Page 72 of Mission Shift

“You feel it, don’t you?” he murmured. “The helplessness. The fear. It’s a dreadful thing, being at the mercy of others.”

His fingers brushed against my cheek.

“But don’t worry,” he whispered. “By the time I’m finished, you’ll know exactly what true powerlessness feels like. An early preparation for Mr. Malinov.”

I tried to scream.

Tried to move.

Tried to do anything.

But all I could do was watch.

“Remove her clothes,” Dr. Gore ordered.

Oleg let out a low, eager chuckle, his fingers tracing over one of my bound wrists as he reached for something on the tray beside him.

I knew what was coming. Men always did this. It wasn’t the nakedness that bothered me, though they all thought it was. They thought stripping a woman down was the worst thing they could do.

It wasn’t.

What came next—that was what mattered.

I could survive anything. Broken bones. Burns. The bite of steel. The crack of whips. The slow suffocation of drowning. I had endured it all.

But if they broke my mind, I was done.

That was what terrified me.

My father had told me I’d been sold to Yakov Malinov. That meant I had to stay alive. But in what condition? Malinov wanted an obedient plaything. A concubine, not a corpse.

What if they did something worse than kill me?

A lobotomy. Electric pulses to erase memories. Mind-altering drugs that changed the brain’s chemistry.

I had seen what the Kremlin had done to others, witnessed the empty, vacant faces of those who had once been brilliant operatives, reduced to husks of who they used to be, the dull, slack-jawed smiles of those who had once held steel in their spines.

No.

I wouldn’t let them take my mind from me.

The metallic snip of scissors rang through the air.

Oleg grabbed the fabric of my prison pants at the ankle and slid one of the blades beneath it.

Slowly, he dragged the shears along my shin. Then, with deliberate menace, he traced the blade up my inner thigh.

I focused on my training.

Compartmentalize. Build walls. Shift the pain into another space.

The pants split open, the dull side of the blade gliding up my thigh, the tip stopping just at the center of my body. The steel hovered there under Oleg’s hungry gaze.

He waited—savoring the moment.

“Too bad Mr. Malinov bought you and wants you unharmed,” Oleg scoffed, his fingers grazing the inside of my thigh and then sliding up my slit. “But then again, why should he have all the fun?”

He shot a glance over at Dr. Gore, then turned his focus back to my center. He chuckled as he licked his lips. Then the steel blade moved again. With another deliberate cut, he split the fabric of the other leg and sliced up the center and through the waistband.

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