This monster.

My captor stepped closer to the cage, the metal prod slipping through the gap in between the bars until it stopped just inches from my chest. I remained absolutely still. I could hear the electricity building at the end of the metal rod. I prayed he wouldn’t push it against my chest.

My eyes remained downcast, until he ordered, “Look up!”

I flinched at the venom in his voice, his harsh and scathing voice. But too afraid to disobey, I snapped my eyes to meet his. The moment our gazes clashed, I felt seared on the spot. There was nothing but contempt and hatred in his piercing stare. His nostrils flared as he watched me, and his scarred top lip curled as if in disgust.

He rolled his neck, a gesture that looked impossible under the tightness of the metal collar and with the thickness of his muscles. Then he closed in, his heavily built chest pushing against the bars. As his skin connected with the metal, I could see the electrical current hit his scarred tattooed skin, volts of electricity shooting through his bones. But this man didn’t even flinch. His arm holding the electric rod didn’t even move. His eyes not once flickered away from mine.

If I had felt fear before, it was nothing to the pure terror I felt under this man’s hateful, penetrating stare. This man felt no pain. This man who clearly wanted to hurt me.

As my desperate situation began to hit home, he raised his chin and coldly ordered, “Strip.”

My face blanched. I didn’t move, paralyzed by fright. But he shook his head and snarled, “Strip!” He paused and leaned his head forward to hiss menacingly, “Suka.”

Bitch. He’d called me a bitch in Russian.

He pressed something on the top of the black metal rod that caused sparks to hiss from the tip. Forced into action, my trembling hands lifted to my coat. It took longer than I meant to push my heavy coat from my body. My arms were numb with cold and distress.

All the time the scarred man watched me, the terrifying buzzing from the rod mere inches away. Tears built in my eyes as my fingers next fumbled with the buttons on my blouse. The minutes that I undressed felt like hours, my clothes dropping to the floor. The slap of the harsh cold air almost brought me to my knees. But I willed myself to be strong. My tears didn’t escape even though they built like a wave. I would not fall to the floor in fear, even though my legs warred with my quest to remain standing tall.

As my pants fell to the floor, my underwear the only remaining garments, I pictured Zaal and Anri in my mind. I pictured Zaal’s suffering for years under the torture of Jakhua. And I pictured Zaal in the photograph, smiling and in love.

Zaal had survived.

I was Kostava. I had the strong soul of our family line.

I could survive this, too.

Inhaling deep, I gritted my teeth at the humiliation of being naked in front of a man. I had never been with a man. I had never been naked and exposed, and now this man was forcing me to bare all to him.

My hands shook profusely as I fought to free the clasp of my bra. I winced as the lace bra fell free, cold air biting at the flesh of my breasts.

I fought back the need to cover myself; instead I forced my hands to lower to my panties. I pushed them down my ice-burned red legs. When I was free of my clothes, I straightened, keeping my eyes downcast.

“Push them out of the cage,” the man said, withdrawing the rod from before my chest. Bending down, I gathered my clothes and pushed them out of the cage as ordered. Backing away, I took my place again in the center of the cage.

I waited.

And I waited.

It felt like at least an hour passed as I stood in the middle of the cage, my captor standing before me, glaring. The whole time glaring. I did not need to look up to see this.

Suddenly, when I feared I would fall to the floor through exhaustion and cold, my captor turned and walked away down the narrow hallway, leaving me alone.

I remained standing for a long time afterward in case this was some test I was meant to pass. But when my knees finally buckled I had no choice but to lie on the floor.

The black tiles were so cold beneath my skin that I felt like I was lying upon a block of ice. But I stayed strong. I didn’t let the fear take control. I didn’t let my despair make me cry. And even when the temperature in the room abruptly switched from Arctic cold to tropical heat, I didn’t scream out in pain. My too-cold muscles throbbed and my skin felt like it was being sliced apart with razors. I closed my eyes and breathed through my nose.

And I pictured Zaal. I memorized his face, because as I lay on this floor, now too hot, sweating on account of the burning air, I became sure we would never be reunited after all.

5

194

I woke, slumped in the corner of a small room. I blinked and blinked as I drank in the dark space. There was nothing in here but a screen on a desk and the picana resting against it.

My eyes narrowed as I stared at the picana; then I glanced at the screen. Distant images began playing like a reel in my head as I stared at the dark-haired female, lying unconscious in the center of the cage. I struggled to know who she was. I struggled to remember how we got here.

The serum had taken hold and brought severe memory loss. Mistress must have loaded my collar with double-dose serum pellets—she did that from time to time when the hit was of great importance. The serum didn’t work on me like they thought it did under the usual dose. I was meant to be completely under Mistress’s control, all day, every day—but I wasn’t. Instead, with this bastard collar, with this double dose the guard had put in, I had blacked out when it injected me. I didn’t even know how long I’d been out.

My lip curled. Truth was, Mistress didn’t need to drug me at all. They had all the control they needed. I would do anything they said to keep 152 alive.

Anything. Pain and killing meant nothing to me. I’d done it for so long, the screams of my victims had faded to vapor in my head. The men who had died under my hands were nothing to me but one step closer to 152’s freedom.

I squeezed my eyes shut and, as though watching from a distance, I recalled everything I’d done under the drug’s influence. I saw myself carrying a dark-haired female in the cage to this chamber. I’d turned the temperature of the room to a freezing degree. I’d made her strip. I saw myself hitting the bars of the cage, the electrical currents arcing to shock her flesh. And I saw myself returning to this room and turning the heat up to the highest point. Yet the female seemed untouched by the sudden change in temperature.