“Ty was made for messes. He and the cockroaches will be the only things to survive the final meltdown.”
Zane looked down at the almost empty glass he held and then set it carefully on the counter. “I wouldn’t bet on the cockroaches.”
Nick was quiet, but Zane could feel his eyes on him.
“You and Ty… you were prisoners of war, weren’t you?” he said, looking up to meet Nick’s eyes carefully.
Nick inhaled sharply and rubbed his hand over his mouth as he looked away.
“I was wondering… I don’t want to ask him details. He doesn’t know I know.”
Nick looked down at the counter and shook his head, then pushed away from the counter and paced away, running his hand through his hair.
Zane winced. “I’m sorry, I….”
“I just, uh… it’s still classified. Not something I really like to chat about,” Nick stuttered. He was truly flustered, and Zane realized that it didn’t suit him.
“I thought maybe it would help me understand you two better. Understand him better. I’m sorry, I….” Zane shrugged. He had worried about asking Ty the details, but he hadn’t even considered the effect the mention of it would have on Nick. He realized that it had been cruel to bring it up. Despite wanting to hate this man, Zane found that he didn’t.
Zane’s words hung in the air between them. Zane wasn’t sure if Nick would give him details. Zane wasn’t sure that he wanted details, but he felt like it was something that had forged Ty into who he was now.
Nick returned to the counter, watching Zane, looking like a man with something heavy on his conscience. It was another look that didn’t suit him, and Zane frowned as a shadow crossed Nick’s face in the weak light.
“We were in captivity for over three weeks,” he told Zane without being prompted again. “Twenty-three days, nine hours, and fifty-one minutes.”
“Jesus,” Zane whispered.
“We were captured when our Chinook was taken down by an improvised rocket-assisted mortar. We’re not really sure how it happened; one minute we were in the transport, the next we were both waking up in a cell. The investigators said that the five us who were in the middle of the helo were thrown. He and I were the only two taken. They think it was because we were further from the wreckage. I don’t know. We were detained, questioned, and tortured for information.”
Zane shook his head. It was worse than he had imagined. He had guessed months ago that something had happened while Ty was in Afghanistan. Little clues had dropped over time, and Zane had collected them: Ty’s incessant nightmares and nocturnal muttering. Fear of small, dark, enclosed spaces. Hating being restrained or even forced to sit still for long. Recognition of interrogation tools and techniques. The POW sticker on the Bronco. The words Zane had overheard when Ty had spoken to Nick. And then Nick had confirmed it.
But when Nick laid out the details, it was so much worse than Zane had feared. Almost three weeks in captivity, being drilled for answers and tortured.
Nick gave him a moment to let the reality sink in and possibly to give him a chance to stop the narrative. Then he continued. “Ty kept pissing them off by speaking in different accents every time they questioned him.” He laughed. It was a bitter, thin sound. “He spent a whole day pretending he was Russian and telling them they were doing it wrong.”
Zane couldn’t help but smile. That sounded so much like the man Zane knew. Even in the midst of an ordeal like that, he was still Ty.
“They kept us together in a cell that wasn’t big enough for either of us to stretch out in. But we had each other, kept each other sane. When they’d come and drag Ty out, leave me there alone, that was the lowest I’d get. They could torture me all they wanted, do whatever they wanted to me. But sitting in that cell alone, wondering if he was coming back… those times are where my nightmares go.” Nick swallowed hard and looked away, his green eyes glistening as he tried to force the emotions back so he could continue. It affected Zane as well, and his chest already hurt in sympathy.
“Finally they started getting desperate. They realized that we were drawing strength from each other. Instead of separating us, though, they tried to drive a wedge between us. They’d take us out together, make us do the work. If we didn’t hit hard enough, we had to hit again. If we didn’t cut deep enough, we had to cut again. I don’t know how long it really was, but we estimated it was about a week that we spent torturing each other, beating the shit out of each other at gunpoint.”
Zane let his eyes fall closed. He had taken enough of Ty’s punches in the past to know how bad that must have gotten. He and Nick both must have been beaten to a pulp.
“But it didn’t work,” Nick murmured triumphantly. “They wanted us to resent each other, turn on each other. It just made us stronger, more determined to live through it together and escape. I don’t think they really knew what to do with us. We wouldn’t crack, we wouldn’t die, they weren’t willing to execute us. Ty wouldn’t shut up.”
His eyes began to peer off into a distance only he could see. Zane watched him, apprehension and nerves swamping him. He could sense that Nick hadn’t reached the worst part yet.
“Then they came up with something that would work.” He looked up at Zane, his hard eyes coming back into focus, bright with anger and memory. “One day they strapped Ty down to this table. I could hear the noise from my cell, and I knew from the way he was fighting, he thought he was going to die.”
The thought hit Zane hard, and he closed his eyes, wondering if he should ask Nick to stop. But morbid curiosity got the better of him, and he forced himself to open his eyes again.
“When they got him tied down, they brought me in there with him. They had him bent over the table, a rope over his back to hold him down. His hands were handcuffed behind him. They put cuffs on me, and I thought for sure they were going to make me cut him open.” Nick shook his head, raising his chin and glancing at the ceiling. “Then they told me I could either tell them what I knew or I could f**k him on that table with a gun to both our heads. And if I didn’t do it, they’d do it for me.”
Zane stopped breathing as he stared at Nick, suddenly frightened out of his mind. He’d expected to hear about torture, but not that. Was that what had happened to Ty to make him hate being held down?
Nick sat silent, eyes on the window, fingers trembling on his glass as he recounted what had to be one of the most terrifying, difficult experiences in his life. In anyone’s life. Zane dimly remembered that Ty told him once that they shouldn’t compare wounds. Now it made terrible, crystal clear sense. He felt sick.