My leg was throbbing.
It took me a while to realise this meant I was awake.
I was lying down, face-up, on what felt like a mattress. My leg was talking loudly in the language of throb - one I've never been too fluent in - and I had a few other aches and pains here and there that seemed to be talking back to it.
I tried moving my limbs, ever so slightly. Right arm, no go. Same with the left. Neither leg was moving. I figured the bindings over my ankles and wrists were playing a large part in that. I tried taking a deep breath, and remembered the hard way that I'd taken a couple of bullets on my vest back when I was mobile.
Oh, this was not good.
I tried to think how I got wherever the hell it was I was. I seemed to recall seeing a Trandoshan, but that may have been the endorphins showing me something pre - well, something bloody ugly to keep my mind off my leg. And lying here, immobile, with my eyes closed, I almost wished they'd do it again.
There was nothing else for it - I opened my eyes, hoping the story of the last few hours of my life would be helpfully written on the ceiling. Maybe it was, but if anyone had written it there it was in the exact shade of the metal they'd used to make the ceiling. I couldn't make out any light source directly above me, and I quickly discovered my head was strapped to the mattress as well.
I shifted slightly, discovering a binding around my waist, and I realised by the way bits of me pinched other bits of me that I didn't have any clothes on. That discovery immediately put waking up tied to a mattress in a whole new light, and I quickly realised that things could definitely be worse.
I had another peruse of the ceiling, and noticed that it had the odd sheen I'd come to associate with durasteel. So it looked like I was in a GFFA holding cell of some sort. Which was good, because chances were I hadn't been captured by the French. On the downside, of course, I didn't know of any GFFA people who'd have an interest in binding me to a mattress - and Bracca doesn't count. She would've asked, at least.
"Glad you could join us, Mr. Nolan."
The voice came from somewhere near the ceiling, so I figured it was a loudspeaker, rather than someone hovering there. Stranger things had happened, of course, and I wasn't precisely in a position to look. But whoever this was, they knew my name. They didn't call me Captain, though... either I'd been fired, or these people weren't in with the NRI.
"My secretary had a hell of a time writing you in," I managed to croak out. So on top of all my other troubles, I was thirsty and sounded like a strangled toad. My day wasn't getting any better.
The floating voice chuckled. "Most droll. Tell me, Mr. Nolan - do you know where you are?" I was sure, now - I didn't know this voice. Entire vistas of unpleasant possibilities opened up before me.
"Somewhere uncomfortable?" I didn't know what procedure was when talking to captors, but I've never liked it when people decide to string out the fact they know something I don't. So whatever the manuals say, I was getting impatient, and I think I had the right to be more than a little grumpy. "No, I don't know where I am. Are you going to tell me? How about why I'm here?"
The voice chuckled again - I was beginning to loathe that chuckle - and replied, "I think not. As to why you're here, think of this as a business trip."
"I deal in craftworks," I said, figuring it was safe enough to invoke available Terran information. "I don't think this fits the job description. Maybe you got your files scrambled when looking for an escort service."
I swear, if I ever got my hands on this guy, I was going to throttle him till he could chuckle no more. "Come now, Mr. Nolan. We both know your dealings extend off this backwater of a planet. You're here because we want you to be here." Even more than stringing out the fact they know something I don't - telling me things I can figure out on my own with very little effort.
"What, you want me to spill trade secrets or something? I don't handle that end of the business."
"You're not here because of what you know, Mr. Nolan." Alleluia. He didn't chuckle this time. Now he was acting the hard-edged businessman. I wondered whether I should act impressed, but decided against it. "You're here because of who you are. Of course, if you have anything to tell us..."
"What I'd like to tell you is to stop fartarsing around, give me some clothes, let me go and piss off, but I don't think it'd do much good."
That bloody chuckle again. Then pain.
I could always say the pain was indescribable, but that's just a cop-out. So here goes.
Imagine finding every pain receptor in your body. Then, get a pair of pliers, and stretch each nerve out to a minimum length of three metres.
