As promised, here we go.
As it had been happening for a while now, it was the pain that woke him up.
The throbbing pounding in his head, exploding with a never ending headache.
The pain all over his face, from to forehead to his jaw through a nose that was more likely broken.
The soreness around his wrists and ankles, tied up more than once in different ways. The same subtle feeling of physical unease spreading through his back, for so long forced into unnatural and uncomfortable positions.
Then there was the ankle, strangely tipped over to a point where it hurt so bad that it had gone numb on him.
There was a new one this time, a whole new level of pain and discomfort spreading all over his chest that had been battered by the defibrillator and, as he started to regain more and more consciousness, a faint smell of burnt which he could easily guess was coming from his skin.
Overall, he felt like utter rubbish, a feeling that deepened and got even worse when the fog in his mind cleared and the memories of the latest events started to come through. The first time, when he had awoken on the very same chair where his ankle had been shattered, for a brief, blissful moment, he had forgotten about where he was and what happened. Floating in ignorance and lack of memories, he had nearly thought he might have been dreaming, half asleep on the couch in his office, only to be roughly brought to reality by the shooting pain coming up his right leg. This time however, there was no misleading thought to trick him, no vain hope to comfort him.
And he liked it better that way.
The illusion that he wasn't knee deep in the worst nightmare of his life wasn't going to help him, denying reality wasn't going to make it any better. More than that, he believed that embracing the situation might have been his only way out.
After all, the moment he had started doing that, things had started to get interesting.
At the beginning, seeing Gillian and the others watching him on that little screen of the torture chamber had surprised him, and not in a good way; there was nothing reassuring in knowing that Warton had created a vicious cycle of never ending torture. But then he had seen her, how strongly she had been staring at him, defiant and determined not to let those images affect her, and it had given him strength.
The second time he hadn't expected her to still be there, he had wished she wouldn't be. How could she, how could she sit there and watch Warton play with him like with a defenceless animal? But she had been there, enduring everything with stoic silence, and soon Cal had started to realise she was, whether she was aware of it or not, acting like an emotional vampire. It wasn't healthy nor advisable, but he felt like Gillian was sucking away some of his pain and fear, an invisible siphon connecting them to balance out their sorrows.
As crazy as it might have sounded, knowing that she was there even against her own best judgement, gave him strength. Now he knew they were watching, that he wasn't entirely alone, and most importantly, that he could use that channel Warton had unwisely opened. Egging him on, relentlessly provoking his captor might not have been the brightest of ideas, but he had gotten something out of it. He had stopped the torture from going on, to start; there had been three more syringes with the stuff that made his heart stop on that tray, but Warton hadn't used them. To Cal, a man who was more than happy to lie down on a muddy floor after what he had been through, that counted as a big win.
And it had been, he hoped as he drifted back into a sleeping state that felt more letting go of himself, only the beginning. Because if Gillian was watching with the level of self- harming attention he thought she was, chances were the little hint he had dropped would not go unnoticed.