by Anderson, S
I’m suddenly struck by what he reminds me of. He’s a Muppet. He’s a goddamn Indiana-Jones-Nazi-bad-guy-wannabe Muppet.
Please tell me I’m not about to be taken into the custody of a cliché.
I blow a stray strand of hair from my eyes, achieving my best Harrison Ford impersonation as I say, “Can’t say the same for you.”
Heinrich smiles, but it’s not a smile. It’s a calculated evaluation manifesting in a display of emotion. I’m reminded of Dr. Stevens. The researcher has discovered his first fact about the rat.
“He always said you would fight the hardest.”
Nikolai’s hand hasn’t left my neck. I know I can fight him. I might even get as far as the end of the parking lot before someone shoots me with something. Conclusive assessment of the situation says it’s smart to not fight. Not yet. They want to take me alive.
I don’t struggle when I feel the zip tie secure around my wrists. “Whoever he is, he’s smart,” I say.
Heinrich looks to Nikolai. He wears glasses, the same ones Dr. Stevens wore. They really must get those with the PhD. His eyes are blue, so vibrant they don’t look real. A few strands of pale blonde hair fall across his high forehead as he says, “She thinks you’re smart, Subject A.”
I know Nikolai’s brilliant, but I keep that to myself.
“I fear I must apologize, Ms. Vincent,” Heinrich says.
“Agent Vincent,” I correct him.
“Ms. Vincent,” he repeats, emphasizing the words with a sharp glare down at me. “You were not scheduled to be taken yet, but your abilities have grown out of proper control.”
Out of proper control. What the hell does that mean?
“Do not worry, Ms. Vincent,” he says as if he can read my mind. “You won’t understand any of this shortly. Your worries will disappear.”
He’s going to mess with my mind.
That does it. I’ve reached the point where survival means more than not being shot. I fight, twisting far enough around to bite Nikolai’s wrist. He lets go, and I land a hard kick to his legs as I jump to my feet. My hands are tied behind me, but that doesn’t affect my legs. I dodge two more guards and sprint.
My heart beats hard between my ears, and I know… I know I’m fucked, but I run for all I’m worth.
I don’t even feel it. It has to be a dart, or a bullet of some sort. It hits me so quickly that it blends with the adrenaline pumping through my blood. It’s only when my feet go heavy and clunky under me and my eyes start to close that I realize I’ve been drugged.
“No… stop…” I’m trying to say, but my lips are heavy. My throat is closing up.
The edges of my vision are going dark. Nikolai is above me then. He’s not trying to help me. He looks ready to strangle me completely now. I focus on his eyes, clinging to words he once branded into my brain.
You will be taken hostage, Poppy. It’s not something those in our line of work can avoid. But that doesn’t mean you’ll be a victim.
As long as your mind stays strong, they can’t break you.
12
I was asleep.
That’s the only thought running through my head as I thrash within the stronghold wrapped around me. There’s something covering my face. It’s thin enough that I can hear through it, made of some sort of cloth. A pillowcase, maybe? It stinks with the tang of sweat and something else… a harsh chemical smell that singes my nostrils each time I inhale.
I’m disoriented. My feet aren’t touching the ground, but I can feel that I’m in motion. I was unconscious. I don’t know how long I’ve been out, what’s moving me, or in what direction.
I try to move. Whatever’s around me tightens.
I can’t breathe.
“Let me go,” I say. It’s meek and coated with the last trace of sleep in my system.
“Keep her quiet,” a voice says. I can’t tell if I recognize the voice.
The more I wake up, the more terror laces each of my breaths.
What’s going on?
I was asleep.
They hit me at my weakest, took advantage of the one vulnerability every human has.
I can’t tell how many are around me. One holds me, and one told him to keep me quiet, but is that all?
Your first priority is to assess your situation, Recruit Vincent. You can’t fight what you don’t understand.
I try to take a deep breath. I can’t.
I can’t breathe.
The chemical smell is nauseating.
I can’t get a handle on the situation, can’t assess shit. I pray that this is just a drill. That hardass Zolkov warned us that all bets were off starting yesterday. I wouldn’t put it past him to kidnap me and call it 'training'.
We move for a few more minutes, and I hear a loud whine of metal against metal followed by a loud thunk.
A door opening, maybe?
“Put her in the chair.”
That’s the same voice that told the one holding me to shut me up. I think.
Everything feels like it’s moving too fast and yet slower than normal at the same time. My heart is beating so fast that my body vibrates with adrenaline. It’s years before I feel the chair underneath me, but once I do, the voices around me are speaking at a speed that only the Chipmunks can understand.
Pain rips through my cheek, and I scream.
My hands are secured behind me, my legs tied to the front of the chair.
“Please,” I say, my voice trembling. “Please.”
I don’t know what I’m begging them to do. I just want to go back to sleep.
I just want this to be a bad dream.
More words fly at me. I can’t process them. Another hit, this time to my shoulder. Something in my brain snaps. I want to cry. I want to scream. My mouth opens and the disgusting stench pours in, all the way down to my guts and pulls the vomit back out with my next breath. I throw up, and whatever covers me face catches the puke, suffocating me with it.
