Fuck that.
Corrado rolled over to his knees despite the way his entire body protested at the action. There was pain, and then there was agony. Some people liked to use those words interchangeably like they were the same things.
Here, he learned they were not.
He wished he felt simple pain, now.
Only pain.
Instead, he felt agony—straight, pure agony everywhere. And not just from the beatings ... not just from the way his body felt broken, and ready to be done with this. No, because inside his mind, and in his heart, it was as though he were being torn in two.
The part that wanted to stop.
The part that needed to continue.
They would not break him.
He would not beg.
But fuck ... were they going to kill him trying?
He didn’t know.
“God, stay down,” he heard somewhere behind him.
Corrado couldn’t.
That wasn’t how he was made.
They could take the rest of it from him—a lot of it, they already had. Should they want his dignity so he wouldn’t understand what shame felt like? Fine, take it. If they needed his body to learn to enjoy pain and discomfort so it could never be used against him? Great, they had that now. Did they need to take his emotions and twist them like his dark thoughts, lost to blackened walls and the water that rushed into his lungs every time they put him in the tank? Okay, he no longer cared.
But not his pride.
That was his.
• • •
There were times when the darkness of the rooms seemed like an old friend to Corrado. He found comfort in the rooms when he was totally alone—when the time bled together because he no longer knew what day it was.
Ha.
That was funny.
He had no clue how long he’d been doing this.
Days?
Weeks?
Months?
It could be any or all of those things, he understood. There was no real thing for him to use to mark the time in these rooms. Not when the people came just enough to give him food, as little as that was, or to beat the hell out of him again.
Never mind when they switched rooms.
Hood over his head.
Rough hands.
Harsh orders in his ears.
Still, he found comfort in the silence and the darkness. Oh, it played tricks on him, sure. The darkness chased away his ability to sleep, making him wired and staring into black space until he was sure he fell asleep just like that.
Sitting there.
With his eyes open.
Some people couldn’t take darkness.
Corrado found he liked it.
He’d started measuring his breaths to combat the pain he constantly battled, but even that wasn’t helping now. Nothing helped.
A buzz speared through the silence of the room, but unlike before when Corrado was new to these rooms, he no longer froze in fear and panic at the sound. That buzzer meant one of three things, and none of them made him afraid anymore.
One, a room switch.
Two, a beating.
Three, food and water.
There was no fourth option, and he had become so used to it being either a room switch or a beating far more often than food that he no longer gave a damn. He wasn’t going to start in fear every time they came into the room for him—maybe they wanted that, or perhaps they liked it too much.
Whatever it was, he wouldn’t be doing it.
The door opening was the only bit of light he got to see now. Just a slate of bright yellow color that seemed so blinding when the door moved that he had to look away from it so that his eyes didn’t sting. Although, the one thing that never changed regardless if they were bringing him food or there to deliver a beating was the fact that the whole team entered the room.
All five of them.
Or was it six?
Corrado wasn’t sure.
It didn’t matter.
All of them contributed to his training. In one way or another.
Except this time, only one person was haloed by the light of the door. His shadow stretched along the cement floor with the stream of color, dragging through wet spots and cracks only to stop right before Corrado’s feet.
A part of him just knew who it was. Maybe by the body shape, or the shaggy hair that the figure pushed back with one hand.
“Les,” he mumbled.
It was easier than saying Alessio’s full name.
His mouth hurt.
It all fucking hurt.
Alessio crossed the floor with quick steps, and never once did the door close behind him. Something else that was entirely unusual. When the team stepped into the rooms, the door always closed behind them. Like they were worried he might try to bolt, and they decided to take the option away altogether.
Not this time.
Corrado blinked as Alessio kneeled down beside him, and set a couple of items to the floor. He tried to take in his features, but he was pretty sure one of his eyes were swollen shut, and he couldn’t see all that well in the darkness anyway. Not with that added bit of light shadowing Alessio’s face as he put together something he’d set on the floor.
“You called me Les this time.”
Corrado chuckled, but that hurt, too. “Don’t get used to it, okay?”
“Mmm, here,” Alessio said quietly, “drink.”
Corrado didn’t even bother to ask what it was that the man offered him—but it was cool, had a fruity flavor, if not a bit chalky, too. Still, he drank it down, eventually taking the bottle directly from Alessio to hold it up himself with shaking hands that clenched too tightly around the plastic, so much so that he spilled a bit.
Alessio didn’t seem to mind.
“It has vitamins, and ... other things,” Alessio explained, even though Corrado hadn’t asked. “It’ll help; you’ve been down here too long, and you need something.”
“How long?”
“A month.”
That long?
Corrado tried to settle that, but he couldn’t. Not that it mattered, as his mind wasn’t working that well, anyway. Even there, it seemed like all he could think about was darkness and silence. Was that a part of the plan, too?
“Chris?”
Alessio, seemingly understanding his question even though he hadn’t given much detail, said, “He started phase two last week.”
But he was out of the rooms.
Out of the tank.
Corrado could breathe easier for that.
He hadn’t startled when the door was open, or when he realized it was Alessio that came into the room, but he did jump a bit when something warm pressed against the side of his face in the darkness. Alessio’s hand, he quickly knew. His palm curved against Corrado’s jaw, and then his thumb drifted over the swell of his bottom lip.
Gentle.
Slow.
Kind.
All things he was not given in these rooms.
“You have to give them what they want,” Alessio murmured, “do you hear me?”
“They want too much.”
“You have to.”
He didn’t reply because he didn’t feel like repeating himself.
Alessio’s sigh echoed beside him, his thumb sweeping Corrado’s mouth again. “Stubborn. That’s what you are. It’s a process, Corrado, you have to trust it.”
“I gave them everything.”
All that he could give, anyway.
“The rest, I’m keeping,” he mumbled.
Silently, Alessio leaned in, and pressed his forehead to the side of Corrado’s cheek. He didn’t linger there for very long. Just quick enough for Corrado to feel his warmth, and know his presence was real. This hadn’t been something that the darkness did to his mind—it wasn’t another trick.