Psychostasis

by Ezra Blake

  “Ivan Skinner.”

  Chris wanders toward one of the velvet egg chairs, nudges it with his knee. It spins. Ivan watches as he takes a seat and thumbs through the magazine caddy in the corner. They have the same issue of House and Home in six different languages.

  “You are early, Mr. Skinner, but it won’t be a problem. We can have the guest house ready in twenty minutes. If you like, you’re welcome to have a complimentary drink in the lounge.”

  “That’s alright,” Ivan says. “Could you page Stefan, please?”

  Her smooth forehead creases. “I believe he’s in a meeting, but I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have, sir.”

  “A meeting?” He checks his watch. “We were scheduled for—”

  “Just leave it, Ivan.” Chris rolls his eyes and replaces the magazine in its bin. “Let’s drop our stuff and take a shower.”

  “No. We’ll wait.”

  Her lips pull tight across her face. “Of course you are welcome, but he might be unavailable until—”

  “We’ll wait,” Ivan says, more firmly. Chris rolls his eyes.

  “Of course, sir. Could I prepare a drink for you, or perhaps some light refreshments?”

  “I can make it myself, thank you.” He brushes past the desk, into a space which may or may not be intended for guests—and he is nothing but a guest, now. Valencia doesn’t stop him.

  The reception area opens into a careful arrangement of lounges and meeting rooms. As Ivan paces the halls, he imagines himself as a potential investor, sheepishly captivated by Die VMM’s lurid promises. Every design choice was made with him in mind. The small collection of aged wine and lavish crystal certifies the organization’s tasteful affluence. White silk privacy screens and dimmable sconce lights assure tact and discretion.

  It’s sterile and lifeless, but he can’t overlook the power in such tailored composition. Everything speaks its message as intended. The fish tank says: “Trust us. We can can keep living creatures alive.”

  He skims the shelf of expensive liquor and returns to Chris empty-handed.

  “I could use some dinner,” Chris says, oblivious or willfully ignorant to Ivan’s discomfort. “Let’s give him ten or fifteen—”

  An interior door bangs open. Valencia jumps. Stefan’s narrowed eyes dart between them. “How long have they been waiting?” He asks.

  “Just a few minutes, sir. I thought you were running orientation?”

  “Orientation?” His eyebrows draw together; he glances over his shoulder. “No, half of our patrons were stranded at Brandenburg this morning. I am taking their calls for the past two hours. Tell me, who has accessed staff assignments since last night?”

  “One moment please.” Valencia scrambles for her tablet. “Ah, you have, sir. And Signore Giovanetti, and…your father.” She bites her lip. “It seems he altered the drivers’ schedules.”

  Stefan straightens up and adjusts his slim tie around his throat. “Never mind. It is no problem.”

  “I locked his account like you said, sir, he must have submitted changes on paper—”

  “Valencia.”

  “We can come back,” Ivan offers.

  “No. Of course you are welcome. I will arrange your car, and we meet for a late dinner at the guest house.” Stefan ushers them out into the quad.

  “If it’s all the same to you, perhaps we could meet earlier? Christopher is quite tired from our flight,” he says. Chris glares at him.

  Stefan’s posture stiffens. They stop at the gate. “I must locate your candidate,” he says.

  “Of course, of course.” He leans in slightly. “Some growing pains are to be expected, no?”

  “I will meet you at nine thirty.”

  The car pulls up, then, and Ivan drops his inquisition. Poor Stefan has enough to deal with as it is. He slides into the passenger seat and spares one last glance at his beautiful campus. Now that he’s paying attention, the fresh paint is obvious, as are the two new structures behind the dormitory. They’re stark, nearly brutalist in their construction.

  These, too, speak their piece.

  The car arrives like a derailed train, skidding through a cloud of golden dust. Elliot’s head snaps up. His eyes skim it twice: black, low, shiny. Though he can’t place the make or model, he recognizes luxury when he sees it. Discernment comes later.

  Jake tosses the carton in his bag and drags Ash to his feet. Elliot beats them to the driver’s side window, where a dark, wiry man is peering at them over his aviator shades.

  “Herr Latzke?” He asks.

