The Oval Office ✓ (Book One)

Chapter Seventeen

TRIGGER WARNING TRIGGER WARNING

  There are four hundred and thirty seven scratches on the brick wall behind me. Four hundred and thirty seven. Some of them are faded gray, but others are coated in dry blood, making it impossible to see the color beneath. I don't even want to know what I look like right now because I can feel it. The three burn marks on my face, bags under my eyes that are now more prominent than ever- a cut that's still oozing blood. These are all things, no matter how painful, that I can ignore. At least that's what I tell myself- that was what they taught us in the fbi.

They always said the probability of one of us getting kidnapped and tortured was higher than any other job, so we had to learn how to deal with it, but now- I can't remember a single word the instructors said. I try to stand up, but the burns on the bottoms of my feet make it nearly impossible. I manage to take a few steps, but they are so severe they start bleeding, so I give up. This is how it ends, I guess.

In the floor of a dirty ass prison cell, starving and bleeding, dehydrated yet still alive somehow. They ripped my fingernails out one by one. Burned me with a branding iron over twenty times in the worst places you could think of. Yes, down there too. Stabbed me about fifty times- in places that would produce immense pain with little to no bleeding. I wished for death multiple times this past day.

"Me too." Emily seems to have emotion on her face for once. She holds up her foot, revealing a nasty looking scar on the bottom of it. "You have to get through it though. You are the first-fucking lady of the United States. They're going to find you and god I hope it's alive."

"I can't do this much-"

"You don't have a choice. Damnit- you are thirty eight years old. You've easily got sixty years left. So suck it the fuck up and fight." Normally I would. I simply do not have anything left in me. They've finally done it- they've broken me.

  The last thing I said to Kyle was "What's going on?" Even though I told him I loved him seconds before that, I want to go back and say it again, just for good measure. But this time, when Adrian, another guard, and James come to collect me, I don't even fight. My eyes stay fixed on the same point as Adrian carries me off to the room I've spent far too much time in over the past twenty four hours. I know what's coming- but my body can't take much more, so I make up my mind to just die instead.  Death can't be worse than this.

  They strap my arms down even though all three of them can see it's not necessary. I don't have enough energy to fight anymore. "Madam First Lady-" Adrian chuckles. "You already know the drill. Answer our questions and you have nothing to worry about."

  "Fuck all of you." I barely manage to speak.

  "I don't think you are in a position to be talking back right now, Ms.Wells." He pauses, reaching over for the branding iron, and I cringe. "Now, we're going to ask you one more time- Where is the nuclear football?" 

  "If y'all were half as decent hackers as the ones we have you would already know."

  "See that's the problem- your hackers 'fixed' the security system just a few minutes ago. We can't get past shit now.  What you're going to do is tell us."

  "Eat shit." That earns me a ten-second burn at the highest setting.

  "GODAMNIT ADRIAN, STOP IT!" James snaps, earning a head turn from the other two. " you don't need to fucking harrass her just because we lost contact with the inside source! She couldn't know where it is she doesn't have the clearance! Even I didn't!"

  " Bullshit- She sleeps with the president of the United States. They have been married for twenty years!!" Adrian yells.

"He doesn't tell me anything I don't have clearance to unless it concerns my own safety." I say.

" I thought  the goal was to keep her alive for leverage- look at her! She's going to fucking die if this keeps up!!" James replies.

  "I'd watch my mouth if I were you. We still have your girlfriend. Step out, James."

—-3rd person P.O.V—

James had finally snapped. Lauren was one of the nicest people he ever had the privilege of working for, and seeing her like that broke him. Months ago, when he was forced into working for the terrorists, his girlfriends life on the line- it felt like he didn't have a choice but to go along with it. Play by their rules in the hopes that he could buy her freedom with his loyalty. That was the plan, at least, but he could feel it drifting away by the second.

He could no longer find it in him to justify what was happening to her in that room, but directly interfering would get him shot- so he set out to do something that he knew, in the end, had a ninety nine percent chance of him dying as opposed to a one hundred percent chance. He took a deep breath- trying to relax at least a little bit for a single second, but he could hear her ear piercing screams from the other side of the door. If he somehow survived what he was about to do, he would surely receive the death penalty. "Fuck it." He thought to himself.

    He Started casually walking to the Phoenix, which was the groups code name for their command opps room. This alone wouldn't draw suspicion, as he often worked in command opps, watching the security cameras or working on coding. His advantage here would be that the guards assigned to directly in front of the door didn't have keycard access.

  So he swiped his card, calmly closing the metal door behind him. There was a look of confusion on the faces of the three people in there, and then nothing. James put a bullet in  two of their heads, knocking the other out with the butt of his gun. He quickly typed an unsecured email directly to Ethan, then hit send. He picked his gun up again, and started smashing every security monitor with it- saving the control panel for last. Almost at the same time, the lights went out and all of  the doors controlled by keycard technology opened. James pulled what the group called "the device" out of his pocket, earning an eyebrow raise from one of the guards.

  "Shoot me and I'll blow this place to fucking smithereens."