Page 23 of Enemy of the State

The first thing I notice is the overturned folding table in the middle of the room, a toppled chair adjacent and Borman towering over it, his breathing heavy and his fists clenched at his sides. Jones and Davis stand across from him.

Dammit, they must’ve told him about Stuco.

“I’m going tokillher,” Borman snarls as he picks up a chair to hurl at what, I don’t know.

Stuco and Borman were tight. Probably as close as me and Jace. I’d be rioting if something happened to Jace and certainly something as violent and senseless as the way Stuco died. But he was foolish, reckless. Louhi became a caged animal the second she stepped into the infirmary. I should’ve done a better job of securing her the moment I noticed that something was off. That’s on me. His death is on my shoulders, and that’s a burden I’ll carry with me every day. I’ve already added it to the invisible pack strapped to my back, weighing me down.

I step in front of the snarling soldier, getting in his face. “Stand the fuck down, Borman.”

The vein in his neck protrudes, pulsing in time with his ire, and his chest heaves with uneven, ragged breaths as his body practically vibrates. His eyes flare with enmity, and while I fucking get it, destroying government property isn’t going to help anyone. He must come to that conclusion too, because he tosses the chair aside and marches from the room, with Jones following him. Better him than me. I’m not good with feelings.

“What the hell happened? I told you to wait for me and that I’d tell him,” I gripe at Davis.

He wears a hangdog expression, knowing he and Jones went against my order. I wait far longer than I should to receive an answer, but eventually, Davis utters, “He knew something was up when Stuco didn’t come back with us, and he asked us point blank. We couldn’t lie to him.”

“You should’ve had him come to me.” I stretch my neck from side to side, attempting to quell my ever-mounting stress, before sighing. “I’ll deal with you three later. For now, go get Peter from Block Three and take him to the playpen.”

He nods and scurries away to obey my order—this time. Peter is one of my favorite prisoners to toy with. He’s a pedophile and trafficker. I’ve already gleaned all the information I can from him, but he always screams so pleasantly, and I’m in the mood to wreak some havoc.

I didn’t kill Peter; however, I thought about it. I thought about it the entire time I was strategically breaking the various bones in his hands. I thought about it while he screamed for mercy. I thought about it when he pissed himself. In fact, I’m still thinking about it, even now, as I lie in bed. The only thing that stopped me was the knowledge that I wouldn’t be able to fuck him up again. Playtimewith Peter would be over. I’d end his suffering. I’d complete his life cycle. I’m not ready for that.

Unlike what was evidenced on Lou’s face this morning, I don’t enjoy killing anyone, only inflicting the maximum amount of pain and torture. I live for the sound of my victim’s screams, the way it fills the time and space around me. Like a vacuum, I’m sucked into their anguish. But I don’t share in their agony, nor do I feel an ounce of remorse. Yeah, I know that’s fucked up.I’mfucked up. Some might even call me a sadist, and those people would be one hundred and ten percent correct. I more than enjoy my job. I derive pleasure from knowing someone is suffering by my hand. Ilikehurting people. Their terror, unwillingness, and hurt excite me.

The second I step foot in the playpen, I shred all traces of empathy, like removing a heavy coat in a warm room. I can still empathize with others when I’m not inthatheadspace, although I typically have to work a little harder to get in touch with the morehumanside of myself. But it’s there. The dark part is always easier to tap into. It’s almost like a split personality, except that it isn’t. I’ve had that checked with a non-army therapist.

When Jace and I were still Special Forces, our unit was deployed on a mission that went south and tragically ended with three guys in boxes draped with American flags. As a result, the army ordered the rest of us to see a shrink. It was in one of those sessions that the therapist stumbled upon my darker desires—desires I’d never breathed to life before, no matter how much I wanted to—and she’s the one who threw out the “sadist” label. After that, I stopped sharing my thoughts with her and she never learned another goddamn thing about me, but the damage had been done.

I think I knew I was a sadist before she ever tossed out the term. How else do you explain that I got harder than concrete any time I’d pinch a woman’s nipple a little too hard, causing her to yelp in pain? Or the fact that nearly every fantasy I’d ever had consisted of me hurting a woman…andlikingit?

However, once that damned word was swimming in my brain, it became difficult to pretend that regular, plain sex would do it for me anymore. As the impulse to hurt the women I was fucking became all-consuming, the frequency with which I got laid slowed significantly. Now, I only have sporadic sex, and when I do, I exhaust myself trying to shut down my dark urges.

The scariest part is that it went beyond sex. I wanted to hurt people, see how far I could push them before they cried, begging me to stop.

I mentally fought that diagnosis for a long time, denying the sadist part of myself. After all, I’d never once acted on those impulses, and I was surviving just fine.Right?

I wasn’t a bad guy, and I never wanted to become someone’s worst nightmare. Shit, I was Special Forces, defending America against Her enemies.

At least that was the case until the army saw my file and sent me here. The only silver lining is that Jace got sent here, too. I suppose there was a reason Jace and I struck up an immediate friendship all those years ago, like our brains sensed that we had an undivulged darkness in common.

Jace and I realized that telling the shrink our truths and letting her inside our brains was a mistake. One that cost us both.

They began training us, and while having Jace around as the dark parts of ourselves were released from the cages of our minds made things easier, shit washard. I didn’t want to be the fucked-up guy the army was having me become. I wanted to keep the darkness at bay; I didn’t want to lean into that part of me. I tried to fight it. I didn’t want it, but once I tasted the ecstasy of torture, I knew there was no locking that beast away again.

If someone had done tests on my brain while I learned how to torture people, they would’ve seen the joy and pleasure sensors lighting up like fucking fireworks. I swear I’ve never jacked off morein my entire life than in those eight months—until Lou had the audacity to show the hell up here, anyway.

Rolling onto my side, I wrestle with my pillow to get comfortable enough to sleep, though I’m sure that it’s going to be a long night. I wish my deep appreciation for sleep was enough to lull me into unconsciousness. I’ve been sleeping less sinceshearrived, just as I’ve been fisting my cock more.

Motherfuck me, I need to pull my shit together.

Louhi

I’m being punished. It started when I jolted awake, covered in sweat, with the nightmare of regaining consciousness on that metal table. The cosmos must be out to get me, because then, Honey Eyes never appeared with my breakfast—dinner? No idea what meal I should be eating at this point. I haven’t eaten since before Doctor Doom’s exam, and I’m more than a little put out. It’s not that I’m hungry, though I am, it’s that I’m being penalized for simply trying to survive.

I don’t feel a skosh of guilt or regret about taking that guard’s life. He touched me without my permission and in a way I didn’t appreciate. Absolutelyno onegets away with that. While I’m a tolerant woman—okay, I’m not, but I like to delude myself intothinkingI am—some things just can’t be forgiven. I certainly don’t plan to let the doctor off the hook. I need to kill him for the sake of my sanity.

Now that I’ve been reacquainted with what it feels like to end a life—God, it’d been too long—I need another hit. I’m dying for another mark. I miss my life outside of these walls, where I walked with a sense of freedom, doingwhateverI pleased without consequences. I know I’d never have been caught if Mercer hadn’t asked me to be.

I’m leaning against the back wall of my cell, with my arms folded under my breasts, waiting. My gut churns with the awareness thatsomeone will come for me today. At some point, I hear the stomping of footsteps from down the hallway. Things have been relatively quiet, with only Carlos making his usual racket. I haven’t figured out which cell noisy Carlos is housed in yet, but he’s officially made my kill list too, simply by being too loud.

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