Author's Note: More chapters to follow.

Warning: Graphic violence, strong language, sexual assault.

"You gotta pull me out of here, Boss."

"We are; we're working on it."

That was the last NCIS heard of DiNozzo.

Begging wasn't helping, but he did it anyway because he didn't know what else to do.

They'd smelled bacon. Somehow. Tony couldn't pinpoint exactly when things went pear-shaped, but that last transmission to his boss and handler spoke of what might happen, and what ultimately did happen.

His options quickly narrowed to a pinprick soon after they realized DiNozzo knew nothing of real, applicable importance to them. And the violence and vitriol was only exacerbated by the revelation that DiNozzo had been specifically sent to become one of them, to infiltrate them, to act and play as if he belonged.

Tony wasn't just some dirty pig looking to get up on the take. He was an undercover pig tasked to destroy them. That was the worst kind, and they made him know it and feel it.

So he begged and begged, voice breaking from the strain of another night - or was it day? - spent screaming in mindless pain.

In reality - a place in which DiNozzo did not fully exist at this juncture - begging was more reflex than conscious choice. When he begged, he could listen to his own voice, and in a way, his own voice reminded him that he was still alive, and that - even if actively fighting was wasted effort - at least he could keep asking for his life. He could keep asking for a shred of compassion brought about by their shared humanity. He could beg for it. Even though - and here came pesky reality again - he was more than likely to get screamed at, and receive another boot kick to the head, than any sort of mercy.

Before, when he thought he'd be swiftly saved from this hell within a few unpleasant hours, Tony challenged his tormentors. He laughed in their faces, even while drooling blood and reeling from their blows. He took his lumps with stubborn aplomb and came up with rude nicknames and inventive insults for every face he met. He could not be shaken, he thought. He'd take what they gave him, and he'd give it back, too. Two or threefold. Once Gibbs and the others came for him... He would be saved, just like it ought to be and just like it always was. Until that happened, he'd give these low-lives hell.

But that was then.

This was now.

Now, he hadn't the spirit left to fight anything off - fly or man alike - but still he managed to cling onto the prospect of escape with torn fingernails and the thin skin of his teeth. This was survival, or its distant relative. Forget bravery or grit or any sort of pride.

Forget rescue. Forget Gibbs.

He had to not get dead.

This would be a long haul. But shorter now as they'd stopped feeding him.

His options shrank to nothing.

The man sitting in interrogation is several pounds beyond merely fat. "I ain't saying nothing to nobody," he says. He's immense, hunched over and hulking in the straight-backed chair, clothes tight and stretched. "My damn dog bit me. That's all."

A sheriff's deputy had pulled him over for a broken taillight. A quick check with dispatch brought back a bench warrant for unpaid child support. Then there was the trip to the ER for the alleged dog bite wound.

Sitting across from him is a sallow-eyed detective. A bargain-rack suit drapes from his bony shoulders, and he's got more stress lines on his face than hairs on his head. He flips through the papers in front of him, a coffee ring stain on the first of them. Boredom presses in thick. He starts, "ER doc stated the wound isn't characteristic of a dog bite. Can you explain that?"

"Lawyer," the man responds, jowls quivering.

The detective leans back and looks toward the observation room as if to say, "well, that was fast."

The door opens. A worried face pokes through, saying, "Uh, detective? I think you're gonna want to hear this."

Biting the hand that fed him had been a mistake.

They kept him in some kind of a dog run in a windowless room. Small and cramped. Maybe four foot by six foot. The floor was a rubberized grate raised ten inches from the solid concrete below. The confinement went straight to his head, and when he could no longer tell the days apart, his behavior became less rational and a whole lot more feral.

"Wakey, wakey, Agent Dipshit," the fat one crooned, as he always did

And then, also as he always did, he opened the kennel door and cuffed Tony about the head while thrusting a bowl of dry, stale cereal at his face.

"Time for din din, Sparky!" The fat man laughed. "You gotta be hungry!"

But this time, instead of yelling vitriol or grabbing the bowl and throwing it at his captor's face, Tony did something different. He caught the man's beefy fingers between his teeth and ground down - hard. The bowl of cereal fell with a clatter, flakes spilling everywhere, as the Fat One screamed and tried to yank his hand away. Growling, Tony reached up to grab him around the throat, clearly using the shock value of the bite to his advantage. But the victory was short-lived.

