The Free Citizen

by T. J. Sedgwick

  “Cooperate and you and Cora can live happily ever after. That’s it! No pain from Doctor Death in her interrogation room and a wonderful life with your sweetheart. An offer you can’t refuse. Oh and, of course, the odd death-defying mission here and there. This is a golden opportunity for us get you into the Alliance’s inner sanctum. A double-agent.”

  Rae stayed silent, his stony stare betraying his desire to pummel the bastard’s head against the wall.

  Intel Prick stared back, but broke his gaze, intimidated even with bars and two burly soldiers protecting him.

  “Alright then,” he said breezily. “You have an hour to think about my offer before the fun starts.”

  He pivoted to the door as the nearest soldier opened it. Then he turned to face Rae.

  “Oh, and Doctor Death is very good at her job—but sometimes a tad overzealous, hence the name. Bye for now, Captain Rae.”

  He grinned and left the room with the two uniforms.

  Rae sat on the cot, stunned. It would’ve been better if they’d just shot him, but he knew they’d never let him go so easily. Like never before, despair grew rapidly, its malevolent black tendrils tightening around his mind, dragging his soul into the depths. Hopelessness had replaced anger, weakening his spirits, sending him to the darkest corners of his mind. He lost track of time as thoughts of self-blame and self-loathing overcame him once again.

  He closed his eyes, taking deep breaths to compose himself, willing his despair, his anger to drain away like water from a leaky bucket. Once such thoughts had been admitted to mind, reason disappeared. His father had taught him that the free-mind always had a choice. Like the cavalry appearing on a nearby ridge, a hither-to unknown reserve of will arrived to fortify him. He thought of his father and chose calm over anger, hope over despair. Time was short—he needed focus, not introspection. It was logic, probability, estimation of outcomes that mattered. How things turned out would be utterly indifferent to his feelings—self-blame for the decisions he’d made long ago, hatred for his tormenters, longing and an unfulfilled sense of duty to protect Cora. He could cooperate and submit or be forced to submit after excruciating torture, sedation and re-activation of his mindchip. For him, suicide was never really an option. It was anathema to who he was, no matter how bad it got. The third way was escape. Just thinking the word brought hope, but the odds were stacked. He eyed the cell, sweeping every inch of its surface, knowing they were constantly watching. He checked out the cinder block walls and poured concrete floor—solid as bedrock, and with no tools, it’d stay that way. Under the cot was just more floor, and he could see that any openings in the wall behind the toilet and sink would be too small for escape. Likewise, the solid steel bars yielded little when he squeezed them, and the door was unassailable. He scanned the ceiling. Just more painted concrete with two circular, flush-fitted lights and a dark circle about the same size—probably the surveillance camera and mic and maybe some other sensors thrown in for good measure.

  Caged and watched. No way out.

  He placed his ear against the cool wall beside the cot and heard the stifled whine of an electric truck. From its volume and the Doppler high-pitch-low-pitch, it was passing by. This wasn’t a maximum-security prison, it was a forward operating base—quickly and cheaply constructed and surrounded by a growing military presence. So, it didn’t surprise him that the rear wall of his cell was also an external wall. With probably bare minutes left before that intel asshole returned, this new knowledge didn’t help. He lay down on the cot and placed his ear against the wall again. Maybe the sounds from outside were a step closer to freedom. He listened as he thought through his play for the time when Intel Prick returned. One thing was certain: the only way out would be on the way to visit Doctor Death. He’d be cuffed for what he assumed would be a short walk. Disarming the soldiers while cuffed then escaping was going to be tough but not impossible. And what better option was there?

  A sound through the wall caught his attention. From outside. He concentrated his every scintilla on deciphering the aural anomaly. Two men, hushed voices, indistinct but imperative. The almost imperceptible vibration of something metallic on the external wall. Then came a gruff, suppressed call, louder but still muffled. Scuffling feet, distant… sprinting on loose gravel. It took him half a second to realize the last thing they’d said.

  Fire in the hole!

  He realized too late and his world went dark.

  15

  Let us sacrifice our today so that our children can have a better tomorrow.

