He’d pissed himself hours ago. He wasn’t even sure when—maybe after the third electric prod. Maybe after they pulled the gag out of his mouth just to force water down his throat, then held his jaw shut until he started to drown.
It didn’t matter. Everything stank. Blood. Piss. Burnt nylon and boot grease. The floor under his knees was sticky, and every time they let his head fall forward, his face met it—the reek of his own body shoved in his nose like a punishment.
His wrists were chained above him. Shoulders screaming. They didn’t care. His arms had gone numb sometime after the first beating. One of them had dislocated the joint just to hear him shout. Then put it back, slow.
He’d blacked out from the pain.
They’d waited. Then started again.
Everything blurred after the restraints went back on. It wasn’t interrogation anymore. It was something uglier.
Systematic. Personal. Deliberate.
They didn’t ask questions. Just broke pieces of him. Bit by bit.
The first one back in was the man with the cold hands and the tight black gloves. Joaquin tried not to remember his face.
He remembered the way he spoke into his ear. Not loud. Almost gentle. Measured. He told Joaquin exactly what was going to happen, what could happen, what they had permission to do, and that no one was coming.
And then he started cutting.
Not deep. Not clean. Just enough to sting. Chest. Stomach. Thigh. Knife dragging slowly, testing. Drawing lines without reason. Making Joaquin guess.
“Still want to be a hero?” he whispered. “Still think someone’s going to find you?”
Joaquin spat at him. Missed.
He paid for it.
The man laughed, and turned him onto his side. The chain yanked tight, and something in Joaquin’s shoulder tore again. Then the boots came back—stomping, deliberate, placed between his thighs and across the meat of his back.
One of them ground their heel in. Joaquin jerked. That earned him another hit to the gut. He retched but there was nothing left in him.
Then came the part he feared most.
The touches changed.
Not hard. Not violent. But slow. Measured.
One of them gripped his jaw and turned his face toward the camera mounted in the corner.
He didn’t fight. He didn’t have the strength.
“I want him humiliated,” the cold one said. “On every level. Let the American see how soft his birds are.”
Fingers slid under the waistband of his underwear. Not fast. Just enough to send fire up his spine.
Joaquin started to shake.
Not this. Please not this.
“Let’s see what the boy looks like broken.”
The lights exploded.
Bang.
Then silence. Real silence.
He barely registered it at first—he thought it was another mind trick. Another deprivation wave. But then the sharp crack of a suppressed weapon filled the air, and one of the men hit the ground hard.
The other tried to run.
Didn’t make it.
She came through the smoke like a blade unsheathed. Tall. Fluid. Black from neck to boot—every inch trained to kill. Her hair flashed red under the emergency lights, and her knife moved too fast for the human eye.
She didn’t ask names.
She didn’t hesitate.
By the time the second body dropped, she was kneeling beside him.
“Torres.”
His name. Real voice. Female. Controlled.
Not like theirs.
He twitched, trying to recoil. But his body barely moved.
“You’re safe. Don’t fight me.”
Her hands were fast but careful—unlocking the chains, supporting his weight. She didn’t flinch at the blood or the stench. She didn’t hesitate at the bruises or the state of his clothes.
He fell forward into her, trembling hard.
Her arms didn’t wrap around him.
But they held firm.
He didn’t speak. Couldn’t.
He just stared at her—her face. Sharp, flawless. Fierce. She looked like vengeance in a human body. Like mercy he didn’t deserve.
His voice broke when it came out. “They almost…”
“I know.”
She adjusted the thermal blanket she’d pulled from her pack, laid it over him like armor.
“They didn’t,” she added quietly. “And they won’t.”
He let out a noise. It wasn’t a sob. Not quite. Just a gasp full of too much fear and too much shame.