I’m not sure how to speak about Leya. I told Bruce that she’s a spy for Roth, but I don’t know whether he will have told them that I know. He was really mad, maybe he wants to get back at Leya and will keep the fact that he knows she’s a mole to himself. I hope so, but I can’t be sure. I decide to say nothing about it.
“And when the fire alarm went off, why didn’t you evacuate the building along with everyone else, Blue?” asks Sarge from his corner.
“I was worried about Bruce and Leya. And even Quinn. Squad before blood, Sarge — you were the one who taught us that. I couldn’t leave squad members behind and maybe in danger.”
“So at least some of the stuff I taught you got through your thick skull and into your soft brain,” he says, sounding unamused.
“So, disregarding emergency regulations, you proceeded to Mr. O’Riley’s quarters?” Roth is determined to keep us on track.
“I did. I still believed that, deep down, he was a good guy, that it was all a misunderstanding and when I explained what had happened out there on the mission, he’d believe me. He said he loved me! And you give people you love a chance to explain, don’t you? You don’t just flip the switch and ignore everything you know about them and decide they’re scum. At least, that’s what I thought — stupid, gullible me.”
I did think it. I think it still. And my anger at Quinn is real, the wound is raw. “Little did I know he’d just been playing me. Maybe he planned to recruit me to the rebels,” I say, wide-eyed as if in shock at this new imagined crime against me.
Clearly annoyed, Roth waves an impatient hand for me to continue.
“Quinn opened the door. Bruce was behind him with the gun and he — Quinn, I mean — started yelling at me again, about how I shot him and his brother and how could I and stuff. He didn’t even give me a chance to explain!”
Roth’s teeth are clenched. She looks like she is only just keeping her temper in check at my broken-hearted bleatings. Good. I hope she buys my version of a silly, naive girl, blindsided and wounded in love, ignorant of anything important.
“And as I came in and closed the door, Quinn snatched the dart-gun out of my hands, shot Bruce with it, took Bruce’s sidearm and turned it on me,” I lie.
“Did you just stand there watching him, Blue? It didn’t occur to you to intervene, to take him down?” asks Sarge, leaning forward.
“Yes,” says Roth. “You expect us to believe Quinn overpowered you so easily? He’s an intel cadet, he analyses information, tracks data patterns. He’s not a trained fighter.”
Roth’s face is skeptical. This part of the story was always going to be a hard sell.
“It happened really quickly,” I say feebly. “And how could I take him down without a weapon? He’s way bigger than me. Besides, I think he may be trained in fighting — he did this kick thing to my wrist. We’re the ones who haven’t been trained in hand-to-hand combat.” I send a reproachful glance in Sarge’s direction.
Roth swivels to check this with him. He gives a reluctant nod of acknowledgment.
“So then the bast- the jerk held the firearm to my head and ordered me to shoot out the window pane and then the main power line to the compound. Last night he said he loved me, and today he threatened to blow my brains out!” More lies.
“You didn’t think to turn the rifle on him?” Roth asks.
“It’s a long weapon, ma’am, and he was right up against the back of me, with the sidearm to my head. I was in a fix. And I was scared.”
“And yet you managed to shoot a power line at a distance of, if I have it correctly, over 200 yards?”
It had been a fantastic shot, but I keep my face neutral. “Well, that’s the kind of marksmanship we were trained for.” I sneak a glance at Sarge. The expression on his face is an odd mix of pride and exasperation. “And it did take me three shots,” I admit.
“And when the power to the compound went out?”
“Quinn made me jump out the window. I nearly broke my neck, and I really hurt my knee! Then he just ran away and left me looking like I did something wrong, like I helped him escape, or something. Because that’s what you suspect, isn’t it?” I say, forcing outrage and a grating whine into my voice. “And I did nothing wrong. Nothing! I raised the alarm as soon as I could, and I got hit in the head for it!”
I’d caused the distraction to give Quinn time to escape.
“Do you know where he was headed?”
“How should I know? Home, I guess.”
