CHAPTER 33

30 days earlier…

"I'm sorry, Sam." Miguel said, before pressing the detonator.

The second Miguel pressed the detonator, there was a moment of complete calm. All of the gunfire that was in the air quietened. He had a brief moment of peace, when he knew he was about to die. As cliche as it might sound, his life flashed before his eyes. But it wasn't his whole life: just the people he loved. He saw Carmen and his yaya; he saw Johnny; he saw Sam; he saw the other rebels.

Then came the explosion. The sound of the explosion was first, a terrible echo as if it were the anguished cry of God. Then, finally, the heat and pain came…

The heat was nothing he had ever felt before. It seared every inch of his skin, melting his eyes and boiling his blood. Miguel could do nothing but cry out in pain as he was rooted to the spot. The whole compound was collapsing and Miguel knew he had less than a second until he was crushed. That was when he finally passed out, no longer bracing for death, but embracing it… When the building came down, Miguel surprisingly didn't feel that much pain. It was just darkness. He didn't even feel himself being dragged away from the wreckage…

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When Miguel awoke, his first thought was 'Am I dead?' He couldn't tell if he was in some kind of hell. He had to be. There was no way in hell he survived that explosion, and with minimal injuries too, as it seemed. Practically his whole body was covered in burns, but other than that, he seemed to be physically all right. However, Miguel was far from okay. He seemed to be shackled to the corner of a windowless, dark basement. He had no idea where though. His answers were quickly going to be answered though. A couple of moments later, a Mexican man walked into the room and smiled at him. Miguel winced and shut his eyes as light flooded into the room. He was quickly unshackled and carried to a different room, this one a lot nicer. It had a window, and a desk with a seat on either side of it. Miguel was forced into a seat on one side of the table, and the man sat opposite him.

"Hello." The man said, calmly. "How are you feeling?"

"Sore." Miguel grunted in reply. The man chuckled.

"I'm not surprised. It's a miracle you survived that explosion. No one else did."

"Who are you?" Miguel asked. The man calmly tutted and shook his head.

"No, no, no. I ask the questions." The man explained, before taking out an empty glass and a bottle of water and pouring Miguel a glass. Miguel accepted it gratefully.

"Thank you." Miguel murmured as he sipped his drink. Getting so severely burned had caused him a dehydration he couldn't have even imagined.

"No problem." The man replied. "Now, I ask you, who are you?"

"John Doe." Miguel remarked in reply. The man shook his head.

"I warn you, please answer my question. If you don't, my men will hold you and ask you… a little less politely. So I ask again, for the final time, what is your name?"

"I'm sorry." Miguel replied. The man sighed and frowned at Miguel.

"That's unfortunate. And here I was hoping we could be friends." The man muttered, before signaling to two henchmen behind him. They immediately grabbed Miguel, ignoring his cry of pain as they touched his burns, and they carried him out of the room. The mysterious man followed close behind and Miguel was quickly thrown again in the windowless, cold basement. The room was tiny, no more than 2 meters by 2 meters. The man looked at Miguel.

"You had your chance." The man said. "Until you decide to comply with our questions, you eat in here, sleep in here, shit in here, die in here. I ask you one final time, who are you?"

"Hugh." Miguel eventually replied. The man raised an eyebrow.

"Hugh what?" He asked. Miguel smirked at him.

"Hugh Jorgasm." Miguel replied. The man understood Miguel's dirty joke and he rolled his eyes. He then gestured to his henchmen, who started pounding the stuffing out of Miguel for several minutes, before they let up.

"Well, Mr. Huge Orgasm, let's try a different question." The man asked, as Miguel coughed and spluttered up blood from the beatdown. "Who do you work for? CIA? FBI? Police?"

Each organisation was punctuated with a blow from one of the guards, but this time, Miguel stayed completely silent. The man sighed.

"Oh well. I wish you the best, Hugh Jorgasm." The man said, before shutting the door.

