Psychosis

Chapter 30- Fear Factor

"I'll never get over the fact that no matter what instrument you pick up, you are talented with each and every one of them," he told her, and she looked down, a blush creeping across her face. He was only the second person to ever tell her that, and the first was someone that was supposed to say that, no matter of its truthfulness. "I mean it. It's a shame you don't have a better singing voice. Unless that's changed since the day at the zoo?"

"How the hell do you remember that?" she asked, even though she remembered it, too. Not so much the day itself, but the conversation that was held.

"Eidetic memory never fails."

Ciara was happy when the memory did exactly what it was supposed to. She felt the fear ebb, and a feeling of calm flowed in its place. She could get through whatever the Unsub was going to throw at her. At least, she hoped she could. If it got too much, she knew her brain would shut most of her systems down as a way to protect her. It had happened in the past, where something became too much, she would shut down instead of melt down. As soon as the threat had passed, she would "come back to life", as Akilah had described it.

Suddenly, she heard the sound of a metal door scraping, and she turned her head quickly to where the sound was coming from. She was just in time to see the Unsub walking in, apparently having decided he was away for long enough. He smiled at her, causing her insides to writhe in anxiousness, knowing he had something dastardly planned for her. He picked up the drill, and for a moment, she wished that the battery was dead. He pulled the trigger and the sound of the whirring bit caused her to jump in her seat, nearly screaming at the sound alone.

"You know, if you all had just been a little nicer in your word choice, particularly you, Agent Morgan, I wouldn't have to do this. Now, don't get me wrong. I wasn't lying when I said I would enjoy this. I will enjoy this very much. Now, Ciara, you know what this little tool is, don't you? I heard you have a very interesting relationship with them," the Unsub taunted, and for the first time, Ciara started to wonder. How did he know that? How did he know about her fear of power drills? The only people she had ever told was her team and one other person. Did one of them tell someone that shouldn't have been told? She didn't have time to think about it, though, because he put the drill down to walk over to her. "I forgot to do this, but now is a great time." Her grabbed her chair, and turned it so that he could stand in front of her without blocking the rest of the agents' view. They would see everything. The Unsub picked the drill back up, and pulled the trigger a couple of times experimentally. Ciara thought that maybe if she didn't show her fear, he would get bored and leave her alone. Unfortunately, not showing her fear was much, much easier said than done.

Finally, he pulled the trigger and held it, the whirring of the bit bringing her back to the unwanted place in her mind. She heard her screams as a child, and it made her adult self nearly scream at the pure memory. Letting the bit whir, he walked over to her, and she tried to scoot herself back, but she found that her chains did a pretty good job of keeping her right where she was. She was stuck. He pointed the drill at her head and started to move it closer to her forehead, and finally, she couldn't hold back her screams anymore. As she screamed, she writhed in her seat, trying desperately to move away from the accursed drill, but she couldn't, and that was what scared her the most. Not the drill itself, even though that was pretty scary, but the fact that he could do anything he wanted to her with the drill and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

He continued to torture her by taking the drill away from her body and suddenly bringing it back to a different part of her body. As he continued to do this routine, her body began to shake out of the fear. She knew that if she had any food in her system, she'd probably begin to throw it up right about now, but she had none, so she was left with the unpleasant feeling that she needed to throw up, but was never actually going to. Even over her own screaming and the whir of the drill, she could hear some of the other agents. Reid was screaming at the Unsub to stop, while Morgan was throwing countless curses his way. She took one moment to turn away from the drill, something she ordinarily wouldn't do, to see the other reactions. Hotch was silent, but she could see the anger written on his face, and she could see Prentiss looking away, not wanting to watch. She also barely saw JJ, sitting away from the rest of them, hands clamped firmly over her ears. Finally, the Unsub did the thing that made her absolutely lose it.