It was easy to lie there and not move; his head appreciated it, but he rolled over anyway. Time to wake up and find out how bad things were.

“Mike. Mike, are you okay?”

There was something soft under him, a mattress? He didn’t want to open his eyes to check. The pain in his head was manageable if he just laid there and did nothing. If only.

“Mike?”

Her hand rested on his arm.

“Yeah.” A cough escaped his mouth, causing him to gasp, his face screwed up so much for manageable. He put out a hand, the other pushing off the bed. “Help me up.”

He bit his lower lip as she lifted him upright. His eyes opened to slits, enough to see Julia with a worried look on a knee before him. There were two beds in the narrow room, the one he was on and another behind Julia.

Dry mouthed his tongue searched for moisture but only found a dry film on his teeth. Next, he cleared his throat and swallowed three times before he could croak out a few words. “How are you doing?”

“I got the wind knocked out of me and a knot on the back of my head. I was unconscious for a while." Her mouth curved into a dull smile. "But I'm feeling pretty good considering.”

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“Hmm.” He put his elbows on his knees and dropped his head. He wasn’t clicking at a hundred percent yet. “I could use a couple of aspirin right about now.”

Julia reached over to the side. “Here.” She handed him a couple of pills and a cup of water.

He scrutinized the pills and water cup in his hands. They didn’t process. How? He closed his eyes and took them anyway. They looked legit; if they weren’t, they were probably the least of his problems. Hotak didn’t seem the type to slip in some fake pills or put something in a water bottle before the torture began. They probably wanted their subjects as coherent as possible at the start anyway.

More water would have been nice, but the small cup got the pills down his dry throat. “Apparently, I’ve missed something.” He sat up and studied Julia. He couldn’t see the bump on her head, but she looked a hell of a lot better than he felt.

A cheap, thin mattress with dirty white sheets, a pillow with no case, and a brown wool blanket on a metal frame, as mountain hideout prisons go, this seemed pretty polite. Across from him was another bed similarly outfitted. To his left was a door with no inside doorknob. To his right was an Afghani woman sitting on one of two red plastic chairs, a red plastic table between them.

She was barefoot, wearing green hospital scrubs. What looked like blood had dried in clumps in her dark, long hair. Purple and yellow bruises covered parts of her face and the skin of her arms. Green eyes stared back at him. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but clearly, she was sizing him up.

“That’s Seeta,” Julia said of the other woman.

“Uhh.” He put his head back in his hands, willing the medicine to work faster. “Hello, Seeta,” he said through his palms.

“Hello, Mike.” She spoke with an almost perfect American accent.

He leaned back against the wall, eyes shut. “So, is someone going to tell me what’s happening.”