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Irina groggigly awoke to utter blackness. Was she blinded from the repeated blows to her head? She moved her hand to touch her throbbing skull, but found herself unable -- she realized that her arms were bound above her head with what felt like metal cuffs, and her feet were not touching the ground.
It was cold and she felt a draft on her skin. Irina realized that, sometime during her unconsciousness, she had been stripped naked -- yet again. Was that the third time in her short ordeal? Hopefully nobody did anything... improper... to her while she was unconscious.
As Irina returned to full consciousness, she realized that there was nothing wrong with her sight; she was blindfolded. Because of the totally enveloping darkness, she suspected that the room was dark, but she couldn't be sure.
"Hello?" Irina called out to the darkness. Utter silence. This didn't seem to be an interrogation -- they were interested only in punishing her for what she did. She dreaded whatever they might have had in store for her.
Irina hung, suspended by her arms, for what seemed like hours. Maybe days. She tried counting seconds, but kept losing track. She was getting hungry and thirsty. The manacles were really digging into her wrists and her arms grew sore. How long were they going to keep her here? Were they going to hang her there until she died? She was getting really cold, but there was little she could do besides rub her legs together to generate a little heat.
Then, with absolutely no warning, she heard a shrill creaking noise coming from the ceiling. Moments later, she was sprayed with jets of water from above. It wasn't warm by any stretch of the imagination -- rather, it felt as cold as a glass of ice water.
Irina shrieked and twisted, trying to escape the jets of water, but it was hopeless. Water was pouring down on her no matter how far she tried to swing around in her restraints, freezing her thoroughly. Irina tried pulling her legs up against her bare belly to hold in a little warmth, but found that she didn't have the strength to do it for more than a few minutes at a time.
"Please stop! I'm begging you!" Irina, on the verge of tears, cried out to the darkness. Much to her surprise, the jets of water shortly stopped. Shivering furiously in her restraints, Irina shouted thanks to anyone who might have been listening.
Her thanks were short-lived. Not a minute later, a mechanical whirring started up and Irina felt herself blasted on all sides with supercooled air. They weren't trying to dry her -- they were freezing her!
"Help... help!" Irina cried. She was now shivering violently by now, almost to the part of convulsions. "I... I didn't mean to do anything! Please, I'll talk, I swear!" Her words went unanswered. The freezing air continued to blast her. Irina's teeth were chattering furiously as she continued to shake against her control. Any attempts at keeping warm were entirely futile. She couldn't escape the cold.
The mere feeling of cold was followed with a searing pain. It started in the tips of her fingers and toes, but slowly, almost imperceptively, crept towards her hands and feet and up her arms and legs. Irina was wailing and sobbing, pleading periodically for the pain to end.
"Just kill me, just kill me!" she cried, flailing continually against the restraints. "Make it stop!" As time went on, she found resistance against her bonds became harder and harder. Her metabolism was slowing, sapping her strength and her energy. She was eventually reduced to a mild twitch and chattering of her teeth as time wore on.
After the excrutiating pain wore on for what seemed like hours -- even though it was well under one hour -- Irina's consciousness started to fade and she found herself just... falling asleep.
---
"Well, Irina, you have our modern medical advances to thank for your continued existence," a voice boomed. Irina opened her eyes drowsily. Still fully nude, she was almost entirely submerged in a warm bath. Her wrists and ankles were restrained to rails on either side of the tub with restraints long enough to allow her limbs to remain fully underwater, where she wanted to remain. She noticed that an intravenous needle was in her hand, pumping something into her system. Several sensors were stuck to her arms, legs, and torso.
"It looks like you pissed someone off real good," said the man. He was some sort of army officer, standing above the tub and looking at her with disdain. "Their treatment induced stage three hypothermia -- you were clinically dead for a short period of time. Were it not for the miracles of modern medicine, you'd be gone for good."
Irina was too exhausted to fully understand the magnitude of her situation. She noticed that the ends of her limbs were a pale blue -- she was still in some degree of, she surmised. All she knew was that she didn't want to get out of the warm bath.
"We don't want to kill you just yet, of course," the officer continued. "You really screwed us over with your earlier 'confession', and this time we're going to get a real confession out of you, believe me. It's just a matter of how much discomfort you want to experience."
The officer dropped a single ice cube into the warm bath, right between Irina's legs. He laughed as it melted away.
"Do you understand me?" the officer said with a smirk.
Irina, too weak to talk, nodded weakly. A single tear ran down her cheek.
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