A/N: And we're back! Short chapter, sorry. Running on very little sleep. It's not beta'd or proofed, so apologies for any errors. Hoping to respond to the backlog of reviews this afternoon.

Danny coughed, retched, and spit something- water? bile? blood?- onto the floor. "Please…" he gasped, "please, no more. I can't… I'll tell you whatever… whatever you want to know."

Jian chuckled softly. "You see, Commander?" he called in Steve's direction. "Your partner seems to know something after all."

Steve made no response. Danny was breathing… Danny was speaking… He was alive; that was good. But his relief was overshadowed by fear. Physically, he was confident Danny would recover if they could escape. But mentally…?

Mentally, Steve wasn't so sure. He'd seen strong men broken by less. Teammates. Men he thought of as brothers. Returning a casket home was one thing; returning a shell of a man was something quite different. But How bad is it, D? wasn't a question he could ask at the moment.

Ignoring Steve's brooding silence, Jian turned back to the detective. "You are making a wise decision, Detective Williams. What can you tell me about the horse?"

"It's…" Danny gagged, coughed, and spit up again. "It's fake. The horse is fake." He swallowed thickly and continued: "We… we wanted to catch… the people after the horse… so we… we set up a sting… it was all a trap… I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry…"

The final plea was meant for Steve.

"And the location of Daniel Ma?"

"He was taken into… into custody Sunday afternoon."

"And…?" Jian wanted to know more.

Danny gulped. Then the words spilled out, tumbling over each other in short, hasty phrases, as though Jian might change his mind if Danny slowed or stopped. "Don't know who. Pretended to be FBI. Not FBI. Called local office, they don't have him. Maybe CIA." Danny inhaled rapidly between each sentence, nearly hyperventilating at the terror of being placed under the water again. "We don't know much for certain. We tried to ask his wife and daughter. They thought he was arrested. That's it."

"None of that is new information to me. Perhaps a bit more time with this…" Jian threatened and turned on the hose.

"NO! No, please, please…" Danny moaned and babbled incomprehensibly for a moment. "I know more, please!"

Steve listened to the water running across the concrete toward him and Danny's panicked sniffling across the room. There was nothing he could say at this point to help him- Danny would tell them everything at this point, anything to avoid being put under the water again. Their only saving grace, Steve realized, was how little they truly knew.

"Well?" Jian broke the quiet impatiently. "I'm waiting…"

"Ma's wife and daughter… they disappeared."

"What do you mean?" Jian asked sharply.

"We went back Tuesday, but they were gone and the house was for sale."

"Where did they go?"

"I don't know."

"Not helpful, Detective. What else can you tell me?"

"Uh… Someone broke in, hacked the system, stole files…"

"Hacked into your system?"

"Yes."

"What files were stolen?"

"Everything about Daniel Ma."

"And the backups?"

"They got them, too."

"Who got them?"

"We don't know."

"What was in the files?"

"Don't know."

"Who did the research? You? Did you forget everything?"

"Uh…" Danny suddenly wavered.

"Yes…?" Jian bit out with impatience.

But to Steve's surprise, Danny still hesitated.

A small shock went through Steve's system. Steve had done the research. Steve knew Ma's background, remembered almost everything in the now-missing files. Steve knew details that Jian didn't know. Danny was protecting him. Despite everything his friend had just suffered, the man was still protecting him.

"I think the detective needs a reminder," Jian mused.

"No! No, no, no, no, nonono…" But Danny's cries were drowned out as the towel was thrown back over his face. Beneath the rush of water, his screams were reduced to faint garglings.

"Stop," Steve growled and pulled himself to his feet. "Stop. It was me."

The water stopped, and Danny coughed and sobbed with relief as the cloth was removed from his face again. Jian's footsteps rapidly crossed the room, stopping just in front of Steve. "You know what was in his file?"

"I did."

"You did?"

