"Wake up!" Came the sharp feminine voice belonging to Clarissa. John's eyes snapped open almost immediately as his new best friend pushed a small button that sent ninety volts of pure electric caffeine through John's system. The shock was brief, small, and only intended to cause significant discomfort; a job that the buzzerbox did quite nicely. Though his eyes were now open, John could see only blurred white streaks with intermittent smudges across his vision. He reasoned that his forehead was still bleeding from the minute cuts his previous "best friend" had left him. A grunt signaled that John was awake and aware.
"Did I give you permission to sleep?" The question was obviously rhetorical but John couldn't resist the chance to be a wiseass.
"No," John responded curtly. One of the new rules he lived by was that he could not talk unless giving up information on the Spider or answering a question.
Clarissa looked like she was ready to push the buzzerbox and send another jolt though her captive but she could not bring herself to break her own rules.
John had figured out precious little about his the fourth member of the crew that had blown up his rental car in Zurich and taken him captive. The first member of the crew known only as "The Doctor" was the man responsible for keeping John alive after the accident. John had heard nothing more about the good doctor in between the rotations of his observers. The second member went by the name Pattrik Vashenfeldt and seemed to be the man in charge. John always heard Pattrik referred to by his first name and had not come to see John since his initial visit. Clarissa Ekmes was the third member of the team and by far the one that John hated the most at this point in time. She lives a rigid set of rules and to call her a control freak would have been an understatement; John knew this only because Clarissa had told him all the rules he needed to know and the consequences of breaking them. The fourth member of the team was known to John only as Oscar. John only knew that Oscar enjoyed inflicting pain and disliked talking. Of the four, he disliked Oscar the most because Oscar meant more pain whereas Clarissa meant that the group needed to know something.
Another surge of electricity traveled through John's system and disrupted him from his thoughts. The ringing in his ears nearly muffled the shouts Clarissa was letting forth from her lightly scarred face. "WHO WAS OR IS THE SPIDER?" Clarissa held the switch for the buzzerbox at the ready in front of John's face, a sign that she was sure to shock him again if he didn't answer.
He had at some point in the last day considered lying to his interrogators but discovered that lying brought Oscar and Oscar brought excruciating pain. John did not know exactly how his new family could tell when he was lying; however, not knowing did little to change the fact the he had no option but to be truthful, or to be silent.
"I told you already--" John delivered as he was interrupted by a hacking cough, "I don't know anything about the Spider." He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth in preparation for the buzzerbox but felt nothing. When he opened his eyes Clarissa was gone from his vision and a soft clicking noise caught his attention. It was a sound John did not know or recognize.
Just as curiosity was beginning to seize him a larger burst of current shot through his system. Right before he clenched his eyes closed he rationalized that the clicking sound controlled the amount of current produced by the buzzerbox. John's muscles spasmed and convulsed but found little room for movement in the chair he was still tied to. It seemed like ages that the current ran through him even though he knew it was most likely only mere seconds.
Deep in the background of his mind he could hear Clarissa yelling and shouting at him. Closer to the surface he knew his body felt pain from the electricity that was now randomly pulsing through his system, but none of this would help Clarissa get her answers. No amount of screaming or electricity would wake John from his semi-comatose state.
Though he did not know it he was the first person to break one of Ekmes' rules and live.
With a sigh of frustration, Clarissa Ekmes turned off the buzzerbox and knocked on the door to John's room. It opened, then closed behind her, and John was finally alone and allowed to sleep.
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