The physician came through the door.
“Come on,” he said. Mike got up and hurried after him. He was led through many corridors—so many that he didn’t know whether he could find his way back. They finally stopped at a door which the physician knocked on. A guard opened.
And I thought they said the only way in and out was the two big iron doors. Mike looked around the room as he entered. There were three guards in the room, which looked a lot more like an office than another cell. Two of the guards barely looked up from their drinking coffee and reading.
“Is that him?” asked the guard who’d opened the door. The physician nodded. “Come on, then.” The guard led them to an adjoining room where a VID-screen was placed on a worn desk. Another guard joined them.
“You have the call-address, right?” the physician asked.
“Yeah, I think I can remember it. But they have to leave us!” Mike pointed at the guards.
One of them puffed out his chest. The physician turned and glared at the guard who after a short while lost the ability to keep eye contact with the physician before he deflated. Both guards turned and left the room, and the physician stepped around the desk to stand behind the VID’s camera.
Mike once again lowered himself gently before punching in the address. A man appeared on the screen. He looked like he’d been sleeping up until Mike called.
“You better have a good reason for calling me at this time.” The man rubbed his eyes. Then he focused on the screen and his movements froze. “Matthews?”
“Zack,” Mike said.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“You don’t want to know. Can you transfer this call to Lewis or Harrison? Your call-address was the only one I remembered.”
“Where are you? Are you in trouble? Don’t tell me you need money, ‘cause I said mercs make good money, but it’s a damn risk-bonus.”
“Zack, I’m in jail! Just put me through... you don’t even want to know what this call costs me.”
“Okay, okay.” Zack disappeared from the screen, and a young man with dirty-blond, wavy hair and intense eyes came on the screen.
“Lieutenant Lewis. I have a proposition.”
“Okay, an introduction would be a useful start.”
“Sergeant Michael Thomas Matthews, division forty-four, level two.”
Lewis stared at him in recognition.
“What happened?”
“I walked into a door... or twenty.”
“Does this door have a name or names?”
“Lewis, I didn’t call to round up a bunch to help me win a brawl. I called because I’m in a serious need of a vacation. The one who can give me said vacation needs a job.”
Lewis raised an eyebrow and looked past Mike as the physician stepped into the camera’s focal range.
“Are you one of the doors?”
“No. I’m the physician... the guy patching him up.” The physician looked at Mike. “Go stand with the guards while I have a chat with Lewis.”
Mike looked at Lewis and nodded, but the worry in Lewis’ eyes was evident. Lewis finally nodded, and Mike left the room. The guards stared at him as he joined them, closed the door behind him, and leaned against the wall.
“You certainly landed yourself in trouble if you ended up with the physician,” said the guard who the physician had forced from the room. Mike looked at his tag. Jameson, it said. Mike sighed.
“There isn’t exactly a plethora of candidates to the good company category out there.”
“No, but at least Keelan Hunter isn’t there to kill everyone at the moment,” the guard said, and the others snickered at his joke.
“Or to keep promises,” Mike muttered. A guard chuckled and was about to say something, but the physician opened the door and joined them.
“I promised you some vacation. Let’s go cash in.”
Mike followed the physician, who led them to Rainer’s cell. The physician knocked on the door, hard and waited.
“Enter!” Rainer yelled. The physician opened the door and grabbed Mike by the neck to steer him in. “Ah, good you’re here. When did you say he’s ready again? I have a customer.” Rainer looked at Mike, who cringed at the sight of Serge and his malicious smile.
“On second thoughts, you wait out there,” the physician said.
“Okay.” Mike left. The physician closed the door, and Mike slumped against the wall, trying to eavesdrop. But he couldn’t hear anything but murmurs.
From Rainer to Keelan to Rainer to the Physician... can it get much worse?
Half an hour passed and Mike’s legs were getting stiff from lack of blood circulation. He thought about walking the hallways, but just as he was about to stand, the physician and Rainer came out. Mike tried to get up, but his legs were stiffer than he’d thought. The physician grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up. Mike looked at Rainer, who looked more than a little displeased—an expression mirrored in Serge’s face.
“See you in two weeks,” Rainer sneered into Mike’s face.
Two weeks’ vacation? That can’t be!
The physician nodded at Rainer and steered Mike by the arm back to the deserted corridors. They stopped by a door, and the physician turned Mike to face him.
“Two weeks. I promised you a bit of peace, and that’s what I could get. In that time, you stay so close to me that people will mistake you for my shadow, is that clear?” the physician asked. Mike nodded. The physician grabbed his jaw in a fierce grip and locked eyes with him. “And I expect an answer, loud and clear. You’ve been a soldier. Don’t tell me you forgot how!”
“No, sir.”
“Not sir, just answer me!”
“Yes.”
The physician let go and opened the door.
“This will be your cell for the next two weeks. When I leave here, I’ll come and get you.”
“Yes,” Mike said, walked in, and looked around the bare cell. It was furnished with the basics and smelled unused. The physician closed the door and locked it from the outside.
