Content warning: Yep, torture.
After he's been in captivity for probably somewhere around a week, Clay finally figures out what it is they're waiting for.
His captors have apparently concluded that he really doesn't speak their dialect, because they've stopped bothering to make sure he can't overhear important conversations. It's not even close to the only area in which they've grown complacent. Hell, they're not even binding his hands most of the time.
Lying in his room with his ear pressed to the crack at the bottom of the door, Clay listens as one of his guards, who also doubles as the closest thing this motley crew has to a leader, tries to arrange a meet with ISIL to sell one elite American military operator in good condition.
Good condition. Clay tamps down the hysterical laugh that tries to escape.
At least now he knows why he's not missing any important bits. These assholes think they'll get more money for him if he's not too badly damaged.
He also knows that his life, whatever's left of it, is about to be over.
The idiots holding him now? They're not well funded, not well trained. Basically just a single extended family of dumb extremist assholes who hit the jackpot. The mistakes these guys are making aren't mistakes ISIL is going to make.
The exchange is set to happen in three days. Once he changes hands, it will be over. All except for the part where he gets to star in his very own snuff film, and the people he loves get to live the rest of their lives with those images burned into their minds.
If he wants that to not happen, he has to either escape or die trying.
Clay needs two things: he needs a weapon, and he needs a way to break out of the room where they're keeping him. Unfortunately, the door is both deadbolted and padlocked from the outside, so he'll have to make his move once they open it. Which is where the weapon comes in.
He has to get his hands on a knife. His best chance of doing so is probably going to come when they're using them on him. This means, unfortunately, that the next time they come for him, he's going to have to stay present for whatever happens next.
His luck being what it is, the next time doesn't involve knives, or anything else that might make a useful weapon. His captors have decided that there's a pressing Clay-having-fingernails issue that urgently needs to be solved. Clay thinks this is incredibly cliché and tells them so in French, which earns him a free punch to the broken ribs. The resulting violent coughing hurts so all-encompassingly that he falls out of his head for a while, despite trying to stay.
He ends up back on the floor of his room, bleeding from both hands, miserable and feverish and no nearer escape than he was yesterday.
The bastard brigade leaves him alone for the rest of the day. He isn't sure whether to be grateful, because he is definitely starting to fray around the edges and isn't sure how much more of this he can take, or disappointed, because he needs a way to escape and is rapidly running out of time to do so.
Toward late afternoon, his cough deepens, starts bringing up thick phlegm that tastes like rotting fish. His chest seems to be full of razor blades. He shivers, cold to the bone even though he can still feel the heat of the room on his skin.
The teenager comes to bring food in the early evening. When he sees the state of the prisoner, his eyes widen and he reaches out to brush his fingertips against Clay's forehead. With a sharp indrawn breath, the kid races off to get the others.
They figure out pretty quickly that they've fucked up. Their 'American military operator in good condition' is suddenly looking like an American military operator who might not live three more days - and while his corpse is still worth something, it's not worth nearly as much as he is alive.
After some frantic discussion, they send for a doctor, or at least someone they refer to as such. By the time the man arrives, it's nearly dark. Clay feels like he's floating somewhere up near the ceiling, watching his body from a distance. He's cold and hot and his bones hurt.
The doctor talks, his voice flickering in and out of Clay's consciousness. He says something about pneumonia. He gives some injections, lifts Clay's head to force water into his mouth.
After a while, mercifully, they all leave and Clay passes out.
When he wakes, it's late and the moon is in its cage over his head again. He stares at it for a while. The left side of his chest still hurts like there's a knife in his lung, but his temperature is down and he's a bit more clear-headed.
He decides that Ashli Mayers maybe feels well enough by now for her first real outing, so she'll be out getting a pedicure.
Stella didn't even like pedicures all that much, but she would do them as girl bonding rituals with other women she cared about, so Clay figures Ashli will with her mom and sisters, or maybe with some of her friends from school.