That was the last Miguel saw of that man in particular, however, his incarceration was far from over. Miguel was locked in that cellar for what seemed like an eternity, nothing to keep him occupied but the endless torture he was being put through. Loud music prevented him from sleeping, the smell of his shit and piss collecting in the corner of the room caused him to continuously throw up the minimal food he was given to survive on. He was starved of food and water, he was beaten, he was burned, he was whipped, he was swung at with bats. His open gashes from this torture was made even worse by the fact that the thugs who were guarding his room would come in every so often and piss directly on them, causing an unimaginable, excruciating pain. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that Miguel knew that time was passing, and every second passed was a second that his friends thought he was dead. How did Johnny and Sam handle his death? Did Johnny relapse into his old, drunk, purposeless ways? He hoped not. But he was powerless to do anything. He was too physically weak, and every day he was stuck in the torture chamber, he got a little weaker. Finally, after a month in captivity, Miguel finally realised something… he needed to escape if he ever wanted to see the outside world again! No one was coming to save him. If he wanted to get out, it had to be on his own…

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After another long day of interrogations that ultimately led nowhere, a shady medic and a thug were wrapping up Miguel's bandaged arm (it had been mangled at some point during the interrogation) when Miguel looked at them.

"Why am I still alive?" Miguel whispered. Their eyes widened as they heard him. It was the first time Miguel had spoken since his first day in captivity. The thug looked at him and sighed.

"You are clearly an American government agent who destroyed the entire Juarez Cartel. We are all that remain of that group. We want to know how much the government knew about us, so you are more use to us alive than dead." He replied, before leaving the room. Miguel clenched his teeth. He needed to escape. NOW!

That night, Miguel was given a tiny glass of cranberry juice with his measly meal of a slice of bread and a rotten fish, and he smirked. That was perfect for his escape plan. He poured the cranberry juice all over his bandages, soaking them crimson, biting back a groan of pain as his gashes came into contact with the juice.

"Help! I need a doctor! My arm's bleeding again!" he shouted from his cellar. A head peered through the window and saw Miguel's arm covered in blood. He realised that Miguel wasn't trying anything and actually was injured, so a doctor ran into the room. As soon as he shut the door, Miguel lunged at him and knocked him out cold. He then took the pistol out from the man's jacket. He had been silent so far so nobody knew that anything was wrong. He tiptoed out of the cellar and used the silenced pistol to take out all of the guards that were in and around his room. Miguel stumbled over to a staircase at the corner of the basement corridor, ignoring his body's cries of pain as he strained his near-dead limbs and eyes. He tiptoed up the staircase and made it to the ground floor, and eventually came to a door. It was obviously locked, and Miguel was too weak to open it himself. He collapsed on the ground. This was it. He had gotten so close, but so far. Just one door separated him from the outside world. He sighed. He would have to wait until the afterlife to see Sam and Johnny again.

NO!

Thinking about the people he loved suddenly re-energised him. He couldn't give up. They hadn't given up on him before when he was weak, and he owed it to them to show that he wouldn't give up himself. Miguel bit back all of the pain he was feeling and forced it deep down. Pain was for pussies, as his sensei would say. Miguel charged at the door and barged straight through it, knocking it clean off his hinges. The loud BANG as the door broke open had bound to have attracted attention, so Miguel needed to move fast. He was now able to gauge his surroundings. He was in a random town, somewhere in North Mexico, he could tell that much. But he could figure out exactly where later. He just needed to get away from the unmarked house he was in. Finally, God sent Miguel a blessing. A motorcycle was parked at the front of the house. Miguel grinned and sprinted over to it, jimming it on and roaring away before the people holding him could catch up. Miguel sighed in relief. He was finally out, and he could go back home. However, he couldn't see his friends just yet. He couldn't let them see him like this. It would give them nightmares. He looked like something from the last 10 minutes of Dawn of the Dead. He had several open wounds, burns and bruises all over his body. He wanted to go to the LAPD station first, so their medics could clean him up and find out he was alive before he returned home.

