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Gaz’s entire world was pain. He’d been tied up, and blindfolded, and hit; he’d been gagged and waterboarded; he’d been made to watch as a knife pierced the skin of his arm, his leg, his side, flaying away the skin and—well, it was better not to think of it. He’d been put through agony, over and over again, and his captors had demanded to know where safehouses were, where weapons were kept, what future plans of warfare were, who the Ghost was. Gaz didn’t know where he was, and he wasn’t totally sure who had him, but that was okay. It was okay. He knew one truth to be certain: The 141 was coming for him. They were coming, and they would get him, and until then, he would not answer a single question.
He was currently blindfolded—well, that was a kind word for the duct tape pressed over his eyes, wrapped around his head, and he knew it would take hair and eyebrows and lashes with it when it was taken off. He sat in a chair, bound with handcuffs and duct tape. The captors brought the chair, a little foldable thing, metal and rusted, when his sessions started. They unfolded it, slammed it down, and forced him down into it, holding him at gunpoint before starting with the binds. Sometimes, when they put him in the chair, he was left there for hours. Sometimes it was for days. Sometimes they didn’t ask any questions, only hurt him, and then laughed at the noises that he made. Sometimes they didn’t touch him, just left him, too tense to dream of resting, wound so tight that he thought he’d break.
Today, they had tied him down without ceremony, no one speaking. They’d duct taped his eyes, but not gagged him. He listened intently for the movement of people around him—a rustle on the left, from the man with the salt-and-pepper beard that had never been trimmed as he shifted from one leg to the other. The bang of pipes in the distance, either pushing water that was too hot or too cold through the walls, expanding or contracting violently and loudly. And this: the sound of something on wheels, being pushed in front of him before it stopped.
Gaz let his head loll forward, resting his chin on his chest. He was exhausted. There was no rest in this place, no peace. Everything hurt. His shoulders ached where they were pulled too tight; his wrists were raw from how frequently he’d jerked them against cuffs in the past days (weeks? Months? How long had he been here?).
He heard Captain John Price’s voice, and the world stopped.
“Sergeant Kyle Garrick.” Something wasn’t quite right about it. It was modulated, toneless, lacking any and all inflection that Price’s voice would normally have had. Price would never have called him his legal name, not in the field like this. The world wheeled beneath Gaz. He felt unmoored. There was clicking, like typing, and then Price’s voice said, all flat, “Tell me where the 141 safehouse in Las Almas is.”
A computer. It has to be a computer. It was a wicked trick, one that lit a deep anger in him, something that he thought had been drowned out around the third waterboarding session. “Fuck you,” he spat, and his voice was ragged and foreign sounding, scratchy from all of the screaming and cursing he’d done, all the water that he was lacking after only getting the bare minimum rations. The fire in him grew, spreading through his chest, down his arms, his legs, and he thrashed in his seat, wanting to get at them, to kill them, to kill all of them. “Fuck you! I hope you burn. I hope you choke on the smoke when they come for you. They will tear this facility down, and they will kill every last one of you, and I will laugh as they do it. Fuck you!” He’d been expecting the strike to the face, and even the one to the gut, but when the searing pain, suspiciously similar to fire, started in his elbow, he couldn’t hide his pain anymore. He screamed his agony, and his hatred, and jerked in his binds. He heard the computer sound, Price’s voice asking him another question. The pain began to dull, and all he could do was scream.
It was only the beginning.
---
It took the 141 nine days to find Gaz.
It was too long by far. By the time that they got to the facility, a little compound deep in the mountains of a neutral European nation, the team was a pack of feral wolves ready for the hunt, with only Price to hold them at bay.
He cut them loose.
They tore through the facility like a wildfire, each blazing their own path of destruction. The team’s presence had been unexpected, and by the time that the captors had even thought to rally an opposing force, the building had been cleared.
Price found Gaz. He was tied to a chair, head flopped to the side. He was blindfolded, but had no shirt, no shoes, only a tattered pair of camos—probably the same that he’d been taken in. He was covered in burns, bruises, cuts, He was bleeding. He looked like all of Price’s worst nightmares come to life; a kid, just a kid, put through the worst sort of hell, without Price there to help. Nine days. He’s been doing this for nine days. He didn’t let himself think, What if he’s not breathing?
Price swore and approached him. “Gaz.” He didn’t respond. Price grabbed his chin, the only part that seemed like it might not be injured, and said, “Garrick!”
Gaz jerked away, hissing, teeth snapping at Price’s hand with intent. Price’s fingers were only saved by quick reflexes. “Fuck you!” Gaz snarled, blinded by the duct tape. “Fuck you, get off of me—”
“Garrick, what the hell’s wrong with you?” Price half expected for his voice to calm Gaz, to be a familiar anchor point, but instead, he snarled and jerked at his chains, trying to get away. His shouting grew louder, his chest heaving with it. “I’ll kill you! Don’t fucking touch me!”
“Gaz!” This was Soap, now standing at Price’s elbow. “Gaz, man, it’s okay. It’s us, brother, it’s us.”
At Soap’s voice, Gaz’s screaming quieted to ragged pants. He turned his face and spat more red than Price was comfortable with, and said, “Get this shit off my face, man.”