She'll be getting little patterns painted on her toes, flowers or hearts or whatever the hell it is that teenage girls like. Maybe she's still jumping at every loud noise, but she's home and she's safe and that matters. It matters.
Clay closes his eyes, tries to take a deep breath, and falls into a fit of coughing that makes his ribs stab him from the inside. He dreams that his grandfather leans over him, touches his cheek with a gentle, arthritis-gnarled hand, and tells him, "You know, son, I sure am proud of you."
When Clay opens his eyes again, his face is wet and he's alone.
The next day is the least terrible one he's had since he's been here. His captors are now wary of killing him, so they leave him alone except to inject him with antibiotics, give him water and broth and some kind of pills that he swallows on the off chance they might be helping.
By evening, he's regained enough strength to stand. His chest still hurts and he's shaky, but he paces back and forth in his room and doesn't even fall over. He's not exactly going to be breaking any of Jason's speed records anytime soon, but it's gonna have to be good enough.
He sleeps restlessly through the night. Sometime before dawn, he is awakened by a cigarette being put out on his neck.
Well, good morning to you too, Fuckface.
Clay pries open crusty eyelashes, coughs wetly, and stares listlessly up at the big guard who hates him a little extra. The fucker grins, displaying an appalling lack of oral hygiene, and draws a wicked-looking blade.
It's been days since Clay bothered with trying to fight back or even reacting much, which is probably why the guard looks so surprised when his prisoner kills him with his own knife.
Adrenaline lends Clay just enough strength to catch the body as it falls forward and ease it to the floor. The guard gurgles quietly through his cut throat, then goes silent.
Mercifully, the big asshole left the door unlocked behind him. Gripping the knife, Clay limps over, eases the door farther open, and peers out into the corridor that leads to the stairs.
The kid is on watch. Clay both hoped for and dreaded that.
With Clay as weak as he is, the safest thing to do is to cut the kid's throat. Make sure it ends as quick and quiet as possible, because if the teenager yells for help, it's all over.
It's the only thing that makes sense. Clay doesn't do it.
He may be weak, but he's still a hell of a lot bigger than the teenager. He can use that.
Dumb kid isn't even paying attention, just staring up at the ceiling, probably thinking about a girl or wishing he could sleep in. By the time he realizes he's in trouble, Clay's good arm is locked tight around his neck and he can't make a sound.
Clay throws them both back against the wall, using his weight to pull the kid down where he can get a leg around him and keep him from fighting loose. He waits long enough to be absolutely sure the kid is out, then lets go and staggers to his feet.
The boy is breathing and hopefully doesn't have brain damage. It's the best Clay can do for him.
This early, the building is dimly lit and echoing silent. Clay encounters one more guard at the top of the stairs, using the knife on him without reservation. The man is about his size, so Clay takes his clothing. It won't fool anyone who gets a close-up glance, but it might just buy him enough time to cross the space between the compound and the steep, desolate hills he hopes to disappear into.
Shaking with exertion, Clay finishes wrapping the turban to hide his blond hair and beard. He straightens his shoulders, pushes off the wall he's been leaning against, and walks out the open door. Everything hurts. He doesn't let himself limp.
There's only the faintest hint of pale gray light to the east, just enough that he can vaguely gauge the distance to the first outcrop that marks the edge of the jagged, rocky hills.
It's the longest walk of Clay's life. With the gentle, windswept silence of the early desert morning filling his ears, he waits for the shout, for the shot, for everything to end.
It doesn't. He slides into concealment behind the shelf of stone, takes deep, wheezing breaths that painfully shift his ribs, and then staggers on, deeper into the broken landscape.
When Clay has put enough distance between himself and the compound to feel minutely safer, and when he starts shaking too hard to go any farther without resting, he drops down against a slab of rock, pulls out the sat phone he took off the third guard, and lets out a breath when he sees that it's got a signal.
Time to call in the cavalry.