His Unidentified & Untouchable Mate

Things I Remember (2)

Zahraa POV

I woke with a start, shifting again and leaping off the carving table.

Except I wasn’t on a carving table – I was on an exam bed in the Central Pack House’s infirmary wing. The floor was the same white tile, which almost made me vomit until I realized the walls were a pristine white, covered with certificates and diplomas.

Jacob stood up when I crashed into Regalia’s stool, knocking it over. He had a mark on his cheek where his fist had been, as though he’d been asleep in that chair for a while. “Zahraa,” he rushed to me, his hands hovering over me as if to grab me, but hesitating, knowing what would happen.

It took a moment for the blood to stop pumping and my mind to clear. I shifted, and immediately rocked on my feet, catching myself on her desk.

“Zahraa!” Jacob rushed forward, his hands on my arms. I slumped forward, realizing to my horror I had no energy to hold my own head up. “Zahraa!” he called again, but this time, his voice seemed as though he were down the corridor. My eyes were so heavy – my lids fluttered closed despite my efforts to keep them open.

“Zahraa,” this time, he was underwater. No – I was underwater, and sinking still. I could just barely make out the words, “Stay with…”

[12 Years Ago]

I scratched the collar on my neck. The skin beneath was raw and itchy, sometimes even bleeding. I hated coming here. They – and I could only call Them ‘They’ because even after a year of being with Them, I had no idea who they were, why I was here, or what they wanted from me – dragged me down here to watch and participate in interrogations.

I didn’t even know what that word meant.

I didn’t know what they wanted from the men and women that they brought to this musty basement, but I knew they were willing to remove toes, fingers, even arms and legs to get it. The first time I’d watched, I vomited. The next three times I cowered until I was called upon. Now, I watched with a glassy-eyed stare.

I’d learned it was just best to imagine myself being somewhere else. When I did, I saw beautiful mosaic tile, stucco walls with yawning lions, a patio with a large fountain, and jasmine flowers pouring out of beautifully coated terra cotta pots. A smell like cloves and jasmine fills the air, and I turn. I can’t see her face for the bright and hot sun, but I see her arms open to me, and softly, I can hear her call my name…

A strike upside my head jolted me from my thoughts, and I looked to my handler for clarification. I didn’t know her name – I wasn’t supposed to speak, so I couldn’t ask – but she had several tattoos. A teardrop on her cheekbone, a cobweb on her elbow, something that looked like X/XII and a black widow on her bicep, accompanied the biggest – an angel plummeting. The body of the angel was on her chest, the wings spanning the collarbone. A single hand reached up, as if begging someone we couldn’t see to catch him.

She snarled at me, yanking my leash. I staggered forward, then complacently walked the rest of the way to the chair in the middle of the room.

I hated to approach it.

The man sitting on it was strapped in and he looked unconscious. There is a point in their torture where the victim is so overwrought with pain that they started to fall unconscious. That’s where I came in.

Because somehow, the pain of touching me was greater than broken bones and severed limbs, and no one had passed out from it yet - there was no physical trace, either. It was all in their heads.

There was blood pooled under his feet – of course, there was a drain there somewhere, but it often clogged, and needed scrubbing. That was my job too. The victim's chin was covered in drool and spittle, and a 5 o’clock shadow. Otherwise, his appearance didn’t matter to me. I was here to hurt him, not talk to him, not recognize him.

Still, I hesitated to touch him. The pain he felt, I felt too. But that didn’t matter to my handler – she plucked me up and tossed me on his lap, grabbed my hand and pressed it to his cheek.

We screamed in unison. She held the contact for what felt like hours, though I knew it could only have been minutes. It was excruciating – a pain unlike anything I could describe. A burn that seared the flesh from the bone, then reduced the bone to nothing but slivers.

“Talk,” the man with the drawl ordered. I’d learned that, while he wasn’t the highest member, he was very important amongst Them. He ordered many of Them around, and he loved interrogations. “Or we’ll do it again.”

I used my arm to wipe some drool off my own face, and the back of my hands to catch my tears. Please, please, please, I begged in my mind. Please just tell them what they need to know.

He spat in my handler’s face. She punched him hard enough that I heard a crack, and though he moaned in pain, still, his lips were sealed.

“Again,” the accented man ordered.

My hand was pressed to his face, and I howled in the pain. Something that smelled like sweat and tasted like salt and bile was shoved in my mouth to muffle the noise. When the contact ceased, it was hard to breathe through the pain. Bile was rising in my own throat, and my only choice was to swallow it or choke.

“Damn you, Horatio, I don’t know,” the man gasped. His voice was a mere rasp after all the screaming. “You think I care where those f*****g termites spawn from? We just lay low, same as you.”

The man growled, a noise that was chilling. I’d never heard him express that much rage, but he grabbed the man by the throat and pulled him up, stretching his joints and knocking me out of his lap. “They have my daughter. I’m tired of laying low.”

He laughed in response, and took another punch – this one in the stomach. “You’re an i***t,” the man spat on Horatio’s shirt. There were equal parts blood and spittle. “Your daughter is dead, and if you follow her, you’ll be too.”

Horatio held the man’s stare for a long while, then scoffed. “Kill him.”

My handler pulled me to my feet by the leash and started dragging me out of the room. I don’t know how they killed the man, but his screams didn’t cease until we were all the way to the top floor.