The air stank of rust, mildew, and something rotting beneath the floor grates. Moonlight slipped through shattered glass panels above, pooling across cracked tiles stained in old blood. Chains hung from meat hooks overhead, swaying slightly in the cold draft.
The man in the chair had been screaming for the past hour.
His voice was raw now. Barely more than whimpers between gulps of panic. One eye was already swollen shut. His hands were tied behind the steel frame with barbed wire. His breath rattled through broken teeth.
Valik stood in front of him, utterly still.
He wasn't wearing gloves. Blood painted his knuckles and dripped from the edge of a small utility knife he held loosely at his side. His black shirt was rolled to the elbows, exposing a forearm covered in faded burn scars and blade cuts—gifts from his time in Syria, in Chechnya, in places that didn't officially exist on any map.
He didn't blink as he spoke.
"You lied to me about the shipment," Valik said, voice steady as stone. "That was your first mistake."
The man tried to speak, but only a garbled cry came out.
Valik crouched to eye level, staring at him like a scientist observing a specimen under glass.
"You know the difference between pain and fear?" he whispered. "Fear makes people scream. Pain... real pain... it makes them silent. It makes them listen."
Pain didn't faze Valik. It fueled him.
I'd seen him take a bullet to the shoulder and continue moving like it was a mosquito bite. He once cauterized a knife wound on his own thigh with a heated gun barrel, grinning through gritted teeth. Not because he had to—but because he liked it. Valik welcomed pain like an old friend. And worse—he gave it back with interest.
He didn't just hurt people. He studied them. Broke them slowly. Efficiently. He knew where to cut, where to press, how to unravel a man's sanity thread by thread. There was a madness behind his eyes now—contained, focused, but there.
