by Greg Krojac
Four hours of this freezing temperature and three klaxon bursts to wake her up when she dropped off to sleep was tough but she managed to endure the severe discomfort. A new instructor, Simone, took over from Diego.
Simone adjusted the temperature within the cell to 45 degrees Celsius. It took a few minutes for the heat to really kick in but Caitlin soon became aware that she was now starting to perspire quite heavily. Earlier she had been feeling hungry but now she was starting to feel desperate for something to drink. She didn’t care what. It had never been her refreshment of choice but even a glass of cold water would be welcome now. She called out.
“May I have a glass of water, please? I’m dying of thirst in here.”
Simone looked at the bank of machines recording Caitlin’s bodily functions. She was certainly dehydrated but there was nothing to give any cause for concern. Caitlin was uncomfortable, but she was nowhere near dying. If there had been any cause for alarm a team of medics would have gone into the room and started the rescue process. There was no need to call for them yet.
Realising that no water was going to arrive, Caitlin tried to turn her attention to stimulating her mind again, but the heat in the room was beginning to become oppressive. She flopped back against the wall for a couple of minutes whilst she assessed the situation. She was hot – uncomfortably hot – but she also didn’t want to lose her clothing, like she had her shoes.
She peeled of her jump-suit, leaving her just wearing her bra and panties. That would solve the problem of the heat; to some extent anyway. This was how humans had made themselves more comfortable for centuries, by removing extraneous clothing. Her main problem was how to ensure that her jumpsuit didn’t disappear. If the cell temperature suddenly went cold she would need it again. She hit upon the idea of tying the sleeves to her wrists and the legs of the jumpsuit to her ankles, whilst she lay on the main body of the suit. It was a great idea but how was she going to tie the jumpsuit to her ankles and wrists? Another minute of thinking was called for.
She remembered that her bra was of the type where the straps could be removed so that she could still gain support whilst not spoiling the appearance of a strapless dress or top. She removed the straps and used them to fasten one leg of the jumpsuit and one sleeve of the jumpsuit to the nearest ankle and wrist. She looked ungainly, twisted up against the wall but Simone had to admire her ingenuity. Caitlin deserved a reward for that exhibition of inventiveness, so Simone let her sleep for ten minutes before sounding the klaxon.
Sleep deprivation was not causing Caitlin any major problem but her bladder was starting to make its presence felt. She ignored it for as long as she could, but after another five hours, during which she had managed to gain three ten minute bursts of sleep, she could bear the discomfort no longer. She didn’t care who, if anybody, was watching. She had to relieve herself. She shuffled over to the furthest corner from where she had been sitting and napping and contorted her body into a squatting position, facing against the wall. She hooked a finger around her panties at the crotch and pulled the material tight to the left to allow a free flow of urine. The relief was incredible. After emptying her bladder she returned to her regular corner.
The time was now 03:00 on Saturday 9th November and Caitlin had been subjected to this treatment for almost twenty-four hours, although she would have sworn on her grandmother’s grave that she had been in the cell for much longer.
Caitlin was taking one of the few naps that she was allowed to by Simone when four hours later she awoke to find herself feeling very moist. No, not moist. She was wet. She forced her eyes open and saw that she was laying in about six inches of water. She stood up and her worst fears were confirmed as the level of the water continued to rise rapidly. There was nothing in the room to climb onto. She was in a closed box that was filling with water. She unfastened the jumpsuit from its anchors on her ankle and wrist. She didn’t want anything to impede her ability to tread water; that was assuming that the water level wouldn’t fill the room completely. The water continued to fill the room until the water level reached five feet from the ceiling, when it stopped. Caitlin continued to tread water but the water showed no signs of retreating. After a while her legs were starting to tire, so she lay back in the water and allowed herself to float on her back, to give her legs a rest.
