They've jacked enough drugs into Tom's veins to stock a pharmacy.
But they've not done it properly. His body's rejected the increased dosage and he's vomited back a lot of the chemicals. As a result, the sedative is wearing off much quicker than before.
He's still groggy, but far more aware of things.
His throat is viciously sore. His stomach growls like a frightened dog. His muscles cramp and ache. Behind the bandage, it feels as though burning grit has been glued to his pupils and lids.
Apart from that, he's fine.
The thought almost makes him laugh. Fine. Just fine. No doubt only hours from being sacrificially murdered, but just fine. He puts his remarkable calmness down to the lingering effects of the sedative. A blessing in disguise.
Lying on his back has given him plenty of thinking time. The way he figures it, Lars Bale has worldwide followers who are ready to mark his execution with a spree of violence that would have Satan himself dancing with joy.
It's going to be bloody.
So spectacularly gruesome that Bale will no doubt become even more infamous in death than he is in life.
A black saint.
Tom hears a key turn in the lock.
Decision time.
Is he strong enough?
Can he afford to wait any longer?
Does he have a choice?
The door swings open.
Tom hears it clunk shut. Someone's playing it safe.
A brief pause.
The key goes in the lock from inside his room.
Click-click closed. They're not taking any chances.
He hears a man cough, clear his throat a couple of times. Now start walking.
Clit-clat, clit-clat.
A single series of footsteps. One man alone.
Tom's heart races. He must decide.
Clit-clat, clit-clat.
Four more steps.
The jailer is just two steps away from him. If he remembers correctly, it's one step forward and to the left of him.
Clit-clat.
Tom waits a beat. Hears a click of metal and glass next to him.
A spike of more sedatives in a steel bowl close by.
One more second and he'll be jabbed again.
Two hundred sit-ups a day for fifteen years finally counts for something.
Tom sits bolt upright.
His bandaged head smashes into something hard.
A dull moan of pain from in front of him. He's butted the man's face, he's sure of it.
Tom follows the noise. Falls to his left. Tumbles from the bed. One knee smashes on the floor, the other into the lower torso of whoever lies the other side of him.
His limbs feel like rubber and his hands are still in plastic restraints.
He launches another head butt.
Useless.
His skull crashes into the top of the jailer's chest.
A fist slams into Tom's temple. Adrenalin shoots through his body.
It's what he needs. It neutralises the sedative. His fingers tingle, his senses sharpen.
Another blow thuds into his ear, makes it ring like crazy.
Tom daren't kneel up, the guy will wriggle free and be gone.
He smashes his cuffed hands in an uppercut to where he guesses the guy's balls are.
Bingo! Air whooshes out of a mouth somewhere above him.
Tom powers more double-handed blows between his kidnapper's legs. Ruthless raw energy that leaves the guy creased up and choking for air. He's immobilised. But he's going to recover.
Kill him, Tom.
You know you have to.
You know you want to.
Tom hesitates.
The voices in his head make sense. Kill or be killed. But then demons always make sense, it's their stock in trade.
The injured jailer begins to stir. He's going to shout for help.
Tom instinctively follows the noise and leans his right forearm across the man's windpipe. If he was going to shout, he won't now. He kicks and bucks like a wild animal, but Tom presses down hard. A hundred and eighty pounds hard.
The kicking stops.
Tom shifts his arm and rolls off him. His head cracks the floor, but he knows he has no time to let the pain register or to draw breath. He lifts his cuffed hands. Gets his thumbs under the bandages across his face and pulls upwards. It's a real struggle to work them off. They rip at his mouth, snag and tear at his nose. Finally, they unravel like the skin of a cotton onion.
Tom still can't see.
White light blinds him. Pain worse than a punch. He shifts on to his side, angles his head away from the brightness and towards the floor.
Better.
He's not blind, just painfully sensitive to light.
The room is windowless. The burning light is from an overhead strip. So high he can't hear it buzz.
In less than a second Tom takes in the rest of the room.
Bare brick. Stone floors with cracked tiles. One heavy door with no window and just a single lock.
It looks like an old hospital ward.
Small and dingy. Musty. Mould on the bottom part of the room. Paint and plaster peeling from damp and cracked walls.
His sight is returning.
The jailer on the floor coughs for air and moves his legs.
Tom turns towards him. The guy's no giant, but he's well-built enough to have thought he could have injected the drug into Tom without help.
The sedative.
Tom grabs the needle from its steel bowl and jabs it straight into the prostrate man's neck. Squirts the whole chamber into his bloodstream.
Now he can relax.
The jailer's out for the count, and his body is a treasure chest – a belt, a Swiss Army knife – and the most valuable trinket of all, a cellphone.
He works the blade open and suffers a few close misses with his wrist veins as he saws through the plastic cuff ties. He rubs blood and feeling back into his wrists and grabs the cellphone. Quickly punches in Valentina's number.
No signal!
Damn!
He's going to have to leave the room. Make a run for it.
Tom wraps the man's belt around his waist and notices for the first time what they've dressed him in.
A sort of gown. Long. Sleeveless. Black.
A robe of some kind.
Now he gets it.
A sacrificial robe.
Today is the day. The day they plan to kill him.