  A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

  T he ringing in his ears gave way to the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic gunfire—some fierce and proximate, some distant. Groggy and disorientated, his back felt sore and beat-up. He spat dirt from his mouth and cracked open his eyes, blinking several times, clearing the dust. The once-bright-white cell had been plunged into darkness; flashes of gunfire strobe-lit the devastated cell through the jagged hole in the wall. He sat up as the door to the ante-chamber flew open, admitting new sounds of war. The armed man approached Rae’s cell and squatted opposite him beside the bars. Late-thirties, stocky and muscular, desert combat fatigues and dark tee-shirt, his dark sun-tanned skin, unkempt hair and rough dark beard screamed Special Forces.

  “Captain Calvin Rae?” he said, his tone husky, rich. Foreign. Australian.

  “That’s me. What the hell’s going on?”

  “I’m Stone. Me and my buddies outside are your new best friends.”

  “Who are you guys?”

  “Look mate, we can’t hold ‘em off much longer,” he said quickly, reaching into his pocket. The small device had a handgrip and trigger, and some sort of aperture at the front. Rae had seen the same type of device before—in the hands of Dr Muller on the SS Erasmus. The device that had deactivated his mindchip and freed him from mental tyranny.

  “That’s the—”

  “Shush,” said Stone. “Just look at the light.”

  Rae’s eyes met Stone’s and he nodded, one pro to the other.

  Rae squinted as flashes of red light danced rapidly across his retinas. Seconds later it ceased, leaving him dazzled and wondering what it had done. He felt no different.

  He noticed that the gunfire inside had ceased, and outside it was now distant and sporadic. Next came, the sound of vehicles speeding towards his breached cell, then jackboots running from the corridor outside the open ante-chamber door.

  “They’re coming,” said Stone stiffly.

  He put the device on the floor and smashed it with the butt of his rifle before picking up the pieces and scattering them amongst the cinder-block debris. Rae watched Stone throw down his assault rifle and pull out his sidearm.

  “Here, take it,” said Stone, offering Rae the handgun. “They need you across the border.”

  Rae took the gun and stood up as Stone slammed shut the ante-room door.

  “Go!” said Stone.

  Rae climbed through the hole and onto the now-floodlit base road. Before he could react, a squad of soldiers arrived at his left as an Infantry Fighting Vehicle came from the right.

  “Drop your weapon!” bellowed the IFV’s loudhailer.

  On the wrong side of overwhelming force. Again.

  Rae sighed and threw the handgun at the feet of the nearby soldiers.

  “Kneel with your hands on your head, fingers interlocked!” ordered Intel Prick, who’d just arrived next to the squad.

  Rae stood there, silently defiant.

  The intel guy raised his pistol, pointing it at Rae’s head.

  “Dare you,” said Rae, his eyes burning with rage.

  “We’ll see how tough you are.”

  Intel Prick wasn’t in the best of moods.

  The nearest two soldiers ran over, cuffed Rae and marched him along the gravel roadway behind the intel officer. They passed a motor pool of armored vehicles to the right and the main block on the left, to a double-chained-link-fence enclosure, razor wired at the top, floodlights outshining t
he first glow of dawn below the eastern horizon. A single guard tower overlooked the enclosure, which Rae saw as he got closer was internally divided into four quadrants. As he trudged to the entrance gate, he counted twelve men and four women sat in three of the four quadrants, hands cuffed, shoes removed.

  “Always the VIP, Captain Rae,” said the intel officer. “Got your own private enclosure.”

  They frog-marched him inside and tried to force him to the ground in the center of the five-by-five-meter sand-floored square. His size and strength and their desire to keep him alive thwarted the soldiers.

  “It’s ok men,” said Intel Prick. “Leave him. He can’t escape. Tell the watchtower to stun him if he tries anything.”

  “Yessir,” said the soldiers in unison.