Now take a wanna-be death metal guitarist. Make sure he's tone-deaf. Give him a sandpaper plectrum. Get him revved up with some Motley Crue. Show him your stretched-out nerves, and ask him to show you he's the next Andrew WK or something.
Have him plug your nerves into an amplifier. Then let him rip on 'Party Till You Die Screaming With Sharp Things In Your Head'. While he's showing off his musical genius, throw yourself into a pit filled with ravenous Thorned Biting Monkeys, all while watching 'Titanic'.
I never realised I had so many pain centres. There were a few that I'm sure were saving themselves up for my old age that were twanging now, in places I didn't realise that had never been sore before. The fact I didn't cry out isn't something I'll remember with macho pride - the simple truth is, all my muscles locked up and I just stopped breathing altogether, frozen with my eyes bulging out of my head.
And then, the pain stopped.
Click, just like that. Nothing residual, just the aches and pains I'd had beforehand. Binary.
"You're right. It wouldn't." And then, to make the torture more complete, he chuckled again. "That was the lowest setting on the nerve inductors you have strapping you to the bed. You would be wise not to antagonise me, Mr. Nolan."
I bit back a reply that would presumably do just that, and did a quick bit of thinking. "If you wanted Nick, why didn't you just go after him?"
"I have no need to give you answers, Mr. Nolan." And no need of mine, it looked like. So the only reason he was talking to me was to massage his ego. A big ego it must be, if he needs to talk to a naked guy strapped to a bed to make him feel better. "I do, however, need you to record a message for me. You will be collected shortly."
It could be worse. I could be abridged.
The door whirred open.
At about the same time, the bindings clicked open and retracted into the bed. I sat up, slowly, and looked toward the doorway.
Someone stood in the doorway pointing at me. The someone was female by her clothing, which tended just a little too much towards the tight black leather look, and Devaronian by the horns emerging from her forehead. After those realisations, it took me a moment to realise that what she was pointing at me was a blaster. Once she had my attention - pointing a blaster at someone tends to get that - she tossed something at my feet. "Put those on."
I'd never read any manuals on rushing someone who's armed while you're not, but I knew one thing. If there was such a manual, they'd have a diagram of this setup, and underneath it, in big letters, they'd have written, "DO WHAT THE PERSON WITH THE GUN SAYS." So I did.
I was hoping for some clothes, but instead it was a clam-shell-shaped device, some forty centimetres across. A pair of tubes linked both shells, and one end had a pair of indentations that would form holes when the shell closed. I looked up at Ms. Discipline, and asked, "How do I put them on?"
"Stick your hands in them. Make sure it won't cut off your wrists when it shuts." Her voice was a pleasant alto, but her blaster made sure that it was the only pleasant thing about her. I complied, and it snapped shut, trapping my hands inside. It was only then I realised I should have scratched my nose before donning whatever-it-was.
"Do I get any clothes?" I asked as I stood. I then stopped to wince as blood rushed through my leg, making it scream something in throb. As it subsided, I did a quick visual damage check on myself, and apart from a couple of huge, purple bruises on my chest and the bacta patch on my leg, I appeared to be all right.
"You get what we give you," Ms. Discipline replied. "Nothing else."
"I'd be a bit more comfortable with something to wear."
She almost smiled at me, but it wasn't a friendly expression, not with all those fangs. "What's the matter? Afraid you'll make me horny?"
The possibility hadn't actually crossed my mind, but now it did, I realised that, yes, I was afraid. It may have showed on my face, because she gave a throaty, nasty chuckle and a feral grin. "Come on," she said, waggling her blaster and stepping backwards out the door. "You've got a job to do."
I nodded, held the clamshell to protect what little modesty I had left and began to walk out the door, wondering what I should be doing. I had taken a few steps, when I heard a voice and I stumbled.
"A prisoner's first duty is to escape."
That, in itself, would not have been enough to make me stumble. But this voice wasn't coming over the speaker, or from out of the corridor.
It was coming from inside my head.