Roth’s scarlet mouth twists contemptuously at my stupidity in thinking a wanted man would run home, to the first place his pursuers would be certain to check.
No doubt they will soon question Quinn and Connor’s parents, if they haven’t already. But there is someone else who might know where he is, someone who would be only too vulnerable to Roth and her henchman — Kerry, Quinn’s much younger sister, with her missing front tooth and her lisp, and her love of dragging her mother to Freedom Park every afternoon so she can see the lady with the baby. And her secret habit of carrying notes from Quinn to Connor. If Quinn is now hiding out where his brother used to, then she might well know where that is. The thought of Kerry being hauled in here turns my stomach. I refuse to let that happen.
“What do I care where he is anyway? I hate him! I’d like to kick him in the shin!”
Again, the emotion in my voice rings true. Quinn gave up on me, on us. He assumed the worst about me — that I betrayed him and his brother out of loyalty to ASTA.
“Bastard! I kissed him. I nearly slept with him, and it turns out I mean nothing to him.”
Again I wipe tears from my eyes. This time, they’re real.
In the corner, Sarge fidgets and cricks his neck. I guess training marines in the desert wars was nothing like dealing with brokenhearted teen girls. Roth is tapping her nails impatiently on her leg.
“Have you caught him yet?” I ask her.
I need to know if he got away safely. I have to believe he did, that all of this isn’t all for nothing.
Roth doesn’t reply and her face remains impassive, but I figure if they’d captured him, they’d be taunting me with it, trying to shake my story by making me watch his interrogation, or confronting me with our differing accounts.
“Well I hope you do, I hope you catch him and bring him here for questioning instead of me. Because I don’t know why I’m here when I just followed orders. I did nothing wrong,” I say in a small, stubborn voice. “And my head hurts.”
“I think we’ve learned all we’re going to from you, Miss James. And, on the whole, I’m inclined to believe you,” says Roth. My heart leaps in relief — I’ve done it, I’ve fooled them. But then she stands up and continues, “However, we need to be sure.”
She hands her list of questions to Mr. Smith and says to Sarge, “Come, Wayne, we can’t be present for this next part of the process. Let’s go grab a cup of coffee. It’s going to be a long night. When we return, we’ll discover if our detainee’s account has stood up to more … vigorous questioning techniques.”
My stomach is an icy pool of dread, my hands start to shake. Smith slides around to the side of my chair and in one swift movement clamps the steel arm-cuff around my right wrist. In another moment, he has sliced through the plastic zip ties with a box cutter and locked my left arm in the restraint on the other armrest.
“Don’t! Please,” I call after Roth and Sarge. Again there is no need to fake the emotion in my voice. But this time it’s not anger, it’s panic. “Think about what you’re doing — I’m a US citizen, I’m just a sixteen-year-old girl!”
Roth cuts me a hard look. “At best you’re a combatant in the war against terror. At worst you’re an insurgent. You haven’t been ‘just a girl’ since you signed on and picked up a rifle.”
“You can’t do this to me!” I struggle against the restraints around my waist and wrists.
“There is nothing I wouldn’t do to keep this country safe.” Roth nods at the man behind
me and then exits the room.
“Sarge,” I beg, stretching my trembling fingers out towards him, “you can’t let them do this!”
Sarge gives me a long look which I can’t decipher. Does he pity me or despise me? Maybe he is merely indifferent, because he does nothing to stop what’s about to happen to me. The door closes behind them and I am left alone with the tall, thin man with the transparent hair. And the trolley of equipment.
Chapter 5
Pain
I don’t know how long it lasts.
The pain, when it begins, is endless. Without limits. Higher than I can scream, deeper than the marrow of my bones, longer than I can endure. It is without beginning or end, an unceasing now of searing agony. It’s an acid burn in my mouth, a rigid clench in my throat, a roaring in my ears. A fire which rises to the highest peak. Then rises higher.