Diego had returned and saw this as his cue to increase the water level. Caitlin saw what was happening but managed to resist the instinct to panic and stayed floating on her back, trusting that One Life wouldn’t allow her to drown. When her nose was almost touching the ceiling the water stopped rising. She was left in this aquatic limbo for a couple of minutes, wondering what would happen next. Would the water rise again, causing her to drown? She didn’t know how much longer she could remain floating like this. Suddenly the water started rising again until she was completely submerged. The instinct to panic was very strong now but she still held onto the reasoning that One Life wouldn’t allow her to die. She decided to dive towards the floor of the room; if she was going to drown she’d rather it be nearer the floor, and therefore the door, than up by the ceiling.
That was Diego’s sign to evacuate the water, which left the room as if a large sluice had been opened. Caitlin lay on the floor looking like a drowned rat for a few seconds before staggering to her feet. She looked at the wall.
“I suppose you enjoyed that.”
A door opened in the wall to her right. Diego stood in the doorway.
“I don’t enjoy it as such. I just do my job.”
“Is that it then?”
“Not quite. What’s your name? What’s your date of birth?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“It’s a simple question. What’s your name?”
“Screw you.”
“What’s your date of birth?”
“Screw you again.”
“Congratulations. You’ve passed this part of the training.”
“Has it been three days?”
“No. It’s been about twenty-eight hours.”
“It feels like much longer.”
“It’s supposed to. I suggest you go have a shower and get some sleep. Proper sleep. No more klaxons, I promise.”
“One last question. Why the order to refuse to give my name and date of birth?”
“Ah, that.”
“Yes, that.”
“Well, it’s such an innocuous question, it seems so harmless a question that we are inclined to answer it instinctively. We wanted to make sure that you remembered that you weren’t supposed to answer the question. And you did remember, after not being allowed to sleep, being exposed to extremes of heat and cold, and nearly drowned.”
“OK. Towel please.”
Diego handed her the towel that he was draped over his arm.
“Sorry, I almost forgot I had it here. You’ll find a shower cubicle in room B2, just down the corridor.”
Caitlin started to towel herself dry.
“Are the others free yet?”
“One of the men bottled out, so he’s gone but the rest are still in their cells. I expect they’ll be out soon though.”
After such an ordeal, Caitlin still found the energy to smile.
“I’m guessing I passed then.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
09:16 Sunday 10 November 2069
The last day of training had finally arrived. The morning was occupied with a written and practical test of the lessons that had been learnt in the previous days. The afternoon was to be a final evaluation of the recruits’ combat skills.
At 2.30pm, the remaining recruits were taken by closed truck to an empty aircraft hangar on the far side of the complex. Upon disembarking, they could see that they were not the only people there; another empty truck was parked in the hangar. An officer stepped forward.
“Recruits. My name is Major Robert Scales. This final session is a combat session and in this session, you will be pitted against someone from another recruit company. Someone
you have not bonded with. Someone that you will feel no compunction about fighting. You are not friends with this person. The only thing that you have in common with this person is that you are both recruits.”
Caitlin was perfectly happy with this arrangement. She had a lot of pent up anger and stress to release and this would be an excellent way to do so.
“Recruits. You will go to a waiting room and you will wait there until your name is called. When you leave the room you will meet your adversary. There will be no crowd encouraging you. There will be only myself, Captain Michelle Boone, and a medical team.
Caitlin was unsure if she was glad or not that Michelle would be there. Hopefully, Michelle would be silently cheering her on and this would be an excellent chance to show her sister that she had overcome her ordeal at HMP666.
The waiting room was sparsely furnished, little more than basic furniture and uncomfortable looking chairs. One by one Caitlin’s fellow recruits left the room to face their opponents. She had no idea if they had won or lost their fights; nobody returned. Alone in the waiting room, she waited for her name to be called, for her opportunity to discharge some of her feelings of anger. The speaker on the wall called Caitlin’s name. She stood up, opening and closing her hands into and out of the shape of a fist, before leaving the room and walking over to face her opponent. She stared coldly at her adversary, her eyes boring into the woman’s skull.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I’m training to be a field operative, just like you.”
