She landed hard on the floor. There were bloodstains there. A fingernail. Clearly no one believed in cleaning up after themselves. She knew she was a little hysterical, but she tried to get to her feet and face him because really, damn him. He could go to hell. She didn’t realize she was shouting it at him until he hit her again, right across the face, right where Cheng’s gun had cut her cheek open.
Zara heard her breath hiss out of her lungs. Then he hit her breast and all air was gone. The pain was excruciating. She tried not to let him see, knowing she would be giving him more ammunition, but it was impossible not to scream. Tears mingled with blood on her face. She lost count of how many times he hit her breasts, then moved lower, attacking her ribs, back up to her breasts and then her face.
There was no way to stand, but she realized they weren’t alone. Someone held her in place for Zhu. He didn’t look as if he’d even broken out in a sweat when he finally stopped. She was dragged to the wall, her hands jerked above her head so high she was on her toes, wrists bound tightly.
She heard Zhu’s voice asking questions, but she couldn’t make out the words. It wouldn’t matter anyway. She didn’t have anything to tell him. Her eyes were swelling shut in spite of the fact that her body had taken far more punishment than her face. He’d slapped her more than punched her in the face, but her body hurt so badly she didn’t think she could breathe through the pain. How did spies do this?
His voice stayed a soft, almost gentle tone. He pushed back her hair, his fingers stroking her swollen cheekbone. A bottle of water was held to her lips and she was forced to drink. It was cold and wet and tasted faintly like blood. He kept stroking back her hair, murmuring soothingly to her. Then he held the bottle to her lips again. She drank because he gave her no choice.
The questions started again. Her name. Where she was from. Her education. She wanted to scream at him. She was written up in the all the journals for her work. What was wrong with him? He already had that information. Her head wouldn’t stop its vicious pounding. The pain made her so nauseated she couldn’t keep from dry heaving. She’d already been sick all over the floor.
Zhu wiped her face gently with a wet cloth. “Pay attention, Zara,” he said. “Answer the questions.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“The truth.”
That horrible pounding in her head increased, and this time, there was that strange ripping sensation in her mind, as if Zhu was there, trying to tear the truth from her. “I’m a professor at Rutgers,” she blurted. “I don’t understand any of this. Cheng invited me to give a talk on the program my team and I developed, the VALUE system. I was doing that when the alarms went off and something happened that I still don’t really know or understand.”
He hit her. Hard—so hard everything became even more blurred. There was no place on her body that wasn’t sacred. She lost track of time. She must have lost consciousness because he threw a bucket of water over her and yanked her head back by her hair. “Stay with me, Zara, this is important.”
Once again, he held water to her lips. It hurt to drink. Her lips stung and her throat felt raw and damaged from screaming. She didn’t even know what she screamed, only that she did. He soothed and petted her. He whispered to her. He let her lean into him. Then the questions started again and that ripping sensation in her head increased. Whatever new drug Cheng developed to force truth from his victims added to the jackhammers piercing her skull. It had to be in the water he gave her. She began reciting mathematical problems in her head over and over to combat the effects of the drugs. For all she knew she recited them out loud. She was beyond caring if she did.
He viciously stripped the clothes from her body, ripping them into long rags and that made her cry harder because she knew she didn’t have any other clothes. They couldn’t send her back to her hotel naked. They were never sending her back.
He spun her around. She heard a whistle like something moving fast in the air. It hit her across the back of her thighs and pain exploded. The cane. He was caning her. She’d heard of it, of course. It was common practice on prisoners. Never in a million years had she ever considered she would have to endure it. He hit her so many times she lost count. There wasn’t a place on her back, buttocks or thighs that he spared. Sometimes he hit in the same place several times until she couldn’t even scream because the pain was so excruciating.
Then he repeated the gentle handling, pushing back the damp hair from her forehead, whispering to her, holding the water to her mouth. Again, the questions began. She was so disoriented, she couldn’t think to answer him. She just wanted to lie down and go to sleep and never wake up.
He dragged her legs back, so that her feet were propped up on something she couldn’t see, the tops of each foot resting in a notch so the soles of her feet were exposed. When the first strike hit the arch of her foot, pain exploded, so excruciating she knew she might black out. She wanted to let go and faint. Nothing could ever hurt that bad again. She was wrong. He spent a great deal of time caning her feet, arches, heels, the balls of her feet, sides, toes, finally the tops. She was sweating profusely, sobbing, her breath wheezing out of her by the time he put down the cane and offered her more water. She choked on it, tried to turn her head away, refusing to drink, but he caught her hair, tipping her head back and forcing the water down her throat.
He let go of her and she tensed, waiting, hanging by her wrists, facing the door. She couldn’t stand any weight on her feet, so she had to take her full weight on her wrists. She couldn’t see and that made him scarier than ever. It was terrifying to wait for what he would do next, and she knew it was something terrible when he spun her around to face him. He stood for a long moment, letting her see what looked like a long bullwhip. Then he swung. The lash hit her across both breasts, cutting into her soft flesh. She jerked hard against her wrists, nearly tearing her arms out of the sockets, screaming again, her voice so hoarse she didn’t recognize it. She’d thought the cane was agony, but the whip slicing into her skin, cutting her open was far worse.
She had no idea how long he kept at it. She lost consciousness twice and both times there were buckets of ice-cold water thrown over her to revive her. He started up again immediately until there wasn’t a place on her body that wasn’t bleeding, bruised, swollen or throbbing with agonizing pain. She quit screaming. She couldn’t think beyond the pain. When he stopped to ask her questions, Zara tried to answer. She pleaded with Zhu to believe her.
Then he was hitting her for the fourth session with the whip, and her mind shut down completely. She hung there limply, unresponsive, almost in a catatonic state, but she was aware of Zhu cursing as he cut her down. From a great distance in her mind, she was surprised that Zhu didn’t get one of his subordinates to take her body down and drag her to her room. Instead he let her fall into his arms. He opened the door to find Cheng pacing back and forth in the hallway.
Cheng regarded her bloody body as if she were a bag of trash Zhu was about to throw out. “Well?” he demanded.
“She doesn’t know a thing,” Zhu said. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and she wouldn’t have been able to hold out. She’s not built for pain. She isn’t stoic and she didn’t have the opportunity to destroy the computers.” He kept walking straight to Zara’s room.
Cheng swore loudly as he trailed after them down the hallway. “It had to be that intruder, the one we never found. A delayed virus of some sort introduced into the network? Or we have a traitor right here in the building, one that works for us.”
Zhu laid Zara on the bed. It hurt so bad when the sheets touched her back she wanted to roll over, but he prevented her with a hand to her stomach. Pouring water onto a cloth, he held it over her face, wiping blood and tears from her swollen cheeks and mangled lips.