Stripped Down,Broken and Remade.

The weight of her words settled over him, a final, crushing verdict. There was no escape. No rescue. No end in sight. This was not an interrogation. It was not a punishment. It was his existence. The women moved around him, their voices back to that casual, foreign chatter. They unstrapped him from the bench, and his limp body slid to the floor. He didn't fight them. He didn't have the strength or the will. He was a rag doll, a broken thing to be moved and positioned. They dragged him across the room, his legs leaving a smear of blood and other fluids on the concrete. They didn't put him back in the metal cage. Instead, they forced him into a small, stone alcove in the corner of the room. It was barely large enough for him to curl up in. They chained his collar to a ring set in the wall, leaving just enough slack for him to sit or lie down. His hands were left free, but there was nothing he could do with them. His wrists were raw and swollen from the cuffs, and his arms trembled with a weakness that felt permanent.

The footsteps retreated. The heavy door scraped open, then slammed shut. The bolt slid home with a deafening clang that echoed the finality of Karen's words. He was alone in the darkness, the only light a thin sliver seeping under the door. The pain was a universe he inhabited, every nerve ending screaming. But beneath the layers of physical agony, a new, colder terror was taking hold. The memories were becoming clearer, more insistent. He saw himself in that Cambridge pub, the serious-faced woman across from him, her warning echoing in Karen's words.

"They're dangerous people."

He saw the dark alley, the piece of paper in his hand. The address. He was an investigator. An operative. And he had been investigating them. Karen. The agency. This whole shadowy organization. He had found something. Something important enough for them to not just kill him, but to take him, to break him, to own him.

He shifted in the alcove, the movement sending a fresh wave of pain from his violated arse. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force the memories back, but they were all he had. He saw the file on Karen's desk, the one he'd signed without reading. What had he agreed to? What had he signed away? His life? His soul? He remembered the black-haired woman, the one with the expensive perfume and the predatory eyes. The one who had injected him. She was here. She was one of his torturers. The scent of her perfume, the creak of her leather clothes, it all clicked into place. He had been so close. He had been right on their trail, and they had been waiting for him. The whole thing, from the moment he'd made contact with his informant, had been a trap. And he had walked right into it.

Time lost all meaning. He drifted in and out of a restless, pain-filled sleep. Sometimes, he would be jolted awake by the phantom sensation of the cane on his feet or the suffocating pressure of the hood. He would lie there, his heart hammering against his ribs, his breath coming in ragged gasps, until the exhaustion claimed him again. He was dehydrated, his throat a parched, swollen tube. He was starving, but the thought of the kibble in the kennel made him want to retch. He was a creature of pure sensation: pain, thirst, hunger, fear. There was nothing else.

He didn't know how many days had passed. It could have been one, or it could have been a week. The only marker of time was the return of his captors. They came twice. The first time, they didn't speak. They just unchained him, dragged him to a drain in the center of the floor, and hosed him down with freezing cold water. They threw a small, hard piece of bread onto the floor near his alcove and left. He crawled to it, his body screaming in protest, and devoured it like a starving animal. The second time, they were more talkative. He heard Karen's voice and the black-haired woman's. They were discussing him, their words a mix of English and their foreign tongue. He heard Karen say,

"His resilience is... impressive. But it won't last."

The other woman laughed, a low, cruel sound.

"Resilience can be trained out of him. We have time."

They didn't touch him that time. They just watched him for a while, their presence a suffocating weight, before they left again.

He was beginning to understand. This was the process. The breaking. They would alternately torture him and ignore him, feed him just enough to keep him alive, and wear down his spirit until there was nothing left. Until the man he had been—the investigator, the operative—was gone, and only the broken, obedient pet remained. He curled into a tight ball in his stone alcove, his arms wrapped around his head. He was fighting, but he didn't know what he was fighting for. He was holding onto the memories, to the man he had been, but they were starting to feel like stories about someone else. The pain was constant, the fear was his only reality, and Karen's voice was a constant echo in his mind.

"This is your life now."

And in the crushing darkness, he was terrified that she was right.