‘Don’t be stupid, of course I do.’ Collins answered angrily ‘I have a right, it’s my project.’ The General let that one pass, moving closer to Collins.
‘She was restrained, hands and feet, but managed to bite him because he came too close to her head.’
‘Why? What was he doing?’
The General leaned over, so his face was extremely close to the scientist’s, no more than ten inches. ‘He was fucking her’ he said simply.
Collins paled. ‘He was what?’ He shouted. The General returned to his seat behind the desk and settled down comfortably.
‘He was fucking her.’ He repeated.
Now it was the scientist’s turn to stand, outraged about what he’d just heard. ‘Why?’ He stammered. ‘What do you expect to achieve with that? What kind of experiment is rape?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t call it rape. For that she would have to be human, and we have more or less ruled that out haven’t we, so consent is not an issue.’ The General was enjoying this.
‘Do you expect her to talk, to answer our questions because of this—this atrocity?’ Collins could not believe what he had heard.
‘Talk?’ The General answered. ‘Are you really that stupid? Do you still expect her to give us the answers to all our questions? My God you’re pathetic.’ He directed all his contempt at the moron across the desk. ‘She will never tell us’ he paused for effect. ‘Because she doesn’t know. Haven’t you figured that out yet?’
The ground seemed to open up underneath Collins. He was sinking fast into the cavern. What did the General mean, she didn’t know? She had to. Otherwise how would they find out? How would he ever get the answers? All his hard work would have been for nothing. There would be no results, no glory at the end of these more than four years of hell. All his dreams of recognition in the scientific world, yes even the ultimate dream—the Nobel Prize—all were going up in smoke. ‘It’s not possible, she has to know.’ He stammered.
‘Has to know?’ The General repeated. ‘Well she doesn’t.’
It was finally quiet for a few minutes. Even the doctor had nothing to say. ‘How long have you known?’ He asked softly.
‘Since about two days after we arrived.’ The General answered. He was really enjoying this. The scientist was broken.
‘Then there is no use in continuing the experiments.’ Collins said flatly, totally deflated by the revelation. ‘Why did you continue—let us continue?’ Collins looked at the General with this last question. Realising the change of agenda.
‘She has other uses for me, so I want to see how far we can go, what she can take before we break her.’
‘But that is wrong.’ Collins tried. ‘Morally repulsive, unethical.’
The General laughed. ‘You are accusing me of morality problems. My dear doctor. I don’t seem to remember any complaints earlier when you still had your sights on glory and recognition.’ Collins paled. ‘Besides its moot.’ The General stated. ‘The subject is under my control. I will do whatever I want.’ He stared directly at Collins. ‘And you will continue to help me.’ The threat was implicit, but just as present as if it had been screamed out loud. Collins flinched.
‘What do you want with her?’ Collins dreaded the answer.
‘What do you think. If we can’t replicate her talents, then she will at least become the ultimate soldier—my ace in the hole. Think about it. Even a moron like you must be able to grasp her value. A soldier that can heal her own wounds, that amounts to more or less invincibility. And her strength, fantastic.’
‘Anyway.’ He continued in a more reasonable voice ‘Who knows, we may get lucky and get her pregnant, replicate her that way.’
‘That’s impossible.’ Collins interrupted softly. ‘She has no uterus, she cannot conceive.’
‘Why not? That wasn’t in her file.’ This had gotten the General’s attention.
‘We didn’t think it was important. Anyway, she contracted cancer of the uterus at a young age and had a hysterectomy. We think this was before her healing abilities kicked in.’
‘Can’t she regenerate it now?’ This was a big disappointment for the General.
‘No.’ Collins resumed. ‘It seems that any damage done before she was about forty is irreversible.’
‘Are the ovaries gone as well?’
‘No, they’re intact, not that it makes any difference. I know what you’re thinking. Forget it, we tried that already. We removed some eggs from her ovaries and they immediately imploded, like all her cells do once they leave her body. There’s no way we can get her pregnant or use her cells for IVF. And if she doesn’t know what made her this way, we have no chance to find answers.’ The scientist had resigned himself to absolute failure.
‘Well that may be the case.’ The General ended the meeting. ‘But we’ll continue to test her breaking point. I need to know that, and then break her so that she’ll become our willing executioner. Then we can wreak havoc on the revolutionaries. Clean up that mess once and for all. Now leave.’ Collins was dismissed. The enjoyment tempered by the revelation that the subject was infertile.
Collins left the office—his office. The truth of what the General had stated, about her not knowing, had rocked his world. In hindsight, he’d known. There was no way that she would have been able to keep it from him after all that time. The doubts had crossed his mind before. But he had dismissed them, because the implied conclusions were just too overpowering, too debilitating. His work, his life was useless. He felt empty, defeated.
