I stood atop the shaky wooden roof, looking back at the van that was nearly completely hidden by the dark. Slowly but surely I made my way towards the small window that, from this close, looked much smaller than it did from a distance but I was sure I would still be able to fit through. When I got close enough to climb inside I heard voices coming from the inside.

"When do the buyers get here?" a male voice asked.

"They said they'd be here by morning, just be patient," a female voice responded.

"And who even are they?" another man asked.

"Said they're part of the Acil Gang or sum' like that," the woman said.

Typical...

I carefully looked through the window. On the other side was a mezzanine, on the left from my perspective were multiple doors along the wall and a few boxes, on the other was a partially rusted metal railing. I made sure not to make a sound as I climbed inside the building. The railing was on top of a, around, ten-centimetre high concrete wall, if one could call it that. It was just barely high enough to give me at least a bit of cover from prying eyes below me.

I made sure not to make a sound as I slowly dropped to the ground and got on my stomach, making sure to stay away from the railing but still being close enough to see what's going on beneath.

The mezzanine extended into a large hall with multiple, partially intact aisles from the old store that was here once. I saw about twenty or so people walking around and chatting with each other in the dimly lit hall. Sitting on a box close to where the mezzanine cast its shadow sat a woman, two-man sitting on camping chairs in front of her. On the woman's lap, I could see the suitcase I was looking for. She wore a black hoodie and a dark blue skirt, showing off her legs, one of the men sitting in front of her was staring at them.

Of course, it can't be easy.

"That'll be a while. Get some rest boss, those assholes are never easy to deal with," one of the men said.

The woman stretched, took the suitcase in one hand and jumped up from the boxes.

"I guess you're right," she said.

As she walked towards the staircase leading up to where I was the two men were looking after her. I now had a new problem, I needed to hide. But climbing out of the window again might take too long and make too much noise. I looked around and saw that I was close to a corner where no light was, together with my black clothing that might actually be enough to hide me. I crawled as quickly and quietly to that place, making sure not to lean onto my left arm because every time I used it to do anything I would feel pain in my left shoulder. I crouched down in the pitch-black corner, my back to the stairs when I heard the footsteps of the woman as she walked up to one of the doors and opened it. I glanced back to see which one it was.

Two doors away from me...

Once I heard the door close I turned around, only to look right into two brown eyes. She had tricked me. She knew I was there.

"Now who do we have here?" she asked, a smile showing on her face.

I gulped down all the saliva in my mouth and tried to crawl backwards, my body shaking. She crouched down in front of me.

"Now, now. Don't be scared. You're the one who broke in. I should be scared, who knows what you might have taken-" she looked from the suitcase to me and then to her crotch, then back to me "- or what you might have done to me," she said, quietly.

I shook my head, hoping I might get out of this, my body still shaking and my eyes twitching around. The woman suddenly whistled twice, loudly. Shortly after the mezzanine was overrun with people, all staring at them, some cracking their knuckles, others flexing their muscles while some even pulled out knives and guns.

"Now why don't you start telling us what you wanted to do here? What you needed that suitcase for and so on..." she put a finger in her mouth and began striking a sexy pose, accentuating her large breasts "- or what you wanted to do to me," she said with a fake bittersweet voice. "Go on guys, look him up, for now, beat him a little, I'll be there in half an hour once I grabbed all of my equipment." There was a bright and excited smile on her face and I just sighed as I felt a fist bury itself deep in my stomach.

I was pushed into the wall by the sheer force and hit my head pretty badly, making me blackout for a moment. When I woke back up they were already carrying me down the stairs and towards a door beneath the overhanging platform we had been on. One of them opened it and they carried me down a flight of stairs, literary ripped the clothes off my body and strapped me into a coarse wooden chair. The room was dimly lit which changed once one of them turned on a floodlight and pointed at slightly above my head. When they looked at me they chuckled and then left.

For half an hour I waited, and then she came, the woman, still carrying the suitcase... or rather she was carrying two of them, one was the one I was supposed to steal, the other was made of brown leather with a golden lock.

"Bet you're wondering what's in here," she said, lifting up the brown suitcase.

She put both of them down on a nearby table and then took a good look at me.

"A bit disappointing, I had hoped for someone that doesn't look like they have been tortured before, makes it a little harder to get any information, like, really hard sometimes... and that shoulder of yours-" she touched the part of my shoulder where a small chunk was missing from my flesh, where one could even see the bone a little, and rubbed it a little making me squirm in pain "-this doesn't look good, like, at all."

She now opened the new suitcase, revealing various different things like wrenches, knives, knuckles, a whip and multiple differently sized pliers. A shiver ran down my spine.

"Now... what do you say we have some fun?" the woman asked.

She took one of the brass knuckles and put it on her right hand before turning back to me. A smile was followed by a quick and fairly powerful punch to the face. My nose started bleeding immediately and felt broken. I spat out a little blood when she pulled back and swallowed the rest.

"That enough to get ya talkin'? Of course not," she said, readying another punch.

Before I knew it her fist buried deep into my stomach. And then there was another punch right against my left shoulder. And another against my chest, one right above my groin another to the face and so on and so on. By the end of her barrage, I was a bloody mess, squirming in pain and crying, screaming as loud as I could. About two hours must have gone by.