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So that's exactly what he did. He rode the motorcycle all the way back to L.A. It turned out that he had been held captive somewhere in Tijuana, so it took him a good couple of hours to get back to L.A. He rode straight to the LAPD station, and he was immediately taken down to the hospital floor of the station. He spent the rest of the day getting stitched up, cleaned up and fed proper food for the first time in a month.

Watching him from the window of the room were three people: Detective Peralta, the Doctor who had operated on him, and his therapist Dr. Cahill. Miguel stared out of his hospital room window and he didn't notice the three arrive at the entrance of the room. The Doctor turned to Dr. Cahill and Detective Peralta and sighed.

"Look, I'm going to give it to you straight. He is lucky to be alive. 20% of his body is covered in scar tissue. Second degree burns on his back and arms. X-Rays show at least 12 fractures that never properly healed." Dr. said to the other two. Dr. Cahill's eyes widened in horror.

"Has he said anything about what happened?" She asked.

"No. I'm guessing, from the fact that he has whip marks, fist bruises and cattle prod burns, he was tortured for information that he obviously didn't have. But I'd like you to prepare yourself." The Doctor warned them. "The Miguel you lost might not be the one in that room. There's no telling how much emotional damage he has."

Dr. Cahill nodded and entered the room. Miguel smiled faintly at her, and Dr. Cahill smiled widely back. At least Miguel was still smiling, that was definitely something.

"Well, well, well, heard you blew up the cartel." Cahill remarked. Miguel shrugged.

"Nah, just their house." He replied, gruffly.

"A lot of people thought you were dead." Cahill stated. Miguel raised an eyebrow.

"You?" He asked. Cahill smirked faintly.

"Me? Not so much." She replied. Miguel nodded at her. "Are you okay? I mean after a traumatic experience, you can…"

"Doc, I'm fine." Miguel interrupted, calmly, smiling at her. "I'm actually fine. I'm alive, I'm soon going to see my friends again. I couldn't have asked for it better. If anything, this experience has taught me that I don't want to die anymore."

Cahill smiled and nodded again.

"Well, I for one am glad you're back. I like having you around." She said.

"Well, I mean, this isn't it right? We can, uh, meet outside of the office? Cheetos on me." He said.

"I was thinking tomorrow, my office, 4 pm." She said. Miguel raised an eyebrow.

"What? What would we talk about?" He asked. "The cartel's gone, so I mean, I'm cured."

Cahill chuckled and looked him right in the eye when she responded…

"If you really believe that, then you are crazier than I thought…"

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The next morning, Miguel was finally going back to Miyagi-Do. All of his wounds had pretty much healed, and were now merely permanent scars that would be on his body for the rest of his life. Despite everything he had just been through in the past month, he was nervous. What if everything had changed? What if Johnny and Daniel had split up training again? What if Kreese had completely taken over the Valley? What if Sam was dating other guys again? What if Johnny had killed himself? That last one was particularly hard to even think about, but it was a real possibility given his track record with alcohol. However, when Miguel parked outside the Miyagi-Do dojo, all of his nerves instantly vanished. Being back in the dojo, training under the two masters… it was home.

He slowly opened the back gate of the dojo and walked towards the garden. He could hear the group talking about something, and as he peered around the corner, he saw Hawk. The mohawked guy didn't seem to be attacking the rebels, and instead seemed to be joining them. Miguel smiled. He knew that guy had good in him, deep down. On the inside, he wasn't Hawk: he was Eli. Miguel listened as they debated whether to let him into the group, itching to finally greet them again, when he could finally take it no longer. He heard Demitri say 'It's what Miguel would have wanted, isn't it?' and Miguel grinned and finally came around the corner as he responded…

"Damn right it is…"

Hey, so as you guys have probably guessed given I'm writing about it, I'm a HUGE Cobra Kai fan and I stayed up to watch Season 3 right when it was released. So I was wondering, what parts of season 3 do you think I should incorporate in this story. I have in my mind decided on a few things that I am going to make similar or different to season 3, but I want to hear you guys' opinions.