Brody didn't see it coming. He heard it a split second before, too late for him to react, like a missile coming in on target. A boot slammed into his jaw, viciously twisting his head on its axis, sending blood and teeth sailing far across the room. It sent him spinning across the floorboards, finally coming to rest on his back, leaving his stomach and groin exposed and ready for a torrent of fists, another flurry of boots. He peered up. Hamid? It couldn't be. Brody couldn't see through the blur of pain and panic, he could just make out a towering figure who was grimacing, maybe laughing. Oh yes, definitely laughing. Brody had rolled onto his side, clutching his stomach, his lungs leeching air, threatening to not re-inflate when he next sucked in. He could make out the planes of the room, he knew what was wall and what was floor and he could just about see a cruel smudge of light that must have been the window. It always helped him to figure out the dimensions of a room when he was taking a beating, as if reminding himself that things had edges and definition, a space where they were and a space where they weren't, and that by extension the pain he was feeling must do too. It would be over soon, one way or another, just as sure as that table had four legs. He could feel blood pooling in his ear. He coughed bile onto the floor. So you've found me, even here, Brody whispered. In response he felt something heavy come down furiously, repeatedly, on his lower spine making his arms and legs extend from under him like shot tendrils. He wanted Carrie, he wanted Jess, anyone who would make it stop. He called out for Nazir. He was pulled up by his hair into a sitting position, made to face his assailant but he still couldn't focus, already losing his grip on consciousness. A final fist delivered him into blackness, the few fleeting images he saw before fainting were the negatives of old family photos.
He came to and found that he was slid against the cabin wall, the floor scraped where his feet had pedalled frantically in one spot, trying to motor himself away from the apparition. He had splinters in his hands. His blood fizzed and he was sheeted in sweat. Brody wanted to put his head between his knees and bring his breathing under control. They had taught him the importance of this in the couple of support group sessions he had attended, told him that without it you could set yourself off again. But he wasn't ready to let go of the wall yet. The wall was definitely real and for as long as he touched it he felt that the flashback couldn't recommence. He brought his trembling hand to his jaw. Cold and clammy but not bloody and broken. His stomach wasn't tender and his back hadn't snapped. It was okay. He was okay. As soon as he ascertained that he was not physically hurt, Brody started to cry, head against the wall. No matter where he was, no matter what the situation, this would always happen to him and there was nothing he could do. Whether he was driving to the grocery store ten minutes away from home or in the middle of a sexual reverie in a cabin across the Canadian border, that boot could still find him. He would always be dragged back there and he would always scream for Nazir to make it stop. Maybe he hadn't changed, after all. Maybe he was still just one beating away from committing mass murder in his saviour's name, if he would only assure him that it would all go away. Tears streamed down his face. Not even Nazir could save him now though. His annihilator, his architect, was gone.
Brody reminded himself that he hadn't always been this weak. He used to have some self respect, he used to fight back. But torture isn't a dance you forget the steps to, no matter how long it has been since you last took to the floor. Just the opening bars from the band were enough to send him scurrying for cover these days. In the beginning, whatever they meted out to him, he used to give it back. He had his pride, he was representing the U.S. marines and he was adamant that he would go down fighting. If sport was what this was all about, the reason they hadn't immediately shot him, Brody would make sure they didn't forget him in a hurry even after they'd buried him. They had laughed at him. They had stamped on his hands so hard that he couldn't make a fist. So he kicked out, used his elbows, his knees. He once broke Hamid's nose by head-butting him. Where he surpassed them in technique and training, they vanquished him in pure sadism. They strung him up and lashed him. They applied crude electrodes to his body, passed current through him, made him jag and smoulder. They stabbed at him with blunt instruments, twisting his wounds ever wider. They were always armed, stronger or more numerous than him.