  The intel officer exited first, followed by the soldiers who locked the double gate on their way out. Rae looked up at the guard tower in the opposite corner to see the intel officer climbing up to join another officer and a grunt in full combat gear. Immediately below the guard tower was a sign: ‘Enclosure #1’. To Rae’s right was ‘Enclosure #2’ and to his left, ‘Enclosure #4’ making his #3. In Enclosure #1 sat two men, with a third having just arrived, knocked to the floor beside them. It was Stone, the guy that had dazzled him with the red-light device before smashing it to smithereens. He spat blood from his battered mouth and looked up to see Rae. They exchanged nods, a façade of calm defiance on Stone’s face. Beside him were two other guys who he tagged as operatives like Stone. Something about their lean, compact physique and determined look that gave them away. One of them—a younger guy, light-skinned, blond hair—had a roughly-bandaged wound to his upper arm. The whole of his shirt arm was blood-soaked, glistening under the floodlights. The other one—to Stone’s right—was older, silver-haired, his tee-shirt sleeve ripped off as the makeshift bandage for his bleeding comrade. In Enclosure #4, to his left, were the other nine male captives. This rag-tag bunch looked somehow less healthy, more disheveled—much of it not from the night’s combat. Poor, malnourished men. By the look of it, many had taken a beating. Several of them bled from untreated wounds. One of them moaned quietly while his buddy checked out a nasty leg break, the bone protruding from his floppy, swollen lower leg. There was little Rae could do with his hands cuffed. Some of them regarded Rae, silently acknowledging him standing there in his charred orange jumpsuit. They looked on respectfully after he’d refused to be bullied into sitting down. And in Enclosure #2, to Rae’s right, were sat four women, hands plasticuffed just like the men. One was slumped against the near fence with her back to Rae. Her shoulder-length black hair ran from beneath a dirty red baseball cap, the dark skin on her arms was bloody and dirty as was the once-tan-colored vest. She didn’t move except for the rise and fall of her breathing. The other three women huddled close together, whispering, concerned looks. Two of them looked Hispanic, one early twenties then other early thirties, both lean, undernourished. The third woman—the one with tied-back raven hair, a pale complexion and a strong, jutting chin—looked over to him. Not from this part of the world. European. Under her black combat pants and black tee, her athletic build told a different story to the other three. Her air of purpose, her physique and her looks said Special Forces.

  He had no doubt they’d have mics trained on the enclosures—they didn’t place prisoners together like this for nothing. Up in the guard tower, the two officers were in conversation, pointing at their captives like bugs in a jar. The raven-haired woman made eye contact with Rae.

  He went over and stood by the fence.

  “If they were gonna shoot me, guess they would’ve done it already,” he said.

  “So, you’re the bloke…” she said, her accent British, well-spoken.

  “Who are you guys?”

  “Can’t you tell from my accent, Captain Rae?”

  “DASIS,” he said, referring to the Democratic Alliance Secret Intelligence Service.

  She nodded.

  “No point hiding it from them. We all know what happens next.”

  “Do we?”

  “Yeah, we do… Doesn’t make it any easier though.”

  “You came to extract me.”

  She nodded. “That went well—”

  “Hey, you, Limey Bitch!” shouted the guard approaching her enclosure with another soldier. “You’re first. Stand up and walk slowly backwards towards the gate.”

  She got up and backed away from Rae, eyes never leaving his. The gate opened, and they frog-marched her into the main block as the rest of the captives looked on helplessly. Feelings of guilt grew as she’d confirmed that they’d come specifically for him. He should’ve known right from the moment they breached his cell. As desperately as he wanted to, there was nothing he could do to help her.

  The hours passed, other captives were taken. As the eastern sky turned from orange to gold, the sun broke over the cloudless horizon and the British operative returned, now limping and hunched, her hair a tangled mess, her tee-shirt hanging off, ripped from the neck. The guards pushed her to the floor in Enclosure #4.

  Bastards.

  The two Hispanic women scrambled over to help her up, their faces anguished, their cries distressed. She raised her head and was unrecognizable—eyes swollen, her mouth bloody. The guards grabbed the woman slumped against the fence, dragging her unconscious into the main block. Rae seethed inside.

  Monsters.

  “Why don’t you assholes get in here with me?” he screamed. “Come on! Show me what you got… Bunch of fucking cowards!”

  No response.

