Disclaimer: Gah, I knew this was going to happen... Rocky doesn't belong to me. For the rest check the prologue disclaimers.

With thanks to Chris, Gamine and Irina for reading, commenting, poking, prodding and generally aiding the writing of this chapter. Much obliged.

Please offer feedback -- it might help make this cold go away...

~*~

Chapter 7 -- In The Nightmare's Grip

"We have to go back!" Kimberly yelled as Hines pulled onto the freeway.

"Not an option," Hines shot back.

"What do you mean it's not an option?" Kimberly screamed. "We have to..."

"Mommy, I'm scared...what's happened to Eric?" Alice asked softly, cutting Kimberly's rant off.

"That," said Hines pointedly, "is why it's not an option. Fos -- you OK?"

That was when Kimberly realised that Foster was gripping his shoulder and muttering low-level curses. "Just winged me," he gritted. "It's not serious."

"Damn." Hines shook her head. "How has this gone to hell so far and so fast?"

"Mommy?"

Alice's frightened query finished what the realisation that Foster had been shot had started. Kimberly found her anger mutating into a determination that she was going to do everything in her power to help Eric.

"It's gonna be OK," Kimberly promised, drawing Alice into her lap and hugging her tightly.

"I want Eric to be OK," Alice sniffed.

Kimberly rubbed Alice's back; trying to soothe her and trying to draw some measure of comfort herself. "I'm gonna make sure he is. I promise."

"Kim," said Hines, "is there somewhere we can go other than this safe house?"

"What do you mean?"

"Right now I don't trust the setup," Hines replied. "There are only two ways those goons knew where to look. Either they've somehow traced Eric via an electronic trail -- which is possible, but as far as we're aware bel Abis doesn't have the means to do that."

"Or...?"

Hines sighed. "Or someone told them where and when to be."

Kimberly stared. "What do you mean?"

"Barbie means that there's someone in this operation who's playing both sides," Foster put in. "I know it's not me, it's not Barbie and it's not Cawdron..."

"How?"

Foster slowly turned to face Kimberly. She could see the visible signs of shock and pain setting in and she almost wished she hadn't asked -- he clearly wasn't up to answering her. "The Colonel was the one who had to tell Sarge his career as a Marine was over. That was his job -- and he did it, but he didn't like it. Sarge was set up to be screwed over -- I think Cawdron thought that at the time. I know he thinks that now." Foster shifted back until he was facing forwards again. "If he was set up back then, this is just an extension of that."

Kimberly shivered.

"So do you have anywhere else we can go?" Hines asked.

"Rocky."

"Beg pardon?"

"Sorry." Kimberly grimaced -- she hadn't intended to say Rocky's name out loud. "I have friends in Angel Grove," she said.

"Angel Grove it is."

"But if you think you're going to leave me out of this from here on..."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Hines answered. "But right now, we need somewhere we can go that no-one knows about. We need to regroup, and we need to figure out what our next move is going to be. And it needs to be somewhere where Fos isn't going to attract questions."

"Rocky won't ask."

"Sounds like a plan."

Kimberly sat back into her seat, hugging Alice close. Alice's sobs had quietened and Kimberly could feel her daughter relaxing into sleep, having cried herself out. Kimberly wished she could find peace that easily, but that peace eluded her. She found herself absently stroking Alice's head while staring blindly out of the window with one thought echoing over and again: Please be all right, Eric.

~*~

Pain.

Cold.

Fear.

It was the cold, lead ball of fear that finally dragged Eric towards consciousness and the total silence around him only added to it.

"How nice of you to join me once more, Sergeant Myers...oh, but wait -- you're not Sergeant Myers any more."

There was mocking laughter in the voice that so shattered the silence. Eric knew he ought to have been relieved by that -- by the fact that the voice gave him something to focus on, preventing him from sinking into hysteria -- but the pounding headache that was now making itself known made focusing difficult.

"I would apologise for your unseemly abduction but...we both know I would be lying."

"Son of a bitch," Eric muttered.

"Name calling -- how unoriginal. Somehow I thought more of you than that. You slipped through my grip twice -- I was not going to take any more chances."

Eric forced his eyes to finally open but all he saw was darkness. Pitch black, oppressive, total darkness. A scream rose in his throat. I will not scream. But there was nothing that could prevent him from making a soft sound of distress.

"What do you want with me?" he asked, trying to hold his voice steady.

Amused laughter filling whatever void this was. "It is really quite simple, Mr Myers." There was a pause. "I want you."

"Why?"

More laughter. "Must I have a reason? Could I not simply desire your stunning wit and charm?"

