Page 245 of Operation: Defiance

Chapter Seventy-Two

Asher

The scrape of the door opening snaps my thoughts from the endless slow drift isolation has forced them into.

I don’t remember how many times I’ve counted the scratches on the table. Or my own heartbeats. Or the muscle spasms in my arms and shoulders.

The noise resolves into meaning too slowly. I struggle to lift my head. More than once I’ve nodded off for a minute or two, only to be woken by a guard repositioning me. I’ve lost count of the number of times they adjusted my position by sliding the rings on the table forward or back. Once they forced me to stand facing the wall, my wrists cuffed at shoulder height for so long, I was certain my legs would give out.

Raine will have talked to Northbridge by now. I hope.

Mark steps through the door first, Chad close behind him.

My sense of time has flattened into long stretches of pain and brief pauses for questions I don’t answer.

“You look terrible,” Chad says.

Don’t sugarcoat it, asshole.

Mark takes the chair across from me, folding his hands loosely on the table as if this is a business meeting, not the sixth—seventh?—round of the day.

“Shall we try this again?” After a brief pause, he continues, “Tell us where Calder is.”

My throat is dry enough that every swallow hurts. “No.”

Halting his pacing behind me, Chad clamps his hand down on my shoulder, hard. Must be his signature move. I assume it’s meant to be intimidating. Objectively, it’s the best thing that’s happened to that muscle in hours. I keep that observation to myself.

He leans down, his voice sharp in my ear. “You’ve had a lot of time to think about this. Try again.”

I say nothing.

“You’re not doing her any favors, Locke. She needs help. We can get it for her,” Mark adds.

I almost laugh. Their version of help involves massive doses of ECT and an unmarked grave.

Chad moves his hand from my shoulder to the back of my chair, the other dropping to probe the wound in my side. Not hard enough to reopen it, but enough to hurt. “You’ve seen the pattern, Locke. Paranoia, reckless decisions, mistakes that can’t be taken back…”

I don’t dignify their implication with a response. I’m too busy breathing through the pain.

After a short pause, Mark nods.

The two work together, releasing my wrists from the table rings and dragging me to my feet. The edges of the room dim as my blood pressure bottoms out from the sudden change in position. They move me without commentary, dragging me to the wall I’ve been staring at for God knows how long.

“Kneel,” Chad snaps.

“No.”

The position is inevitable. Two of them, one of me. But if I fold on cue, they start to believe their voices are enough to break me.

I won’t give them that.

Mark’s hand drives between my shoulder blades. At the same time, Chad hooks his foot around my ankle and pulls, hard.

My knees hit concrete.

The impact reverberates straight up my spine. I lock my jaw before the pain twists my expression into something they can use.

Working together, they drag me back until my feet are jammed against the wall. Chad jerks the chain between my wrists forward, then locks it to a ring embedded in the floor in front of me. It’s far enough away I can’t sit back on my heels, and have to fight gravity and physics not to fall on my face.