Price grabbed the duct tape with gentle hands, peeling it from Gaz’s face. The skin beneath was not comforting—black and blue and green like the rest of his body, one eye swollen shut from one or more brutal hits. His other eye was bright, angry and afraid. Price hissed through his teeth in sympathy before moving on to the duct tape on his arms, then the cuffs at his wrists and feet. There wasn’t a part of his body that was not sporting injury; even so, when Price was finished, he straightened and said, “You broken?”
Gaz didn’t answer, and he didn’t look at Price or at Soap. He pushed himself up from the chair before swaying slightly, bracing against the chair. Both Soap and Price moved forward to catch him. He only flinched a little. It took a second for him to find his words. His voice made a tickle creep from between Price’s shoulder blades to the base of his skull. It was ragged and raw, speaking to days of screaming and pain. “Let’s go.”
---
Gaz had been home for four days before Price was allowed to visit him in the hospital. There were protocols (fuck the protocols, he thought, but no one agreed), debriefings (bugger the debriefs, he insisted, though it fell on silent ears), and the matter of treating injuries (I can be there for that, he protested, to an audience of eye rolls). There were things that had to be done, and he was not required for any of them. So, Price waited.
When he was finally allowed to see Gaz, Price brought a bag of greasy fast food and an iced coffee, the sort that was made of mostly sugar. He didn’t understand why Gaz liked the things, but the kid did, and God knew he’d need the comfort. Price bullied his way into the infirmary—he was not supposed to bring food, but he’d been told no too many times this week, so he ignored the nurse. He finally found himself in Gaz’s room where he found the man sitting up and reading, or at least looking at, a book.
“Hey, kid,” he said. It didn’t escape him how Gaz flinched. “Brought you some food.” He set it down on the table beside Gaz, found a plastic chair, and settled himself down in it. “The others miss you. They’ll be checkin’ in with you soon, I’m sure.”
Gaz nodded. He made no effort to eat. Price saw that his bad eye was starting to open—the swelling was receding, the bruise turning a little bit more gray-green than black-purple. Gaz’s gaze was fixed on the wall across from him, his shoulders tight.
Price kept his voice low and gentle. “Kyle. What’d they do to you, kid?”
“They had a computer.” When Gaz spoke, his voice was careful, detached, like he was keeping all of the emotions out of it. It was terrible—Gaz, who was made of passion, who had joined up because of how strongly he felt things, was trying to tamp those feelings down right now. Price did not let himself think, What if they took something vital from my boy?
“They used it to ask questions. It faked voices,” Gaz continued. “Don’t know how. Some sort of program. They must have mined audio.”
Price put the pieces together: The computer faked voices, and Gaz flinched every time that Price spoke, and Gaz wouldn’t look him in the eye. His heart stopped. “Gaz…” This hurt. He had never said it, but he thought of Gaz as a son. He would do anything for this boy, anything to make him happy, to keep him safe. To think that his own voice was causing distress was almost more than he could bear. “Do you need me to go?”
“No!” For the first time since he’d come into the room, Gaz looked at him, and Price saw his eyes were getting bright with tears. “No. Don’t.”
“Okay.” Price settled back into the chair, pulling his ankle up to rest on his opposite knee. He folded his hands over his stomach. “Okay. I’m not going.”
Gaz took a deep breath before he spoke again. Now, his voice trembled, just a little. The waver in his voice made Price’s chest squeeze, but he ignored it—this was about Kyle.
“At first, I could tell that it was a computer. There would be typing, first, because they had to put in the question. And the computer didn’t have a tone. It was flat.” Under Price’s gaze, Kyle started to shiver, an uncontrollable shake that he didn’t seem to notice. “But they kept me awake, and they kept hitting me, and asking questions, and I… I guess I lost my mind, man. I started thinking it was you. I couldn’t figure out why you were hitting me, and I had to keep trying to remember where I was, but it was getting harder, and harder, and—” He swallowed his words and turned his face away. Price watched his throat work as he swallowed and tried to figure out what he needed.
A moment passed. Price stood, leaned over, and hugged Gaz.
Gaz immediately began to cry. It was quiet at first, almost inaudible save for his little hiccupping inhales. Then, he leaned into Price and let himself sob.
Price kept an arm around his shoulders, the other resting at the base of his skull. He started talking over Gaz’s sobs, voice gruff with emotion despite his best efforts. “I am proud of you. You survived hell for nine days and didn’t tell the fuckers a thing. You did me proud, son. It’s okay, now. I’ve got you. It’s okay.”
He wasn’t sure how long they sat there, him holding Gaz and Gaz sobbing like a child. At some point, Gaz’s crying slowed and he sat back. His good eye was puffy, now, from tears, and his face was a little messy. He muttered a thanks when Price handed over a tissue before settling back onto his shitty plastic chair with a groan. They sat in silence for a while.
Price kicked Gaz’s bed, rattling it. Gaz looked at him sharply. “What?”
“I brought you food, you ingrate.” He pointed to the fast food bag, now thoroughly soaked in grease where the burger had pressed against it too long. “Eat it. I know you’re getting green smoothies and shit here.”
Gaz laughed and reached for the bag. “Yeah, so you give me well salted cardboard.” He pulled out the side of fries that came with the meal.
“And your sugar water. Don’t forget that,” Price said.
Gaz rolled his eyes. “How could I forget?” He reached for his coffee, smiled, and looked almost normal.
It was not going to be fixed today, and Price knew that. The damage that had occurred might take years to fix. But as Price watched Gaz eat, as they started to laugh and joke with each other, as Gaz began to relax and the smiles reached his eyes, Price let himself think, It will be okay.