"Go to hell you fucking asshole."

The headache was subsiding -- or maybe he was getting used to it, he wasn't sure which -- and other details of his situation made themselves known. He'd been chained naked and upright, hanging from his wrists; a familiar burn was beginning to manifest itself in his shoulders as a result. He made an effort to support his weight on his feet but the second his right foot touched the ground, pain shot through his whole leg in white hot lances.

"Oh, I wouldn't try to stand on your right leg," observed the voice. "I can't be sure but I do believe the bone might just be fractured."

"Go to hell you cock-sucking bastard!"

"Quite to the contrary, Mr Myers," the voice replied. "I am not the one who does not know his own father." There was a pause. "Perhaps you might like to think about that."

"Fuck yourself."

"You know, you might wish you had not said that," mused the voice.

Suddenly the void was filled with light. Eric couldn't help but yelp as his eyes struggled to adjust. He heard a door open and heard people walk into the room. There was a buzz of chat from them, betraying their location to him even though he was temporarily blinded.

"Kleknuti!"

Eric froze. This was his nightmare. This wasn't real.

Something was jabbed against his spine.

"Kleknuti!"

Oh God.

It was real.

He knew what was coming next.

Eric tried to kneel. Tried to drop to his knees to show them he was compliant. Anything but that.

There wasn't enough slack. There was nowhere to move. There was no escape. Though his sight was finally returning, there was nothing to see, just blank wall before him, the chains that held him and the cattle prod wielding man behind him.

The man cuffed him. Star bursts of pain exploded behind his eyes and he went momentarily limp. The cattle prod was jabbed against his spine once more.

Nonononononono...

His skin tingled and then thirty thousand volts poured into him from that contact.

~*~

Rocky heard the door of the dojo open but he didn't think too much of it as he worked on the dojo's accounts. It was early morning and people did come into the dojo to work out before they headed to work.

"Rocky?"

Kimberly's voice dragged him out of his thoughts and away from the accounts. What the hell would she be doing here at this time of day? He left the office to see Kimberly, Alice -- who appeared to be asleep in Kimberly's arms -- along with two other people, a man who if he hadn't been shot then Rocky was a Dutchman, and a woman who looked alarmingly like a walking Barbie-doll.

"Rocky?"

For the first time in Rocky's business life he was glad there was no-one else present in the dojo. "Kim -- what's going on?" he asked, offering her a careful hug, mindful of the sleeping Alice in Kimberly's arms.

"Thank God you're here," Kimberly answered, looking relieved to see him. "It's Eric." For one horrible moment, Rocky thought she meant Eric was the one who had shot her companion. "They've taken him!"

"Mr DeSantos," said the woman, before he could ask what Kimberly meant, "is there somewhere private we can talk?"

"My office," he replied automatically. "But whatever it is -- yes."

She looked startled. "You don't know what I'm going to ask."

Rocky shrugged. "Kim's a friend, Eric's a friend. What do you need me to do?"

The woman, still looking faintly stunned, nodded. "I see."

After carefully locking the dojo's doors to prevent anyone from walking in and finding a man with a gunshot wound in the dojo, Rocky led the group into his office. "You," he said to the man who was visibly in shock, "sit -- I've got a first aid kit. I can patch you up while I get some explanations."

"Sounds good to me," murmured the man, half collapsing into the seat Rocky had indicated.

Rocky opened up the first aid kit and started to clean up the wound, which looked fairly minor but was unquestionably painful. "So...a few introductions, Kim?"

"This's Ian Foster and Danielle Hines," Kimberly began.

"We're former colleagues of Eric's," Hines contributed.

"Not friends?" Rocky queried.

"Sarge didn't really 'do' friends," Foster contributed, wincing. "Not when we knew him, at any rate."

"Sarge?" Rocky asked, not entirely surprised by the rest of Foster's words. That had been a conclusion he'd drawn for himself after the Biocon fiasco.

"Eric was a Marine," Kimberly said.

"Well that explains a few things," Rocky murmured. "So what's going on?"

Between them, Kimberly and Hines explained while Rocky bandaged up Foster's arm.

"I see," said Rocky when they'd finished. "What do you need me to do?"

~*~

Time ceased to have a meaning.

What did it matter whether it was ten minutes or ten seconds? Pain was pain.

The sound of his own screams filled his ears.

His throat was raw.

His whole body trembled.

Every fibre and muscle and sinew and synapse was alive with pure and unadulterated agony.

And there was no release.

There was no order to cease.

There was just the torture.

And that was endless.

~*~

Kimberly opened her mouth to reply but Hines got in first.