I hear more words, something that makes me hope they’ll at least uncover my head. A few seconds, or another year, I don’t know, and my face is liberated.
I draw in a deep breath, coughing as the last bit of vomit clears from my throat.
“You’re a disgrace,” the voice says.
It’s no longer distorted by my fear and the pillowcase. It’s clear as a bell tolling over a graveyard in the dead of night.
I’m pulled out of the memory, sucked free of the effects of the drug Heinrich hit me with.
I smell the tang of stomach acid and know I threw up this time, too. Last time it was from inexperience. This time I’m guessing it’s from whatever was in my system.
I’m not afraid of being kidnapped anymore.
Nikolai taught me how to handle it.
“I’m the best,” I say, locking my breaths under control. I realize the chemical smell was external from the memory. It’s in the room I’m in now, permeating the air like a cloud.
I can’t see anything but a bright light that shines directly in my eyes to distort the rest of the view. I hear feet shuffle around me, telling me more than one person is in the room. A drip echoes in the far right corner. I don’t know if it’s real or for the effect of slowly driving me insane. I pinpoint the chemical as chlorine. If I didn’t know better, I’d say we were sitting in a pool cleaning supply room.
I hear the motion of his hand the exact second I feel the slap on my cheek.
It’s sick. I’m sick.
My insides tighten in a way that’s opposite from what I should be feeling. I know that hand. I know the force of his hits. I know this isn’t some scene he’s playing with me. At the end, he’s not going to untie me and tell me how I’m the best little soldier under his command.
But I can’t help the natural response I have to this moment.
“You’re pathetic,” Nikolai says. His voice is deeper, harsher than I remember. He has more anger in him now than he did training me.
I wonder if Heinrich utilizes that rage or
if he’s oblivious to it.
“I’m not the one who had to tie a girl up to beat her.”
That earns me another slap and a growl.
“Enough,” Heinrich says. “Leave us.”
The light remains in my eyes, and I rely on my other senses to figure out how many have left the room. I hear only one pair of feet circle around to my left side.
“Where did you go, Miss Vincent?”
Let the mind games begin. “You can’t break me.”
“And why is that, Miss Vincent? Do you believe your mind superior to any other?”
My mind is above average, and my training prepared me for anything he can throw at me. “You can’t break me.”
“I find myself lucky. Many of my colleagues can no longer appreciate the concept of humor.” He takes two steps, and I imagine him standing in front of me as he says, “Perhaps they just haven’t worked with such… funny subjects as I.”
“You think I’m joking?”
“Oh, I know that you believe your words, Miss Vincent. I know that there is a place deep inside of you that somehow clings to a universal truth that was once taught to you. But on the matter of whether or not you can prevent me from getting inside your head and controlling you…” He takes a few breaths for dramatic impact. “Well, that is the joke, Miss Vincent.”
I close my eyes. “Laugh it up, ugly. It’s only the last laugh that matters, anyway.”
“Where did you go, Miss Vincent? I have to admit, my curiosity is on the edge of its seat to know.”
I don’t want to give him an inch. He’ll make it a mile that I’ll have to backtrack from. “You tell me,” I say. “I was unconscious. I have no idea where we are.”
“Where are my manners?” He claps once, and the light shuts off. Another clap, and the room is illuminated by light shining up through the white panels of the floor.
I blink a few times, glancing around. There’s no leak in the corner, but I see the speaker that emits the sound of one. The chemical smell deepens, and I taste the traces of bleach and ammonia along with the chlorine. The room is sterile, white empty walls surround me, beaming with the light from beneath me.
“Do you not remember this place, Miss Vincent?”
Remember it? Other than thinking I’m stuck in a bad Alien autopsy flick, I can’t imagine ever coming to this place.
Heinrich holds a neutral expression on his face, but his eyes are betraying that humor he talked about. “You have been here before, Miss Vincent. Many times.”
He’s playing me, pushing ideas into my head to get under my skin.
“You can’t break me.”
This time, he laughs. He looks young when he does it, barely in his twenties. “Fight it all you want, Miss Vincent, but you have been here before. I have been training you longer than General Zolkov. I broke your mind before you started building your pathetic attempts to shield it.”
Not possible.
“Fuck off,” I say.
That makes him downright giddy. “Where did you go?”
This shit again. I clench my teeth together.
“Let me clarify,” he says. “I know you prefer clarification.” That side comment unsettles me. I’m a literal person. Any psych eval of me probably indicates that about my personality. I do prefer to have things spelled out for me. But he hits my nail on the head with his first swing. I shouldn’t let it get to me. I can’t let it get to me. “When you woke up just now, where did you think you were while you slept?”
You can’t break me. The words are on the tip of my tongue, but instead I say, “Recruit training.”
“Interesting.”
He says it like I’m a chemical reaction that just turned hot pink in the test tube or something.
“How old were you?”
I look down, staring at the lit floor. I’m not giving him any more information.
