Darkest Before Dawn

The height was dizzying, but her fear of enclosed spaces was even more crippling. Having spent an entire night trapped under the rubble of the clinic that lay around her in ruins had given her an intense phobia of tight, enclosed and airless places, even though the cage was well ventilated.

Sudden unexpected pain screamed through her body—but no, the high-pitched shriek came from her, the sound of someone in unspeakable agony. Her skin was on fire. She could feel the horrible licks of the flames consuming her. Was she being burned alive? A vague recollection of something like a cattle prod, an instrument that when touching her skin delivered a shrieking electric shock that set her nerve endings on fire, drifted through her shattered memories. For a moment it was as if she simply short-circuited because she had no idea what had just happened. Only that it hadn’t been the first time it had been done to her.

Then she saw him. The man who must be Maksimov. He held a long rod that he’d pressed to her skin, delivering a devastating electric shock that still had her nerves jumping and quivering. She was in no way in control of her body, her muscles giving involuntary jerks and spasms.

She huddled there, weeping, not just from the shock delivered to her body, but from the ultimate betrayal Hancock had handed her. It was her fault for offering him her forgiveness. For giving him her trust when he’d proven he wasn’t deserving of it.

But it didn’t make the agony any less. He had done what nothing or no one else had been able to do.

Hancock had broken her.

Not the clinic bombing. Not ANE. Not Bristow’s two attempts to rape her. Not even this asshole standing by her cage, a predatory gleam in his eyes. He enjoyed pain—inflicting pain. He thrived on it. If she could see any lower than his face, she was sure he’d be aroused, just as Bristow had been when he’d hurt her.

But neither of those men, Bristow or Maksimov, had broken her or would break her.

Hancock had broken her, and she no longer cared whether she lived or died. She no longer cared what was done to her because nothing could equal what had already been done by Hancock’s hand.

“I think I may keep you for a while before I let A New Era know of my precious find,” he mused, studying her as he circled the cage. “You’re surprisingly strong. For a woman,” he added with a sneer that conveyed all the disdain he obviously felt for the “weaker” sex. “I think you will provide me many days of entertainment. You’ll be a challenge and I do so enjoy a good challenge. But I’ll break you. You’ll learn what is expected of you.”

“You can’t break me,” Honor said softly, speaking for the first time.

Her tone was absent, disinterested almost, as if she were thinking of something else and he was a mere distraction. He wouldn’t like not being able to command absolute focus and attention. He was a man well used to deference from everyone. Well, too fucking bad because he wasn’t getting it from her.

He looked faintly puzzled, as if he sensed something other than defiance, which such a statement would normally be construed as.

“And why is that?” he asked in a mild tone that told her she hadn’t pissed him off. Yet. No, he was genuinely curious.

She found his stare and knew hers to be vacant. Hollow. Lifeless. Already gone. His eyes narrowed as if he too saw what she knew to be there. And for some reason unknown to her, she got the impression that it bothered him. Which was laughable given he thrived on making others suffer so much that they became as lifeless and as hopeless as she already was, and he’d only just begun. Perhaps he was merely angry because he wasn’t the reason that she was already far gone from this world—and reality.

“Because you can’t break what’s already broken,” she whispered through numb lips.

He pondered her words for a moment and maybe she imagined it, but she could swear something in his gaze shifted and softened. Maybe she was just finally losing the final pieces of sanity that had seen her through this far because they were no longer needed. She needed no shield. No protection.

If only . . .

She didn’t even bother feeling shame or regret for not having succeeded in taking her own life. If she’d had any inkling of Hancock’s coming betrayal, she would have sliced through her carotid artery in a heartbeat to deprive them all. Hancock, Maksimov and ANE.

He flipped a switch that caused the cage to lower closer to the floor, and then he reached through one of the bars, his fingers lightly caressing the bandages of her wrists, studying them.

“I don’t suppose you can,” he murmured. “But I guess we’ll see then, won’t we? But, woman, do not think to defy me. You will instantly regret it.”

She gave a faint ghost of a smile, one that matched the hollowness of her eyes, and as much of a shrug as she was able in the confines of her tiny prison. “I have no reason to defy you. My fate has been sealed. I know what my destiny is to be. I have no reason to live, so why make my eventual death worse by fighting the inevitable?”

He frowned again, as though he had no idea of what to make of her. As though he’d never come across someone like her. And judging by the expression on his face, he didn’t much like puzzles he couldn’t solve.

Any idiot could figure her out. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know when a person had already been driven past their limits. That she was already a hollow shell of a human being. Nothing could touch her no matter what was inflicted on her from now until whenever monsters tired of their sick, torturous games and finally gave her eternal rest and . . . peace.