Previously…
Finally, she lifted the object Rozalia had given to her close to her face. It was a scalpel. A weapon.
Although she wouldn't let it go far, Kensi felt hope begin to spark in her chest.
Maybe she could, no, she would get out of this hell.
She had failed, and failed miserably. As Kensi lay naked and shivering on the filth-encrusted mattress, that served as her "bed", she fought the waves of agony that racked her freshly-tortured body and stared blankly at the wall as she tried to figure how everything had gone so unbelievably, horribly wrong.
Earlier in the day:
It had started after Rozalia had given her the scalpel. Kensi had spent an agonizing night on the mattress, getting no more than twenty minutes of sleep because of her injuries. Only the scalpel and the thought of escape kept her going. However, the lack of sleep became her greatest foe.
The next morning, after another unappetizing round of sawdust-like gruel, Kensi had been dragged back to Nikolai's torture room. Nikolai had momentarily released her hands to pull down the cuffs suspended from the ceiling. In that brief second Kensi pulled the scalpel from its hiding place in her hair and lunged forward, aiming for Nikolai's exposed throat.
The scalpel never reached its target.
Had Kensi been her normal self, she would have undoubtedly struck where she had been aiming and torn open Nickola's unprotected throat. However, lack of adequate sleep and food, combined with her extensive injuries, slowed her down and caused her usually rock-steady hand to shake and jerk. It was enough for Nikolai to jerk his head to the side; the scalpel merely struck the side of his neck, slicing skin and muscle, bunt nothing vital.
As Kensi's arm flew past Nikolai, he grabbed it and used her forward momentum to her to the floor. Instinctively, she kicked out at him, hoping to throw him enough off balance so that she could strike again, but with incredible speed Nikolai caught her foot, leveled her leg out and landed a devastating kick of his own to her knee.
There was an odd sound, somewhere between a pop and a crunch and Kensi's knee bent sideways at an impossible angle. At first her adrenaline-saturated brain wouldn't register the pain, but after three seconds of staring numbly at her oddly-positioned knee, the pain abruptly raced up Kensi's leg with the ferocity of a wildfire. She collapsed to the ground, writhing in agony.
Nikolai, ignoring Kensi's prone form, began to examine the scalpel with such intensity that it looked like he would burn a hole right through the tempered steel. Eventually his piercing gaze turned back to Kensi, and she shivered with terror, wondering what he had in mind for her now. He knelt down next to her prone body and gently, almost lovingly, caressed Kensi's cheek with the flat of the blade. Kensi tried desperately tried to get away from the cold silver of the blade, but her shattered knee sent agonizing waves of pain with the movement. It wasn't long before she had collapsed once again on the floor, panting with fear and pain.
The scalpel slid to Kensi's throat and dimpled the flesh as Nikolai leaned in, his fetid breath bathing her face.
"A gift from Rozalia. I will have to thank her." The look on Nikolai's face promised anything but good things for Rozalia.
"No…don't. It wasn't her faul…"
"Shut up!" Nikolai backhanded Kensi's cheek, causing her head to snap to the side. He then dropped his knee onto her sternum, driving her breath out of her lungs with a whoosh.
"You are lucky, woman. In short time I fly to your country capital and find that traitor bitch and her family. Be glad you have no family. I will make her watch her bastard husband and sniveling brats die before I kill her. But I kill you first. Not today. Soon. Soon you die." He stood upright, gave her damaged knee a solid kick before returning his attention to the cuffs suspended from the ceiling. After getting them into place, he half-dragged, half-carried her to the cuffs, hung her up, and began to torture her once more.
Present
I shouldn't have done anything. Kensi thought as she traced a crack on the wall with her eyes. Because of her actions, she had likely signed Rozalia's death warrant, and she had still been unable to stop Nikolai's actions in any way. Worse, she was now crippled and it was likely that she wouldn't get any medical treatment for her injuries, now that Nikolai was planning to kill her within the next few days. To top it all off, she could do nothing, nothing at all, to warn Ziva and her family in Washington D.C.
But would she have been any better off if she had done nothing? Nikolai would have tortured her regardless of her actions, and she had been able to mark him- a small consolation, but a consolation nonetheless. That thought acted as a small spark, a spark that rekindled the fire deep within her chest. Through all the pain, torture and terror, Nikolai had managed to break Kensi down in only a matter of hours. He had made himself appear more than human- he had become a god of torture.
He wasn't.
He had made a mistake, hadn't he? He had allowed Kensi to get access to a weapon, and she had made him bleed.
She could do it again. She would do it again.
Kensi's fighting spirit, so long subdued, flared up like kerosene thrown on a bonfire, filling her every cell. It burned away the pain and humiliation, leaving her clear-headed and much stronger. One thought became her central focus: even if she was killed, she would never give Nikolai the satisfaction of seeing her beg again.
Her resolve growing, Kensi rolled her body over and felt something poke her back. Annoyed, she rolled over once more, and then something in her mind clicked. The mattress springs! An idea began to form as Kensi's probing fingers searched for the spring that had jabbed her. Finding it, she sawed the worn mattress fabric over the spring until the metal poked through. Her pulse quickening, Kensi worked the rusted spring back and forth until she was able to break a four-inch piece off of the spring. Kensi bent the piece once more, then dug once more into mattress and worked the springs again and again.