"The first thing," she said, "is that we need someone to look after Alice."

"You're going after Eric?" Rocky exclaimed, looking straight at Kimberly.

Kimberly nodded. "I have to."

Rocky nodded slowly, unsurprised, and reached for the phone. "Let me call my wife and Alice is taken care of."

Hines looked a little dubious. "The more people know about this..."

"Aisha won't say anything," Kimberly replied, cutting her off as Rocky started speaking on the phone. "I trust her."

Hines nodded, clearly still reluctant.

"Cawdron's going to have a head fit over this anyway," Foster commented. "We're already into SNAFU territory. One more thing isn't going to make much odds." Foster looked at Kimberly. "Does Sarge know Aisha?" Kimberly nodded. "And I'm betting that if he doesn't know her well, he trusts your judgement...Barbie -- we don't have a whole lotta choice here."

Hines sighed. "I know. Doesn't mean I like it."

"You don't have a problem with my involvement," Kimberly observed.

"You're different," Hines explained. "Like it or not, you're already involved -- you've been involved from the get-go, in fact. It would be very hard to exclude you...and I'm not that cruel."

Rocky put the phone down. "She'll be here in five minutes," he announced. "What else do we need?"

~*~

It was dark again.

They had gone.

But they would return.

Eric shivered convulsively. They had left him hanging by his wrists, like so much meat. He tried to get his left leg, at least, to bear some of his weight but he was shaking too much.

I can't do this again...

The darkness was closing in and drawing his fractured attention to the oppressive silence.

I can't...

They would probably leave him like this. Leave him hanging in this pitch black, soundless void. Leave him to hang until they were ready to have more fun.

I won't...

They would probably start beating on him next. The cattle prod had just been to soften him up -- that much he was sure of. Would they flay him -- like they did in Kosovo? Would they shred the skin and flesh and muscle on his back until he could barely feel what they were doing? Or would they have new toys?

I can't...

This was almost worse than the physical pain. Here, in this noiseless, black hole, he was his own torturer. Kosovo had taught him just what depths of cruelty human beings could sink to...and now -- here -- his mind dredged those details up once more.

~*~

"Rocky are you sure about this?"

Rocky looked up from locking the dojo doors at Kimberly's query. "Yes." Aisha had come down and collected Alice, leaving Rocky free to accompany Kimberly, Hines and Foster back to Silverhills to meet up with Cawdron and the head of the intelligence operation. He was fairly sure that Cawdron would veto the idea of him or Kimberly joining any rescue mission, but he wouldn't have felt right not going.

"You don't have to..."

"I know I don't have to," Rocky replied, offering her a tight smile. "You need a friend. I know you don't want to think about..."

"He's going to be OK," Kimberly cut in.

Rocky slowly shook his head, although whether it was at Kimberly's determination or at how much Eric had come to mean to Kimberly in such a short while he wasn't sure. God help this bel Abis jerk if Eric isn't all right. "You still need a friend," Rocky repeated. "Whatever happens."

Kimberly smiled faintly. "Thank you."

"Ready?" Hines asked.

"Yep." Rocky nodded.

"Good." Hines gestured to the SUV where Foster was already ensconced. "Let's hit the road."

~*~

"So, how did you like your first taste of my hospitality?"

It took Eric several minutes before he realised that the voice was back and that he wasn't actually imagining it.

"Did you enjoy it?"

"Fuck off." He knew continuing to be defiant was a short road to a lot of pain but not being defiant meant he'd given in.

"Such language!" exclaimed the voice in mock surprise. "Whatever would little Alice think?"

Anger surged through Eric. "You bastard!" he yelled.

But that just provoked more mocking disapproval. "Need I remind you which one of us has no knowledge of their father?"

Eric had attached no importance to it the first time bel Abis had brought up his past but at the second mention, every sense went onto alert. "What do you know about that?"

Laughter greeted the question. "You would be amazed what I know." There was a pause. "But I think, perhaps, I might leave you to wonder about that. I have...other things to attend to."

Eric felt something jab into his left leg. Panic flooded through him, even as he felt the syringe empty into his leg.

"Sweet dreams, Mr Myers," stated bel Abis. "I have some...carnal delights to enjoy. Sorry to say you won't have the same comforts."

Eric opened his mouth to reply but no sound came out. The drug was starting to act. Even though it was pitch black and he had no visual clues, he felt as though the world was spinning around him. Faster and faster and faster. Up was down. Left was right. He was falling. Hard. Fast.

Then he hit the ground and everything faded out.

TO BE CONTINUED...