Isabel looked around the room, expecting many torture instruments to be waiting for her, but she only saw one. There was just one problem. It was the one she was most afraid of.
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Ciara looked, wide-eyed, at the power drill on the table, unsure what the Unsub was going to do with it, but knowing that whatever it was, she wasn't going to like it. She screwed her eyes closed, trying to imagine she was anywhere but there. Unfortunately, as a writer, she always had an overactive imagination that didn't always do what she wanted it to do. As she tried to imagine she was in a different place, her imagination instead left her right where she was, and instead greeted her with images about what the Unsub could do with the power drill.
She quickly opened her eyes and looked around for the Unsub, but he had only delivered her to the room and chained her up before leaving. She knew he wanted to torture her by leaving her in the same room as what he thought was her biggest fear so that she would think about what was going to happen to her. He wanted to torture her by dragging her fear out to almost unimaginable lengths, probably until the fear caused her to break down. He wanted to torture her by making her imagine what he would do with that feared object. And damn it all, it was working.
She tried to take her mind off of what could happen, but her imagination took her to yet another unwanted dark place. It took her back fifteen years to when she acquired her fear. In her mind, she clearly heard the screams and sadistic laughter that accompanied the memory, and even though her eyes were shut tight, she couldn't escape the vision her brain was presenting her with. She shook her head violently, but she knew it was no use.
Try as she might, she couldn't run from her own mind. No matter how hard she tried to control her mind and her psychosis, in the end, both had ultimate control over her. She knew she was screwed from the moment she was little, but still, sometimes, she wished that it wasn't so. Sometimes she wished she hadn't been born at all. Sometimes Ciara wished it had been the both of them, instead of just her. Finally, the memory left her mind, and she looked up at the window where the five members of her team were standing, watching for the Unsub to come back.
She looked at Reid, and she felt a pain when she saw the fear on his face. He had his hands pressed against the glass, and for a moment, Ciara thought maybe he'd be able to push it away and they all could save her from her prison, but then reality came crashing down. If Morgan couldn't break the glass by punching it, how could Reid do anything to it? Neither Reid nor Ciara had much muscle, and she knew that one day, that was going to bite them in the butt. Maybe it already was. In a desperate attempt to calm herself down, she let her imagination take hold again, pleading for it to take her anywhere but here. It listened, and brought her back to the day in the music store after everything had turned sour. She had forgotten about the one bright spot after that moment, and her imagination was quick to remind her.
"Hey, I've been meaning to tell ye something. I learned a new instrument," Ciara said to Reid, who looked over at her with interest.
"Which one?"
"The trumpet. Oh, oh, and listen to this!" she exclaimed, picking up one of the trumpets. She was so glad that the store owner had given her permission to try out the instruments to her delight, thinking that maybe she would find one that she would one day buy. She brought the trumpet to her lips, and reminded herself of the notes, before playing the trumpet part to one of her favorite songs, "Nine in the Afternoon". She could hear Brendon's voice singing in her mind, and even though she wanted to smile, she was a bit preoccupied with playing the tune. As soon as she played what she knew, she wiped off the mouthpiece with the cleaner that she had bought when she first went in, and she saw Reid smiling at her.
"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.
He brought the whirring drill near her neck, and therefore, near her hair. Another unwanted memory came around because of this. The memory of having her hair ripped out by a power drill. Even now, her hair follicles began to tingle, a remnant of the pain she experienced when she was nine. At the tender age of nine, she had experienced the pain of having her hair pulled out in sections, all while being laughed at by the kids that were doing it. She was thrown back into the present, and as the drill got closer to her neck, her screaming and shaking increased and she began to cry in her fear. She was utterly terrified, until finally, her brain had decided she had had enough.
She shut down.
It always happened in steps, as her brain always checked to see if it needed to continue. Her screaming and crying came to an abrupt stop, and her shakes also ceased as her body grew limp. Her eyes stayed open, and she watched as the Unsub looked at her with a look of confusion. The drill was still whirring, and her brain registered that as a threat, and it shut her completely down. Her eyes closed until the only sense still working was her hearing, Eventually the whirring stopped, and a few moments after, she turned back on, a step at a time. First, her eyes opened to see that the Unsub had left the room, and her brain knew that the threat had gone. She regained control of her body and then her speech.
She tried to imagine what he would do next. Or was that it? Was that all he wanted to do to her? Would he let her join her teammates now? Or was she going to remain in this room, separated from the rest of the team, until they were found? She went to rub her eyes when she realized that her chains had been slackened. She doubted that she could leave the room, but she could walk over to the glass. On shaky legs, she stood up to face the mirror, seeing that only Reid and Morgan still stood by the glass. Hotch and Prentiss were with JJ, who was still reeling after watching the Unsub torture Ciara like that.
She walked over and stood in front of Reid, the only thing separating them being that damn glass. Reid still had both of his hands on the glass, so Ciara reached up with hers and put them on the glass, too. It was almost like holding his hand without actually touching him. She kept her head down, not really wanting to see how he had been affected by the whole thing. Nobody really knew what to say, until Reid finally did say something. It was slightly distorted by the glass, but Ciara could still hear every word clearly.
