Blood-chilling cold.

An ache in my jaw pulled me from the wooziness that’d settled over me. When I opened my eyes, though, the darkness didn’t go away. I double blinked, only the flapping of my lashes across my cheekbone telling me I was awake. Blackness surrounded me, where I lay against what felt like cold metal grates pressing into my muscles, the sharp, protruding prongs scraping across my skin.

Sickness churned in my stomach, like when I’d spend too much time outside and forget to drink water. I jerked my arm, rattling a chain attached to my right wrist, the cuff of it biting into my bones. With a shaky hand, I followed the path of the chain in darkness, locating the end of it bolted to the metal frame beneath me.

Finding my left hand unbound, I patted along my body, taking comfort in knowing I was clothed, in spite of the chill humming along my bones. Though, I’d no idea what they’d done to me after I’d passed out—a thought that balled my stomach into tight knots of terror.

I pushed up, and the hard crack against my skull knocked me back down again. I reached out, palpating hard metal grates, and up along the side of what felt like wooden planks. The surface pricked my finger. I drew back and blindly finger-tweezed a sharp nettle of wood from the source of pain. Careful the second time, I reached again and tapped my fingers across the wood in front of me, the warped curves of it offering gaps, through which I could slip my hand up to my palm.

I pawed at the floor again, my mind scrambling to puzzle my surroundings together. A metallic scent, like old tools, suggested some kind of storage space, and the damp, moldy undertones hinted I was in a basement. But what the hell were the metal grates beneath me? Some kind of cage inside a pantry? I kicked out my feet, rattling the metal, only to find the space accommodated no more than my bent form.

Over the swishing of blood in my ears, voices emerged. Laughing. More than one. Two. No, three distinct voices.

“Help! Help me!” I slammed my feet and hands against the metal to make noise.

“Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, James. Oh, fuck.” Eli’s voice, even brimming with terror, offered a small comfort in the surrounding blackness.

“Can you see anything?”

“No. Nothing.” His quiet whimper escalated into a squeal of panic. “Those cocksuckers put us in a cage!”

“A closet, or something,” I corrected. “And some kind of metal floor.” I tried to make sense of its purpose, based on what I’d unseeingly touched.

“They’re going to kill us. They’re gonna fucking kill us in this shithole, and nobody will find us, Jay.”

“Just … let me think.”

A creaking sound broke my thoughts.

A bright yellowish glow bled through the wide gaps of the door, allowing me to see that they were, in fact, wooden planks, the slats so worn down and misshapen, they failed to serve as a barrier. Through the chinks in the wood, I could see a room with brown pools of water scattered over the concrete floor, in the center of which sat a box shape, draped in a black curtain. I lifted my head, staring at it, studying its purpose—or, more importantly, what might be in it.

“You see that box?” I called out to Eli, hoping to get some idea of where he sat.

“Yeah. I see it.”

The door to the room beyond must’ve sat somewhere to my right, because shadows danced across the water-stained cement walls in front of me, melding into the dark parts of the room, warning me we were no longer alone. My nerves flared as I sat forward, searching through the gaps for who had entered the room.

Cold black eyes, like two empty graves, peered in from outside the door, and I kicked myself away from Fox. With his face shining beneath the penetrating light, the warped barrier between us wasn’t enough to shield me from his curious stare. “Hello, sleepy head,” he said. “Right about now, you’re probably wondering what the hell is going on. Why you’re in here.” His gaze shifted to my left and back to me. “You boys don’t hold your liquor very well.” From somewhere beside him, he produced a flip phone, holding it up so I could just make out the back of my head, as I sat slung over a dirty toilet seat.

Flashes of memory flickered like snapshots through my mind. Being forced to drink. The room spinning. Burns searing into my skin. Feeling sick. The blackness settling over me.

He pulled the phone back and chuckled, looking down at the glowing screen. “Here’s another one.”

My teeth chattered with the tension in my jaw, as I stared at a picture of Eli passed out and sprawled across a couch, completely naked. “You sick fucks.” I turned my attention away from it, unable to look at his helplessness.

“Oh, don’t you worry, son. Nobody touched you, or your pansy little boyfriend.”

“Why are you doing this?” I gritted out, and hammered my foot against the door, kicking Fox backward.

Jaw shifting, he spat onto the floor and shook his head. “We don’t tolerate that shit, boy. I want to introduce you to a friend of mine.” He waved his hand to the side, and another face appeared through the cracks. “Joey Trevisano, Trevi for short, but we like to call ‘im the Fat Italian Bastard.”

The new man’s size dwarfed Fox—a disgusting pig of a man, with tattoos crawling up his neck. “Look at that pretty face just itching to be bruised up.”

I clenched my teeth, hands balled into tight fists, as I refused to break eye contact with him.

“Now don’t be intimidated by this one. He’s nothing but a big … fat teddy bear.” With an obnoxious laugh, Fox slammed a hand against the fat guy’s back. “This one’s quite the Joker. Tell ‘im a joke, Trevi.”

Trevi smirked, holding eye contact with me.

“C’mon, just one,” Fox persisted. “Make the kid feel more at home.”

Trevi stroked his chin, bringing into view a snake tattoo that wrapped around the back of his palm, across his knuckles. “Okay, so what’s the difference between a rabbi and a priest, huh?" He only paused a moment, glancing toward Fox then back to me. “A rabbi cuts them off and a priest sucks them off.”

