ATLAS 2 (ATLAS Series Book 2)

by Isaac Hooke

  She tossed me a dirty, used rag. “The first sting was a light one. To introduce the two of you. I would like to demonstrate the full power of the Snake. I suggest you bite down on the cloth. If you value your tongue, that is. Of course, we can forego all of this if you reveal the password to your embedded ID.”

  I balled up the rag and stuffed it into my mouth defiantly. It tasted of iron. Blood from the previous victims.

  The woman’s silhouette pointed the Snake at my groin.

  Agony exploded inside me. It was like I’d dipped my gonads into a nest of bullet ants, whose bite constituted the most excruciating venom in the world. Imagine fire-walking on coals embedded with rusty nails. Now do it again, dragging a certain sensitive area between your legs across those coals and nails.

  Baring my teeth, I clamped down on the cloth. Didn’t help. One of my molars, a rotten one that I should’ve had fixed months ago, shattered from the pressure. Because of the wide, rictus shape of my mouth, the tooth passed outward, slitting my lip. I hardly noticed. How could I? Not when the bullets of a Gatling gun tore into my nether regions, unwinding tubules, dissecting vesicles. The pain resonated upward, into my gut, and aggravated the whole area. My heart pounded against my chest so hard I thought it was going to burst any second. At least if that happened, I would find release. Until she revived me.

  The whole time I was vaguely aware of a bunch of loud clicks, like the hum of a 60 Hz transformer, coming from the knob behind my head.

  The sound of my brain frying.

  I wanted to fall down. I wanted to shield myself. But the pain was too much, and all I could do was convulse in place, like a rag doll struck by twelve thousand volts, kicking and thrashing. I couldn’t breathe. My eyes were shut tight, but my vision was tinted blood red from the glaring light that so easily penetrated my eyelids.

  All I could think again and again in my mind was, Morphine! Morphine! Morphine!

  Consciousness started to ebb away, but then, as quickly as it had come, the agony ceased.

  I doubled over and spat out the cloth, inhaling violently. When I exhaled, a long stream of blood and drool trickled downward, connecting me to the floor. I felt secondary waves of ghost pain, which soon subsided, until the only hurt I felt was from my cut lip and burst molar.

  “There, there,” the woman said, patting me on the head like an owner who felt guilty after punishing her dog. “It’s over now. You’re going to be okay.”

  Panting raggedly, I clung to her leg, struggling to keep myself upright. When I had recovered somewhat, I pushed away, wanting to put some distance between myself and this evil woman.

  “I am Jiāndāo,” the woman said. “Your Keeper.”

  “Jiāndāo,” I repeated weakly.

  “Yes. The name means ‘dagger’ in your tongue.”

  “Dagger.”

  “Yes,” she purred. “Dagger. And your name is Floor.”

  “Where am I?”

  “It does not matter, Floor,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “What happened to the man captured with me?” Hijak.

  “It does not matter. All that matters is you reveal the password to your embedded ID. Do so, and all of this ends.”

  She waited.

  Squinting, I regarded her silhouette in the brightness. I knew I’d never be able to wrench the rod from her hands in time. Not before she inflicted the pain again.

  Still, I had to try.

  I lunged.

  Too slow, of course.

  It was like I was back in MOTH training all over again, except the pain was no longer self-inflicted, and hurt so terribly more than anything in training ever had. I don’t need to describe it again. We are all human beings. We have all experienced pain. It comes with the territory. You cannot be human, and not know pain.

  And as with all moments of agony, it passed.

  When she released me, I lay there, cowering in the corner, panting, covered in my own vomit. Somehow I’d avoided biting off my own tongue.

  I dearly hoped, with all my being, that she wouldn’t apply the Snake again. I was almost ready to tell her anything.

  Except the password to my embedded ID.

  “Floor, are you listening?” the Keeper was saying. “Floor?”

  I nodded slowly.

  “I want to tell you a story,” she said. Her tone was mockingly sweet. “The story of us. When you first came here, we sent you to the Weavers. You refused to give up your password, so the Weavers administered scopolamine. As you may or may not know, the substance renders its victims extremely susceptible to suggestion. But the drug had little effect on you. Maybe because of your training, which graduates only the strongest men, or maybe because of some innate resistance, but whatever the case it did not work, other than to promote memory loss.

  “Next we tried the Simulation. Again, you resisted. Your mind kept throwing up barriers to protect you, drawing upon the horrors of your past to prove your present wasn’t real.

  “Finally, they sent you to me.” Her silhouette tapped the rod against her thigh. Slowly. Methodically.

  “Your will is strong,” she continued. “I admit this. But I relish a challenge, and in the end I will break you, even if I have to resort to more traditional techniques. There is no need to continue resisting. No need to draw out the agony. You have proven your point. You are strong. A fierce, fierce man. But why prolong the inevitable? End it now. Find peace. Live a life free of pain. There is no dishonor in that, is there?

  “So I ask again, what is the password to your embedded ID?”

  Somehow I held out. Somehow I resisted.

