Chapter 1 #2
They take me to a room at the end of the corridor. Small, maybe ten by ten. Concrete floor with a drain in the center. Metal chair bolted to the floor. Hooks in the ceiling. The walls are bare except for dark stains that could be rust but probably aren't.
The guards cut the flexicuffs. Blood flows back into my hands, painful and sharp. Before I can react, they slam me into the chair and secure my wrists to the armrests with fresh restraints. These are metal, built into the chair itself. My ankles get the same treatment.
Kessler enters and closes the door. The sound of it locking echoes in the small space.
"Comfortable?" he asks.
I test the restraints. No give. The chair is solid, professionally installed.
Designed for exactly this purpose. I scan the room for weaknesses, catalog details.
The drain suggests they hose down between sessions.
The door opens inward, heavy steel, likely reinforced.
No windows. One camera in the corner, red light blinking.
"You're looking for escape routes," Kessler observes. "There aren't any. This room has held men much more resourceful than you. CIA officers, special operations personnel, foreign agents. They all thought they could outlast us. They were wrong."
He walks a slow circle around me. I track him in my peripheral vision, keeping my head still. Stay neutral.
"We'll start simple," he says. "Name everyone currently operating out of Echo Ridge. Include support personnel, technical staff, anyone with knowledge of operations."
I say nothing.
"I know you're thinking about resistance timelines.
How long you can hold out before your body gives up or your mind breaks.
You're calculating when Kane might realize where you've gone, how long it would take to organize a rescue.
You're wondering if your team knows they're already being hunted.
" He stops in front of me. "Let me save you the trouble.
You'll talk. The only question is how much you'll suffer first."
Footsteps in the corridor. The door opens, and a man enters wearing surgical scrubs. He's carrying a metal case. Sets it on a table I didn't notice before, positioned just out of my line of sight. The latches click open. Glass vials clink together.
"Dr. Hayes specializes in chemical interrogation," Kessler explains.
"A combination of compounds that enhance suggestibility, lower inhibitions, and make lying physiologically difficult.
Think of it as a more refined version of sodium pentothal.
The side effects are unpleasant—nausea, vertigo, temporary memory disruption—but the results are impressive. "
Hayes prepares a syringe. I watch the liquid catch the light, amber-colored and viscous.
My heart rate kicks up despite my training.
Chemical interrogation is harder to resist than physical pain.
It bypasses conscious control, attacks the nervous system directly.
SERE training covered it, but theory and reality are different animals.
"Last chance," Kessler says. "Cooperate voluntarily, and we can skip this part."
I meet his eyes. Keep my voice level. "Go to hell."
He nods to Hayes. The doctor approaches, and the needle stings my arm. The liquid burns going in, hot and wrong. I count heartbeats. Five. Ten. Everything tilts sideways, edges blurring. My mouth goes dry. Sweat breaks out across my forehead.
"Give it a minute," Hayes says. His voice sounds distorted, underwater. "The initial wave is disorienting."
Disorienting doesn't cover it. My vision doubles, triples, then snaps back into focus so sharp it hurts. Colors are too bright. The fluorescent lights become suns, burning into my retinas. I close my eyes, but that's worse. Darkness spins, and nausea claws up my throat.
"Name your handler at Echo Ridge," Kessler's voice cuts through the chaos. Commanding. Insistent. "Who gives you orders?"
"Fuck you." The words come out slurred. My tongue feels thick, clumsy.
"Wrong answer. Let's try again. Who runs Echo Ridge? Who's in command?"
Gravity shifts. I grip the armrests, metal biting into my palms. The pain helps. Something solid to focus on. I force my breathing to slow. Four count inhale, hold, four count exhale. SERE training. Anchor yourself. Find something real.
"Your team abandoned you," Kessler says. The words worm into my skull. "They left you to die. Why protect them?"
Because they didn't. Because Kane made the tactical call, and it was the right one. Because Sarah needed medical attention, and staying would have killed us all. Because that's what good operators do—they survive to fight another day.
But the drug makes certainty slippery. Doubt creeps in, insidious.
What if Kessler's right? What if Kane saw an opportunity to cut loose the outsider?
Kane found me in the mountains, brought me in when I had nothing.
Earned my place through blood and skill, but that doesn't make you family. Just makes you useful.
"Tell me about Echo Base," Kessler says. "Location. Security protocols. Access codes."
The room tilts. Colors bleed together, sounds echo wrong.
I see Kane in the snow, weapon lowered, making the tactical call.
See Rourke's easy competence, Stryker's dark humor.
See Sarah bleeding but holding on. Khalid, young and determined.
Tommy at his screens. Willa standing her ground.
The family I found after everything else burned.
"No," I manage.
"Then we'll try something else." Kessler's voice drops. "Give me Echo Ridge, and I'll make this stop. The pain. The drugs. All of it. You stay operational. You get to walk away."