Great. No one can get to me, Mike thought and lay down on the bunk. He sighed contently and closed his eyes. Maybe he could get some sleep without worrying about who would come through the door next.
The physician kept his word. The days were lonely with the exception of mealtimes. Walking the corridors with the physician gave Mike the feeling of being his slave, and something about the physician made Mike think that that was exactly what the physician wanted. Other than that, the physician patched Mike back together and kept a close eye on the healing process.
After about a week with satisfactory sleep, Mike began getting restless at night again. However, it wasn’t fear of who might come through the door next. It was the fear of who would come once this vacation of his was over.
The physician barged through the door one morning.
“Get up!”
Mike fumbled blindly to get up and find his shirt which he pulled over his head on his way to the door.
“Is something wrong?”
“I’m hungry. And I have to take care of some business. You’ll have to come, but you stay quiet, and you don’t meddle!”
“I won’t.” Mike followed the physician. He noticed that the physician was wearing the... once white doctor’s coat. He only did so when acting physician somewhere and never around his own corridors. He was also carrying the tattered leather bag that Mike had seen him with when in the doctor’s coat.
“Do you have a question?”
Mike looked away from the bag. “No.”
“Good.”
“Well, actually I do.”
“I’m not telling you what’s in the bag.”
“That’s not it.” Mike smiled.
The physician stopped and turned to face him. “Ask.”
“When these two weeks are over, then who... where... ” Mike began, but he had trouble finding the right wording. The physician stared at him expectantly. “Can I belong to you instead of Rainer?�
��
“Are you expecting a long vacation with me?”
“No,” Mike said, looking down. “But no one can be a more sadistic ass than Rainer.”
The physician didn’t reply, so Mike finally looked up and found amusement dancing in his steel-gray eyes.
“You might want to ask me this question later,” the physician whispered and walked away. Mike threw out his arms and ran after him. “Carry this, but don’t look inside.” The physician pushed the bag into Mike’s arms.
“Yes.”
The physician mumbled something intelligible.
The canteen was almost deserted at that hour, and at first, Mike was unsure whether they could even get anything to eat outside the three mealtimes a day. But a man was waiting with two trays of food as they reached the food hatches.
The physician ate, as always, quietly, but he seemed more determined than usual, so Mike ate more quickly than normal. Suddenly the physician stood up, and Mike almost knocked over his glass of water in the attempt to catch up. The physician stopped to stare at him.
“The secret is to anticipate everything.”
Mike looked at him, puzzled, then collected both their trays and remembered the bag.
The physician steered them to the center hall and stopped to look up at the window under the ceiling where the guards were watching from.
“You were told to come alone,” a voice said over the speakers.
“He comes, too,” the physician said. A long silence followed, and Mike tried to figure out what the physician was up to.
“Come through.”
One of the big doors opened, and two guards stood on the other side.
“The prisoner’s name?” the physician asked.
“Jack Ripley. Jack Ripper, as he calls himself.”
Mike looked up, too fast, and the physician sent him a sidelong glance.
“Someone you know?”
“Yeah, I collected his bounty about a year ago.”
The physician chuckled while the guards exchanged glances and sized Mike up.
“What do you need to know?” the physician asked and followed the guards down a hallway.
“Who was supposed to be on the roster the day the escape was to go down, how many were trying to escape—”
“So, the usual questions,” the physician concluded, nodding to himself. “Have you prepared for the interrogation as specified?”
“Yes.” The guard stopped by a door.
“Give us a minute.” The physician pulled Mike to a side. “In the military, did you use role-playing?”
“Yeah.”
“How many of the slave rules do you know?”
“All of them. Our neighbor was a pack of varanuides. One was a trainer, and that’s not a... discreet business,” Mike said, fighting a shiver from running through him.
“So you know the varanuides well?”
“Yeah, I talked to them a lot. You know how that species is with kids.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard. Play my slave now.”
“Okay,” Mike said, wonderingly.
“If you fail in your part, I will reprimand you according to the slave rules.”
“Yes,” Mike said, shocked by the lack of feeling in the Physicians voice or eyes. The physician motioned as if he was trying to haul something out of Mike’s mouth. “Master,” Mike added. He really hated hearing that word leave his mouth.
“Good, then we’re ready.” The physician turned and looked at the guards. One opened the door, and the physician entered, closely followed by Mike.
“You’ve got to be kidding me! Mike Matthews? I had hoped never to see your face again since—” Jack grew silent as he took in Mike’s body language and downturned gaze. Even though Mike was staring at the floor, he could see the way Jack Ripley had been fixed to the wall—in chains so short that he couldn’t sit, not even on his knees. A typical slave trainer trick, and Mike suddenly understood the Physicians reason to ask him to play his slave. The merc who had collected Jack Ripley’s bounty acting as a broken mind would be a useful weapon against Jack’s mind. Or maybe the hope was that he would then fear the physician more.
“Sit,” the physician commanded.
