Vow

by Annelie Wendeberg

  ‘We aren’t protecting ourselves, we’re protecting the cultures! For years we had recurring problems with contamination. You see, the cultures are slow growing, which means that just one contaminant can overgrow a test batch in a matter of days. But a few months…no, more than a year ago, we found a high-security lab half buried in the mountains. In Switzerland. We salvaged a lot of the equipment and set it up here. I swear, the suits, the dust-free environment, all of it is to protect our cultures.’

  ‘So if I told you to take a spoonful of each of those cultures and mix them in a glass of water, you and your brother wouldn’t mind drinking it?’

  Twenty-Nine

  It took some throat clearing and cryptic staring at his brother, but eventually Doc nodded agreement. He’s on his way up to the lab right now, guard in tow. I don’t know what to think of it, or how long he’ll be gone. But I’m going to use that time on Ice Face.

  He won’t be leaving this room alive.

  ‘Tell me about Maura.’

  ‘She’s a member of the Council. She was sent here to watch our progress with you, and report back to them.’

  ‘They know about your methods?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long have the Sequencers been torturing prisoners?’

  He stares at this hands, at the hardened rivulets of blood trailing down his ashen skin, and mumbles something I don’t understand.

  I place the mouth of my gun against his right middle finger.

  ‘Since the Council was founded!’ he shouts in panic.

  And I didn’t even say, ‘One.’

  Should it surprise me that the Sequencers have used torture for decades? It probably shouldn’t. ‘Where do you keep your prisoners of war?’

  ‘Complexes like this one. Small, easy to control and keep hidden, with no more than a half dozen cells.’

  I nod, pretending to be satisfied. ‘When did you first meet Erik Vandemeer?’

  He rears back and accidentally tugs on his hands. Sweat pours from his neck and face as he retches into his lap. When he takes too long getting his heaving under control, I set the muzzle back atop his middle finger. ‘One…’

  He whimpers. His breath comes in hap-hap-haps.

  ‘Two…’

  He shakes his head. I’m not waiting for “three.” I squeeze the trigger. His roar cuts through the cell, and that’s when I sense a faint brush of empathy for him. The feeling disappears in a heartbeat.

  ‘When he… Before he…’ Ice Face can’t get a clear sentence out. His mouth and throat are working on small chunks of air. His legs are trembling so hard, his knees keep knocking against the table.

  ‘Deep breath in. Deep breath out,’ I say softly. ‘Come on, you can do it. Deep breath in. And…deep breath out.’

  He’s breathing now, getting a grip on himself. The trembling doesn’t cease though. ‘I met him…I don’t know…five or six years ago when he was in training for an undercover job.’

  So that would explain Erik’s first disappearance. Those Sequencers who weren’t involved in the Espionage Unit were unable to explain where Erik had gone. Strange that the Espionage Unit hadn’t provided a cover story. ‘Which undercover job was he given?’

  ‘We never knew who was assigned which job. It’s normal procedure. I swear. To protect the missions.’

  ‘Where did you meet him?’

  ‘I will not give away locations. Lives depend on it.’

  I pull up Doc’s chair and sit close to Ice Face. ‘Are you sure?’

  His eyes tremble in their sockets, but he manages a nod.

  ‘All right. But you have to give me something else. Two big something elses.’

  Another nod. He really thinks I’m letting it go.

  And I do. For now. ‘Number one: Maura. She knows a hell of a lot about that battle on Taiwan, yet she seemed to have no clue I was abducted. Someone fed her intel. You have an undercover agent high up in the ranks of the BSA. Who?’

  ‘We… We were recruiting someone. But he was killed on Taiwan before we could make a deal.’

  ‘Who told you I was working with Vandemeer? Who told you that Erik and I and two of his men escaped Taiwan? Who told you I helped destroy several Sequencer bases? Who told you I destroyed the satellite network. Who?’ I place the muzzle flat against the base of his pinkie. If fire the shot will rip deep into his hand.