  I said aloud Shaw’s words. “Remember me in the deepest, darkest hours, when you think you can’t go on. Remember me in the storm.”

  The Keeper unleashed the Snake once again.

  The interrogation continued like this for some time. It was getting harder and harder to refuse her after each bout of pain. To end it, all I had to do was log on to my Implant. Think my password. It was so tempting. Maybe if I was quick I could log on without the brain sensor picking up my password. Then I could message Hijak, if he was in range, and we could coordinate our escape. We could—

  No. No matter how fast I was, the brain sensor would read my password.

  There was no way out of this except to endure.

  As I had endured in training.

  The session ended, in time. The Keeper tied my wrists to the harness at the end of the rope above me, and left my limp body hanging like a piece of meat in the abattoir.

  There I remained in the bright light, arms hoisted above my head, leather harness digging into my wrists. Ghost pain from the Snake lingered throughout my body. My broken molar throbbed.

  What the hell had happened to me?

  I was a MOTH, once.

  More than a man.

  I had piloted ATLAS mechs.

  And now I’d been reduced to this.

  Less than a worm. The plaything of a cruel mistress.

  My name was “Floor.” Something to be stepped on. Trodden over.

  No.

  I was still a MOTH. And always would be.

  She was trying to break me. I couldn’t let that happen.

  Yet if that pain kept up . . .

  Pain.

  I’d grown soft since training. If I had been interrogated by her right after graduation, I wouldn’t be having these thoughts. Hell, if this had been training, I wouldn’t have even doubted my ability to resist. Because in training, I was ready to become a MOTH or die trying.

  But the problem was, during training there was a light at the end of the tunnel. I knew that eventually it all had to end. But here, there was no such end.

  I refused to die here, in some stone cell countless lightyears from Earth, as something less than a man. And that was how I would die, if I ceded to
her will.

  No, if I had to die, it was going to be as a MOTH.

  I would resist. To the death if it came to it.

  I wouldn’t talk. I wouldn’t reveal my password.

  I wouldn’t break.

  My MOTH brothers were coming for me. I knew they were. That was going to be my light at the end of the tunnel. That was going to be the hope that got me through this. It would have to be.

  Yet a seed of doubt took hold the moment I had that thought.

  What if no one came?

  What if my platoon brothers couldn’t find me?

  What if they didn’t care?

  I refused to believe that.

  My platoon would come for me. Chief Bourbonjack, Facehopper, and the rest of my brothers wouldn’t abandon me. No one was ever left behind.

  But what about Shaw, came a dissenting voice from the recesses of my mind. You saw how Big Navy abandoned her.

  I silenced that voice. I had to.

  The Teams are different, I told myself. We’re not like Big Navy.

  Because if I believed for a moment that my platoon wouldn’t come, I didn’t think I could go on. Didn’t think I could survive the humiliation, the torture. I’d just give up and die right here, rather than enduring what was to come.

  I thought of what the Keeper had said about having direct access to the pain receptors in my brain. That was very illegal, and went against the tenets of the Fourth Geneva Convention. You didn’t treat prisoners of war like this. No one did.

  But since when did the SKs obey international rules? They’d actively encouraged privateering against UC ships for years, after all.

  I wasn’t sure how I was going to resist, not without losing my sanity. I thought back to the Code of Conduct all military personnel were to follow when captured. The code taught us how to conduct ourselves “honorably,” as if there were such a thing when you were being tortured to death.

  It went something like this: Never surrender. Make every effort to escape. When questioned, give only name, rank, and embedded ID number.

  Easy, right?

  That code seemed downright laughable to me about now.

  The bright light was starting to get to me. There was no escaping it, not with my hands secured above my head. The rays penetrated straight through my scrunched eyelids, painting my vision a painful white-red, and causing my bio-printed eyes to itch and water. Snot streamed from my nostrils, and I was developing quite the migraine.

  Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, the braying music of some SK pop song blasted into the chamber. The thumping bass line rattled my ears and throbbed my chest. The high-pitched Korean-Chinese warbling of the “singer” didn’t help matters, and grated on my nerves. Did I say music? I meant trash.

  I couldn’t even think anymore, not with that noise.

  I was helpless. I simply hung there, my senses on overload, my body dangling above the stone floor, the harness digging into my wrists.

  We MOTHs took pride in our ability to fall asleep on a whim, because there was no certainty when the opportunity might arise again.

  But there was no way I could sleep now, not like this.

  So I just hung there.

  For how long, I don’t know.

  Hours.

  Maybe a day.

  Seemed like forever.

  I kept telling myself my platoon brothers were coming. That they’d rescue me.

  Yep.

  Any time now.

  The music shut off and the lights dimmed.

  I tentatively opened my eyes, but the bright afterimage persisted, a chrome spot that blotted everything out. It was like I’d been hit with a flash grenade or a laser dazzler. My hearing was muted, too, and the approaching footsteps seemed muffled.

  Someone unhitched the rope from the wall and lowered my body via the pulley, allowing me to rest on my knees. My arms still hung in the harness above me, supporting my upper body.

