by Michelle Kay
She'd never expected it to be so easy—accepting her own death. How badly could it hurt, after all? A flash of heat—she'd probably be dead before the meat fell from her body.
Just as she was sealing her pact of silence, a squealing of static filled her cell. Certain that the siren would follow the crunchy white-noise, Clover's hands moved to her ears, then light came from the screen above the door. It had been black since she'd first woken up, but as the snowstorm of static cleared, it revealed the inside of an interrogation room just like the one she'd been in a few hours ago. She lowered her hands. There was no siren, but she could hear the heavy breathing of the man locked onto the table.
Clover knew she was looking through a camera that was different from the one she'd seen during her first interview. The angle was wrong. It wasn't split or face-level, but peered over the shoulder of a black-haired agent from its perch in the corner of the room.
"I know you think you're being brave." Clover didn't need to see the agent's face to know that it was Rainer's voice coming through the speakers. "But silence won't save you, and it won't save them. It's only going to make things harder in the long run."
A squirming sensation started in the very bottom of Clover's stomach. She felt like Rainer was addressing her, like he knew somehow that she'd just sworn herself to secrecy. She thought the man at the table was feeling the same queasy sensation, because he shifted in his chair, balling his fists and leaning further away from his captor.
Rainer waited for an answer, but the man only pressed his lips more tightly together. Even over the speakers, Clover could hear the dramatic sigh that Rainer released, followed by the soft thud of the hammer he placed on the table between them.
"I'm going to ask you one last time." The conversational tone he used, the one Clover had become accustomed to, was gone. "Where does your pack hide?"
Clover wondered where her resolve had gone. She'd just finished convincing herself that nothing they did to her would make her talk, and now she was willing this man to tell Rainer everything, all because of the glint of light that reflected off the head of an everyday hammer. Maybe she was a coward and saw herself in that man's position. Or maybe it was the broad set of the prisoner's shoulders, and squared edge of his jaw. The man who was built like her father.
She knew it was impossible, given the poor quality of film, but Clover thought she saw the man's fists shake. He frowned, which hardened his jawline, and shook his head. Rainer nodded, as though accepting his answer, then he struck with the same speed she'd seen him scruff his brother with. In one motion, he grabbed the hammer and brought it down on the man's fist. The crunching of bones was muffled, and Clover realized that it wasn't just the man's screaming that was drowning out the sound. Her breath was coming in deafening gulps as she turned her back to the screen, one hand covering her mouth, the other folding over her stomach to keep the terror from writhing out of her body.
Clover refused to look at the screen again as she heard Rainer restate his question, shouting over the growling coming from the werewolf across the table. There was no answer and the thudding of the hammer returned. Screams of pain framed the dull percussion and Clover locked her hands over her ears, determined to keep the sound of shattered bones out of her head. Just as she'd managed to press hard enough to drown the noise out, she was knocked to the ground by the jets of ice water, whose threat she'd forgotten about. She was washed toward the center of the room, and as the volume of the video was cranked up over the crashing of water, she realized they were playing a new game—she would watch the video or suffer.
The television stayed on after that, playing through an endless string of interrogations, all ending worse than the one before. Clover tried to ignore them, tried to fool the camera watching her by staring at the wall just to the left or right of the screen, but they seemed to know when she was blocking the sensations out. When an older man had his face beaten beyond recognition, when a woman had her brown jump suit ripped from her body by two unrecognizable guards, when a boy her age had an ear cut off, Clover found herself washed to the ground, punished for trying to block the screen from her line of sight.
Forced to watch as she was, Clover tried to harden herself against the onslaught of violence. She wasn't a stranger to injury, and tried to remember every gory slice of flesh she'd watched as she and her father had removed their friend's arm. She would combat their violent imagery with her own, she would remind herself that she was stronger than Rainer's scare tactics. Then she watched a woman have each of her fingertips clipped off with wire-cutters, and she realized that it wasn't the injury that forced the bile up her throat and onto the floor in front of her—it was the horrific intentionality of it.
Once her body had given up the bit of ground she'd maintained until that point, she was no longer able to close the floodgates of tears and vomit that had been opened. Hours passed like that—cycling between bouts of strength, followed by a trip to the toilet to be sick, then the battering of water—and soon the interrogations began ending in death. She was watching her future through the misery of these strangers, and she knew that was exactly what Rainer wanted her to take from his sick collection of snuff films. He wanted to show her what was waiting for her if she chose not to answer his questions.
Eventually, she stopped guessing how much time had passed, but her body felt like it had been days. She knew, at least, that it had been long enough for everything to go numb. She'd stopped crying, and hadn't been sick for at least a score of videos. She didn't even have to stare at the wall any more to trick her wardens. She watched, heavy lidded, as an older man's arm was broken over the edge of the table. He wasn't bound any more, but as Rainer broke his second arm in a similar fashion she guessed it didn't matter if he was or not. The man was dropped to the floor, both limbs making "L" shapes in directions that were unnatural.
It might have been shocking at the beginning of this onslaught, but now broken bones was only a precursor to the real interrogation, which is why Clover was shocked to hear this man's voice suddenly break through his screaming, answering questions that so many people had died to protect.
"There's an old mining vein!" The man was sobbing in a way she'd never seen an adult cry until these videos had started. "Three miles west of the old factory."
"Are you lying to me?" Rainer wiped sweat from his forehead looking as surprised as Clover was that the answer was coming so readily.
"No! No, it's grown over, but it's there. I swear!"
Rainer stood taller and straightened his uniform, then went to the small speaker by the door, mashing a button to open communication. "Send him to the medic."