It drives the breath from my lungs and the sense from my mind. My skin singes away to raw nerves, my aching bones quiver and melt before the heat of it. My nails want to claw me up the walls, the whole of me shrieks an order to escape. Bolt! Run! Die.
He is good at keeping me just this side of the dark abyss of oblivion which beckons, promising a respite from consciousness and pain. Every time I’m about to go over, he pulls me back.
He batters me with questions, but I can’t speak. I can’t breathe around the pain, it takes up the whole of me. If he would just stop, I’d tell them what they want to know. I’d tell them anything. But I can’t think, can’t make sense of the questions through the shattering vice of pain. I’m broken. In fragments.
I black out, wake to find my head slumped on my chest, a trail of bile flecked with blood across the front of my dress. Smith grabs my long ponytail and pulls my head erect. This is it. This is the moment between agonies when I could catch my breath and talk, when I could stop it. If I can remember how to make words rather than screams, I can tell him everything.
But he has me by my hair.
By my hair.
For some reason, this strikes me as more offensive, more despicable than anything that has gone before. A grown man has secured a teenage girl to a chair, has tortured her and is now holding her head up by her ponytail. And, somewhere, Roberta Roth, CEO of ASTA, and Sarge, my squad leader, are drinking coffee.
I had been delighted when I was selected to train as a rat-sniper because of my exceptional skills as a virtual-reality gamer. I had been proud to think that I could serve my country and make a real difference in the war against the plague. I’d thought Quinn was paranoid in his suspicions about ASTA’s true purpose and the government’s real motivations. Until yesterday, I’d suspected that he was exaggerating or misunderstanding what was happening in our society.
But any organization that can torture children, and any government that can mandate them to do it, or even just turn a blind eye to its methods, does not deserve my loyalty.
I wondered, when Quinn first showed me footage of the torture, whether it might be justifiable, whether it might be a fair moral trade if the information it extracted from suspects saved lives in the future.
But now I know that information extracted like this is worthless. It cannot be relied on to be accurate. Under the pressure of this pain, I’d say anything, invent stuff, confess to being the devil himself if it would make the pain stop.
In his faint Irish accent, Quinn had said, “Can’t you see, Jinxy? It’s not about them, it’s about us. It’s not just what we’re prepared to allow happen to them, it’s about what we’re prepared to do, who we’re prepared to become.”
Quinn was right.
I imagine them torturing others like this — not just suspected terrorists, but people like Connor who believe that our nation is capable of better, capable of moral greatness — not merely of superiority of power. I imagine them torturing other young people, fellow cadets like Bruce or nerdy, perceptive Cameron, or friends of Quinn like Sofia Medina. I imagine them torturing little Kerry.
And in that moment, I know, know deeper than the pain can reach, that I will tell them nothing.
Smith pulls my head back by the ponytail and begins again.
More pain.
Excruciating. Unbearable. Endless.
Yet with every new pinnacle of agony, something inside me strengthens. As my body bows and bleeds and bruises, my will solidifies into something dense and unbreakable. Every strike hammers my locker of secrets deeper inside me. With every twist and blow and shock, I hate them more. My determination to thwart them grows. I may not be brave, but I am stubborn. Roth was dead right when she called me obstinate.
I find my lips and my tongue, and my voice — rasped almost to silence by my screams — and I speak. But I tell him only what I told Roth. I say, sob, scream the same things over and over again, clinging to the words like they’re solid buoys in an unending sea of agony.
The door opens and Sarge comes in. I think he comes in sooner than intended — maybe he has no real appetite for this. I am slumped, panting, shaking and dripping wet. It’s from sweat, not water — Smith hasn’t yet gotten around to using the water and the sack and the board, and perhaps he’s disappointed at being interrupted before he can, because his pale fingers, already on the dial, give an extra twist. My body goes rigid. My wrists bite into their restraints. My back arches against the chair.
My eyes roll, and I drop into a vortex of black.
Chapter 6
Keeping records
There is a soft clicking sound from somewhere to the left of me. Fingers on a keyboard? Then a phone rings.
