Dominion

by JL Bryan

  Ruppert didn’t know how to respond to this, so he stayed quiet.

  “Your parents live in Bakersfield. Retired. Visit them often?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Looks like only the occasional holiday. Why is that?”

  “It’s…I don’t really know.”

  “How’s your marriage?”

  “Fine.”

  “You don’t fuck your wife very much.”

  Ruppert stumbled to find a response. “She’s very religious.”

  “Religious women fuck. I see it all the time.”

  “We’re not…It’s not a…”

  “Yes?”

  “We’re having some problems.”

  “You just told me your marriage was fine.”

  “I would say it’s average.”

  “There is no point in lying to us,” the Captain said.

  “Our marriage isn’t great. What does this have to do with anything?”

  The Captain looked him directly in the eyes for the first time. There was something cold and reptilian in the man’s pale gaze.

  “You have been briefed on the rules regarding asking questions?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”

  The Captain looked past Ruppert and gave a short nod. The two guards seized either side of Ruppert’s chair—they hadn’t left the room at all. They carried the chair to the curtained side of the room, then hauled the curtain aside.

  They tilted his chair back into a trough of scummy water, then dunked his head under the surface. Ruppert struggled to break free, but the restraints held firm and cut into him. His lungs began to burn—he hadn’t taken a breath to prepare for this.

  They tilted the chair up and he took a deep breath, then they leaned him back and held his head under the water. His lungs slowly consumed the air he’d taken in, and soon they were burning again.

  They brought him up again, but he barely had time to exhale before he was back under water, this time squirming and aching for air. The dirty water seemed to swallow him up, and he felt immense pressure in his head, as if his brain were being crushed by the lack of oxygen.

  They repeated the process several times, more than once bringing him right up to the brink of drowning before they pulled him out.

  “Enough,” Ruppert heard the Captain say. The two men lifted his chair and carried it back to the table, facing the Captain. The Captain lifted from his doctor bag a yellow plastic box strung with loops of stripped copper wire. One of the guards accepted the box from the Captain and dropped the wires over Ruppert’s head. They swung against his soaked t-shirt.

  The guards retreated back towards the door. The Captain held up a smaller yellow box and extended an antenna from its top.

  “Now,” the Captain said, “How would you characterize your relationship with your wife?”

  “Terrible,” Ruppert said.

  “Good. You see how easy it is to tell the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now. Tell me where you came into possession of a SinoDyne 8000XR data console.”

  “Just a junk store in Chinatown.”

  “The name of the store?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  The Captain touched a lever on the smaller yellow box, and pain filled Ruppert’s body. All his muscles seized up, and he spasmed in every direction, straining the chair’s leather cuffs. The water soaking his skin and his meager clothing helped conduct the electric shock to every part of his body.

  “Now,” the Captain said.

  “It was on one of the smaller streets. Bamboo, I think. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’d tell you if I remembered.”

  “Why did you purchase the unit?”

  “I wanted to see the bigger picture.”

  “The bigger picture of what?”

  “The world. What’s really going on in the world.”

  “As a newsman, are you not already in a position to understand that?”

  “I only report the official story.”

  “You report the truth to the people.”

  “Some of it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I report some of the facts. A version of the truth. I don’t even know how it gets decided what’s true and what isn’t.”

  “So you look for truth in enemy propaganda. Is that it?”

  “It’s not all propaganda.”

  Another electric surge hit Ruppert’s body. He felt saliva foaming out of his lips.

  “If it is anti-American, it is propaganda,” the Captain said. “This should be fairly simple for a man in your position to grasp. In a time of war, we must all band together. You have violated that basic principle.”

  “I’ve kept these things secret,” Ruppert said. “I haven’t tried to change anyone else’s mind. I just want to know for myself.”

  “I have seen this pattern before. First, you are simply curious. In time, you would be evangelizing for the enemy. Eventually, you would be willing to commit terrorist acts against our country. We have simply captured you in the process of conversion. You are a threat to the state and the people. What do you think we should do with you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I said I don’t know, sir.”

  “Tell me this, Mr. Ruppert. If your doctor found a single cancerous cell in your body, would you want him to excise it immediately, or would you allow it to thrive, going its own way, altering the cells around it?”

  “I’d have him cut it out,” Ruppert whispered. The strength was seeping from his body.

  “Louder.”

  “I’d say cut it out!”

  “Then you understand. I am the doctor, Mr. Ruppert. And you are the cancer. My role is to protect the rest of the body. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Our enemies are murderers without hearts or souls. They do not care if they die themselves, so long as they bring suffering to our country in some way. You may try to sympathize with them if you wish, in the foolish way that some would sympathize with a venomous rattlesnake, but I assure you, they will never sympathize with you. Your place is here among your own people. That is the only realm in you which you could possibly be of any value. We are in a war for our survival. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now. Explain to me your relationship with this sports reporter…” The Captain’s eyes scanned up and down the screen in his hand. “This Sullivan Stone, real name Kerry Gristone.”