"I was drugged. Someone broke in Monday night while I was still at the office. They drugged me, took the files, cleared the hard drive, and wiped the security footage. The drug they injected gave me amnesia- I don't remember anything between noon Monday and Tuesday morning." A lie, buried in truth. "Danny had already gone home for the evening. The files were erased before he arrived the next morning, and I have no memory of any of it." Steve could only hope Jian believed him.

"You were injected with a drug?" Jian's question served the additional purpose of confirming what Steve already suspected: that the Chinese were not behind Monday night's incident.

"Yes. Left arm."

"What was it?"

"Don't know." Not quite true, but the complex chemical name that Charlie sent back was not something Steve could remember.

A strong hand gripped his wrist and the sleeve was torn away. A finger poked his arm, just below the elbow. Jian made an indeterminate noise in his throat. A moment later, the blindfold was ripped away and Steve found himself blinking in the bright beam of a powerful flashlight. Jian stood before him, studying his face curiously. "So… You remember nothing?"

"No." Steve turned his head away from the Jian's silhouette and the blinding light. The rest of the room was shrouded in darkness, although he could faintly see his partner strapped down not far away. A single fluorescent light flickered over Danny's trembling body and Steve could see his hands clenching and unclenching rapidly. Water pooled on the floor underneath him, and a man standing over Danny held the soggy towel and hose.

Steve was disappointed he couldn't see the man's face. He wanted to remember that face.

Jian's voice pulled him back. "Not even from Monday afternoon, Commander? You have no memory of Monday afternoon?"

"I only know what Danny told me."

"Hmph." A dissatisfied grunt escaped the Chinese mobster. "If you know nothing, then you are useless to me."

"No!" Danny screamed, apparently taking this to mean further torture. "No, no, no! We know more! Ask us more!"

"You've wasted my time, Detective. I doubt very much you know anything of value to me."

"No, please! Ask me more! Ask me more!"

"Danny!" Steve called. "Danny, it's going to be okay. Deep breaths, buddy."

Danny rushed on. "Look, the docks- we caught a man down at the docks looking for the horse! I can tell you about him!"

"I already know everything about him," Jian said dismissively.

"Hoof prints, along the H3- Steve thought he saw hoof prints."

"Not useful."

Danny was nearly hyperventilating now, his chest rising and falling too rapidly as terror overwhelmed him.

"Danny!" Steve tried again. "Slow your breathing- in, out… in, out…"

But Danny ignored him. "The company… rented the horse, pink princess… please! Ask me about them! I can tell you more!"

Steve closed his eyes as his partner's yells devolved into mumbled fits of crying and babbling. Danny's terror- and Jian's blatant apathy- evoked a strong feelings and long-buried memories of a terrifying night in Bamyan valley in Afghanistan. He shuddered. Pushing the memories forcibly away, he turned toward Jian. "What do you intend to do with us?" he called to the retreating man.

Although the man was already halfway across the room, he stopped and gave Steve a very studious once-over. "Do you want one last chance, Commander? Very well, I grant it: tell me where the real horse is."

"We don't know."

"No?" Jian was not amused. "You sacrifice your life- and your partner's- over such a small thing?"

Steve made no reply.

Jian sighed. "On your own head be it." His feet turned away from Steve and marched crisply past Danny and out the door at the far end. Before the door closed, his final words were issued to one of the guards in the room. "Clean this up."

The order was carried out immediately. A few seconds later, Danny cried out and was suddenly silent. In the dim light of the room, Steve couldn't see what had happened, and as the footsteps approached, he struggled but was powerless to stop what came next: a rush of noise and color overwhelmed him, a sharp pain, and then nothingness.

…

A dark Humvee pulled to a stop on the side of the gravel road, its windshield wipers tossing the snow to the side as the heavy flakes collected on the glass. A door opened and two men were pushed out into the cold. Neither seemed to feel the harsh, biting air or mind the heavy thump as their bodies were unceremoniously dropped to the ground. The door slammed, the engine revved, and the Humvee pulled away, spitting wads of snow from its tires. Neither man stirred.

A/N: So… any guesses where they are?