  Over the next few hours, captives returned—all showing varying degrees of abuse. The only ones that hadn’t returned were the unconscious woman with the cap and the guy with the badly broken leg. Rae doubted they’d be in the infirmary.

  Probably dead.

  The small, gray intel prick, in his pretentious gold-rimmed specs, came striding towards Rae in the mid-morning sun, as usual flanked by soldiers in full combat gear—this time a platoon-sized group of twenty-five men.

  He chuckled and said, “You must stop having your little tantrums, Captain. It’s your fault this… this suffering. They came here for you.”

  Fuck you.

  Rae said nothing.

  “Ok men, take the prisoners.”

  At gunpoint, they frog-marched all fourteen remaining captives along internal roadways and through the checkpoint at the base’s high gabion walls. Rae was marched some way behind, following the beaten, limping captives into the desert.

  “I thought you’d like to see this,” said the intel officer from behind him.

  “You thought wrong, asshole.”

  “You know, extracting intelligence is just like squeezing oranges really—some are juicier than others. We got some useful stuff from these guys and gals—especially the British girlie. I particularly enjoyed my chat with her. But others—the worthless Illegals—not so much.”

  They lined up the captives in the desert facing the base, behind them endless miles of desert and scrubland. The soldiers gagged and blindfolded the captives as Rae looked on in horror. His rationality evaporated. He needed to act. One second later he did, round-housing the nearest soldier, knocking him to the ground before instantly sweeping the legs of another. Intel Prick ran towards the nearest grunt for protection, but Rae accelerated, ignoring all threats, launching himself into a flying kick and connecting with Intel Prick’s lower back. Rae landed behind him, got to his feet and dealt a ferocious kick to his side before the sharp pain of a stun gun floored him, collapsing his muscle tone, extinguishing his fight.

  When he sat up, Intel Prick was grimacing and holding his ribs then dusting himself off, trying to regain composure. He hobbled over to Rae and kicked him in the face, then the chest. The pain was nothing he couldn’t take. He didn’t move, didn’t react.

  “That all you got, asshole?”

  Intel Prick gritted his teeth and poked his finger at Rae, looking for a come-back but coming up blank.
Lost for words, he turned away and paced up and down trying not to lose it. Meanwhile, the sorry line-up of bound, gagged and hooded captives awaited their fate in the desert sun. Opposite them stood the firing squad—one per captive. Gone were the days when the military tried to protect the conscience by having multiple shooters per condemned. These soldiers were Serviles—their reward algorithm would probably give them a hit of dopamine for following orders. The intel officer ignored him and spoke indistinctly to the platoon sergeant, who ordered his men to remove the hoods. On the right were the three Special Forces guys, one of them with the injured arm. Next to him was the raven-haired British operative, her look unyielding, but he could see she was fighting pain. Beside her were the two Hispanic women, the younger of the two hardly able to stand. The remaining men—he guessed from either across the border or the Badlands—looked terrible. Unfed, beaten and probably tortured, only death or servitude awaited them.

  “Any more trouble,” said Intel Prick pointing at Rae, “and you can stun him again.”

  Intel Prick walked towards the firing squad, stopping behind the far-left soldier. His target—an early-twenties fighter, slim, boyish—started shaking. A urine stain grew down the inside of his pant leg. Rae shook his head in disgust, lowered his eyes. The young man was mumbling something, looking to the sky—a prayer.

  “Fire,” said Intel Prick calmly, before a single shot rang out and the young man slumped to the ground.

  The captive beside him sneaked a look at his dead comrade, as Intel Prick moved to the second soldier.

  “He can live.”

  Rae bowed his head, tried to shut out the horror. This was the system he was fighting. A distant memory emerged from a time before the so-called Renaissance, when history books had been freely available and uncensored—something he’d read about World War II, well over a century back. People liked to look back on the rise of the Nazi’s and what they did by setting them apart from the rest of humanity as though they were some purely evil species. They were Nazis not Germans, not ordinary citizens, not people like us. Now his own country had succumbed to the darkness. This was a system he would become part of again if he didn’t do something. He wondered exactly what Stone’s red-light device had done during the failed extraction bid. He felt no different. Maybe it had failed. Maybe it had done something else, not yet apparent.