  Vision slowly returned as my oversaturated retinal pigments normalized. I glanced upward, at my throbbing wrists. Bad move.

  The movement made me dizzy, and I nearly blacked out. When the stars cleared, I saw my hands: swollen, purple messes.

  I let my head sag back down.

  “Are you comfortable, Floor?” Jiāndāo said, mockingly. “Are you pleased with your accommodations? If you have any requests, don’t hesitate to contact the concierge.”

  I didn’t look at her. Why would I? It would only egg her on. Besides, exhaustion filled me. That blinding light, that blaring music, my bindings, all of it had drained me to the core. The lack of sleep only compounded matters.

  “You know,” the Keeper continued, “during the Kang Dynasty, the Keepers used the Simulation to pluck the brain regions responsible for sight and sound during prisoner interrogations. It was considered . . . more humane. But when the dynasty fell, the traditional methods came back into favor. There’s something about having a blinding light shone into one’s eyes, and a braying song played into one’s eardrums, that simply cannot be duplicated by direct visual and auditory stimulation.”

  She bent down in front of me and whispered in my ear. “But pain, well now, that’s an entirely different matter. Direct pain, we all know how wonderful that is. Are you ready to experience the blissful release of direct pain, Floor?”

  She slid the pronged tip of the Snake down my chest, somewhat erotically. I was just waiting for her to activate it. Dreading it.

  “Of course,” she whispered seductively. “If you tell me the password to your embedded ID, this can all end.”

  “I am Rade Galaal,” I said, staring at the floor. “Petty Officer Second Class. Navy MOTH. Embedded ID number 527892540.”

  “Look at me,” she said. “Look at me!”

  I didn’t. “I am Rade Galaal. Petty Officer Second Class. Navy MOTH. Embedded ID number 527892540.”

  “As you wish, Floor.”

  “I am Rade Galaal. Petty Officer Second Class. Navy—”

  She set the prong of the Snake directly beneath my chin.

  And gave me pain.

  I won’t describe what happened in the next few hours. No one likes to read about torture. All I’ll say is that by the time she was done, my heart had to be restarted three times, courtesy of the portable defibrillator she’d brought along specifically for that purpose, and I nearly choked on my own vomit twice.

  I never looked at her directly, not once. Never gave her that honor. Though I caught enough glances to know she was dressed in tight-fitting, blue-and-gray digital camos.

  When it was finally over, she used the pulley to raise me up off the floor once more, then secured the rope to the metallic loop in the wall. My body stank from my voided cavities, but I was too far gone to really notice.

  “I have heard MOTH training prepares a man for anything,” she said. “And yet, do you know, I interrogated two MOTHs before you, using all the techniques of the Sino-Korean Keepers we have absorbed. Eventually, both MOTHs cracked. You knew them, I believe. Angus and Mortar of Bravo platoon.”

  “Impossible,” I said. It had to be a lie. Those two had died on Geronimo, with most of Bravo platoon.

  “The great MOTHs,” she continued. “Who thought they were more than men, proved to be little more than weeping children in the end. Sniveling, groveling children, begging to obey. Begging to answer my every question.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  A hint of humor tinged her voice. “You have proven to be most resilient, Floor. But in the end, I will break you, as I broke them. As I broke Hijak.”

  She left. The door slab sealed, and the bright lights and blaring music returned.

  I knew she had lied. Hijak would never talk. Nor would any other MOTH. It just wasn’t possible.

  Even so, another realization slowly dawne
d on me:

  My platoon wasn’t coming.

  Either my brothers couldn’t get to me, or they couldn’t find me. Otherwise, they would have arrived already.

  They are not coming.

  I told myself these sessions were no different than what I had endured in training. That it was simply Trial Week all over again. I just had to buckle down and see it through.

  But it was different. Because in training there was an end in sight, a glimmer of hope. But for this torture, the only release was submission. I had wanted to die as a MOTH, but not even death was an option, because the Keeper kept me alive no matter how many times my heart stopped.

  If there was a hell, this was what it was like. I pitied the damned in that moment.

  I pitied myself.

  I held out for a week. Longer than could reasonably be expected. My broken molar became infected. My hands swelled in the harness. But that pain was minor compared to the agony of the Snake.

  I repeated Shaw’s mantra when I came close to cracking, alternating it with the Code of Conduct answers for Missing-Captured personnel. “Remember me in the deepest, darkest hours, when you think you can’t go on . . . I am Rade Galaal. Petty Officer Second Class . . .”

  I had told myself MOTHs never gave up. That it just wasn’t possible.

  But in the end, no mantra, no mere words, could save me.

  I had said I would die before I surrendered.

  Well, I did die. I did.

  My spirit, anyway.

  The Keeper returned each day, and on the seventh, she seemed to have sensed something was different about my demeanor, because she lowered my body entirely to the floor and freed me from the harness.

  When the bright afterimage faded from my vision, I stared at my swollen hands. My purple fingers were so distended I couldn’t move them.

  The Keeper cradled my head in her lap, and she fed me the gruel she had brought.

  Thus far, I had never once looked at her face, even when the light levels were low like this.