"Are you okay?" he asked, before sucking in a breath in frustration. "No, of course you aren't. Why would I ask such a stupid question?"
"It's okay, Reid," she whispered. "It was like Fear Factor, only a thousand times worse."
"I wish I could break down this glass so I could get to you," he responded, and she sighed. "How did he even know you were afraid of power drills?"
"I don't know. He must have gotten that from someone," she guessed, and Morgan took this moment to say something.
"All of us in here don't know him, so it wasn't from us. Maybe Garcia, Rossi, or Akilah know him," Morgan guessed, and Ciara nodded.
"What do you think he's going to do next?" she asked, and neither of the men said anything, and she knew what that meant. They didn't know. None of them knew what she was going to go through next, if she was going to go through anything at all. She heard the door sliding again, and she knew it was time to find out. He didn't make her sit back down in the chair again, but he did chain her to it so that she couldn't go anywhere, before bringing out his next choice of torture device. She knew as soon as she saw it that it was a taser, and she gulped. She knew what people did with tasers.
"So, Ciara, I have a few questions for you," he said, and she didn't say a word, knowing he was going to continue. "Yeah, I've heard a lot about you, Ciara Byrne, but there are still questions that I have that have gone...unanswered. Think you can answer some of those? Here, I've heard you like games. Let's play a game."
"I hate games, as a matter of fact," Ciara said out of spite. She used to like games, but then a certain Unsub during her time in Los Angeles had completely changed that.
"Oh, but you'll like this game. Here are the rules. I ask a question, you answer. Simple as that. But, if you refuse to answer, or you lie, or I don't like your answer, you'll get to spend a few seconds with Mr. Taser here, got it?" he asked, and Ciara looked down and nodded, knowing she wasn't getting out of it. "Good. Now, first of all, where did you grow up?"
"Of all the things ye know about me, and ye don't know that?" she asked, and then a snake of fire bit her in the side, sending electricity through her body. She didn't even have time to scream before he pulled the taser away. He didn't need to give her enough time. She understood. "Nebraska. I grew up outside of this little town named Anselmo in central Nebraska."
"So you lived on a farm?"
"Farm and/or ranch, yes. We had both livestock and crops," Ciara answered.
"Interesting. Why did you go to a mental hospital at the tender age of thirteen? Why didn't you go to a college or something after you graduated high school so young?" he asked, and she sighed. Of course he knew about the mental hospital. She shivered just thinking about that place, but she wasn't going to answer that. She didn't care how much he shocked her, she wasn't bringing those memories back.
"I'm not answering that." Again, the snake of fire bit her, shocking her until she felt her body would convulse, but just before that happened, he pulled the taser away.
"Answer me, you little bitch, or I'll shock you so badly that you have a seizure," he threatened, but she stood firm. She was not answering the question. He saw that she wasn't afraid of him causing a seizure, and he smirked. "Okay, fine. I'll ask another question and give you another chance to think about answering the other question. Do you love anybody?"
"Do I... do I what?" she asked, not quite sure what that had to do with anything.
"Do you love anybody?"
"I think I love my family," she answered. "But isn't everyone supposed to love their family?"
"I suppose that's true, yes, but that isn't quite what I meant. I meant romantic love, Ciara Byrne. Do you romantically love anyone? Have you ever romantically loved anybody?" he asked, and Ciara knew this answer for sure.
"No." A shock ran through her body, and she looked at the fresh burn on her shirt sleeve. "What the fecking hell?!"
"I don't believe that. I don't believe you've never romantically loved anybody."
"I haven't, and I can tell ye why. It's because I don't know what romantic love is. I don't know what love is period. That's why I only think I love my family, because I don't know. I don't know what love is," she answered, and he seemed satisfied with her explanation.
"Now I want an answer to the other question. Why did you go to a mental hospital?"
"I still won't answer that." She closed her eyes, knowing what was coming. He hit her with the taser and held it against her skin. She immediately got her tongue away from her teeth, knowing that he was angry enough to actually induce a seizure. It only took a few moments before she couldn't stand on her own, and she fell back into the chair, her body starting to violently convulse. She heard the chains rattling against and hitting the wooden chair, but she couldn't register that it was her convulsing that was causing it. She thought she heard the Unsub telling her that if she would have just answered the question, this wouldn't be happening, but she was unable to decide if she really heard that or if she just thought she heard that. She knew that a seizure was imminent, but right before she blacked out, she heard a screaming in the distance.
In her state, she was completely unable to realize that the screaming was her own.
So, yeah, that happened. I'm really sorry about hurting Ciara. But we got something big about her past out of her. Did anyone catch it? If you caught it you get a cookie. Anyway, the big question is, how does the Unsub know the things he does about Ciara? Who told him about the drill fear, and where is the rest of the team? And for all you Panic! fans...you are welcome for Ciara playing "Nine in the Afternoon" on the trumpet. But speaking of that memory, who's still wondering what was so bad about it? I promise you'll get to see that in the next chapter or two. *looks at chapter number* Holy shit...we're already on chapter thirty...I still have no clue how long this book is actually going to be. BYE!
"Your fear seems to hide deep inside your mind." -Irene Cara