My OCs - Elias and Oliver - Live-Stream
content warning: torture, blood, fingore (ripping of fingernails, jamming pins under nails)
Oliver pushes a cart into the cell. “I know you miss your team, and I’m sure they miss you too.”
Elias lifted his head from the dingy mattress to see a mess of cables dangling down from the cart. Sitting on top of it all was a white box. A camera, Elias realized.
“Up,” Oliver ordered, gesturing for Elias to sit on the chair that he had set in the middle of the cell.
Elias scrambled to his feet despite the throbbing in his side. After the past several months spent in this hellhole, he knew better than to disobey Oliver in any way.
“Good boy,” Oliver patted Elias on the head. Elias barely managed not to recoil in disgust, knowing how much it would anger Oliver.
With great familiarity, Oliver zip-tied Elias’ hands together behind the chair. Same went with the feet, each ankled attached to a leg of the chair. Then, Oliver started setting up the video equipment.
Elias watched, almost detached from reality. For some reason, Oliver hadn’t come in to hurt him that much over the last week or so. Maybe he was preparing for this. Elias shivered at the thought. Who knows what he has in store.
The camera was set up, facing Elias. A red light was blinking, and it made Elias oddly queasy. “And now we wait,” Oliver said. “I’m sure your team will find the link very fast. Rumor has it that they are monitoring all our web communication.”
Oliver was right. In a couple of minutes, the computer beeped, signaling that a new viewer has joined the streaming room. Oliver circled behind the camera to check the screen. “Perfect! It seems like your team is online. Why don’t we check the comments to see what they have to say? Let’s see… ‘What are you doing,’” Oliver read off of the screen. “‘Let him go.’ Let’s start by greeting them first, Elias, what do you have to say to them?”
Elias looked at the camera and opened his mouth to say something, but came up empty on words.
“Tsk tsk, you’d think that our little prisoner here would have more to say after not seeing his team for months. Hopefully, the team is more talkative.” Oliver grabbed a pair of pliers off the table and brought it near Elias’ hand.
Maria slammed the table next to her as Simon typed frantically on their shared laptop. “Stop it,” he typed, “What do you want?”
On the live stream, they saw Oliver walk over to the display screen in response to a ping from their message. Calmly, he read it out loud for Elias to hear.
“What do I want? All I want is for Elias here to scream in pain, but my superiors… Well, I’m sure you know what they want.” Oliver grabbed Elias’ and again, making him tense in anticipation of the pain to come.
With his teeth gritted, Elias spoke for the first time. “Don’t do it,” he begged his team. “Don’t give it to them. Don’t do it for me, I can take this.”
Oliver smirked and gripped Elias’ pinky nail with the pliers. Looking directly into the camera, he twisted.
Maria turned her face from the screen as she heard Elias scream. It was short and strangled, obvious that Elias was trying to hold it in for the same of his team. Simon's hands were balled into tight fists on the table.
Oliver pulled the nail free of Elias’ finger with a smile of satisfaction and held it up to the camera. “The plutonium, where is it?”
“Maria,” Elias’ voice was rasped from the screams. “Don’t.”
Simon looked up at Maria, both of them shaking from anger. Maria pressed her lips into a thin line and shook her head.
“No reply?” Oliver said after waiting at the screen for a couple of minutes. “Very well then, we will continue.” Again, he latched the pliers firmly onto Elias’ nail. This time, before he started, he looked Elias straight in the eye and faked a pulling motion. This made Elias inhale sharply, while the team watching all flinched at the sharp movement. “So easy to scare,” He chuckled, “Let’s start for real now.”
This time Elias was unable to stay quiet. His shrill screams echoed through the room, made sharper by the audio equipment by the time it reached the team. Maria closed the distance between herself and the laptop in two long strides, pushing Simon aside to type a message herself.
“Ah! We’ve got a response.” Oliver gave Elias’ exposed nail bed a squeeze before checking the screen. “‘How do we know you’ll let him go if we give you what you want?’ Silly question,” Oliver walked back to Elias and picked up the pliers again. “You don’t. And besides, we have no intentions of letting him go. Elias here is quite eager to die after the hell he suffered through. Anything to make the pain end, right Elias? Tell them about it.”