  ‘We don’t know!’ he cries out. ‘After the Taiwan battle, someone at BSA headquarters contacted us. Said he wanted to work for us. He sent us messages, copies of communications between Vandemeer and his second in command, footage of you and Vandemeer directing an attack on our bases.’

  ‘Did that person happen to give you anything useful? Anything that would enable you to save lives?’

  ‘Sometimes, yes. But he wasn’t high up enough to be involved in their planning.’

  ‘And you never wondered why he was present when Erik and I led an attack? A man who wasn’t ranked high enough to know about attacks well in advance?’

  ‘We did wonder. We thought that maybe…maybe it was a woman. Maybe it was Vandemeer’s wife.’

  I burst out laughing. ‘A regular woman in the command centre? You thought Erik would allow his wife to walk in on his…oh, my. You guys have no fucking clue. He led you around, and you never noticed. Erik has no wife. When he’s in heat, he drags a young, untouched girl into his hut. When he and I led an attack on your bases, no one else was in the control room. He sent you those messages. He had control over your satellites, and let you see and hear want he wanted you to see and hear. Erik fed you the Svalbard footage so that you would come running and cut off my escape route for him. You were his Plan B. He had me rigged and wanted to blow me up. And when that didn’t work out, the Sequencers were called in to do the dirty work. But that didn’t work out either, because I shot them.’

  Ice Face digests my words. His Adam’s apple bounces. ‘But those men…upstairs…you told those men upstairs you’re second in command.’ He’s growing smaller by the moment. All those layers he’s put on to become the tough guy strip away, leaving very little of the person.

  ‘They aren’t the BSA. They are people from Alta who need medical supplies, weapons and ammo because the Sequencers stopped offering help. Everything I told you under torture was true. I never belonged to the BSA. I was their prisoner for two years and did what I was forced to do.’

  ‘Why are you—‘

  ‘Telling you this? What do you think?

  He swallows and blinks. His eyes are leaking. ‘You’re going to kill me.’ A resigned nod, and then, ‘Many of us…are trying. We’re trying.’

  That he isn’t begging for his life surprises me. ‘Your intentions don’t matter. The founding Sequencers vowed to protect humanity. You, your Council, your Espionage Unit, and even your brother abused and broke that vow. You use it as a slogan, nothing more.’ Thinking of the amount of medicine they’ve stockpiled in this building, just because they could, makes my trigger finger itch with fury.

  ‘Spare this place. The scientists and my brother.’ It’s a hoarse whisper he produces. As if his voice is already on its way to a crematory.

  ‘You don’t get to tell me what I can or can’t do,’ I bite out.

  Footfalls approach through the corridor. I ask Katvar to signal to them to wait, then turn back to Ice Face. ‘Do you think you have the right to ask me not to burn this place to the ground? This place where I was imprisoned, abused, and tortured for months? Treated worse than a dog every minute of the day? By you and your men? Do you?’

  ‘I… No.’ He’s bared now, stripped of all hope.

  ‘But I will. I am going spare this place, and I’m only doing it because help for my people might come from it one day. There’s one condition, though. You will give me the locations of all the Sequencer and BSA bases, all your planned movements in the northern territory. You will give me the specifics on your means of communication and transportation, and the location of the Council. You will tell me
everything we need to know to bring the BSA to their knees and to weed out corruption among the Sequencers. And you will spill your guts about your bioweapons. Your brother might not know about them, but you do.’

  And he talks.

  He knows these are the last things he gets to say.

  Thirty

  Burly Guy is standing by the cell door, his grip a vice on Doc’s elbow.

  Doc is the last person I want to see right now. His fingers are wrapped around a beaker, the liquid within sloshing against the glass. He must have heard the final shot. And yet, sidling up to the terror in his gaze is a dash of hope. ‘My brother. Is he…’

  ‘A worthless piece of shit? Yes.’ I pull off my cardigan and use it to rub blood splatter off my hands, then lift my chin at Burly. ‘Take him to the mess hall for now. We’ll be up there in a minute.’

  Doc’s movements are mechanical. Stiff. He doesn’t fight Burly when he’s turned around and nudged toward the narrow flight of stairs that leads up to ground level.

