The Price of Loyalty

I don't tend to do an authors' note but on this story I will. For a long time I wondered what was going through the head of Lucas North the night/day he tried to hang himself in the cells of that Russian prison.... and finally, I wrote my own interpretation. It is dark.... and although brief, it's graphic at some points. So.... here we go - inside the mind of  Lucas North - MI5 agent second, but a  fragile, tormented and confused man first and foremost.

The Price Of Loyalty

When you start your career anywhere, you don't tend to think you'll end up in a small prison cell for eight years. You don't expect to be altered completely both on your body and in your mind... and yet here I was, I wasn't the man I had been all those years ago.

For the rest of my life I would be altered – would be the man who nearly lost everything because someone made a mistake.

# # #

For eight years, I was in the prison cell because I stayed loyal to my country.

Eight years, each one marked forever on my skin so I wouldn't forget, couldn't forget what I had been through for Queen and Country, for the blind faith I had that as every day ended and I saw the sky darken, I would be returned to England and to the life I knew, to Elizabeta, to MI5, to just plain old fish and chips in greasy paper.

It never happened.

I refused even in my darkest hours of torture and torment to believe I'd been intentionally forgotten, given up as a casualty of the Cold War that hadn't really ended. Days turned into months and the blue lettering and designs created by other inmates so I 'belonged' each drop of ink that went into my skin by the sewing or whatever other hand made needle making me go faint with the pain and vomit throughout the night, appeared on my body. I belonged to their world but each design reminded me of my own. I refused above all to submit to the completion of the bars on my arms though... that would signify I was prepared to die here, I prayed nightly that I wouldn't give in to that – would not give Arkady and the others that used my fragility against me to make me believe that they cared, their human contact albeit brief and often painful making me realise I was not alone; the knowledge that I couldn't survive here.

The nights I lay there on the cold floor feeling the grit from years worth of dirt, blood and God knows what else stick to me and cried. I grew ashamed that I was crying, I had been through months of training, convinced myself and others that I could get through any situation. I thought I could. Hell, I thought I had become invincible – how very wrong I was.

To crave something that could kill you, that could make you feel such intense pain and fear... something that your body needed more than anything was becoming torture. Water.

The cold liquid that stopped the pain in my throat, the dryness in my eyes and the overwhelming sensation that my body was dying was dripping from a pipe in the corner of the white room and they were staring at me as I practically fell through the metal door. We were here once more for the questions to be asked of me and I knew that I didn't have the answers, I couldn't even begin to lie that I did because I had no idea what they wanted from me. Every three days I think, they did this to me. Pulled me from the darkness into the light and dragged me like I was nothing more than a carcass to the floor, the hood was over my face as soon as I began to lift my eyes to their level, I had to remember what they told me, that I was theirs and that I was now beneath them, I was not a man but the shit on their shoes.

I was nothing.

When your arms get tied behind your back and you're not allowed to heal, the pain is like nothing else, my skin was slowly tearing away from the flesh and the scars were getting worse. I knew that I'd be dragged to the floor and tied to that wood, the straps that would go across my body that made me breathless and the ribs that had been fractured more times than I cared to think, crush into my lungs.