  “No,” the man says, and gestures for them to get in.

  They ask their most pressing questions and receive a few grunts in response, and nobody talks after that. Sunlight dulls and scatters across their jeans as they careen down a dirt road traversing the thick pine forest. The only sound is the low hum of the engine and the occasional snap of a branch under the tires. Elliot stares at his feet.

  Forty-five minutes later, they stop before a chain link fence that could probably keep dinosaurs contained, if needed. It’s topped with layers upon layers of barbed wire. Their driver shouts out the window. A gate swings open. Jake watches with the flat, slack-jawed dismay of a man who’s just lost his life’s savings in Vegas, but Elliot knows better. Barbed wire could mean a lot of things—weapons or animals or government secrets—and besides, he knows how gambling works. You can’t bet anything you aren’t prepared to lose.

  They pull into a courtyard of neo-baroque buildings in pastel colors, worn yellow and blue and light olive drab, regal and slightly exotic. A clock tower surveys the lawn from on high. The place could be a historic college if not for the enormous statue of Vladmir Lenin in the middle of the quad.

  Their driver opens the door only once the gate is firmly closed behind them. “Out,” he says.

  “Where’s Latzke?”

  He touches his waistband. For the first time, Elliot notices the holster.

  “Get out,” he repeats. “Follow me. Latzke finds you later.”

  They scoot across the seat and onto the grass. Elliot nods toward the gun a few times before Jake gets the memo. His whole body deflates and he shakes Ash’s shoulder, like Ash cares. If the driver shot him, it’s doubtful he’d notice.

  “Follow me to das Gehege.”

  “What’s that mean?” Jake whispers. Elliot shrugs.

  The man herds them toward the building at the head of the quad. There are two doors, both staffed by guys with guns. One ushers them inside, but Jake plants his feet. “I’d like to speak with Latzke first.”

  “Ihr werdet tun, was wir befehlen.”

  Jake opens his mouth, fists clenched—he’s about to say something stupid and get them all shot. Elliot grabs his arm and tugs him toward the door, hissing, “Take it easy.” The guards usher them inside.

  Elliot read a memoir once about a man who climbed Mount Everest. He wrote that no matter how much you train, nothing can prepare you for the moment you first see the mountain from the plane. You gaze out your porthole at the snow-capped peak, and something feels out of place. Then you realize you’re looking up.

  The same feeling strikes him as he steps into the gymnasium. It’s just south of awe and a few miles north of boundless, unremitting dread.

  The space is wide and airy with new wood floors, drenched by sparkling skylights; uniformed guards are erecting three pop-up medical tents with those cloudy plastic windows. Two dozen people mill about. They wear nightgowns, tracksuits, designer streetwear, and handcuffs.

  This wasn’t the fucking deal.

  “We’re employees,” Elliot says, turning to the door.

  “Hey, Elliot, take it easy!”

  “We work here,” he says, ignoring Jake. “We’re not—”

  “Warten Sie hier!” The guard shoves him back, and there’s no time to struggle. He snaps cuffs onto Elliot’s wrists.

  “I fucking work here!” He lunges for the door. The driver blocks his path again, grabs his s
houlder, and throws him into the cinderblock wall, knocking the air out of him. Elliot doubles over and gasps. The door bangs shut.

  He takes a moment to catch his breath, listening and watching feet shuffle past.

  Several people are crying. A few argue in languages he can’t identify. One woman paces frenetic circles and mumbles to herself, but most of them look vacant. They’ve flipped the off switch.

  “This is insane,” Jake says. “This is literally fucking insane. You’d better start talking. I mean it. This had better not be what I think it is.”

  “Enlighten me. What do you think it is?” He straightens up. Jake and Ash are cuffed, too. Their hands are in front of them and there’s plenty of slack in the chains, but the degree of restriction is far less important than the implication.

  “They’re stripping them in that tent. Look.” Jake gestures across the gymnasium, but Elliot doesn’t look. “We’re getting trafficked.”

  “We’re not.”

  “Do you have a better explanation? Because it looks like we’re on the wrong end of a fucking De Sade novel.”