  Numb, I watch them disappear. The show isn’t over yet. I still have to make everyone believe that Ice Face kept his mouth shut to the very end.

  Katvar is pressing his forehead against a wall, struggling for breath. I sink to the floor and shut my eyes, feeling like a jumble of disconnected joints, aged beyond years. ‘I want to go home,’ I hear myself say. But where and what is home? A safe place? Is any place safe these days?

  Grief is suffocating me. I hear myself sobbing, but feel disconnected from the actual thing. Whatever my face and chest are doing, I have no say in it.

  Katvar drops to the ground and arcs his body over mine, pressing me to him with what seems to be cries of…of…goodbye? I draw back and look him in the eye. What I see is killing me: Regret. Shame.

  He’s seen my monster fully formed, and now he knows. Now he knows. And he can’t bear it.

  I scrape my hands over my face, and push myself up. ‘Right. Let’s finish this.’ And I’m not sure if I mean this job, or us.

  Or myself.

  I find a bathroom and stare into the mirror. I haven’t seen my own face in months. The mirror in my room was only ever interesting as a means of cutting myself free.

  The woman I see now is a stranger. Small red droplets mist my face and throat. Black shadows loom under my eyes. My cheekbones are sharper, my jaw harder. My eyes are dead. I don’t look like a teenager. I look like the terrorist the Sequencers believe I am. This is what Katvar sees. This is what makes him turn away with regret and shame.

  War is riding on your shoulders. A young Lume girl once told me that. It was true then and is even truer now.

  I sigh.

  I’m not sure I can believe Ice Face’s final words as I put the gun to his head. ‘I swear we never made them. It was only theory. We never made them.’

  Bioweapons. Easy and cheap to manufacture, but hard to deploy if your target is as splintered and fast-moving as the BSA. But the look of fascination in his eyes as he thought of the possibilities… In that short moment, he wasn’t even aware of the muzzle pressed to his brow.

  My bloody fingers curl around the rim of the sink. Scarlet smears on stainless steel.

  I turn on the tap and wash my skin, and can’t tear my gaze from the reddened water that circles the drain. Bloody circles. That’s what we do. We run in bloody circles of retaliation, chasing our own tails.

  Doc is squatting among a bunch of hogtied and blindfolded scientists, talking to them in a subdued voice. When Katvar and I walk up to them, he has the guts to make demands. ‘We’ll all drink this if you agree to leave the laboratories untouched.’

  I’m so tired of this bullshit, I pull my gun on him. ‘My suggestion is that you all drink this, and if it doesn’t make you sick, I might only blast off your kneecaps. How’s that for a deal?’

  He gulps, fumbling for words. ‘Please don’t destroy this facility. It’s going to save lives.’

  ‘Whose? Ours or yours?’ I ask, knowing they firmly believe we are BSA.

  ‘Everyone’s. Science takes no sides.’

  I laugh. ‘Is that what it is?’ I scan the other hostages. ‘Take off their blindfolds,’ I tell Doc.

  He does as asked. Surprised and maybe blinded by the sudden light, Doc’s colleagues blink, looking dazed. Until they spot me and my pistol. Instinctively, they duck their heads.

  ‘Science taking no sides,’ I say slowly. ‘Is that what you did when you watched the abuse of a woman you knew nothing about, and decided to just let it happen? Is that what it was, not taking sides?’

  I can’t believe I wanted to be one of them. And how desperately I wanted it!

  Did they too have ideals, honour, and beliefs when they were young, and then…simply forget what once motivated them as they got older? A part of me understands the gradual erosion of one’s own values. You grow wiser with age, you tell yourself. But what really happens is that you give less of a fuck because you realise that holding on to your ideals takes a lot more effort than you thought it would.

  But maybe these are people who never gave a shit from the start, people who just wanted to be big-brained Sequencer scientists so others would look up to them.

  Not really important, though. ‘Drink this shit, or I’m going to empty my clip into your bellies, you fucking cowards.’ My hate burns white hot, and I love having these people as an outlet. The uproar in my chest has nothing to do with Katvar’s reaction to the monster inside me.