Caitlin had mixed feelings about facing her clone, Philippa, in a fight. She’d been able to forget about her doppelganger for the last few days but now she was brought back to reality with a resounding thud. The physical reminder of what she had gone through at that prison was standing there, right in front of her. Now she could exorcise her soul of some of the need for vengeance that had been gnawing at her guts ever since her rescue. Major Scales stepped forward.
“This is not a fight to the death. A dead recruit is of no use to us. However, otherwise, no punches should be pulled. Consider your opponent your enemy.”
That would be easy for Caitlin. She already considered Philippa an enemy. But Philippa had no axe to grind with Caitlin. She felt guilt and remorse about the part that she had played in Caitlin’s ordeal. She wished that she could turn the clock back but that was impossible. She knew that she would have to fight, but she didn’t want to hurt Caitlin any more than she had already done so.
Caitlin had no such qualms.
“The objective of this fight is to immobilise your enemy, to render her unable to continue the battle. You may use whatever force you consider to be necessary. But I repeat, you may not kill your opponent.”
Philippa had actually volunteered to be Caitlin’s opponent, a request that Michelle had initially been loath to endorse. She knew that Caitlin had not fully faced what had happened to her, that there was a lot of pent up emotion and anger inside her. Fighting Caitlin was a great risk. Michelle didn’t know how her sister would react. She questioned Philippa’s motives and was afraid that the clone would allow herself to be a human punching bag, as a sign of remorse for her involvement.
“Fighters, shake hands and start fighting.”
Philippa held out her hand but Caitlin ignored it and instead took a swing at her opponent’s head. The impact of fist against jaw caught Philippa unawares and she momentarily lost her balance, tasting a trickle of blood caused by the involuntarily biting of the inside of her left cheek when the blow landed. Instinct led Philippa to raise her other arm in defence and she was able to parry the follow-up punch that had been aimed at her right cheek.
Philippa took a couple of steps back in an attempt to regain her composure, anticipating that Caitlin would move forward expecting to land more punches. As Caitlin did as Philippa had silently predicted, Philippa loosened her stance and suddenly hooked her right foot around Caitlin’s weaker left ankle, bringing it quickly towards her so that Caitlin lost her balance and crashed to the floor. Philippa didn’t want to hurt Caitlin, but if she allowed Caitlin to beat her too easily the Major and Michelle would know that she wasn’t trying that hard to win the fight. It had to be convincing. She followed through and straddled Caitlin on the floor but applied only loose pressure, allowing Caitlin to shrug her off with the minimum of effort.
Both fighters were now back on their feet, squaring up to each other, deciding upon their next move. Caitlin made a darting movement towards Philippa, which was easily anticipated by her opponent and she returned to her original position.
To the casual observer the fight would have seemed bizarre, two identical women brawling, but all Caitlin could see was someone who had been an accessory to her suffering and who needed to be punished as hard as she was humanly able to punish her. Michelle almost flinched when the two women converged upon each other again and Caitlin drew her head back before unleashing a violent head-butt, breaking Philippa’s nose in the process.
The pain was almost unbearable but Philippa knew that it would serve no purpose to give in now. Caitlin was still full of pent up rage and that rage needed an outlet. She stepped back and put her hand to her nose – a bad move. Even the slightest touch caused searing pain to spread across Philippa’s face.
Caitlin sensed an opportunity to finish the fight and moved in for the kill, but Philippa was not as vulnerable as she looked and she sidestepped the advancing punches and landed two of her own; a straight right to Caitlin’s stomach swiftly followed by a right uppercut to her chin. Caitlin doubled over with the first blow and the second punch righted her again, causing her to stagger backwards. Adrenalin had kicked in for both fighters and Philippa couldn’t prevent herself from aiming another right punch at Caitlin’s left eye.
