Page 58 of Enemy of the State

My bare feet are silent as they pad over the cool concrete, sending a shiver through me as I follow Sean down the corridor.He holds the door open for me to the familiar room, and I duck inside.

Honey Eyes is perched in a chair in the corner reading… “Bloody hell, is thatPlayboy? Could you be any more of a cliché?”

He glances up at me, smirking, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “Not all of us get action around here, you know.” He winks. “Besides, there are more than just pretty pictures; some of the articles are actually interesting.”

Rolling my eyes playfully, Sean’s warmth surrounds me from behind. I’m about to toss out a quip when Sean beats me to it.

“You sound jealous. Maybe you should see if Carlos is interested?”

“I’d rather stick my dick in a paper shredder.”

As the two men continue to bicker good-naturedly, I turn my attention to the naked man in the center of the room, hanging from chains in the ceiling. The chains wrap under both of his arms, digging into his armpits and crossing over his chest and upper back. His arms are crossed at his lower back, bound with rope, as additional twisted ropes hold his ankles together. I appreciate that Honey Eyes took things to the extreme by essentially hanging him by the armpits and stripping him of his clothes solely for the added humiliation.

Circling the man, I poke him in the back. When nothing happens, I peer around his body, asking, “Can we wake him up? He’s rather boring like this.”

Sean snorts, reaching for a black case on the floor next to Honey Eyes’s chair and holds it out for me. Inside, there’s a needle and three vials that I’d venture contain adrenaline.

“You can wake him up, but we need to get a few answers first, then he’s all yours,” Sean informs me, my lips forming a thin line as I narrow my eyes at him. I don’t relish the idea of letting these two have a go at this bloke first, but I suppose we all know that he won’t still be breathing when I’m finished with him, so how can I really argue with Sean’s order of events?

Filling the needle, I estimate the amount, since it doesn’t particularly matter, so long as I don’t accidentally kill him via a heart attack—that’d spoil the fun prematurely.

Plunging the needle into the side of his shoulder, I depress the plunger. A few beats later, he’s gasping, filling me with giddiness and zeal.

“Hello, doll,” I chime as I flash him my most reprehensible smile. Now conscious, he attempts to wriggle free, but the clanking of his chains is simply the soundtrack of his death.

Ignoring the vitriol he’s spewing like a faucet, Sean comes to stand beside me, and I nod reluctantly, backing up to stand against the wall, sulking a bit as they take their turn.

Based on my own experience in this room with them, I knew that Honey Eyes and Sean worked well together. Able to view things through a more objective lens now, their seamless partnership is nothing short of impressive. They alternate asking questions and removing fingers and toes without batting an eye. The two men seem to communicate nearly telepathically, anticipating the other’s next move.

It’s comical how quickly a guard in a government-run torture prison buckles under the torture inflicted on him.Wimp.

When Sean and Honey Eyes learn all they want, they step back, droplets of blood speckling their bodies from their masks to their sand-colored boots.

Sean nods at me, and I trod toward the shelves containing the various tools, perusing my options. When I spot a block with various knives stationed on the bottom shelf, I pluck a fillet knife fromits slip, testing the sharpness of the blade against the pad of my thumb.This will work.

The world around me—the audience, the room, the entire bloody prison—fades away as I stand before the sniveling man, his face bloody and bruised. Lifting the blade, I trail the tip over his skin much like he had done to me, only I press a little harder, a stream of blood appearing in my wake, leaving me transfixed by the way his skin parts like water for me. It’s been so long since I got my hands dirty. I fucking missed it.

Breathing deeply, I soak in his terror, committing it to memory so that I might bask in it later. I missed the feeling of exacting retribution.

I’ve mastered my craft so that I’m now able to be highly selective in the jobs I accept at this point in my career. I have more requests in my encrypted inbox than I could realistically take in this lifetime and the next. It wasn’t always that way, though; there was a time where I took every job, regardless of the risk. However, I made sure I became the best in the business, so that I could be able to choose which hits I wanted to accept and reject.

The guard I killed in the infirmary was the first target I haven’t been paid to eliminate in years. Nonetheless, he provoked me, and I wanted to remember the way bloodshed felt.

Standing before this man, I recognize a difference. This is vengeance I haven’t tasted inages. This is compensation. This is punishment. This is justice.

I drag the blade over his chest and look up into his ruddy brown eyes, parroting his words mockingly. “Are you familiar with Lingchi?”

He doesn’t answer, not that I expected him to—continuing his wails and curses—so I tell him, “You seem to be a bit rusty on your ancient torture methods, but that’s alright. I’ll fill you in.” I don’t typically talk theatrically with an overabundance of hand gestures, but I make a point of waving the knife around when I speak to this wanker.

Borman won’t shut the fuck up and listen to me, though, testing my patience. Fed up, I glance behind me to request a gag, when Honey Eyes saunters past me, shoving a dirty-looking rag into the captive’s mouth, growling, “Shut the fuck up and listen to her.”

A grateful smile sweeps across my face as Honey Eyes stalks past me, returning to his post against the wall at my back.

Resuming my one-sided conversation with the soldier, I explain, “As I was saying, death by a thousand cuts means something different within various Chinese dynasties, but they all contained theremovalof flesh, in some capacity, something you seem to either have forgotten or not have been aware of. Luckily for you, I’m somewhat of a slow-slicing expert, and I’ll try to keep this process as authentic as possible for you. I’m partial to the methods of the Qing Dynasty, so that’s what I’ll be adhering to.”

He screams into his gag, the sound pure delight to my ears, as I cut through the flesh of his left pectoral, then his right, tossing the skin and muscle tissue I removed aside, suddenly grateful for the adrenaline coursing through him. I want him alive for every painful moment of this.

I continue the cuts I made in his chest down toward his ribs, exposing the top portion of his ribs, again lobbing the flesh on the ground. I must admit, there’s something about seeing the inside of someone’s muscles that’s fascinating to me. Maybe in another life I might have been a bloody coroner.

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