Sitting in his office, the General pondered on the confrontation with Collins. He regretted telling the stupid man so much, but the look on his face had made it all so worthwhile. Only now he would have to take care of the scientist sooner than he had planned. That is, if the stupid fool jumped ship. Then again where would he go? The whole scientific community would shun him, he would be the laughing stock. But why run any risk if it could be solved by an unfortunate accident? After all, the man was fragile. Suicidal if the truth be told. He would have Jenkins take care of it.
The General pressed the intercom. ‘Susan, get Major Jenkins in here would you?’ he asked pleasantly.
CHAPTER TEN
The resistance stepped up their attacks on the pharmaceutical companies, trying to gain access to the cure for the introduced illnesses. Biological warfare was turning out to be a very effective way to combat the insurrection. It decimated not only the enemy soldiers but also the families and sympathetic bystanders. It cut into the conviction of the resistance like a hot knife through butter.
Their attacks were often insufficiently planned, sometimes the spur of the moment idea of a group of farmers or workers who were desperate for the cure for their families. Choosing not to wait for the more organised resistance, they ran head on into the military guarding the facilities. Reacting to the hasty and amateurish attacks, the resistance was pulled into the fray.
The military were having a field day. The unprepared resistance fighters were being killed and captured in larger numbers than before. The jails were overflowing, and the General had been requested to interrogate some of the partisans. Survival of the prisoners was not important. They would be executed anyway.
He wanted to test the subject’s empathy, so with Jenkins and the other military scientists he devised a number of tests where prisoners would be brought in and subjected to the same torture as she was. That way they could measure how much more she could take than any normal human being, and at the same time see whether she reacted to others being hurt in her vicinity. They also wanted to test her reaction to them punishing others for her perceived lack of cooperation.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was getting more difficult to block out what the General was doing. He was projecting the pain and suffering he thought I should have onto other people. The fact that I didn’t know these people made no difference.
I was a spectator to the suffering, but I was also the cause. There was nothing I could do to stop it. It made
me feel so small, so inconsequential, so helpless. I wanted to do something, anything. Make up the answers that they so desperately needed. But there were no questions that made sense. I screamed at them to stop. I threatened, cried, ignored them.
Nothing helped.
They carried on. Tortured and murdered men, women and even children, teenagers and some even younger.
The military scientists looked on and observed my reactions. Wrote everything down. Made it so clinical.
Initially, the civilians in the lab were shocked. Some adapted to the situation out of self-preservation. Others looked away, or even called in sick—leaving was not an option. Nobody left to tell the tale, the General made sure of that.
The military, including the General, were enjoying it. An added benefit was that they were killing terrorists, so it was more or less legal; they were just doing their jobs.
I cried for the victims in the darkness of my cell. Cried for the hopelessness of their and my predicament. Cried out of pain and rage.
Slowly the anger was starting to eat away at me. My nerves were fraying, and I was thinking violent thoughts, wanting revenge for the injustice, to me and to others. The guilt was eating at my soul. They were dying because of me. Hurting because of something that was expected of me, something that I couldn’t deliver.
Why?
That question burned in my mind all the time, keeping me from sleep, driving me crazy. The only release I had was physical exercise. Tiring out my body to the extreme. In the coldness of my cell, this was my escape. I embraced the pain of exhaustion. I slept because of the extremes I drove myself to—hundreds even thousands—of push-ups and sit-ups in the pitch black of the night. Any exercise I could think of. My body welcomed the stress and my strength increased beyond anything even close to what had become normal even for me. The muscles toned to the maximum. In the deep of the night, I felt them to their deepest fibre.
The dark played tricks on my senses. It seemed as though my form blurred. My hands gripped the cold stone beneath me. I attributed the hallucinations to the dark and fatigue. But somewhere deep down a small voice told me otherwise. I could see so well in the dark, that it wasn’t possible that my eyesight misled me. Strange things were happening. I thought I was tripping, but the strange deep scratches in the stone floor and the wood of my bed disagreed. They were still there in the morning.
I held conversations with myself. In my head I thought, but sometimes out loud. Was I really going mad? Or just stir crazy?
During the torture sessions I ignored anything they did to me. Not reacting to any form of pain or stimulation. I tried to cut myself off from the pain of the others, but with less success.
The days and weeks blurred into a regime.
Every day I cried inside, every night I got stronger.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The door to her cell opened, the harsh light momentarily hurt her eyes. Two soldiers stood in the doorway holding a bundle of rags. They unceremoniously threw their burden into the small cell. The man in the rags, as she had deducted from his scent, tumbled on to the cold floor and mumbled in pain. The door closed once again, blocking out all but a small strip of light. She waited for a few minutes, then stood up and made her way to the corner where the man lay. She could smell his pain. He was battered and bleeding.
‘Lay still’ she said, ‘tell me what hurts most.’ The man replied in a language she could not understand. ‘Please. English’ she requested apologetically. The man tried to sit up, his back to the wall. She helped him.
‘Everything hurts’ he whispered in near perfect English. ‘I am so cold.’