A whole slew of goons showed up to take care of the situation. But the fight hadn't ended once the man's crushed digits had been laboriously pried from between Tony's teeth. He lunged at the closest man - the Lazy Eye one - but somebody else reacted quicker and slammed the cage door into Tony's face, briefly stunning him. Hands grabbed him roughly by the jaw and slammed his skull against the cinderblock wall once, twice, three times. He could not count how many times; things were spinning around wildly, and the next thing he knew, he was sprawled on his knees against the wall, breathing hard. He couldn't move. And even though his ears were ringing, he could hear arguing going on around him.

The feeling of bones cracking in his mouth lingered. He could feel it over and over again. And the taste of salty skin and, later, blood slid down his throat. The Fat One still whimpered nearby. Tony barked out a demented laugh even as he slid further down the wall. Something warm and wet dribbled past his ear.

Once the arguing stopped, Tony knew he was in for it. This would have been the perfect time for Gibbs to round that corner, gun held up and ready. Would have been perfect! He'd give up his ninth life to hear somebody call out, "Federal agents!" It didn't even need to be Gibbs. He'd take Ziva, too. He'd love to see Ziva and her assorted pocket knives! Even the McProbie, still green as grass as the kid sometimes was. He'd fall over in absolute relief if he saw McGee! Anybody!

They dragged him down the hallway, into a kitchen, and to a sink that Lazy Eye was joyfully filling with hot water. They smashed his face into two inches of it. The faucet kept pumping scalding water on the back of his head. He bucked and jostled, gagged and coughed as the sink continued to fill. He felt himself being pulled upright at intervals. He could focus on nothing else but sucking in air and hacking out water. It took two of them to hold him down, rough hands forcing his face into the stainless steel sink bottom. Each time they lifted him back out of the water, he wrenched his body around, still attempting to get away, but it was useless. They rammed his face back into the water. It sloshed out, landed on the floor, on the counter, all over everybody. But the faucet was kept on. When his knees began to give and his body began to loll, they hauled him out for the last time and tossed him to the floor.

Watery vomit dripped from his mouth after a hard gag. Breaths wheezed in and out. In an act of retribution, the Fat One stepped on his shaking hand, grinding it into the dirty floor with his heavy-soled work boot, all while smiling down at him.

"Oh God," Tony rasped, finally. "Please stop. Stop! Please!"

And so it began. More begging. The remaining notions of rescue left him here to suffer. Where the fuck was Gibbs? Where the fuck was anybody?

They'd left him here. They'd left him as bait for these wolves.

Lazy Eye and the others laughed at his body spread out and dripping on the cheap linoleum. They spit on him and faked kicks at his head. He shielded himself with trembling, stiff hands. The stomped-on hand felt like it was on fire. He could hardly move it.

"Stop," he half-sobbed.

With a hyena-grade laugh, one of them - aptly nicknamed "Crazy Bastard," Tony disjointedly remembered - unceremoniously unzipped and aimed a stream of urine at Tony's head. Despite the pressing exhaustion and his weakening hold on consciousness, Tony thrashed in disgust, attempting to drag himself away from the piss. But Crazy Bastard moved with him, laughing more frenetically than ever.

It was Rational Rita, the only woman of the group, who finally spoke up in Tony's defense. She seemed shy and reticent, and must have come late to the "party." She nudged Crazy Bastard on the shoulder. "Stop it. That's disgusting. I gotta cook in here." Surprisingly, he did.

"Oh shut up, you," Fat One dismissed the woman as he pressed his boot onto Tony's throat, in order to make him still. Thoroughly terrorized, Tony stared up at him, eyes bulging. The man smiled slowly, teeth crooked white nubs. "Pathetic," he barked, laughter in his voice. "Pathetic pig. Thinks he can bite like some dog."

Tony grabbed weakly at the boot that was making breathing rather difficult. The others laughed at his struggling.

"Fucking pig," the man went on. "Gonna beg for his sorry life." He pressed his foot down harder. Tony's mouth fell open in response, and he began to choke. His good uninjured hand gripped the man's jeans and tugged, weakly. "But we're gonna make him squeal."

Tony felt hands ripping at his pants. Cold air stung his thighs as they were ripped away. The Fat One had taken the boot off his throat, but now he was kneeling down and forcing Tony over onto his belly.