  “He was a co-worker.”

  “The two of you occasionally took private lunch periods together.”

  “It wasn’t that private. Sir. We just grabbed lunch at a place near the studio.”

  “Why did the two of you require time alone? What did you discuss?”

  “We mainly just talked about work.”

  A third electric shock flared throughout Ruppert’s body, sending him surging up against his restraints. He could feel his nerve endings popping like expired light bulbs.

  “Again,” the Captain said.

  “We had a shared…I don’t know if you would call it…a sense of irony that wasn’t present in many of our co-workers.”

  “Irony about what?”

  “About…our roles in the world, I guess you’d say it that way.”

  “As journalists? Your work at GlobeNet?”

  “Yes. Sir. After a while, you start to notice how the truth shifts over time, how the story changes. A war in the Philippines becomes a war in Indonesia without any explanation. That kind of thing.”

  “Naturally, facts change over time.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s difficult to say what I mean. We talk about freedom and democracy, but we’ve had the same people in charge as long as anybody can remember. We talk about religion, but we bring war to every corner of the world.”

  “You attend a Dominionist church?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you understand the unique nature of our place in the world. We fight
against evil itself.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now. Did you ever fuck Sullivan Stone?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever perform an act of sodomy on him?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you ever allow him to perform an act of sodomy on you?”

  “No.”

  “Did you suspect he was a social deviant?”

  “It’s easy to suspect that kind of thing.”

  “Why did you not register your suspicions with your employer? A public man cannot be allowed to carry on private immorality. It’s damaging to the republic.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I asked a question.”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  The electrical jolt hit him again. He could feel his spine twisting like a flag in the wind.

  “I should have reported him, sir,” Ruppert said between gasps for air. “I didn’t want to risk ruining his life over a false accusation, sir.”

  “If the accusation turned out to be false, there would be nothing to worry about, would there, Mr. Ruppert?”

  “I suppose not, sir.”

  “Answer me more clearly.”

  “No, sir. There would be nothing to worry about.”

  “I have in front of me frames of video from a visit Mr. Stone made to your home. You and he go down into the basement. This was in April. What was the purpose of that visit?”

  “I don’t remember, sir.”

  The Captain held up the yellow remote control again.

  “He was afraid,” Ruppert said quickly. “He thought you were watching him.”

  “He thought I was watching him?”

  “Terror. The Department of Terror.”

  “Why would he come to you under that circumstance?”

  “I don’t—I guess he thought I might be sympathetic.”

  The Captain nodded and leaned back in his chair for a long minute. His pale eyes studied Ruppert, as if the Terror officer were contemplating whether a particular creature was worth pursuing as prey.

  “This is exactly what I was talking about,” the Captain eventually said. “You see? This Sullivan Stone was a social deviant. He had a corrupting influence on you.”

  “I’m not sure that’s exactly accurate.”

  “Why not?”

  “We didn’t explicitly talk about…politics, or anything.”

  “I doubt that. But it isn’t necessary, in the early stages. It can be gradual. A particular facial expression or gesture at the proper time. A disparaging comment about our Dear President. You see?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your employer will be reprimanded, of course, and probably fined for employing deviants. I think this is the real story here. Sullivan Stone was a corrupt and dangerous human being. He sympathized with the enemy, and he propagandized you to do the same. Is that correct?”

  “Sir, I don’t think it was Sully’s influence so much as—”

  This time the electrical jolt was much stronger. His teeth ground into each other and his lips curled back to expose his gums. His eyes felt as if they would pop from his skull.

  “Now,” the Captain said. “I stated that Sullivan Stone influenced you towards thoughts and actions characteristic of terrorists. Is that correct or not?”

  “Yes, yes, sir. It’s absolutely correct.”

  “Yes, this is largely Mr. Stone’s fault. I want you to think that over. Think about it very carefully. We’ll talk again.” The Captain rose from the table, gathered his equipment back into the bag, and departed the room without another word.

  ELEVEN

  They returned him, still soaked to the waist, to his refrigerated cell, where Ruppert shivered until he slipped into a comatose sleep.

  He lost track of the days and nights, and even the ability to determine the time of day. The guards pulled him out at irregular intervals, for another interrogation by the Captain, or to administer a gratuitous beating and maybe take him to the filthy bathroom at the end of the hall. They would interrupt his sleep with loud, piercing sounds that sometimes rang for hours and hours, driving him mad. They offered no medical treatment for the damage to his hands, and the wounds from his bindings etched into his flesh as scarred black loops and whorls across his palms, fingers, and the backs of his hands. He never saw any of the other prisoners.

