Unknown- A Criminal Minds Fanfic

Chapter 47- Like What You See?

Though I had picked out the agent, and I knew he had recognized me, like I had expected, SWAT, the state police, and every other law enforcement officer in the near vicinity did not come busting down the door.  No, instead I was released from the handcuffs and dragged back into the other room and down the hall before being thrown--literally, my feet left the ground and I hit the back wall with a clang--back into my cage.  The man I had kneed in the family jewels slammed the door, but I didn't miss the glimpse of a gloating smirk on his face right before it banged shut. 

I groaned as I got to my feet before sitting heavily down on the mattress.  My head, my shoulder, my side, my arm, practically half of my body hurt, and the cold, hunger, and lack of sleep weren't helping.  Aside from the fact that I had, in the case of my stalker, arguably suffered worse, it still didn't do anything to make this situation any less miserable.

"You okay?" I heard a timid voice ask, and I glanced at the girl to my right who I hadn't been able to wake up earlier.

She was tiny, barely even five feet, if that, and she could probably fit into a twelve-year-old's clothes.  It was then that it struck me perhaps she was only twelve.  Shit.

"Considering the circumstances, yeah," I answered, a hint of sarcasm leaking through.  Rossi's voice clicked on in my head, reminding me I shouldn't be using sarcasm to avoid conversations that made me uncomfortable.

At my comment though, the girl flinched, reflexively uncurling her fingers from where they were hooked in the gaps of the chain-link.  She stared at me with wide pleading eyes, kind of like the look Chocolate gave me when I didn't give him a bite of whatever I had made myself for supper.

"Sorry," I apologized, softening my voice.  "I didn't mean to snap, just this whole thing," I trailed off, exhaling a sigh. "It's a lot," I finished lamely.

She nodded, but her lips trembled like she was resisting the urge to cry.  Poor kid.

After a beat, she said quietly, "I'm Sara."

I glanced up at her, replying simply, "Casey."

"Did they...did they hurt you, too?" she asked, peering curiously through the links between our two cages.  I couldn't miss the healing cuts and fading grayish-yellow bruises on the underside of her forearms.

"Yeah.  It's not that bad," I insisted, because though my own cuts stung a little and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a red handprint on my cheek, the twinge of the stitched cuts across my shoulder and torso had hurt, and occasionally still did hurt, a thousand times worse.

She shook her head and said softly, "I'm not that brave."

My stomach clenched as I remembered how long I had kept my stalker a secret from Reid and the rest of the team.  That wasn't brave, that was the mark of a complete coward, and I knew nothing I did now could make up for it.  Instead of telling her that I wasn't actually brave either, though, I resolved to change the subject.

"How old are you?"

"Thirteen," she answered.

I hadn't been that far off, but if they were taking girls that young...I hoped the agent I had seen just minutes ago could get out damn soon to go make the call that would set all these girls free.

A loud bang interrupted our very short conversation as another girl, unconscious, was dragged in through the doors on the left end of the hallway.  They put her in one of the empty cages from the two girls that had been 'sold' earlier.  Some of the other girls got up and tried to see what the new girl looked like, but most just briefly glanced in that direction before returning their attention to whatever they had been doing previously.

The two guys that had dragged her in left, and the silence permeated only by the noises of a human pound resumed.  Hours passed and nothing else happened.  I was debating if it was even worth it to try and get some more sleep when two guys--the one I had punched, and Brady, of all people--came and dragged me back to the other room, again handcuffing me to the chair.

I let a little bit of timidity badly masked by feigned bravery creep onto my face.  These men expected me to be scared, I knew what to expect now so of course they would make it more painful, but there's also the fact that Brady was most likely a sociopath and at least some of the other men had sociopathic tendencies.  They got off on hurting people.  So did the buyers, but there were only two of them this time, and neither was the other undercover agent from before.

This time the man I had punched was allowed to punch me back, and he didn't just stick with an uppercut to my nose.  By the time he was done, one of my eyes was swollen shut, it hurt to breathe, and I was bleeding from three different spots on my face.  And then instead of a knife, Brady took over with another strange...tool I suppose is the best word for it.  It resembled a large screwdriver, or maybe a small crowbar, I couldn't quite tell because of the blood in one eye and the puffy eyelid over my other.  He had held the end of it over a lit butane torch so it was glowing orange, and hot enough that I could feel the heat radiating from it when it was still a few inches from my skin.

And the minute it touched my flesh, I screamed.  It felt like someone was ripping my skin away from my body, and the sizzling of burning flesh combined with the smell somehow made it more painful.  Aggravating senses other than that of touch was a proven torture technique, and evidently these bastards had figured out how it worked, and were now using it on me.

I squirmed and gritted my teeth, trying to stay still because the buyers' lecherous eyes were focused on my expression, and I didn't want to give them the satisfaction.

Brady touched the tool to a few different spots on my arm and then moved to my other arm. My strangled cries of pain curled upwards with the smoke from my burning skin, and I shifted involuntarily but that only made the pain worse.

He finally pulled it away, and I panted for breath as the pain lingered.

"Like what you see?" Brady asked as he picked up a knife from the table.  I recognized it as a hunting knife, perfect for cutting open a deer carcass.  Which made it just as perfect for splitting open my skin.

The somewhat obscured scene in front of me suddenly blurred and I couldn't catch my breath, the pain fading as all the air floated to my head, making me dizzy.  I was going to pass out, I could see the single bulb dangling above my head.

I couldn't let myself slip away like this, not again.  Reliving what my stalker had done to me was worse than what was happening to me now.

I forced myself back to the present when a loud bang followed by the shouts of law enforcement officers echoed from the other side of the door I had been dragged through.  

Finally.