"Big brave pig is pissing hisself," Crazy Bastard sing-songed from nearby. "He's pissing hisself!"

"Bag it," Gibbs says to McGee, who's holding a bloody beer bottle in gloved hands.

"There was a struggle," Ziva muses. Her eyes rake over the scene. Her lips are stuck in a grim frown. The sink is half-filled with water polluted with hair and strings of frothy drool. The counter and the floor are wet. There are blood smears on the floor. The small room stinks of urine and fear.

Gibbs grits his teeth. "Yeah. There was a helluva struggle alright."

"You think he might've got away?" McGee asks. He's still crouched on the floor, hopeful eyes raised and stuck on the boss.

Gibbs doesn't know. How could he know? He stands there and looks around the room, hand scratching at the hairs on the back of his neck. McGee and Ziva both are looking at him now, waiting for some great insight to come forth. Gibbs has nothing for them, or for DiNozzo, wherever he is. "Let's keep doin' the scene," he says, "c'mon."

Later, they find the dog run.

He did squeal. It was an inhuman sort of scream. He fought as hard as he could. Crazy Bastard sat on his head, no doubt in an effort to quell his wild struggling. It ended up being a small mercy. The suffocation served as a distraction from what they were doing to him. It took him a long while to die.

Except he hadn't died.

He wished he was dead.

There was a radio on nearby. Despite the trauma - or because of it - the current song stuck to his brain, playing on repeat.

Sweet Caroline... Good times never seemed so good...

Took a while, but he finally stopped fighting. Exhaustion left him spent and numb.

And eventually, he stopped begging, too.

There's no moon tonight and the winding rural road is pitch black and deserted.

Gibbs almost runs over the dog. He swerves the car at the last moment, tires squealing in protest. McGee and Ziva hang on for dear life while Gibbs applies the brakes, bringing the vehicle to a hair-raising halt.

"What was that?" Gibbs asks, voice calm.

"Uh, think it was a dog, Boss," McGee says.

"I could see that much."

"A pit boar," Ziva suddenly adds. "I think it was a pit boar."

McGee makes a face and corrects her. "Pit bull, Ziva."

"Pit bull," Gibbs repeats in a mutter, even as he's reversing the car. "Said he had pit bulls."

The dog is still there, and they can see it clearly in the glow of the headlights. It has a stout body and dark fur with a single white mark on its chest. Not a wonder why Gibbs almost ran over it. Its tail wags fiercely.

"You think that-" McGee starts.

"I don't think, I know," Gibbs says. "This is it."

There's a dirt driveway to their right. No mailbox.

"This is it," he says again.

Tony woke to a warm tongue licking his neck. Awareness came slowly, and when he managed to open his eyes, he found himself eye-to-eye with one of the many pit bulls. He kept still, afraid that any move he made might set it off. But for right now, it seemed content licking at the blood that had dried to the side of his head and neck.

He felt woozy and miserable. His hand ached, his head ached, his ass ached. Everywhere ached. He realized he was half-naked and lying on the living room carpet, its pile long beaten down by general filth and dirty shoes. The TV was on, and the smell of baking chicken competed with the stench of urine and vomit that clung stubbornly to him. There were two other dogs in the room. They rested in separate crates and watched him silently. He closed his eyes.

This was the end. He was already past the end.

"Go on! Get out of here!" an unfamiliar voice scolded.

The licking stopped and the dog walked away, to the kitchen judging by the sound of claws against linoleum.

A foot nudged Tony's shoulder roughly. "I know you're not sleeping, Agent Dee-Nozzo."

Tony roused, body shifting with drunken lethargy. He struggled to look upward, though his eyes kept threatening to roll into the back of his skull.

The foot nudged him again. "Hey."

Tony jerked back into semi-lucidity. The disjointed black blur above him slowly took shape into a man, the face distantly familiar, but he couldn't place the voice. Body buzzing, Tony tried to speak, but when his mouth opened, all that came out was a garbled croak.

The man leaned down, something in his hand. Tony flinched at the stinging burn he couldn't locate. His uninjured hand rose up, batting away at nothing. "That's a good boy," the face hovering above him said. "A good boy." He felt a hand in his hair, stroking.

The room began to cave in and then spin around.

From a distance, he felt his body coughing and retching weakly, and he heard that song again.

Sweet Caroline… I believe they never could...

TBC