Both men kicked their heads back, laughing at his joke, and Fox grabbed his friend’s shoulder. “See? Funny as a motherfucker, this one! Tell ‘im another one, Trevi.”

“Let us go, you fucking twats!” The wobble in Eli’s voice signaled he was on the brink of tears, while still holding some of the blistering anger inside of him.

“Excuse me.” Both men disappeared from view, and I lurched forward, twisting myself awkwardly over the metal springs that squeaked beneath me.

I peered through the gaps, my pulse pounding with every thud of their boots across the floor.

They disappeared into the shadowy areas to the left. Only the stuttering moron from before stood where I could still see him, his eyes focused somewhere to the left of me, where I assumed Eli might be.

“Twat? What kind of shitty ass manners your momma teach you, boy?” Fox’s voice held zero humor. In the time we’d spent with the men, I’d learned one thing about him—he had little patience, or, tolerance for insolence.

“Fuck you!”

A beat of silence followed, before Fox huffed. “Ever heard of parrilla? Of course you haven’t. You’re just a punk kid with a small mind.” He nodded his head toward Trevi, who hobbled toward where two side-by-side light switches sat above two separate dials. "It’s a method of interrogation used in South American countries. Fairly effective. Allow me to demonstrate.”

Trevi flipped one of the switches and slowly turned the dial below it.

A hum filled the room, followed by a snapping sound and rattling, squeaking metal. Eli screamed, a loud, pain-filled screech that reached down into my bones.

I glanced down at the bedsprings beneath me, suddenly aware of their purpose, and back to the switches on the wall. They’d rigged them, somehow.

A misery-laden yelp steeled my muscles, as the quiet hum escalated to a buzz, while Trevi gave another crank of the dial.

“Stop! Stop it!” I screwed my eyes shut against the sounds of his tormented cries. “Stop!”

Fox’s wicked laughter smothered Eli’s sobbing, turning my blood hot with anger, and the hum quieted. “So, an electrode is set to metal, in this case, the springs across the floor in there, and it emits an electric shock. The intensity of the shock depends on how much of a fucking cowboy you wanna be. We like to use it for training. Sort of like them collars you put on a dog to keep it from doing the wrong thing.” Pacing back and forth in front of us, Fox reached into his shirt pocket and tugged out a cigarette. “Designed ‘em myself. Now. I’m gonna ask you a couple of very simple questions, and you’re gonna answer them. If you answer them incorrectly, my friend Trevi’s gon’ flip his goddamn switch. Ain’t that right, Trevi?” He glanced back toward the asshole, whose wrist swiveled, miming turning up the dial.

Both men laughed in response.

Eli’s whimpers twisted knots in my stomach, while my mind raced for a solution, an escape. That single opportunity my father would’ve stolen to get us out.

“What’s your name?” Fox asked, his attention directed to the left, and the pungent stink of stale menthol cigarettes masked the burning smell of before.

“Eli.”

Another hum, followed by that stomach-turning scream.

“Wrong. Your name is Boy from here on out.”

The thought of that sat like knives in my chest, and I curled my lip, wishing I could tear their throats out with my bare hands.

“And what’s your name?” Fox peered through the distorted door at me, puffing on his cancer stick, and blew the smoke into the closet.

“Fuck you. That’s my name.” I coughed, batting away the faint plume seeping into my lungs. I didn’t even care if he shocked me for it.

Eli’s screams filled the room again, sending shots of panic into my chest.

Assholes!

An obnoxious laugh bounced off the walls of the room. “We attach it to his head, we can alter his fucking brain!” The gurgle of Trevi’s voice made me think of him drowning as I held his head under water. “No brain, no pain!”

The squeak of my teeth and the sharp spasm of pain in my temple told me I’d been grinding my teeth the whole time. “What do you want?” I gritted out.

“I want you to answer the question. What is your name?”

“Boy. Okay? My name is fucking boy.”

Eli screamed again, and every muscle in my body shook.

“Fucking stop! What do you want me to say?”

Fox’s shoulders bunched, his eyes widening like he feigned surprise. “Your name, of course.”

“James! My name is James!” My stomach folded, anticipating the next round of shocks that never arrived.

“James,” Fox echoed, drawing another puff of his cigarette.

Why was I allowed to answer any different? Why would I keep my name?

“And how did you end up in this shitty situation?”

I took the cue to answer as honestly as I could, for Eli’s sake. “I came here. With Eli. And the other kid, Gideon.” I swore if I could go back to those moments in the Packard Plant, I’d have laid that kid out on the ground and beaten the ever-loving shit out of him right then and there.

“You didn’t want to come here, did you? You didn’t want to steal from me?”

“No. I didn’t.” The truth, and I prayed he could see it on my face through the gaps in the door.

“Well, I’m going to tell you what. You have an opportunity to leave this place. Alive. All you gotta do is keep your mouth shut and behave. Can you do that, James?”

In spite of the wrath burning in my veins, and the watery blur of tears in my eyes, I nodded.

“Now, tell me. What’s your friend’s name over there?”

Lips tight, I frowned, choking back the snarky comment trapped at the back of my throat, one that would surely result in Eli’s torment. “Boy,” I said. “His name is Boy.”

“Good. Very good.”