The Identity Mine

III

Fear.

Kiera Lomas sucked in a mouthful of dusty air and coughed, her head bowed down so tight that her chin jabbed her chest as she choked. Her wrists were bound with coarse hemp rope that sheared the skin from her wrists, her hair hanging in limp fronds and her ankles shackled to a chain in the concrete floor of the cell.

She had been taken four days before, or that was as close as she could guess her abduction had taken place. The market district, strolling among the stalls, the smell of fresh goods on the air, warm sunlight, smiles of greeting, a rare break from the monotony of the next breaking report from the remains of a country that the rest of the world was trying to forget.

Then the looks of concern on the market traders’ faces, the sudden scurrying away of other shoppers, shouts of alarm, and then they were upon her. A dusty looking truck or 4x4, she couldn’t really be certain, had careered into the market and smashed its way past several stalls, braking to a halt within ten yards of where she stood. She had known then of course that she should run immediately, but her legs had betrayed her and the doors of the vehicle had burst open to reveal masked men armed with Kalashnikovs who swarmed upon her like demons upon a fallen angel, dragging her into the labyrinths of Hell.

Keira knew that she was underground, concealed in a pit beneath the floorboards of some old building likely bombed — out years before by her own countrymen. Basra had been the site of some of the war’s most vicious battles between the forces of Al — Qaeda and both American and British infantry, alongside their fledgling Iraqi comrades. The masked abductors had bundled her into the vehicle despite her protestations that she was a reporter and not a spy or soldier, and within half an hour they had shoved her into a building that she presumed acted as some kind of safe house.

She had not immediately been placed into her underground prison, although now she wished that she had been. Instead, she had been dragged into a small room wherein a thin, stained mattress adorned an iron — framed bed. There, she had been bound to the headboard and her clothes sliced from her body using long — bladed knives that were frequently waved in front of her face to dissuade her from any opposition. Lying naked before the masked men, she had been forced to watch as they bartered cigarettes for the rights to her body, sniggering and jostling and arguing until a hierarchy had been accepted. One of her captors had placed a blindfold over her eyes before the men removed their masks.

She did not care to recall what had happened next, the memory buried somewhere deep inside a neural tract that she hoped she would never, ever revisit. Cut free from her bonds afterward, she was hastily dressed in a burka and then dragged into incarceration in the pit in which she now huddled in her own filth, her mouth dry from dehydration and her mind filled with terrifying hallucinations of what terrible fate awaited her at the hands of the captors whose identity she now knew.

Islamic State. They had been known to burn people alive at the stake, a fate so unbelievably barbaric it had not been witnessed since it had been routinely practiced by Christians in medieval Europe hundreds of years before. Islamic State, along with the Taliban and Al — Qaeda had beheaded Western journalists live in front of television cameras and broadcast the grisly videos to the world, shot schoolgirls, seemingly competing with each other in order to increase the barbarism they enjoyed inflicting on the innocent around them.

And now Kiera was in their hands.

A noise from somewhere outside sent shockwaves of fear pulsing like writhing snakes through her shivering body and she tried to stifle her sobs as she heard heavy footsteps stomping toward her amid angry bursts of Arabic and Urdu. A heavy latch was slid through its mounts and the trapdoor above her hauled open.

Rough, dirty hands hauled her up and out of the pit, the pitiful shawl around her falling away to reveal her nakedness once more, smeared now with bodily fluids. Gasps of disgust were followed with more angry shouts as Kiera felt something draped across her shoulders, felt a more gentle touch guide her away from her captors through the building.

Crippled by fear, Kiera allowed herself to be led, her bare feet slapping on cool stone. She could feel the man alongside her, could smell the scent of tobacco on his breath, could hear the sound of his breathing as he led her into another room and closed the door behind them.

‘This way.’

She startled, the voice almost American, Middle East accented but recognizably touched with a New York twang. For a moment she wondered whether she was about to be rescued, but she quickly realized that such good fortune was not possible. This man was as much an abductor as the men who had raped her, was her enemy as they were.

Her thighs bumped against the edge of a bed and the man’s hands guided her to sit down. Keira perched on the edge of the bed and suddenly she felt her ankles swung up onto the mattress and a strap pulled tightly over her legs to secure them in place. Her heart sank as she realized that she was once again to be raped and she was unable to stifle a sob.