It took nearly two hours, as she often had to pause due to her near complete lack of strength. Not once was food or drink passed into her cell, and she idly wondered if Nikolai simply planned to starve her to death. The thought fueled Kensi's determination, and she was finally able to remove enough springs and cloth to fashion a crude brace that could steady her broken knee. It took a great deal of effort, but she was eventually able to stand and limp over to the door. There she braced herself against the door and looked at the lock.
There was no interior mechanism for the lock, but Kensi had watched and heard it enough to know that it was a deadbolt- a relatively simple lock for her to open. However, she very quickly realized that her biggest problem was not the lock itself, but rather her tortured body. At first she was able to maneuver the springs into place with relative ease. Yet, as Kensi was working, she shifted her body and stepped on her shattered knee. In less time than it took to draw a breath, a bolt of pain shot up her entire body and the spring dropped to the floor with a clang.
Kensi, doubled over in pain, froze. Her pulse raced as the precariousness of the situation- if Nikolai were to come in to investigate the noise, she would lose everything she had worked for, including her life. Her body trembled in a combination of fear and pain as she waited breathlessly. She was certain that she hear the heavy footsteps of her tormentor within second. However, after several tense moments, the silence remained unbroken and Kensi slowly, awkwardly, reached down to retrieve the spring, biting back several curses. Once more she positioned the spring in the lock. Again and again she attacked the lock, and again and again her efforts were stymied.
Just as Kensi's strength was about to fail completely, the lock slid open with an ominous "clank". With cautious movements, she nudged the door open and was almost immediately blinded by the light from the open door. She slit her eyes, and once they had adjusted, she nudged the door open further, assessing her surroundings. Because Nikolai had always either blindfolded or moved Kensi far too fast to the "torture room" for her to see what surrounded her room.
The first thing that that Kensi noticed was that she wasn't in any sort of warehouse or office building as she had originally thought. The dank smell of a basement permeated the air, and slime-coated concrete met her searching fingers as she ran them along the wall. The source of the light that had blinded her before came from a small window high on the wall about twenty feet away. Because of the window's light, Kensi could see the surrounding area clearly. If was at least four or five times as large as her tiny prison room and mostly bare save for a few boxes taped closed and piles of unidentifiable trash. There were two rooms near Kensi's- one was directly to the left of her room and one was further down, against the far wall.
She knew that the window would have been the quickest and most direct route out of the building, however, with her damaged leg, there was no way she would be able to climb up to the window. Kensi turned to the closest door, praying that her leg would hold long enough to escape her hell. She gave the knob an experimental turn, startling when the door opened silently. Instinctively, she backed up, waiting for Nikolai to come rushing through the door. When nothing happened, she carefully crept forward, eyeing the area. A rickety- looking wooden staircase led up into darkness. Ever so slowly, Kensi settled her bad leg on the stair, causing a creak to echo throughout the area. She froze, her ears tuned to the slightest noise, but nothing happened. Wherever Nikolai was, whatever he was doing, he couldn't hear her escape.
Relief flooded Kensi's body, but her training suddenly kicked in, and she moved towards the edge of the stairs were the wood was less likely to make noise. With utmost care and focus, Kensi half-dragged, half-pulled herself up step by step, pausing often to listen and rest. The journey was excruciating, exhausting and took much more effort than it ever should have, but Kensi wouldn't let herself stop. Near the top of the staircase, Kensi encountered another door. Testing it, she found it unlocked as well. Inch by agonizing inch Kensi turned the knob until the door creaked open. Again she paused to listen, again everything was quiet.
Looking around, Kensi found herself in an open room, small and dark. At first, she wondered if she had taken much longer to get up the stairs than she had originally thought, but then some light filtered through and she realized that she was looking at a small, dingy, rustic cabin whose windows were covered in some sort of cloth. In the low light, Kensi could just make out three doors leading from the main room, one of which she had just come out of. However, exploration was the last thing on her mind, and she busied herself finding an exit.
She tried the nearest door and nearly screamed. There, on a large bed, illuminated by a single lamp, lay Nikolai, fast asleep. A book lay over his chest, and he snored loudly, explaining why she had managed to climb so clumsily up the stairs without alerting him to her escape. Clamping a hand over her mouth, Kensi stumbled backwards, nearly falling over. Nikolai grunted, shifted and groaned, making Kensi tense with fear. Her tormentor groaned once more and then resumed his loud snoring. Kensi let out a soft breath, then slowly closed the door and limped over to the other one and eased it open.
It led outside.
Kensi nearly wept with joy at her find, stopped, and assessed her surroundings. She was in deep forest, and it was nearly sunset. With luck, Nikolai would be out for a long while and would not notice her absence for some time. Likewise, the coming darkness would help hide her trail. On the other hand, she was badly injured, had no food or water, and no shelter, and might easily end up dead out in the forest rather than in the cabin.
A rock and a hard place indeed.
Looking back once more, she steeled herself and limped off into the forest. It was time to leave her nightmare behind.
Annnnd, it took me forever to update. Again.
So sorry!
Anyway, hopefully I'll be faster on the next one!
Please review!
Yeah, sure, you becha!