  The Captain questioned him repeatedly about his political and religious beliefs, but also devoted long, intense periods of questioning to the minute details of Ruppert’s sexual history and inclinations. Ruppert did not know if they were profiling him as a social deviant, or if this was intended to break him down psychologically, or if it was just a private obsession of the Captain.

  Eventually, the Captain brought him in again to talk about Sully. He began by replaying the video of Sully’s visit to Ruppert’s house, obviously recorded by Ruppert’s screens at home.

  “We have to wonder, Mr. Ruppert,” the Captain said, “What might have transpired in your basement.”

  “I told you, Sully was afraid.”

  “And what, precisely, did he want from you?”

  “He wanted…he thought I might be able to help him. To hide him.”

  “And why would he think you could do that?”

  “I don’t know. He must have been desperate.”

  “And you said…?”

  “I told him there was nothing I could do to help him. I don’t think anyone could have helped him by then.”

  “You turned him away?”

  “I just told him the truth.”

  “But you wanted to help. You sympathized, even knowing he was a morally corrupt deviant. You would have helped him if it were in your power.”

  “I felt sorry for him. I wouldn’t have risked my life to protect him, though. I still have Madeline to think about.” Under the captors’ rules, this was the closest he could come to asking what they’d done to Madeline.

  “Are you absolutely sure nothing else happened?” the Captain asked, ignoring Ruppert’s implied question.

  “Nothing. He was only there for a minute. I told him not to come back.”

  A powerful electric jolt tore through Ruppert’s body.

  “You know how we feel about lies, Mr. Ruppert.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now. I’m going to make this extremely easy for you.” The Captain reached into his bag and brought out a transparent evidence bag. Inside was Ruppert’s wallet, a thin square box fronted with a screen for communications and transactions, with hollow compartments for cash and other items. The compartments were now open and empty.

  The Captain laid the evidence bag on the table, then placed a second bag beside it. This one held the plastic card with the long alphanumeric direct number stamped across it.

  “Where did you get this?” The Captain indicated the card.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Another painful electric shock hit him.

  “Again,” the Captain said.

  “I don’t remember.”

  Another electric shock, even stronger this time.

  “Why are you still trying to lie, Mr. Ruppert? Have you not fully grasped the rules? Don’t you think we investigated the number ourselves? We know who this contacts.”

  “Then you know more than I do,” Ruppert said. He winced, waited for the shock, but either the Captain sensed he was telling the truth or he’d grown tired of jolting him for the moment.

  “Allow me to make this completely clear, Mr. Ruppert. We still have your wife in custody. We can have your parents in ten minutes, if we wish to, though I don’t think they would hold up at this facility as well as you have. As for you—how familiar are you with the coal-mining industry?”

  “Not at all. Sir.”

  “You will learn fast. I have a standing request from a civilian labor camp in West Virginia. I don’t know what goes on there, but they do seem to have a bottomless demand for workers.

  “As for your wife, there is a constant need for work
ers to help clean up the Comanche Peak reactor site. You remember the Comanche Peak meltdown, don’t you? You probably reported on it.”

  “I was still an intern then.”

  “Workers assigned there have an eighty-three percent chance of developing malignancies within twelve months. Again, a bottomless demand for warm bodies.”

  Ruppert could not answer. He tried to suppress his imagined picture of Madeline toothless, hairless, shriveled by cancerous radiation.

  “I have the necessary assignment orders on my desk,” the Captain said. “They only need my signature. I could put you both on a train tonight—separate trains, of course. You’d be at work by five A.M. Eastern time. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, I will likely send you both to these work camps. There is only one other possibility. Would you like to hear the other possibility?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mr. Stone clearly intended that you make contact with this person.” The Captain tapped the card in the evidence bag. “We want you to do that. You are permitted for the purposes of this conversation to ask questions.”

  “Why do you want me to do this?”

  “Not an acceptable question.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. What…do you want me to say when I call?”

  “You will do whatever is necessary to gain his trust. We believe that he knows the whereabouts of a Class A target, a person of high priority to my organization. We believe he may even lead you to this person, in time. Look at him carefully. We want you to find his location.”

  The Captain laid his screen flat on the table and turned it around so Ruppert could see it clearly. The screen displayed two pictures of one man, probably a police mug shot. The man looked to be in his late thirties or early forties, large and husky like a football lineman gone to fat. He had a heavy mustache that sprawled out at either side into scraggly beard. His hair was long but he was balding at the top, and in the balding area Ruppert could see an aged, slightly wrinkled tattoo of what looked like scratch marks, or the footprints of chickens.

  He read the description below the pic: