Chapter 1: Secrets

"What is it? What do you want from me?" I yelled as the Man stood over me with a bucket of water. I was yelling and screaming for my life, over some stupid mistake I made a month ago.

"You know what we want from you!" The Man yelled, tipping bucket over my head. The rag duct-taped over my face got dampened and I had the sensation I was drowning. I would've taken it off, but my hands and legs were tied up to the board.

"Alright! Alright!" I yelled, the rag muffling my voice. "I'll tell you, just take the rag off my face!"

The Man didn't. Instead, he poured more water onto my face. "Zakroi svoi rot, prezhde chem ya shchelyu gorlo."

I did not understand what the Man had said, but I understood one word he said in Russian: Prodolzhit, which meant continue. And he said that word to me now, wanting me to tell him about what happened on that night of the mistake I had made.

"It was a night in February. I was positioned in a remote part of Russia. A man by the name of Nikolai asked me if I knew anything about Operation Black Hawks. I said no and he handed me confidential files, and I read them, and found out that you were trying to-" I was cut out off when the Man poured more water on me.

He grabbed be by my neck and yelled, "Now you listen to me and you listen to me good! If you say one word I will ya shchel yu gorlo vo sne!"

The Man punched me in my jaw, making it bleed. I swallowed some of my blood, but I was used to the taste of it. My right-hand man had died during the war by our nemesis. I made sure he died slowly.

When I was battling with Nikolai, it was the last battle I was in before I was being water boarded. I was in about nine or ten before this whole thing. And each one, I thought for sure I was going to die. The worst-case scenario was when tear gas was thrown through a clear class and the Russians shot at us. But we ran to cover into a cave and recovered.

"Alright...I'll tell you…"