Page 200 of Alessio

It only made shit worse.

“Did you ask for it to stop?” Dare asked.

Alessio watched the screens, another hallway … the rooms were coming faster now. Soon, Corrado wouldn’t know what daylight was for a long fucking time.

“Not until the third round in the tank room,” Alessio said, scratching at the side of his arm because that memory made him anxious as fuck, and he knew better than to show it. That’s what training had taught him—he didn’t deal with any of that in the same way anymore. Fear, panic … it was all secondary to everything else, now. “I couldn’t find the pocket to breathe, the water kept coming in my mouth, and—”

Dare made a dark noise.

“Sorry,” Alessio muttered.

“It’s what you wanted, no?”

“It was.”

Ten feet away, he watched Dare nod at the screens.

“And it’s what they want, too, Les. You’ll have to remember that for the next little while.”

“Where is the other one—Chris?”

“In his room, fine. That’s why we put them on opposite ends of the complex for living quarters. If we put them in the same corridor, it was likely one would panic and do something outlandish when the other was removed from their room. A risk Cree didn’t want to take, of course. It’ll be only once Corrado is situated—we knew he would be the more difficult one at first—that we’ll begin phase one for the other twin. Rotational trips between the rooms for them, of course. Instead of long spreads in each like we typically do. The one, he’s going to need a break in-between the tank.”

“Christopher, you mean.”

“Scared of water, yeah.”

“But even if he asks for it to stop—”

“We can’t stop it once it begins, that isn’t how training works.”

“What if he reacts really badly to the tank?” Alessio asked.

Dare chuckled dryly. “The best way to deal with a fear is head-on.”

“Except it’s more than a fear. Everybody is scared of things like the dark when it’s been too long, or of the unknown for something like the tank. But that might not be the same.”

“Then, he will break sooner than his twin because of it, won’t he? A healthy mind processes things like anxiety and fear, or pain and discomfort in a completely different way than a broken one does, Les. And so, we need them broken before we can begin to rebuild. You know this.”

“I guess.”

“You don’t like it, though,” Dare replied.

“Not this time.”

“Hmm.”

On the screens, a battered Corrado had finally made it to the basement. The team stood outside of the two large, metal doors on either side of them that would lead into the dark room, or the tank room.

“They’re about to begin,” Dare said. “You should probably leave.”

Alessio didn’t move.

“I think I better stay, actually.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Safely behind one-way glass, Alessio watched the scene that seemed surreal happening beyond cement walls. The light from the hallway in the complex’s basement allowed him the ability to see inside the tank room, but no one in there could see him.