Chapter Eleven

Dumar sat on the edge of the massive bed, his hands idly disassembling and reassembling the semi-automatic pistol. He was questioning the possibility his mind had finally snapped under the constant onslaught from McCabe.

Some of the tortures and chemical dependencies he had been exposed to had been extreme to say the least and the final straw that McCabe had stooped to in order to get him to comply had brought Dumar to the realisation he would never be free of the man.

Tears welled in his eyes as he remembered the horrific state of the man who had been dumped in the middle of his living space.

For six years after Dumar and McCabe had stood in the hallway discussing his purpose and the future he should expect, the Shadow had made his life a living hell.

It had started out gently, additional training, harsher conditions, the withholding of food and internet access.

As it became clearer Dumar was opposed to McCabe's every command, however, he found himself on the receiving end of some nastier treatments.

McCabe had ordered his food to be laced with a newly developed strain of diacetylmorphine in increasing doses until he had become completely addicted to the drug, which he then denied him.

Dumar had been at a loss to what was making him feel so unwell until three days into his withdrawal, McCabe had spoken to him through a set of speakers set into the ceiling.

"The doctors here tell me it feels as if your bones are vibrating. You can't eat or drink, you've got the shits, it feels like your guts are being pulled out through your back and all you want to do is smash your head against the wall."

Dumar could hear the purr of satisfaction in the other man's voice as he detailed the exact hell Dumar was in the middle of experiencing.

"Sweaty? Anxious? I can make all this go away as soon as you start doing what I want you to do. Think about it, Dumar, you could go back to feeling like a person again. Just agree to work for us and it all goes away."

Shaking and yawning, with goose-pimples running over his back and down his legs, Dumar knew if he gave in now he would never be free to make another choice in his life, McCabe would own him.

In spite of his acute need to get some kind of relief from his current situation, there was no way he was going to give in. In his weakened condition and through gritted teeth, Dumar spat his words with as much power as he could muster.

"Go fuck yourself!"

An ominous silence followed and Dumar smiled weakly as he imagined the black-clad McCabe raging in whatever room he was in. When he did finally speak, McCabe's voice held an air of false calm.

"Smile all you want Dumar, because I can do this to you as many times as I want, with as many different drugs as I want for as long as I want," Dumar had heard a click as McCabe cut his transmission.

When it became clear Dumar had the capacity to endure the drug dependencies, McCabe had turned to good old-fashioned torture. Burning with heat and chemicals, cutting his skin, water boarding.

None of these actions had any effect on Dumar's attitude, mainly due to the properties of resilience the Company's teams had bred into him. So McCabe had played his ultimate hand.

Dumar had endured a nasty little three-hour session, chained naked to a steel table while electricity had been pulsed through his muscles. Making his own body almost tear itself to pieces had come to be one of McCabe's favourite entertainments and Dumar had overheard there was a pool taking bets on whether one of his bones would snap and if it did, whether the bone would puncture his skin.

Physically and emotionally wasted, Dumar had been unceremoniously dumped on his bed and left to recover.

It had been the smell of blood he had noticed when he woke hours later and his mind started to race with the possible source. His entire body ached from the earlier torment, pain flaring as he checked his body over, looking for any wounds.

Finding nothing bleeding, he padded into the adjoining room where the smell of blood had mingled with sweat, urine and faeces. It had only taken two seconds for him to locate the body. Or what had once been a body. He could not make out a single area untouched by violence and the sight had sickened him.

Dumar tried to block the memories out, concentrated on anything other than the awful sight of that tortured body laid out on his floor.

His cruel mind, however, had other plans and insisted in reliving the whole experience in high definition.

***

Kneeling beside the ruin Dumar had found, he assumed the man to be dead as he could not believe such horrific injuries could be survived.

As he looked the man over, he realised many of the wounds had been closed, burned shut to stop the bleeding.

Whoever this was had been beaten first, evident by the purple cast to his skin over every portion of his body and the darker patches where he had been struck.

His hands were destroyed. With every other finger savagely ripped off, the remaining ones had been snapped and jutted up away from the main hand at nasty looking angles.

There were deep cuts across his pectoral muscles and his nipples had been torn off. Puncture wounds in his stomach indicated his intestines had probably been ruptured and were bleeding infection into his body by the second.

For the first time, Dumar wished he was able to shut his emotions off so he did not have to feel the pain the sight of this gruesome find brought to him. Working his gaze lower, Dumar felt a tight sickness in his own abdomen as he noticed the man's genitals had been ripped away.

A feeble dribble of blood dripped down from the gaping, blackened hole where his manhood had been. There were holes running down from his knees to his ankles and Dumar had to wonder how long they had spent drilling them.

The ankles had been shattered, leaving his feet at unnatural angles and his toes had been ripped and broken in a similar way to his fingers.

Whoever this had once been had been subjected to having all his hair ripped out, one of his eyes punctured, his nose torn away and his lips mashed against his teeth.

The bruising and swelling combined with the lack of hair hid the identity of this man until his remaining eye flicked open. Terrified and filled with pain, the single eye rolled around madly in its socket until it lit on Dumar's face.

A flash of recognition and even hope crossed his broken features before he opened his mouth to speak. Dumar looked on in sickened horror as he saw they had even snapped off some of this man's teeth.

"Du-mar, mate?" The words slipped from his mouth in a hiss.

"Smitty?" Dumar almost screamed. "Jesus fucking Christ, Smitty, what they done to you, man?"