“Yes, master.” Mike knelt on the floor, placing the bag in front of him. He bit the inside of his cheek to not snicker at Jack’s sudden lack of snappy comebacks. Even the fact that slaves weren’t allowed to look higher than a free man’s chin was something Mike felt grateful for, because had he seen Jack’s expression he probably would have gotten a beating from the physician who, in this case, was supposed to be his master and a slave trainer. Instead, Mike tried to remember how slaves acted.
As a child, he’d wandered into the neighbor’s training room while looking for a good spot, playing hide and seek with the children of the pack. The pack then had consisted of seven adult varanuides—a huge and brutal-looking species with poisonous fangs and scaly skin. But their love for all species’ and race’s offspring made them the best playmate a child, no matter the origin, could have.
The species was notorious for their many human slaves, but, as Mike had understood it, they treated their slaves better than most humans did.
The varanuide of the pack, the trainer, had spent many hours with Mike after he had seen the unbroken slaves and heard their pleading cries for help as he had run into the room by mistake. His relationship with the big varanuide had never been the same, and it was obvious that the trainer was saddened by Mike’s chosen distance to him after that.
He’d still played with the Nyoes of the pack—orphaned children of all species and races which the pack had taken in and loved unconditionally. Not everybody knew about that side of the varanuides. Their brutal and scary appearance seemed so contradictory to their nature of protecting and loving any offspring who hadn’t yet finished puberty and matured fully.
Mike let go of his memories and found the mentality he remembered from the broken silver slaves who’d served in the varanuide pack’s home.
The physician walked to Jack and stared at him. “Sounds like you know the one in the corner,” he finally said.
“Past tense would be more appropriate, I think,” Jack said, peering around the physician with wonder and disgust on his face.
“Who am I?” the physician asked.
“His master.”
“No. Who am I?”
“How the fuck should I know? Beat it, buster, your coat needs washing. I hear it’s laundry day today!” Jack shouted and kicked at the physician, but he avoided the kick with more agility than Mike had expected. A belt flickered, and the crack was followed by a scream. Mike jumped, trying to identify where the sound came from and stay in character.
“See, he knows that sound.” The physician pointed at Mike. “You might as well get used to the sound. You see, when anyone escapes... or tries, I should say as nobody has ever gotten further than the docks, then they end up in my stable. I am the guard’s prayer answered when it comes to unruly prisoners. Because I have never had trouble getting them to listen. With time, of course. I ask only one more time. Who am I?”
Jack stared at the physician, wonderingly, and Mike no longer thought that Jack’s expression was the least bit amusing.
“I don’t know.”
The belt cracked again, and Jack swung himself around on the wall to cover his face.
“What are you?” the physician sneered.
“In trouble!”
“There are two ways out here. Both give me what I want. One of them also gets me a bonus. Which way do you pick?”
“What the hell kind of bonus are you talking about?” Jack’s had evidently completely run out of witty remarks, and the sight of the physician and the feel of the belt were effective persuasion methods.
Oh shit, that’s why he wanted to talk to Lewis. He applied for the job as an interrogator at Spec Edit twelve. He seems to know his craft. Mike suppressed a shiver caused by memories of the few interrogations he’d had to witness as a so
ldier. He’d even been the assistant interrogator in two such incidents, but this was completely different.
“Bonus. You’ve been here what, six months plus a few?” the physician began, strolling over to pick up his bag, which he placed on a stool. Jack didn’t answer right away—his attention was on the bag. The physician took two long strides toward Jack and let the belt crack again. “Answer!”
Jack screamed in anger, writhed, and kicked out again, but the physician once again adroitly avoided the kick and strolled back to continue his rummaging through his bag.
“Why? Why do you want to know how long I’ve been here?”
“To know just how stupid you are.” The physician pulled out a rope and looked at Jack.
“Stupid? You’re stupid!”
“Ever hear of the physician?” the physician asked, calmly. Jack’s sudden lack of facial color was enough of an answer. The physician walked over to him but stopped just shy of his leg’s reach. “And a white coat hasn’t made a bell go off in the hollow space behind your forehead?”
“I’ve heard it’s not even a real doctor.”
“Which, I’m guessing, is why you’ve never heard my name either. And to answer your question from before about the bonus. You’re the bonus.”
Jack shot a fearful glance at Mike, who was still playing his part as a good slave.
Wonder if the physician really does get the prisoners who try to escape. If that’s the case, then Keelan has to be among them. He just said that no one ever made it further than the dock. But then again I’m sitting here as a slave... and I’m on vacation.
“You can be ever so stubborn, ever so tough. But I still haven’t met the man or woman that I can’t break. My record is seventy-two hours from collected.”
“You’re a trainer,” Jack whispered, and something in his eyes died.
The physician smiled joylessly. A hard and well-placed punch caused a crunching echo to sound in the empty room, and Jack screamed more painfully than before. Mike glanced their way and saw how a spatter of blood marked a fine arch on the wall. Most of Jack’s face was smeared with blood and snot from the broken nose.
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