A man came into the room with a tray, on it was a glass of water and some food.

"Ah, thank you," the woman that had been punching me for the past two hours said with a smile on her face, licking a bit of blood off her lip, my blood.

She took the tray and put it down on the table, next to the two suitcases and took a bite from one of the sandwiches.

"You want one?" she asked, holding one out to me.

I couldn't answer.

"If you don't want to then I can't change that," she said, putting it back on the plate. "Now... why don't you... tell me what you wanted here?" she asked, taking bites every so often.

I just shook my head, my mind trying to figure out what to do... but fear overcame me as I remembered what Martin said... and from memory, I could tell that this might as well be heaven.

"You still don't want to talk... alright, alright. It seems you want to play some more, if that's what you want then I can play with you some more... but first I think you should really eat something, don't want you to starve."

The woman took one of the sandwiches and began eating it, but not swallowing. With one hand she grabbed my chin and with the help of the other hand, she forcefully opened my mouth before spitting the mushy paste the sandwich had turned into in my mouth. She then used the hand on my chin to make me chew it. Then she tilted my head up and made sure I swallowed all of the wet paste.

"Perfect... now I think we should use a different plaything."

She took the whip from the suitcase and turned to me, whipping the air and producing a sharp snap. I swallowed all the spit in my mouth and prepared for what was to come. The whip snapped across my chest in an instant, having me gasping for air. The stinging pain across my chest became worse and worse. I saw a long, red cut across my chest and part of my stomach when I looked down. My breathing became heavy as I tried to ignore the pain. But before it even became slightly better I felt the whip on my skin again, this time making a cut in the opposite direction, creating a bloody 'X' on my chest.

I spat out some blood onto the floor.

"Ughh, how disgusting," the woman torturing me said quietly before I felt a sharp pain on my left cheek.

She had slapped me, luckily using her hand instead of the whip.

The torture continued for hours... at least it felt like hours, there was no clock down here so I had no idea what time it was. Every so often the woman would stop to question me again. When I didn't give her an answer she would often change the tools she would torture me with and continue. By the end, I was missing most of my fingers and toenails, had many bloody wounds all over my body, had multiple broken fingers and a broken rib.

"Still trying to play hard to get huh?" she asked. "Let's make a deal, I'll stop all this and even let you touch me a little if you just tell me what you wanted here, and who's behind you."

I shook my head, I knew that no matter what, the things waiting for me were far worse than whatever she could ever do to me and that, if I were to take her deal, it would just be worse than it would already be.

She looked at me with disgust before putting down her tool and going up the stairs. When she reached the top I heard her call out: "Uh, seven o'clock already? The clients should be here soon."

I smiled, knowing what would happen soon. And sure enough, only minutes later I heard footsteps.

"Yes, yes. He broke in here at night and we still don't know what he wanted but I assume he was after the merchandise," the woman explained to the clients as they were walking down the stairs.

Shortly after I came face to face with Acil, who was smoking a cigarette as usual. When he saw me he smiled.

"So this is the little fuck that tried to steal something and got caught huh?" he said.

"That's right if you want to you can try and get anything out of him but... he doesn't talk a lot, I even offered my body."

Acil's smile became wider and he called Martin, who was eying me with an annoyed expression. He whispered something in Martin's ear and he left, leaving me alone with Acil, two of the gang members and the leader of this other gang.

Acil leaned down to me and whispered in my ear: "Let's make your fuck up a bit fun, apologies loudly for fucking up. I wanna see the look on her face."

There was a wide smile on his face as he put out his cigarette on my chest.

"I... I'm s-sorry for... for fucking up," I said, trying not to cough up more blood.

Acil began laughing as soon as he saw the confused look on the woman's face. Only moments later gunshots could be heard from above and the gang members that were with Acil had already pulled their guns and pointed them at the head of the woman.

"So that's how it is..." the woman said.

Acil, ignoring the woman, walked over to the table with the suitcases, grabbed the one I was supposed to steal, and opened it. Inside were all the things that were supposed to be inside.

"Get Ethan out of here and bring him to the black room," Acil said to one of the gang members before turning back to the woman.

The gang member walked up to me, removed my bindings and then lifted me over his shoulder. He carried me up the stairs, making me watch as the woman that had tortured me was shot in the head by three people at once. I heard a few chuckles as we passed some of the Acil gang members that were shooting the members of the other gang in the large open hall. But I just looked at the ground, mentally preparing myself for the black room the place where they would always torture me. I could already feel the burn marks all over my body begin to itch and hurt just thinking about the place.

_________________________

My sleep was disrupted by voices echoing through the forest. These were voices I was not familiar with, voices I had not heard before. These were not the voices in the wind or in the rustling of the leaves around me, these were the voices of other people... or maybe of creatures imitating people. Slowly I got up and leaned against the tree trunk, and I listened.

"Are you sure it's safe out here?" a feminine voice said.

"Of course I'm sure. That beast is in the other sector, we'll be fine as long as we're fast," a masculine voice said.

"If you say so," the feminine voice said.

I repositioned myself and nearly slipped off the branch, making an ever so slight sound.

"Did you hear that?" a second masculine voice said.

There was no response, instead, I heard the bushes below me rustling and the three people came into view. They were hunters... and they were human.