She suddenly remembered that her intention had been to sacrifice herself as part of Caitlin’s healing process as well as to punish herself for her part in Caitlin’s ordeal and the punch didn’t land with such force as had originally been intended, but land it did, and Philippa’s knuckles opened up a small cut just above Caitlin’s left eye. Blood trickled down from the wound and obscured Caitlin’s vision for a few seconds as it made its way into her left eye. She wiped her eye on the sleeve of her white jumpsuit, the crimson of the blood contrasting sharply against the stark white of her clothing.
Philippa’s wound was much worse than Caitlin’s and the front of her jumpsuit was now a mottled design of white and red. Philippa looked into Caitlin’s eyes and still could only see the red mist of anger and hate aimed towards her. This fight was not over yet.
Caitlin ran towards Philippa, yelling like a banshee, her arms raised and hands open with the intention of grasping her opponent’s throat but Philippa side-stepped her at the very last moment and Caitlin ran past her, tripping over her own feet and tumbling over onto the floor. She seemed to have forgotten the unarmed combat training that she had received earlier in the program and was fighting solely on instinct.
Philippa turned to face Caitlin again and saw her pick up a piece of abandoned pipe that had been left lying around. This put a different complexion on the fight; Caitlin now had a weapon.
Caitlin strode forcefully towards Philippa with an evil glint in her eye. Philippa suddenly realised that she was in real danger now. Had Caitlin forgotten that this wasn’t a fight to the death? She hoped not but was now starting to fear for her life. Philippa had been a Navy Seal in a previous life and could have taken out Caitlin in the blink of an eye, but she realised that to leave Caitlin in this state would do nothing to help her recover from the post-traumatic stress that she was so obviously suffering from. She had to keep fighting. She had to give Caitlin the chance to exorcise her demons. She had no desire to be a martyr, but she felt an obligation to draw the fight out long enough for Caitlin to benefit from it.
Suddenly Caitlin dropped onto one knee and the metal pipe struck the back of Philippa’s knee with such force that she could do nothing to prevent her leg from
buckling under her, making her drop to the floor in agony. As she hit the ground Caitlin jarred her knee into Philippa’s throat, causing her to splutter as she tried to breathe. Philippa looked up and could see the end of the pipe hovering above her right eye, Caitlin’s hand trembling as it prepared to deliver the killer blow.
Michelle rushed forward as the pipe bore down towards Philippa, but there was no way that she was going to reach the two women in time and stop Caitlin from killing Philippa. Time seemed to slow down and Michelle could see in clear detail and in slow-motion the pipe as it headed towards Philippa’s eye socket.
There was a loud clang as the pipe hit the concrete floor alongside Philippa. At the last second Caitlin had diverted the pipe’s path away from its intended target. She collapsed on her back alongside the clone sobbing uncontrollably, repeating again and again…
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Michelle ran over and cradled her sister’s head in her arms, doing her best to comfort her. Caitlin was still crying and begging forgiveness from anyone who could hear her. She hadn’t cried since the attacks and was a ball of pent up emotion, which was finally being released now. It was horrible to see, but Michelle knew that this necessary if Caitlin was to overcome the trauma.
A few feet away, the medical team was patching up Philippa’s broken nose. She would look a real sight for a couple of weeks. Philippa turned to Major Scales.
“At least nobody will be able to confuse us for a while.”
Michelle helped her sister to her feet. She was still shaking but the tears were now reduced to intermittent sobs. Supported by her sister, Caitlin staggered over to where Philippa was also on her feet, the medic confirming that the protective mask that had been applied was positioned correctly and not causing any additional pain. Anaesthetic spray had taken away the worst of the pain and it was now reduced to a tolerable soreness.
Caitlin slipped out of her sister’s supporting grasp and moved towards Philippa, whose instincts told her to move away from her assailant, but she could no longer see rage in Caitlin’s eyes. She could see only sadness. Caitlin put her arms around Philippa and held her tight.