“It’s not worth it, guys,” Elias managed to hold up a strong facade for his team. “Don’t give it to them. You can’t put the lives of millions at risk just for me.”
“Not your decision to make,” Oliver grabbed Elias’ hand again. “Team, what do you say? I can tell you I am enjoying Elias’ screams quite a bit, i don’t know about you.”
Maria closed her eyes and furrowed her brow as Elias’ screams carried over the live-stream. Simon had his hands balled into fist. Gabrielle took a step forward and approached Maria. “We need to do something,” she pleaded. “I know we can’t give them the plutonium, I’m not asking you to, but we can’t just watch Elias get,” She cut off abruptly, not wanting to say the word to acknowledge the cruel reality.
“I know!” Maria snapped. “Sorry, it’s just, we’re all really stressed about this. Simon? Can you trace the signal?”
Simon started tapping away on the keyboard before he even replied. “Yep, on it.”
“Can you still do it if we disconnect?” Maria asked.
“Hm, I’m not sure, let me check,” Simon pulled up the interface for tracing signals. “It’s a public broadcast, which means we can turn off the feed from our end, so that we are not watching it, but we would still be receiving the signals if he doesn’t end the feed. But he really only intends for us to watch it, so if we do disconnect, he might end it on his end.”
Maria paused. “We’ll take the risk. I can’t watch this any longer. Do it.”
“Ah!” Oliver exclaimed. “It seems like your team had disconnected. See? They don’t care about you, all they care about is there stupid little canister of plutonium. Well, if they’ve abandoned you, I’ll end the feed. I don’t intend on sharing your screams with anyone else.”
“Fuck!” Simon swore. “He ended the feed.”
Maria stayed silent, but she was berating herself in her head. It’s her fault. She should’ve been strong. If she wasn’t so soft and stayed on the feed Simon would’ve had time to track it. It was her fault that they had now lost their only clue to finding Elias. It was her fault that Elias was captured in the first place. She should’ve been the one to scout the mountain pass. It was her job, and she did it every time. Every time except that one day, that one day that there had been an ambush.
“Maria, stop blaming yourself,” Gabrielle laid a hand on Maria’s arm. “You were the one that made the decision, but we wouldn’t have let you if we disagreed. None of us could bear to watch him do that to Elias. It's not your fault.”
Simon stood up and walked away from the computer towards Maria. “We’ll find him, I promise.” A promise that he had no idea how to keep. “We won't stop trying.”
“Did you think that your team would try to save you?” Oliver stabbed a pin under his other nails that were still intact. “Did you really think they still cared about you?”
“They do, I know it.” Elias squeezed out through gritted teeth. “But you won’t get the plutonium. They’re trying to figure out where I am at this very moment. They’ll find me and they’ll come rescue me and they will make you pay for what you did.”
“Oh really?” Oliver talked but his hands did not slow. “Then why haven’t they come yet. Do you know how long you’ve been here?”
Elias shook his head. He had spent way too much time unconscious from all the beatings he took, there’s no way of telling how many days had passed in between each time he passed out and woke up. The last time that Oliver had told him about the date was when he was left outside to freeze. He shuddered at the memory. Back then, Oliver had said that he’d been captured for over two months. After that, the days that he had been conscious for counted almost another month.
Oliver stopped the torture and counted on his fingers, no doubt to draw out the process and torment Elias with anticipation. “We are two days short from a full four months. You’d think they’d have rescued you already if they really did care.”
No, they haven’t abandoned me, Elias tried to convince himself, but it was getting harder and harder with all of Oliver’s taunting. If his team didn’t care about him, then why had they watched the live-feed and begged Oliver to spare him? They can’t give up the plutonium, he knew, and he wouldn’t want them to. That’s why they left the feed. They couldn’t bear to watch Elias being tortured and not being able to do anything. Elias repeated the thought over and over in his head and Oliver continued to rip off the next fingernail.
“Well, I guess there’s no point in doing this anymore if they’re not here to see.” Oliver started gathering up the video equipment. “Get some rest, or don’t, but I think you’ll need it in preparation for tomorrow.” He didn’t have plans for what to do next yet, but he loved seeing his prisoner squirm, not knowing what’s in store.