He quickly learned that if his jailer was angry, his beating would be more intense and he would have to endure greater pain for a shorter period before passing out. Brody preferred this. This came to constitute a good day in his book. That, and a lack of fecal matter in his food. So he would provoke them. He spat at them, he called their mothers names in Arabic, he was insolent. If he got lucky, he thought, they would be so mad they would kill him inadvertently. But they always stopped short. He cursed them. Hamid in particular soon recognised this ploy and although he was unable to control his temper when Brody taunted him, he just resolved to spend the time that he was unconscious on the ground to devise new and ingenious ways to brutalise him the second he woke up. There was no way to win so Brody eventually just stopped trying. He couldn't remember how long it took them to break him entirely. Probably not all that long. The passing of days and nights lost meaning to him, he could only chart time through the changing of his guards' shifts and the pause between beatings. Now, if any aggression surfaced, if any impulse to retaliate rose in Brody's chest he swallowed it hard, pushing it deep down into his stomach, burying it and crushing it like a lump of carbon squashed by centuries of magma, concentrating itself into a diamond. Nazir would later cut and polish that diamond to his liking. He took great care in crafting it; it was, after all, destined to be the centrepiece of his life's work.
Looking back, Brody supposed that when they succeeded in getting him to beat Tom Walker to death his disintegration as a human being had been complete. The memory of it never failed to make him sick. They had hauled him out of the cell where he had been for what seemed like days, suspended in utter darkness. The sudden reintroduction of light into Brody's world had been enough to drive him crazy alone. They had then held a gun to his head. If it had just been as simple as that there would have been no question, he would have let them pull the trigger on him before he hurt Tom. But they told him that Tom had tried to save his own skin by betraying Brody. They said he had given up details on U.S. positions. They knew things about Jess and his kids. They said that Tom had given them his address. They said that Hamid's cousin lived in Chicago but that he was on his way to pay Brody's family a visit. They explained what he had been instructed to do to them. Tom looked half dead already. Brody would never forget it. The sound of his fists relentlessly beating his sniper partner, his friend, still provided the percussion to his nightmares. The memory of his bloodied knuckles blasting Tom's body, the horrific yield he felt after each blow - like punching wet sand - no bone, no structure left for his flailing jabs to glance off. That feeling was the texture of Brody's terror itself. Brody had wished their positions were reversed. When Tom slumped to the floor and his throat stopped rattling, they said he was gone. They congratulated Brody. They petted him. They had turned him into Nazir's attack dog. Carrie would say that they had obliterated his morals, his love, made him feel like he could never go back to Uncle Sam even if he could have escaped. He had a new master now. All that was left to do was provide him with a new doctrine and a mission. While Brody could see the truth to Carrie's explanation of his conditioning, he still didn't accept the last part. Islam was not a doctrine and Nazir had not forced it upon him, he just left it around where Brody could find it for himself. He was infinitely thankful that he had found Allah. As for a mission, Nazir had provided Brody with the method, the specifics, which Brody now held to be wrong. The motivation, the determination however, had come from deep within Brody himself, the desire to expose Walden and his administration for the casual murder of innocents. Carrie said that Brody exhibited all the classic symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome towards Nazir. Maybe. But he knew that there was much truth in the adage that one man's terrorist was another man's freedom fighter. Brody still felt enormous affinity for Nazir, even though he now recognised that he had done something sinister to him. The final affront that Nazir had framed him for Langley had been the hardest blow to bear.
Brody was still shaking, still sobbing. He had killed Tom twice for Nazir. The second time was easier. He had figured that Tom must have been through the same sort of experience as Brody had. He had turned up ready to play his part in the bunker plot, he had shot Elizabeth Gaines. The FBI had staged a manhunt for him, his photo had been all over the place. Tom had no video though, his shock currency not as strong as Brody's due the latter's media profile and later dalliance with public life. Brody remarked to himself that he had actually done Tom a favour in the end, he had saved him from a fate similar to his own. He wished Tom had exacted his revenge and shot Brody in the face in that alleyway that night.
Carrie had assured Brody that he was a good man. Brody knew that she was wrong. His gaze settled on the backpack, where Carrie's gun lurked. He could readdress the balance right now and switch all this off forever if he chose to. Brody swiped his forearm across his face in an attempt to clear away some tears so that he could think clearly for a second.
The constant feeling of being under seige, the unrelenting white noise inside his head. He just needed it all to stop.
He crawled over to the bag and hovered there, suddenly aware of his pulse in his wrists, his groin, his neck.