“Hi, honey,” says a man’s voice.
A moment of confusion holds me still, then a shudder of terror trembles through my body as I remember. I draw in a ragged breath, cover my mouth with my hand to stop myself crying out, and open my eyes in time to see a short, white-coated man walk out of the room, a cell phone pressed to his ear.
He half-closes the door behind him, but I can still hear his side of the conversation, so he must be just outside — probably no way to escape then. And anyway, I feel exhausted, weak and sore all over, and wouldn’t have the strength to fight off a kitten. Plus, I have no idea where I am or which way is out.
“Nothing much, I’ve just finished stitching a girl’s head wound, but she’s still out cold, so I’ve got time to chat.”
I raise a hand to my aching head, feel the thick bandage wrapped around it, see the bandages wrapped around both wrists, notice the red welts on my hands, and feel a tug on the inner elbow of my left arm where a needle pierces the skin, connecting me to a tube leading up to an almost-empty drip bag hanging from a stand beside the bed. I want to curl up into a ball and sob. But right now I have to hold it together and figure out what’s happening.
It takes me a few seconds to orient myself. I’m lying on an examination table in what I think must be a doctor’s office, though it’s been years since either Robin or I visited one. There are glass-fronted cabinets storing medicines and equipment and gleaming steel instruments, a large sterilizing unit, and biohazard medical waste disposal bins. A decorative, multicolored hologram of the human nervous system rotates above a projecting pedestal in one corner, and in another, a 3D printer is laying down strata, building up what looks like an anatomical model of a heart. At the far end of the room is a door with a bathroom icon on it.
“But you’re up late, honey, what’s up?”
To the left of me is a large, paper-strewn desk with a computer monitor and keyboard in the center. The computer is on.
“But he’s okay?” I hear the voice beyond the door say.
Trying to ignore the throbbing in my heavy head and the protesting ache in my every muscle, I push myself up so that I’m sitting, then ease myself off the examination table. My legs feel stiff and sore, and my ears are ringing. I have no idea how to unplug myself from the drip without making a mess, but I don’t need to — the drip stand is on wheels. Good.
As silently as I can, I move behind the desk, hanging onto the stand to
steady myself. There are no pens or pencils on the desk, I guess because these could be snatched up by a detainee and used as weapons.
“I’m not sure, I’ve still got an examination and some paperwork to do,” the voice outside the door says.
Displayed on the computer screen is a logo: “Stapla Inc.” But my eyes are drawn immediately to the online form below, which has been partially completed with today’s date, the sixth of August, and the title “Medical Chart. Attending physician — Dr. Z. Green, Detainee: J.E. James (JJ20027).”
That’s my ASTA number, the one engraved on my ID bracelet.
I scan the screen quickly, not sure how long I’ll have before the chatty doc returns. On the left of the screen is a heading: Interventions. Beneath it is a vertical list of items, each with adjacent columns for entries of date, time and notes. The first two “interventions” on my chart, intake examination and initial questioning, are blank but the third, enhanced interrogation, has today’s date entered beside it and some notes have been typed up. This must be what he was busy with when I regained consciousness.
“Yeah, I’m getting too old for these all-nighters.” He laughs.
I read the entry. It begins, “Post-interrogation examination: Shallow laceration on right cheek — disinfected and dressed. Open laceration, approx 2.5 inches, on right upper temporal region of scalp, contusions and swelling, fracture not suspected — 8 sutures.” It goes on to list my other weals, abrasions, bruises and burns, and their treatment.
My stomach clenches, and a cold sweat breaks out on my top lip when I read the next headings in the intervention list: enhanced interrogation 2, enhanced interrogation 3, enhanced interrogation 4. They can do this more than once?
I cannot go through that again. I won’t make it. The fracture lines in my mind threaten to crack wide, to let the memories of what happened in that room flow in, but I cannot allow myself to go to pieces now. I must stay focused.
The Recoil Trilogy 3 Book Boxed Set: Including Recoil, Refuse and Rebel Page 24