She gathered the weathered blanket she had received a few months ago and draped it over the man’s shoulders. Even in the absence of light, she could see him well. She could see in almost pitch black like a cat. The man seemed very old, but that could be the result of the bad treatment that he had been subjected to. She estimated he was somewhere in his fifties. A small Latino man, slight of build, with a weathered face and body. His health was bad, especially because of the torture, but probably had never been so good to start with.
She sat down beside him.
‘I’m ok’ he said, even though she knew the opposite was true. He was a tough one, this old man. ‘My name is Julio’ he held out his hand, then pulled it away as he realised that it was dark and that she would not be able to see him. She left it at that, not wanting to complicate things. Reaching to the plateau near the door, she retrieved the water and offered it to him, pushing it in his hand. Thankfully he sipped the cold liquid.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘Just another prisoner.’ She replied.
‘What is your name?’
‘I don’t have a name any more, they call me subject 336.’ Her voice was soft and without any anger. She had resigned herself to the impersonal way the scientist treated her a long time ago.
‘Everyone has a name.’ Julio insisted. ‘If you have forgotten it, you must have been here a long time.’ Softly he asked, ‘how long?’
Resting her back against the cold wall, she thought back. How long had it actually been? She had been abducted in the summer of 2053, how long ago was that, about two or three years?
‘What date is it now?’
‘Sometime half October 2058’ he replied, ‘I don’t know the exact date.’
She was quiet for a while. More than five years. She had been here in this hellhole for more than five years. The time had seemed endless, but then, five years was a long time. Much longer than she had thought.
’Five years’ she said. ‘Five endless years.’ The days had blurred into weeks, then months. There was no way she could have kept a record of the days or had been able to know what the date was. In the cell she hardly noticed which season it was. Kept inside most of the time, her last real visit outside had been months ago. The cell was in the basement of the building and she was transported to and from the interrogations with a bag over her head.
How much had she missed, what was going on in the outside world? Was it any better than when she had come here? For that matter; where was “here”? She turned her attention to her fellow prisoner. ‘Do you know where we are?’
‘Probably in one of the facilities in the southern Mexican provinces, I think in Chiapas.’ He answered. ‘They blindfolded me, so I don’t know for certain, but we know that they have secret places all over the southern areas. The air is warm outside so that makes me certain that we are somewhere near the desert.’
‘Who is “we”? she asked.
He hesitated. Maybe this was a trick to get him to betray his comrades. What if this woman was one of them and she was supposed to milk him dry about the resistance? But his instincts contradicted this. Deep in his belly he felt that she was a real prisoner, in the same predicament as he was. Of course, it was possible that they had bugged the room, so he would not tell any secrets. The military already knew who and what he was. Knew that he was connected. They had celebrated enough when they caught him.
‘We are the resistance’ he continued. ‘We fight the Americanos and try to liberate the southern nations. Last week America attacked the southern Latino countries, the next step in the expansion of the Americas. The northern countries were annexed years ago and formed the new states. The Americanos new offensive has a dual function: to gain control of the energy sources and to divert attention from internal to external enemies. The American government, like so many of its western peers, is losing control and this is a last desperate effort to salvage some of the influence they so desperately need. Their idea was to get the energy, offer it to the people and regain the loyalty the government so dramatically coveted. The idea backfired. Our revolutionary groups were more connected than the government realises. A war against the Latino countries is a war against the brethren, against the poor people worldwide who inspire more loyalty from the common man than the bureaucrats could ever dream of.’
‘All this is for the energy sources?’
She felt as though she had been incarcerated for a lifetime. She had missed so much.
‘Whoever has the energy has the power. The shortage almost shifted the balance of power for good. As you may know, more than twenty years ago, the oil all but ran out. The western and oil countries had not invested enough in alternative energy sources and found themselves without options. Our countries—the poorer ones—had been forced to look for alternatives long before then because of the exorbitant prices of the quickly diminishing oil products. We hardly noticed the absence of the oil. We still had our own sources. But the rich countries were in dire straits. They had to buy energy from us. The global balance was turned upside down. The “undeveloped” countries had it, the West wanted it. Nations in Africa and South America found themselves catching up with the West at a breath-taking pace. The new rich of these countries, that is. The poor still didn’t benefit, worse yet, the contrast between rich and poor grew. Everywhere. In the West, the rich were the only ones able to buy the energy, in the rest of the world—in the energy countries—only the rich profited. Just when the Western countries were almost on their knees, help came to them from an unexpected phenomenon—LKX.’ He sighed. The pain clear on is features.
‘LKX killed indiscriminately, until the West found a cure a few years ago. Once again, they had the upper hand. They saw the dramatic losses in work forces due to the fatalities of LKX and distributed the cure to their own constituents. The energy countries got none. Resentment festered. And with it the revolutionary fire. We started working together over the country borders. We targeted the pharmaceutical depots, the cure for LKX was our main goal. Casualties—mainly among our supporters—were high, so we switched our sights and started targeting ammunition depots and military encampments to arm ourselves.’
He paused for a moment. The memories were clearly difficult and painful.
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