The choice crystallizes, terrible and sharp.
Trade everything for nothing. End the pain, betray the team.
The utilitarian calculus would be simple if I was the only one who mattered.
But lives aren't numbers. Echo Ridge is fighting something bigger than any individual.
The Committee, corruption, the rot at the heart of the intelligence community. If they fall, that work dies with them.
And Kane—he'd never forgive betrayal bought with my comfort. He'd see it as weakness, as proof that I couldn't make the hard call. He'd be right.
"No deal," I whisper.
Kessler's expression doesn't change. "That's unfortunate. For you."
He gestures, and Hayes administers another injection. This one hits different—slower, colder, like ice spreading through my veins. My muscles go rigid. Breathing becomes difficult, each inhale a conscious effort. The edges of my vision darken.
"Stress positions next," Kessler says conversationally. "Then sleep deprivation. We have time, Mercer. Days. Weeks if necessary. Eventually, you'll tell me everything. The only question is how intact you'll be when we're finished."
The guards unstrap me from the chair. My legs give out immediately, and they catch me under the arms. They drag me to the corner of the room, force my arms above my head, and lock the cuffs to hooks in the wall.
My shoulders scream. The position forces me onto my toes, calves burning within seconds.
"I'll check back in a few hours," Kessler says. "See how you're holding up."
The door closes. The lock engages. The lights stay on, bright and merciless.
I hang there, muscles trembling, mind still fuzzy from the drugs.
Count seconds. Minutes. The pain builds from uncomfortable to unbearable to something beyond bearable that just exists, constant and consuming.
My shoulders feel as if they are going to dislocate.
The pain is intense and I scream through clenched teeth because I can't stop it.
Time becomes meaningless. Could be one hour. Could be six. The fluorescent lights never change. No windows, no day or night. Just endless brightness and pain and the sound of my own breathing, ragged and desperate.
Somewhere in the haze, I think about escape.
About weaknesses in the facility. Guard rotations—I counted four different operators during transport.
Electronic locks, which means power supply vulnerabilities.
The camera in the corner, which means central monitoring. Someone watching, recording. Evidence.
Evidence can be useful. If I get out. When I get out.
Because I will get out. Kane is too good, too stubborn to let this stand. The team will come. Maybe not today, maybe not this week. But they'll come. I just have to survive long enough to be worth rescuing.
Faces swim through my thoughts. Unbidden, unwanted.
I never let myself think about futures that don't include blood and gunfire.
Never allowed the luxury of imagining something normal—someone waiting, something beyond the next op.
That's not for men like me. We're tools, weapons, pointed at problems until we break or the problems disappear.
But for just a second, hanging in the dark with my shoulders on fire and chemicals eating my system from the inside, I let myself imagine it. A life where Echo Ridge wins. Where the Committee falls. Where the team gets to choose something different. Where we're not hunted.
The fantasy dissolves. Stupid. Dangerous.
The door opens. Kessler returns, pristine and calm. He studies me for a moment, then nods to someone outside. A guard enters with a tablet.
"I want to show you something," Kessler says. He holds up the screen.
It's surveillance footage. The staging facility.
Multiple angles showing the firefight, the chaos, Committee operatives falling.
Then the camera tracks to the tree line—tracks me chasing Kessler into the forest. The angle shifts.
Shows the ambush. Shows me going down. Shows Kessler's team dragging my unconscious body to the extraction point.
Then other footage showing Kane arriving too late. He raises his weapon, calculating the shot then lowering the weapon. Standing there. Watching.
The footage loops. Kane watching. Over and over. The moment frozen in time.
"He could have tried," Kessler says softly.
"Could have taken the shot. Probably would have missed, probably would have hit you instead.
But he could have tried." He pauses. "He chose not to.
Made the tactical call. Cut his losses. That's what good commanders do, isn't it? Sacrifice the expendable asset."
He leaves the tablet on the table, the footage still playing on loop. Kane watching. Kane lowering his weapon. Kane turning away. The door closes again. The locks engage.
I hang there, staring at the looping footage. Something cracks inside my chest. Not breaking—not yet. But definitely starting to fracture.
This is how they win. Not through pain or drugs or exhaustion. Through showing you the moment. The choice. The calculation that made you expendable.
The lights buzz overhead. My shoulders are twin points of white-hot agony. The drugs still fog my thoughts, making everything sharp and distant at once.
I close my eyes against the screen. Count my heartbeats. Calculate how long shoulders can stay dislocated before permanent nerve damage sets in. Forty-eight hours, maybe less. After that, even if Kane finds me, I might never regain full mobility. Career over. Life over, in all the ways that matter.
The camera's red light blinks in the corner. Waiting.
Kessler thinks he's shown me proof of abandonment. What he's actually done is show me Kane making the right tactical call under impossible circumstances.