Tyler and Carly interrogate Tara's informant, and Tyler takes desperate measures.
Part of [Way Over His Head / Tyler's story].
Also, this is for @amonthofwhump 12 Days of Whumpmas, Day 6 - "Stress Position" and "Too Late".
Content / warnings: BBU, Facility Whump, Whumper PoV, captivity, stress position, interrogation, drugging (in an interrogation), torture, light notes of medical whump, syringe, memory loss, protagonist making some drastic choices. Seriously. Tyler is not a hero.
The miracle box, Doctor Wood called the collection of vials and syringes in the case Carly had sent Tyler to pick up for the interrogation.
He knew some of the color coded ones, single purpose to induce pain, panic or pleasure.
"All our specialties", the Doc had said. "Don't mix and match though. However much Handler Thompson likes to play. Give it at least two hour before you change colours. Otherwise, the subject's mind gets temporarily..." She mimicked an explosion. "Fried."
Tyler had just nodded. He'd only ever used one of them - purple, the aphrodisiac - to prepare 238 for her owner in the final stages of her training. He lacked the fantasy of what they'd need that one for, when dealing with the pet lib activist and he refused to delve into it any further. Nor did he think about why he had volunteered for this. He could've just gone home. Slept through his hangover. Kept himself from making just another stupid decision in today's collection of stupid decisions. He could've erased that note he'd written the fridge. Went on with his life.
But no, here he was in WRU facility 002, openly carrying a box of drugs, suitable to erase a whole person.
Here he was, covertly carrying a recording phone, barely able to say what he was expecting to find, much less what he would do with it after.
Tyler felt sweat collect in his collar, single droplets running down his spine. Don't let her see, he told himself. Don't make yourself suspicious. Be your normal workplace self. Handler Parker. Doing his job.
He forced himself to unclench his jaw, relax his shoulders, and just walk behind Carly.
Facility 002's interrogation rooms were on the ground floor, just on the other side of the staff cafeteria. Tyler had never been to this wing of the building, he realized, as matching the pace of Carly's easy stroll. He'd expected storage rooms here, or garages, or something maintenance-related. He'd not expected barred cells that were even tinier than the rooms they kept the trainees in. He'd not expected rooms so obviously fitted with hooks and chains and torture implements.
It made sense, in a way.
What they did to the trainees in the main wings happened in clinically clean white rooms, with uniform layouts and precisely inventarised equipment. Well documented, perfectly designed. They had chaptered handbooks and detailed reports. Rules and regulations. It was horrifying, how easily he'd adapted to that framework.
And now, here, in the not-even-secret, not-even-in-the-basement, wing C, the sheer cover was stripped to expose what it really was WRU did. They were torturers. It was nothing but a business model.
They were torturers, and Handler Tyler Parker was one of them.
His knees threatened to give in, and he leaned to a wall, as casual as he could manage. Keys jingled, when Carly opened one of the doors. Keys, not the perfectly white key cards with the handlers' ID numbers on them. Of course. No paper trail. Not even in their systems.
"I'd love to tell you she's a piece of work," Carly said conversationally, while pushing the door open. "But she's not. She's a weak and whiny cry baby, broken as can be. No idea where she got the guts to stand up to us, but I guess it was a person, and I guess she'll give us some names soon, will you, kitten?"
All she got in return was a pained, high pitched whine.
The woman was strung up in the middle of the room, bent forward, with her arms fixated to a metal bar that pressed against her shoulders. A chain from the ceiling pulled the bar up, while another to the ground forced the woman to kneel.
It looked like something he'd be disciplined for, using on 238. Too dangerous, too much risk for lasting damage. But this one? She wasn't an investment. She wasn't here to be sold, she was here only to be broken.
A garbled scream escaped from her throat when Carly rested a gloved hand on the prisoner's strained shoulder. "Zsuzsanna. Susy, I recall, to your friends?"
"Please," she whimpered. "I know nothing! I never did anything. Please, let me go."
Without so much as a change of expression, Carly backhanded her, watching as she screamed and her body spasmed in pain. "Drop the drama, Suzy. We all know you'll cease to exist once this is done. Question is, how long will your pretty body make it. Do we go through the effort to find pet 002242, the one with your face on it, a nice loving home, or do we use her as a bait in Guard Dog training. Personally, I favour the latter. Poetic ending for a pet lib slut, being torn to pieces by the very pets you wanted to save." She chuckled to herself. "But. This is not about me. It's your call. Will you give us some names, some of those pet lib friends of yours, or will you seal 242's fate?"
"Please!" The woman looked up, dark eyes searching for Tyler, silently pleading. Her face was wet, covered in a thin film of tears and snot. She looked horrible. For a moment he wondered, if that was normal. If all involuntary acquisitions went through that. If their perfect, pretty 238 had been messily begging like that, too. He'd made the lying to himself so easy.
Tyler shook his head, folded his arms and straightened his back. His grey handler's uniform felt too tight around his neck. The weight of the phone in his pocket felt too heavy. The prisoner didn't notice, though. Tyler was tall and muscular, didn't need much effort to be intimidating.
"Too late," he said. He was talking to himself, more than her, and it felt horrible.
Her sob turned into a scream when Carly's baton cut through the air and landed on her ribs.
"Tyler, give me some of the yellow," she said smugly, before bringing down the baton again, calling forth another cry. "Let's spice this up. We don't have forever. I want to watch the game at four."
Tyler opened the kit with numb fingers, while Carly paused her beating long enough for letting the prisoner see the vials.
Natural team work. As if they did this every day. And, Tyler realized, he did. Him and Alan with 238. A demonstration of scary effic, their routines gripping into each other like matched dials.
"Yellow," Carly said, as she turned to watch Tyler draw up the syringe. "It's for pain, you know. After that, the tiniest brush of my fingers will hurt you, more than my baton could. I can caress you into agony." Her fingers lightly wandered over the woman's arm, and she whined under Carly's touch. "Please, I... I don't even know pet lib, I just... I just try and protect the kids in my shelter, please..."
"Already getting talkative, huh?" Carly's fingers ran over the woman's neck playfully, up, until she cupped her cheek. "How about we start with this journalist you've been talking to, then?"
The syringe almost snapped in Tyler's hand. No. No. Not Tara, not so soon.
"Journalist? I haven't... I don't know what you're talking about, I... She's..."
"Ty?" Carly prompted.
He stared into the kit. Colours mashed into a blur in front of his eyes. 'The journalist'. She couldn't. He... He couldn't.
"She's got... nothing to do with this, please, I... I don't..." He heard another whimper. Carly had wrapped her fingers around the prisoners neck, leaned in obscenely close, as she whispered something into her ear. None of them looked at him. None of them saw, how he snapped open another vial with shaking fingers.
Don't ever mix and match.
He hoped it'd be fast. He hoped it'd be okay.
"Come on." Carly grabbed the woman's hair and yanked her head to the side, other hand taking the syringe from Tyler and jabbing it into the woman's bared neck.
