said to Kennedy. "Anafranil to keep her from climaxing, more of the barbitol to keep her fuzzy and also scopolamine to make her hallucinate." She watched as the guards locked a long chain leash to Shana's collar, then wrapped the other end of the leash around one of the heavy posts at the foot of Kennedy's bed. Kennedy smiled as he took his clothes off, watching to see when the drugs would kick in.
Shana's eyelids drooped, heavy, as a liquid warmth pooled in the pit of her belly and spread outward. Unbidden, her mind wandered to Snake Eyes, what he might be doing at the moment, and an image came to her of him in the shower. A smile spread across her face as she envisioned slipping into that shower with him…normally with Snake Eyes satisfaction was only moments away, but this time something was holding her back, because while she could feel sexual tension building up inside her, she couldn't—quite—get there. She used her hands to work herself faster, harder, her body screaming for the release she so desperately craved, but it remained elusive.
She tried, oh God, she tried, until pain from her raw, hyperstimulated body cut through the drug-induced lust. She still tried, sobbing in shame and humiliation and helpless need, until rough hands dragged her wrists apart, tied them to opposite posts at the end of Kennedy's bed, and shoved a cloth into her mouth, stifling her frantic cries of please, please, I need it, please…
Kennedy groaned as he sat back in a chair and watched his Testarossa's body writhe. "Exquisite," he said Rosa.
"She's going absolutely crazy," Rosa grinned. "You know, we should try this with both of them…think Hole would do what she could to stop the redhead's torture?"
"Making them do each other?" Kennedy looked intrigued as Rosa brought forward her probes again and slipped them into Shana's body. "Would they?"
"That's the question, isn't it?" Rosa grinned as she hit the button on the remote she held and the probes in Shana's body activated. "If Hole saw the redhead this frantic would she do her friend? I'd love to try it." The three of them watched as Shana's body arched in her bonds, screaming into the gag as the probes in her body stimulated her with electricity. "We could drive her insane with this. I'd say my experiment with Oxytocin and Anafranil together was successful, wouldn't you?"
"Absolutely," Hans and Kennedy said together as Shana arched and screamed again.