and use his training. And he had to do it before they came back.
Suddenly, without warning, the lights came on, a bunch of overhead fixtures that were so bright, so blinding, that he had to shut his eyes again. His headache intensified tenfold under the terrible glare. It was so awful that he couldnât force his eyes open, not at first. In time, he squinted through half-closed eyelids and tried to see where he was. He needed to be observant. Find any weaknesses he could in them, in their organization, in their actions, in their personalities.
As soon as he managed to open his eyes all the way, however, the harsh light dimmed down to near normal brightness. Thatâs when he saw that he was inside a big white room. It was completely empty. It appeared to be roughly thirty feet by thirty. The walls had some kind of white shiny fabric over soft padding, the kind of room used in mental hospitals to house the most violent patients. There was a big drain in the middle of the white tiled floor not far in front of him. A big tan fireman-type hose was coiled up on the wall beside a spigot. A wooden bench sat on one side of it, no doubt used for waterboarding prisoners. But he had already had that done to him when he was in training. He could survive it, he knew that. It just wouldnât seem like he could.
Black shifted his head slightly. A camera was mounted directly in front of him, the kind that was affixed to the ceilings of department stores, a small round dome of black glass with a small dark eye inside, focused on him. He suspected that the video feed was transmitted to some kind of control room somewhere, one with a bank of monitors, maybe in the room next door. He had seen similar operations. Someone would be in there now, watching his every move. So he didnât move. Just sat and waited. He had to be calm. He had to use his training, no matter what they did to him.
There were no windows, no door that he could locate. Directly in front of him, the entire wall was composed of sixty-inch, flat-screen television monitors, lots of them, all abutting, probably so that the screens could project a huge wall-sized image at times and/or play different images on different screens. But now he knew exactly what he was up against. He had seen places like this before. He was in a room designed for torture. Not the kind done in dark medieval dungeons with whips and racks and burning pokers, but the other kind, the modern kind. Psychological torment. He also knew that to be the Soquet familyâs favorite pastime. And through his study of their heinous acts, he knew they had gotten it down to an art. Three phases of breaking a man, both mentally and physically. Jaxy was always in control of Phase One, Max was Phase Two, and Marcel, last but not least, and most brutal of all, ended their games. Especially when dealing with Black. Marcel hated Black so much that he might just do everything himself.
Incongruously, once that the truth and realization of what was to come hit him, he relaxed a little. Okay, he knew all about psychological torture. He knew what it entailed. He knew Marcel Soquetâs personal techniques and favorite atrocities, what theyâd do to him, how theyâd do it, and in what order theyâd do it. He had studied their dossiers for years, had seen some of their stuff demonstrated in law enforcement seminars, and knew full well how they worked. He knew all about every kind of psychological torture and how to withstand it, though he had never taken part in it himself, either as perpetrator or recipient, except in his military training scenarios.
More important, he knew the best way to react to almost anything they chose to throw at him. It was not going to be fun, or pleasant, but he was well enough equipped to handle the mental stress and agony they would inflict on him. He was trained for it, thank God. And that was Jaxyâs specialty in their evil school. She would work his mind over first,
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