Heinrich waits three seconds then sighs. “You can cooperate, or I can get information from you my own way, Miss Vincent. It is, as it always is, your choice.”
As it always is. He says it casually like we’ve done this a hundred times before. I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it.
I’ve never been in this room before.
“Fuck off,” I say, cutting my eyes back to his face.
“Your choice.” He looks over me, and I hear a door open and close. “Have you ever heard of SP-117, Miss Vincent?”
SP-117 was an urban legend out of KGB bio labs back in the Soviet era. It was rumored that the stuff loosened lips and had no traceable properties.
I laugh without humor. “Truth serum? You call my words a joke, and you come at me with truth serum?”
He drapes my hair over my left shoulder. I smell alcohol as I feel something cold touch the right side of my neck.
“You might find what happens next hilarious, Miss Vincent. We shall see.”
A pinch stings the same spot on my neck. Something heavy flows into my vein. It’s like lead as it slowly moves down across my chest. He moves away, and by the time he stands in front of me again, I’m highly aware of the weight coursing through my system.
He’s fucking with me, giving me the suggestion of thinking whatever this is with force the truth out of me. It’s classic torture 101. The power of an idea is more effective than the actual act.
“Look, if you just put some thousand island dressing in me, I feel I should let you know I prefer ranch.”
He sneers. “I assure you, Miss Vincent, it is not salad dressing I just injected into your body. You’re feeling it now, yes? The heaviness. Your shoulders are so heavy. Just relax them. Give in to the weight.”
I want to laugh again, but I can’t deny my shoulders really do feel heavy. It’s like Nikolai is standing on them. I slouch forward against my will. I don’t want to give in. I don’t.
But it’s so heavy.
“That’s it, Miss Vincent.”
I want to remind him of my rank, but more than that I want him to stop saying anything. I’m tired of my own name. Tired of hearing his voice. I just want the pressure to go away from my skin.
“It will feel better if you just give in,” he says. “Just let go of the fight and open up to me, Miss Vincent.”
“Fuck off,” I say. Or, well, I hope it’s what I say. My lips are floppy, and my tongue is swollen.
“Now, Miss Vincent, there’s no need to be so angry. I’m here to help you. I like to help you. I’ve always been here to help you.”
That’s a lie.
Isn’t it?
I don’t remember when I first met him. My thoughts are all boulders piling on top of each other, building a mountain I’m too tired to climb.
“Fuck off.”
“What’s your name?” Heinrich asks.
I want to say something sarcastic. He knows my name. I know he knows it. I want to say, “Marilyn Monroe.” My brain tells my mouth to say it. But the words are too heavy. They drag my lips and tongue down.
“What is your name?”
Just say Penelope. Just thinking my name lightens everything around me. “Penelope.” Yeah, that helps the clear the heaviness. I take a full breath.
“What is your mission?”
Again, I tell myself to lie. I’m not currently on a mission. I bite the inside of my cheek.
Just tell him the truth.
My shoulders are bricks. Sweat drips down my forehead.
Just tell him the truth… tell him you don’t have a mission right now. The voice in my head promises this elephant on my back will go away if I just tell him the truth.
I lock my teeth together.
“You fight too hard, Penelope,” Heinrich says. “Your struggle is difficult… heavy.” My body bows forward when he says it. “Lighten the load. Tell me what your mission is. You can rest once you tell me.”
What’s your prime objective when taken hostage? Nikolai’s memory asks me.
Keep your secrets secure.
I bite down on my lip until it bleeds.
<
br /> “You don’t have to tell me everything you know,” Heinrich says. “I know all the details.” That’s not possible. “I just want you to confirm what your mission is.”
He can’t know anything about my missions.
Can he?
He touches me—his hand cradles my chin as he lifts my head up. I don’t want to look at him. Looking at him makes the pressure intensify.
I’ve never felt more compelled to do something than I am right now.
“What is your mission, Penelope?”
I don’t want to give in. I don’t want to keep fighting.
I just want to rest.
I want King Kong to stop sitting on my shoulders.
“I don’t have one. I’m in between orders, on medical leave due to the attack.”
Relief washes over me, and my lungs sting as I breathe too quickly.
I hear the door behind me open and close, and Heinrich steps away from me. Another relief.
“You should be proud of her, Subject A,” Heinrich says.
Nikolai is in the room.
“She lasted longer than you did.”
I count his steps as he circles around me. Ten of his long strides are all it takes to stand in front of me.
I look up, feeling failure seize me. This man taught me how to fight what I just rolled over for. He busted his ass… my ass… to make me strong. And I just bent over and took it up that ass from the Devil.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I say before I can stop myself. Right now, he’s not my General, and he doesn’t think I’m really me.
But I am sorry I’ve failed him.
His cheek twitches, but otherwise, he shows no sign that he even heard me.
“I have business to attend to,” Heinrich says. “Do you have everything that you need, Subject A?”
Everything he needs for what?
Nikolai’s eyes shrink to two black slits. His skin is paler than I remember it being in the hotel. He’s back in his black leather gear, contempt rolling off of him like a scent in the air.