‘Quiet now,’ the man said. ‘You will not be harmed.’

She felt his hands unwrap the blindfold and suddenly light filled her vision. She squinted, trying to focus on the room around her. Slowly she noticed a series of lights set into the ceiling, the walls around her painted a clinically bright white that reflected the glare. She turned her head and saw that a man was standing over her. Dark skin, dark eyes, heavy beard, a white lab coat that contrasted with his tanned skin and the cruel gleam in his eyes.

Keira glanced to one side and a wretched fear twisted her guts as she saw a trolley bearing medical equipment; scalpels, needles and tweezers all gleaming in the light.

‘Do not fear them,’ the man said. ‘Soon, you will fear nothing.’

Keira’s limbs began to twitch erratically and her breath came in short, sharp gasps as she replied.

‘Who are you? What are you doing?’

The man smiled without warmth or compassion as he turned away from Kiera and walked across to the trolley. He picked up a hypodermic needle that was filled with a clear fluid and flicked the needle to ensure no air was trapped before he moved beyond a muslin veil that shielded her view from the rest of the room.

She could hear movement outside the veil and she fell silent and still. Another noise, like two pieces of metal being tapped together, then that voice whispering in the darkness.

‘Has he survived?’

Her breathing rasped and she could feel her heart trying to thump its way out of her chest.

‘We have signals verified from the pre — frontal cortex.’

A figure moved past nearby and the muslin sheet rippled and parted enough for her to see into the room beyond. Some ten feet away was a metal gurney upon which lay the naked form of a man. Tubes protruded from his body and she could see his chest rising and falling. An intravenous line rose up to a saline bag suspended above his head and she could see that his nose was swathed in blood — stained bandages.

Kiera started to twist her hands back and forth, seeking a weakness in her bonds. Her wrists were narrow and her hands small, perhaps small enough to squeeze free. She forced the thumb of her left hand inward and then pulled against the strap. The strap scraped against her skin but she felt the edge move. She pulled harder and the strap slipped further over her hand. She gritted her teeth against the pain and pulled hard.

The strap slipped across her hand and then it jerked free. She clenched her hand a few times before reaching across and loosening the strap on her right wrist.

‘He’s coming round.’

She sat up in the bed as she heard a faint whimper from across the room as though someone were crying out for help. She turned and saw the naked man’s body quiver.

‘He’s almost awake,’ the voice said again.

The body shuddered again as though live current were zipping through dormant muscles. Another murmur came from deep within the man that rose suddenly to an ear piercing scream of anguish that soared through the building. The body flailed, the naked man sobbing and screaming as he thrashed about on the table as the doctors sought to restrain him.

The man began frothing at the mouth, choking on his own saliva and his head began crashing violently against the gurney. Kiera’s guts convulsed as she saw him suddenly snap his mouth open and shut with sharp cracks and a thick torrent of blood spill down his chin as he crunched through his own tongue.

The man’s body convulsed violently once again and then suddenly it stiffened and then sagged, the limbs falling to its sides as the sound of a fixed — tone pulse monitor droned in the sudden silence. Kiera stared in horror at the corpse, its ruined tongue dangling by threads from his mouth and strings of blood drooling away toward the floor.

She heard a sigh, and then another voice.

‘At least we still have the woman.’

Kiera yanked the restraints free and leaned forward in a desperate attempt to free her legs as a whimper of terror blurted from between her lips. The muslin sheet was whipped aside before she could free herself, and she cried out as two men wrestled her back down onto the bed and fastened her wrists back into place.

‘Let me go!’ she screamed. ‘What are you doing?!’

The doctor smiled down at her without compassion.

‘It would not matter if I told you who I was, why you were here or even what is going to happen to you, for you would not recall it anyway.’

Kiera whimpered as the syringe in the doctor’s hand drew closer to her. ‘Please, let me go.’

Again that cruel smile, fixed it seemed upon his face as he leaned in.

‘That, my dear, is precisely what I intend to do.’

Kiera squeezed her eyes shut as she felt the needle slip with a sharp pain into her arm, and then a cold sensation flowed through her veins that chilled her to her core. Slowly, her rapidly beating heart and labored breathing faded away into blackness, and her last thought was her horror at feeling the man gently caressing her brow with one hand as she passed out.