  Or so I tell myself.

  They scramble for the cup and spill a few drops in their haste. I don’t care anymore if the concoction kills them, or if they end up dying in twenty or thirty years in their own beds. I just want to get as far away from them as possible.

  But I can’t. Not yet.

  Without glancing at Katvar, I bark, ‘Get me a drink, soldier.’

  Flashing my teeth at our captives, I turn to find a chair to sit on. A moment later, a cup of cold tea appears in my hand. I look up and find Katvar.

  ‘Thanks,’ I mumble, and turn my head away. I can’t bear the look in his eyes.

  He touches my arm and signs, ‘I heard the scientists talking about the stuff in the beaker. They were saying it’s tuberculosis bacteria.’

  ‘What? Is the asshole planning to spread that crap around?’ I push past Katvar and walk over to Doc to confront him.

  ‘It’s a non-virulent strain,’ he says, palms up in surrender. The dark patches under his armpits grow bigger every time I talk to him.

  Yep, I’m very trigger-happy today. ‘Meaning what precisely?’

  ‘These cultures have lost the ability to cause tuberculosis. Or rather, we took that ability away. The bacteria are…um…how can I put it… They are like a farm for bacteriophages, which we hope to use in virotherapy against multi-resistant tuberculosis. Drinking this is relatively harmless.’

  I stare him down, but he doesn’t flinch. Just blinks at me with large puppy eyes.

  Okay. He’s probably not trying to kill us all. Not today, anyway.

  I’m near collapsing, but I straighten my spine, and narrow my eyes at Doc. ‘Excellent. As all of you are doing so well, you’re ready for a few questions, yes? Colonel Johansson was a tad…how should I say…reticent? I’m sure you can help a lady out. I need the locations of all Sequencer bases in Scandinavia, the location of your Council, your means of communication and transport, access codes, etcetera etcetera, and everything you’ve planned against us. In turn, I won’t kill you by carving your limbs from your body. But if you think you might need more convincing, I’ll drag you to my pretty cell in the basement and sit you down with Johannson’s remains.’

  ‘We don’t know anything about strategies against the BSA or locations of secret bases. We are scientists, not soldiers.’

  Slowly, I turn my head to the woman who has spoken. She’s a head shorter than the others, and there’s a fierceness to her that I like.

  ‘I don’t see that as a problem, because someone in this mess hall does kno
w. So I’ll be torturing and killing as many scientists as it takes for that person to come forward.’

  She blanches and grabs the arm of the man next to her for support. He barely registers the touch.

  I smile at them and say to Doc, ‘I’ll get to you shortly.’

  Then I turn on my heel, jerk my chin at the guy with the radio, and march back to my chair and my cup of tea. A single line is on constant repeat in my head: “need to get out of here need to get out of here.”

  The man in charge of this group approaches casually, pulls up a chair and plops down on it. Even bumps me with his elbow as if we’re chums. ‘When you’re done with the prisoners, you want us to burn everything to the ground, or leave the labs so we can come back later and get more stuff?’ He says it loud enough for Doc and his staff to hear. The whites of their eyes are showing. A couple of them are crying, and I’m not sure if they are concerned about the life and well-being of anything but their fucking bacteria and viruses.

  I bend close to Leading Guy’s ear and whisper, ‘Leave the labs untouched, but act like we’re getting ready to blow everything up, including the prisoners. Are we ready to leave now?’

  He nods, and clicks the button on his radio four times without saying a word.

  I lean back and gift our hostages an ugly sneer. They all sag in despair.

  A minute later, a bunch of men I haven’t seen before come storming in and shout something about enemy movements and that we have to get the fuck out of there. They are so authentic my pulse is jumping until Katvar signals to me that all is going as planned.

  Maybe the new ones were on recon while everyone else was inside the building, and were called back in for the pretence of needing to leave in a hurry.

  So that’s what we do. We exit the building like it’s on fire. Night engulfs us. I suck in the fresh air and feel the wetness of tears on my cheeks. I don’t mind the couple of mosquitoes I inhale on the way.