Voices. He heard voices, distant, muffled. Sothing moved around him. No, not just around him, he felt himself being dragged, lifted, shifted. Soone shouted, words he couldn’t understand.
Paul’s eyes flickered open. A face lood only centiters away, eyes widening in sudden shock.
Paul tried to move, to rise, but pain shot through every limb. His body felt pinned, crushed by weight.
Before he could try again, the man raised his arm. Sothing long glinted in his hand. The object ca down fast. Paul’s instincts forced his eyes shut.
The impact crashed against his skull, and the world slipped away once more.
Darkness.
Then a jolt. Paul’s eyes fluttered open for a heartbeat, the world swaying violently. He was being carried, his body bound tight with rope. The sound of boots echoed around him, voices in harsh Spanish, sharp and hurried.
He tried to lift his head, but it dropped again, heavy as stone.
Darkness.
He woke once more, this ti staring up at the sky. Lantern light bobbed above him, clouds drifting in and out of view. His mouth was dry, the taste of iron thick on his tongue. A soldier walked sat beside him, muttering, cigarette glowing red in the night. Paul blinked, trying to focus, then the glow blurred into nothing.
Darkness.
The next ti he woke, it was colder. Damp. He realized he was no longer moving. The air reeked of mold and rot. He lay on rough stone, his hands chained to the wall. A single torch flickered sowhere in the darkness.
This ti he did not drift back into the void. This ti he was awake.
Sothing filled his mouth, he spat it out. Blood splattered across the stone floor.
Pain flared from nearly every part of his body. He glanced down. Bandages were wrapped around his stomach, his left arm, and his right thigh.
"Shit," he blurted, the first word that ca to mind.
Paul shifted, struggling to sit up straight. For the first ti he took in his surroundings—a small cell. No window. Only iron bars between him and freedom.
"How the hell did I survive that?" His eyes sharpened, a dangerous glint forming. "More importantly, why did that bastard pull ?!"
He tried to stand, rage pushing him forward. But before he could find his footing, the pain surged through him. A primal groan escaped as he collapsed back onto the stone floor.
Paul’s jaw tightend: "I’ve miraculasly survided only to die sowhere else. "The world truly loves , doesn’t it."
"Oh, you won’t die—just yet."A disgusting laugh echoed from outside Paul’s cell.
Paul’s head snapped up, eyes searching until they locked on a figure, half of his face lit by the torchlight.
"Who are you?" Paul demanded.
The man answered in German, his words twisted by a heavy accent. "I’m the one who patched you up, who rescued you. How about thanking ?"
"Thanking you?" Paul spat in his direction, his eyes burning with hate. "I’d thank you if I had woken up in a bed. But you threw into a cell."
The man answered, a devious smile curling on his lips:"That I did. But I wonder... why don’t you ask anything? Are you not curious yourself?"
"You seem eager to answer them, even without my encouragent," Paul said, trying to adjust his seating posture.
"Yes, you are right. You are quite smart for a soldier. Obviously your job is to answer, to answer anything we ask. My job is to ask. Simple enough, right?"
Paul said nothing. Silence grew cold between them.
"It seems you aren’t so smart after all." The man stepped closer to the iron bars and gripped them. "I would love to tell you the consequences, but I patched you up for a reason." His tongue slid over his lip. "Everyone knows you must fatten a sheep, patch it up, feed it well, before you can savour its at."
The man’s smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. He set down a bowl, its contents shifting with a soft clink, and pushed it into the cell with his foot. "Eat well," he said. "You’ll need it."
Paul reached for the bowl, staring at its contents. It looked like so kind of soup—perhaps pea, perhaps sothing else.
He clenched his teeth, eyes never leaving the liquid. Hunger gnawed at him; he didn’t know how long he’d been without food, but it felt like an eternity.
I’m not ready to leave this world yet. There are still too many things I have to accomplish, he thought, picking up the spoon with visible reluctance. I will survive.
Just like he had survived the plane crash and the collapse.
A surge of power coursed through him, gripping the spoon tighter. And he would find whoever was responsible. He would escape and find them. They would pay. They would bleed like he had, suffer like he had and they too, would live like dogs. Then would die. But he would not.
Ti passed slowly at first, agonizingly so, but eventually Paul developed a routine. Sleeping on his bunk, eating whatever scraps the guards threw at him, refusing to answer the man’s questions. Each ti Paul remained silent, the man grew more furious, more eager.
Paul knew the man was so kind of psychopath, soone the Spanish kept around for one purpose: torture.
He also knew it would co sooner or later. But giving the man anything, any piece of information, wasn’t an option. If Paul revealed even the limited intel he had, he would beco useless to them. His value would plumt, and with it his chance of survival. Enduring the pain, enduring the interrogation, was the only way to stay alive. At least for a while.
He was painfully aware that he would have to escape eventually; his survival depended entirely on a plan. As for a savior, the Germans, or Franco’s n. He had stopped believing anyone would co.
Paul sighed, thinking of his friends, his squad. They probably think I’m dead. He didn’t bla them. He too would have prioritized his own survival over soone whose chances were so slim. Paul thought a lot about them the last few days.
I hope they made it back at least, he told himself. So all of this wasn’t for nothing. His eyes drifted to the iron bars as his thoughts sank deeper, the cell fading around him.
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