NOVPUBThere was barely any time to react as the SUVs swerved into the garage, and as fast as they came, the agents hopped out of the cars, and as if Marco were just a bag of potatoes, they picked him up by the hands and legs and went with him, following the agents toward the room.
James and Thomas, on the other hand, were slow, and it was because James was out… like he was sleeping so deep that he didn't even feel the cars bumping and the hurried steps and shouts, and well, Thomas was waiting for something.
He just sat beside James like he was his father or something, looking at him while the agents outside were confused about what was happening and why they weren't getting out.
He's really sleeping… how the fuck can he sleep so calmly… Thomas thought as he was looking at him in disbelief that this fucker, after making a deal with the government, after all this fight and literal war, is sleeping like a princess.
A sane person would feel so much stress they couldn't even sleep, and James too, he's supposed to be looking stressed, disoriented, someone that just sealed the biggest deal… but not at least from the outside.
The sleep was… well, the medicines and all the things Thomas thought of.
James was so stressed that his hands were shaking, and he couldn't think straight. But before leaving the house, he took some pills to make sure his legs wouldn't hurt. In the process, he accidentally took a sleeping pill too… well, all his pills looked identical, and maybe it was a good mistake… at least he could get some rest.
"James…" Thomas said his name but nothing. "James!" He raised his voice the second time but still nothing.
Is he dead? How good that would be…
"James!" He shouted now as he tapped his shoulder and there was it, he was up… but hell, that was scary.
He opened his eyes straight, staring at Thomas like a monster was woken up, like a bear during its sleep. He didn't move, just stared at him.
"What?" He asked simply, still staring at Thomas.
"We're here…"
Silence for a bit as James just realized that he slept through the whole road.
"Ohh… good." He answered and after a moment of silence he finally opened the door stepping out to the garage where everywhere were agents waiting.
It was a crazy scene, like a true boss, all around, soldiers dressed in full black, standing and waiting.
I was out… what a good sleep it was. He thought as he took his first step, but he noticed the same thing that Thomas earlier.
James stepped one… the agents too stepped. If he stopped, they stopped too.
Is it an escort or do they want to arrest me… He took another look at them, but to be honest, not even one of them was looking at him, at least in his eyes. It was like they were cautiously looking for threats rather than James himself as a threat.
Strange…
"Linda's waiting for us." Thomas said as he walked past James, toward the tunnel, but from the agents nothing.
They didn't go after Thomas, their boss nor moved an inch.
Pretty strange… James thought but there was nothing he could do about it and well he didn't care that much so he started walking and with him all of them, escorting him toward the tunnel and then towards the room. 𝓃𝓸𝓋𝓹𝓾𝓫.𝒸ℴ𝓶
Dozens of agents in that tunnel went after him like they were his shadow, and finally, he was there.
He stopped in front of the door and before him, the scene was familiar.
Maybe too familiar.
Not the same room, not the same chairs, but the feeling was the same when he was "questioned" by the NSBI agents when all the bullshit started.
He also noticed the familiar faces there but the one who stepped to him was Linda herself.
"Here." She said as he handed a coffee to him.
"Thank you." He said as he grabbed it from her and sipped it, and immediately realized it was… first it was ass from a coffee machine that wasn't cleaned in ages, and two, it was straight black coffee.
It tasted as if Linda wanted to poison him.
So James made the quick decision to actually use the coffee for something better, and he stepped right in front of Marco who was already chained into the metal chair and he was still unconscious… well, not after James poured the coffee into his face.
It wasn't very hot nor was it cold, it was the perfect temperature to feel pain from it but not an intensive one… just to wake him up… and it worked.
Marco's eyes shot open, but he didn't move, nor did he understand what the hell was happening. His head was spinning like crazy, his vision was blurry, his whole body ached, and now his face felt like it had slammed into a stove. But that was it… as quickly as he woke up, his head slumped forward again. Not a single movement followed, only the sound of his slow breathing filled the room.
"Should I use this?" Benjamin asked, and as James turned toward him, he was posing with a hammer.
"You guys are experts in things like this, so do what you want." He said as he slowly sat down on one of the chairs and just stared at Marco.
All of them got confused by it because they thought he would go berserk in the first second he saw him, like chopping him up or beating the living shit out of him. But no, he just sat there in silence.
And there were multiple things to it… not just the sleeping pill which made him extremely sleepy, but he was still stressed about Ferucci, about his mother Bella, and Charlotte, as they still didn't call, and to be truth, he wasn't a master of torture.
He popped out the police chief's eyes, but it came from extreme anger and guilt… yes, because Rafael was killed. But now there wasn't any shot or surge of that feeling to cause pain, to do something brutal, to take revenge.
He didn't realize it yet… that there will be no surge of it. It's already in him.
He is one with terror. Like a true monster.
On the opposite of it, Benjamin was actually excited about it because first, he could prove himself more to James, and second, he can torture somebody truly famous and influential in the underworld… not like those motherfuckers he did in his career that just leaked information or sold them.
So he raised the hammer in his hand and was ready to strike.
"First principle of torture is the time." Stephen's voice came from the back as he sat. "Time that the prisoner realizes that there is no hope for him."
"Well first he's fucking out…" Benjamin pointed the hammer at Marco as he looked at Stephen. "Second, we don't have time. We need to kill him fast… I mean question him first and then kill him."
"Both of you are right, same time wrong." Thomas said, and he realized James was closing his eyes like taking a nap again. "Time is crucial, but we have no time, and second, beating him with a hammer is not going to give us information. He already knows he's fucked and going to die, which means we need to use slow pain that will crushes his soul. What you want to do, Benjamin, is just butcher him." He looked into his eyes. "Well, that's how the NSBI works, but now we need to be cautious." He explained and stepped toward the toolbox, but there wasn't anything he wanted so he turned back. "Amun, come here!" He shouted out the door, and suddenly one of the agents arrived… a medic one. "Give him a shot that will wake him up and also give me some needles and a scalpel."
"I need to grab my bag from the car." Amun replied and left the room, and Thomas turned to another agent. "Joel, give me your tools."
Joel stepped in and pulled out his tool pouch from his vest, giving it to Thomas, who opened it, and it was like a torturer's treasure chest.
Well, to be true, it was a tool set for break-ins and for bombs, as Joel was a specialist, but those pliers, scissors were the best to… get some nail work done… maybe some tooth checkup too, but there was something that Thomas noticed.
"Is that bleach?" He pointed at the ground.
"Yes, it is." Linda said, but she immediately got a stomach ache. They didn't even do anything, but she felt like throwing up the moment she confirmed that it was bleach, because Thomas and Benjamin's eyes lit up, and Amun too got back with his bag.
"Should I wake him up?" He asked as he looked at Thomas, who just nodded as he grabbed the bleach from the ground.
So Amun did it, and he gave him an injection. "It will take 10 minutes to act." He said as he grabbed some needles and a scalpel from his bag and gave it to Thomas. "Well, if something happens, I'll be outside."
"Me too." Joel said as he turned around and stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him.
A silence followed, then Benjamin started chuckling. "IF agents, and they can't stand torture?"
"They were trained how to counter torture, not how to torture." Thomas said.
"Oh, and how do they do it?" James suddenly asked from the side.
"They don't let themselves be captured." Thomas replied. "They're trained killers, not prisoners."
"So they die for this country?" James chuckled.
Well, yeah... it was funny and absurd. They would kill themselves for a country that was rotten to the core... but what was even more absurd was that the man they once tried to capture, spy on, even kill was now sitting in a torture room, alongside the agency directors and a minister… in the basement of the ministry, torturing another gangster.
The peak of absurdity.