  “Stop. Just let me think,” he says.

  “You knew this was gonna happen.” He elbows Elliot in the ribs. “Huh? Nobody’s following you. There was no keylogger.”

  “There was, Jake, I didn’t know what it was at the time but I found—”

  “You planned this whole thing.” Jake’s face splits into an awful grin. He steps closer, shaking his head. “I’m so fucking blind. That’s why you wouldn’t tell me anything about your boss, huh? He’s some kind of pimp. I bet you thought you’d get out if you sold us into fucking slavery.”

  “Slavery?” Ash’s head snaps up.

  “I mean, what else could it be?”

  His enormous eyes grow impossibly wider. “I can’t be a slave,” he says. “I’m white.”

  They stare at him.

  “I ain’t never harvested crops, neither.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Elliot says. “It’s a misunderstanding. Latzke is coming back for us.”

  Jake laughs. It’s a shrill, joyless sound. He says, “You stupid bitch.”

  The loudspeaker screeches. A groan ripples through the crowd as they cover their ears. A moment later, a stern English voice propagates through the room: “Form a single file line in front of tent one.”

  The guards brandish their guns. The crowd congeals into a uniform mass and sweeps forward. A shoulder catches him in the nose. Elliot stumbles. He looks behind him but sees only a mob of tear-streaked, wide-eyed faces. Jake and Ash are gone.

  They take his clothing. They take his blood. They take his height and weight and write them on a clipboard; they prod his scars and shove gloved fingers in his mouth, but they can’t touch him. Ash smiles and nods and even bends over when they ask him to. He is redemption in motion, purgatory personified. Each indignity becomes a drop of cleansing fire.

  When they’ve taken everything but his smile, they usher him into a beautiful auditorium painted red and gold. Nobody is talking anymore. He sits in a hard wooden seat on the aisle, cold against his bare thighs, and if he cared, he might hug his knees to his chest. Instead he slumps in his seat, closes his eyes against the onslaught of naked bodies, and drifts.

  Holy Trinity held assemblies in a room like this. They had benches instead of chairs, but the layout was the same. Sometimes, a choir from another school would visit. They’d stand in rows on the stage and sing hymns while Ash and his classmates sat on the benches looking straight ahead, sitting on their hands. He sat with his friend Riley that first year, sometimes tucking a hand under Riley’s thigh. Staff put a stop to that real quick.

  “Ash!”

  He opens his eyes. The lights are dim now. Jake’s face is inches away from him, his naked chest heaving shallowly. “Are you okay?” He whispers. “I’m gonna fucking kill Elliot, I swear to—”

  “Shh.” He presses a finger to his lips and tips his head toward the stage, where an armed guard is fumbling with a projector screen.

  “God, this is insane.” He sits back and stares into space for a moment. Then he leans into Ash with renewed passion and says, “I promise I’ll get you out of this. If worst comes to worst, my father—”

  “Quiet,” the guard barks, finally yanking the screen down from its mounted roll. “I must not hear a sound from you during the video.”

  “Ánte gamísou!” Someone in the audience shouts.

  “If you would like to leave the compound, I suggest you walk out of the auditorium now.” He lifts his machine gun a few inches. “Find out what happens.”

  He pauses. Nobody moves.

  “Good, so we are all happy to be here. I will now play instructional video. Pay close attention.” With that, he steps from the stage and motions to the projection booth with his weapon. The crowd ducks in a near-perfect arc as it swings across the room, but not Ash. He watches the screen.

  A sinewy old man sits behind an oak desk, hands folded in front of him like a Presidential address. He’s not so different from most old men Ash has met, but something is wrong with his eyes. They’re too glossy, or too small, or something.

  “Welcome to the Wünsdorf compound. I am Ulrich Latzke, founder of die Vereinigung der Männer der Macht, or VMM.” His voice is raspy and surprisingly soft, weighed down by a thick German accent. “Die VMM is a well-oiled machine. Follow the rules and you may be comfortable. Disobey, and you will face consequences up to and including execution.”

  The video cuts to a wide shot of the compound from outside the gate, and then closer, showing architectural details and a few pictures of the red statue out front. “I will briefly explain the rich history of Wünsdorf,” Ulrich says. “It was constructed as headquarters for the German Armed Forces and was used as a communication hub for the Nazi party…”

  “Christ,” Jake whispers. “What do you wanna bet he’ll pull up a PowerPoint next?”

  “…When the Soviets moved in to the compound, it was given the nickname Die Verbotene Stadt, the Forbidden City, by the East Germans. At it’s height, it housed 75,000 men, women, and children…”

  The camera pans through simple but elegant rooms: sleeping quarters, a dining hall, a library, a pool. Ulrich drones on and on. They can’t mention execution at the beginning of the presentation and then go back to architecture and Soviet-German relations.

  Ash blinks hard and refocuses his eyes every few seconds. He’s barely present by the time the reach the section on rules and procedures—“What did I say?” Jake nudges him. “PowerPoint.” And Ash should listen, but he can’t pay attention to anything except the metal weight in his guts and the slow ache dripping down his spine. He’ll need more painkillers soon. Maybe he can sneak off to the bathroom.

  After what feels like an hour of self-indulgent monologue, it finally cuts back to the old guy at the desk. “If you follow the rules and do your best to serve, your time at the compound can be enjoyable,” he says. “Remember: suffering is brought upon oneself.”

  The video fades out. Nobody takes the stage. In the front row, all the men with clothes on are whispering angrily to each other. As the minutes drag on, the naked people start talking, too.

  “Okay. Okay, two ideas,” Jake whispers, right next to his ear. “Idea one, we get as far away from the guards as possible and I cut the you-know-what out of you-know-where. I keep them away while you steal a rug and we toss it over the barbed wire and climb out—or, actually, we could get a car! Threaten one of them until we get the keys and drive through the fence, like at camp, it worked once. And idea two, we can do both of them, we use the you-know-what to—”

  “The gun?”

  “Listen, we cause some kind of distraction and try to get them panicking, the crowd I mean, and that’s when we slip off and take the car—”

  “What ‘bout Elliot?”

  “What about Elliot? He got us into this. I’m not waiting up for him.”

  Ash frowns, trying to catch some of the vague thoughts rico
cheting around his head. “We can’t leave him. He ain’t supposed to be—”

  “A round of applause for our gracious benefactor!”

  They look up. Someone new has burst through the doors. He’s a short blond man in a gray suit, holding a riding crop. He smacks it against his palm as he climbs onto the stage. “You’ve gotta be kidding,” Jake mutters, but it’s intimidating enough to elicit a reluctant round of applause.

  “I am Stefan Latzke, son of Ulrich Latzke. In a moment, I will hand out rank assignments,” he says. “You will each be given fifteen seconds to explain your special skills and why you will be valuable to the organization, and you will then be sent with the rest of your rank for individual briefings.” He smacks the crop against one of the pillars on either side of the stage, sending a loud crack through the auditorium. “Line up on the west wall.”

  Everyone scrambles out of their seats. Ash and Jake are separated. He stands with his back against the wall, blearily skimming the crowd, assuring himself that nobody’s staring at him. It’s the least of his concerns, but it’s the only one he can wrap his head around.

  “Officers,” Latzke says, stepping down from the stage, “if you would like to dispute an assignment, find me after orientation.” He approaches the first woman in line, imposing himself in her personal space. “Fifteen seconds. Begin.”

  The woman, a curvy brunette in her early thirties, looks cowed. “Um. I—I have two children, and I’m a good parent. I can cook and clean, ah, I keep a neat house. I used to work as a—”

  “Rank four,” he says.

  What does that mean? Is that good? She doesn’t look happy about it.

  A young man with a sharp jawline. “I’m a certified nurse. I’m well-read and good with numbers. I was studying to be a midwife. I’m punctual, detail-oriented, and obedient.”

  “Rank two. Next.”

  The next woman doesn’t look at him. He smacks the crop on the wall above her shoulder.

  “You. Explain yourself.”

  “Es gibt keine Arbeit für dich,” she mutters. “They eat our suffering. No God, kein Gott, kein Gott, the center of Earth filled of fear, white deer, good night dear—”