This time, instead of changing to another interrogation, the TV went black. Clover didn't move from where she'd planted herself against the wall. Was that the end? She knew that the end of a show like that could only mean one thing—it was her turn. She could still hear the reverberation of screaming in her head when the sound of boots started thumping from the hall outside her door. Tears stung her eyes again. Since the screening of torture had started, she hadn't thought of escaping, or of Elliot rescuing her. She had only thought of how she would endure something so horrible while keeping her dignity intact. As the boots got louder, she considered biting her tongue off. They couldn't torture her if she was dead.
Instead of killing herself, she shuffled to the center of the room and, working against the stiffness of her body, laid face down on the cold floor. Her hands were folded neatly behind her back when the door scraped open. Surrendering almost felt like a reward as her body was finally relieved of its task of supporting her, and she was happy when her captors took her invitation and didn't use the shock collar before cuffing her. The bag came over her head as she tried to guess whether she would be the one to talk or the one to die.
- 22 -
Despite the strange calm that had taken her in the last minutes inside her cell, when the hood was removed, she could see her hands shaking where they were bound to the table,
and without the fabric sopping them up, she felt tears dribble from her chin. She didn't test her bonds this time, but tried to draw her fingers into fists, though her swollen, crooked finger refused to move. She wanted to protect them, imagining them as short, waving stumps that would coat the table in the grainy blood puddle she'd seen through her private screen.
Before the roots of panic could plant themselves any deeper, the door opened and her interrogator stepped inside. Rainer seemed larger, broader and more dangerous than he ever had, and despite the chill that had set in Clover's bones, the room felt hot and claustrophobic. She held her breath, not wanting him to hear how terrified she was, as he sat down across from her. He folded his hands in front of him and Clover thought that for the first time, she may actually look like the helpless, enslaved creature she'd been feebly portraying for the past week.
Rainer's voice was soft, the malice she knew he kept under pressure inside himself expertly concealed. "Did you like the show? I put it together just for you. I wanted to make sure you were fully informed before deciding on your course of action. You remember the questions I gave you, don't you?"
Clover pressed her lips together when she felt her chin start to shake.
"I suggest you answer me, Clover. Unless you need me to help you."
A gagging sensation stung the back of Clover's throat and she nodded, wondering if playing his game would postpone what she knew was coming.
"Good girl." The side of Rainer's mouth twitched and Clover thought he might be enjoying himself. "I'm sure you have a lot of questions, but I get the impression you're not very interested in talking to me right now, so why don't I guess what you might want to say to me?"
Even as she hoped to postpone the torture she knew was in her immediate future, part of Clover wished he would just get on with it. When she'd laid down in her cell she'd been ready for the onslaught of pain, but now he was playing with her, and it threatened to crack the foundation of her resolve.
Rainer steepled his fingers in front of his mouth, as though pretending to concentrate on what Clover might be thinking. "You're wondering why I don't interrogate every werewolf we pick up. Why I don't just find every pack. Am I right?"
Clover bit the inside of her mouth. That question had never even crossed her mind, but after a quiet warning from her interrogator she nodded, performing the way she knew he wanted her to.
"We don't hunt you all down because the Bureau doesn't want to get rid of you. Not really. We might tell everyone else that's what we want, but it's not." He watched her again for a minute in silence, then continued, apparently not getting the shocked reaction he'd been hoping for. "You see, this agency is just like my little brother. They want to keep you trickling in forever. They want to keep the suffering going for as long as they can. And do you know why?"
Clover was still shivering, but a small place inside her, a place where her strength and curiosity had been entombed against onslaught of horror, was listening. She nodded again, this time meaning it.
"Monsters like you line their pockets. I bet you can't even fathom the amount of money people like Elliot make off every one of you. Think about it, Clover. When he and his little Evaluator friends kill one you, we, the Bureau, take the financial hit. But if he saves your life," his voice strained with disgust. "Then he makes bank. He makes money, and the Bureau makes money, and he gets all the praise because he's just added another free worker to the system."
His game was clear, now. He was poisoning the well. He seemed to be under the impression that Clover, like many of the other indentured werewolves she'd met, admired Elliot—thought he was some sort of light in the darkness they lived in. If he wasn't an Evaluator, if he didn't sign death warrants for innocent people, she might have felt that way about him. But she also knew that she would take his betrayal over her current position in a second.
Elliot was no saint, but there was something good at his core, Clover could see it. She could see a good man struggling against the system in his own, ignorant sort of way. There was nothing beneath the hard surface of Rainer, though, nothing but darkness and bloodlust.
"He's not worth protecting, Clover. He's your enemy, as much as I am."
"I'm not protecting him," she said, her voice stronger than she'd expected.
"Then tell me. What is he looking for in those files? His request said it was for a case study for his residency, but you and I both know that’s a lie.”
Clover stared at her assailant—at her living, breathing nightmare—then shook her head, tears dripping from her chin even as her resolve hardened. "I don't know."
Pain shot up Clover's arm as Rainer's hand came down on top of her broken finger. She felt the air surge from her lungs as he squeezed the swollen digit between its endangered neighbors. She'd seen no warning signs and it was that ability to strike instantly—without precursory jitters—that scared her.
"I admire your resolve." His voice hadn't risen at all, making it hard for Clover to hear over her loud breathing. "It's commendable that you're willing to die to keep whatever secrets you think are so important, but are you willing to give up someone else's life?"
Rainer's grip moved to her unbroken ring-finger, pressing it back until she stood up in a futile attempt to alleviate the strain. "You were meeting with someone in that corridor, weren't you? He was a pack-mate of yours? Did you think I'd forgotten? Or that I hadn't noticed?"
Unsure if she was answering his question, or just willing the situation to be unreal, her head shook continuously.
"Tell me what I want to know, and I'll let your friend live."
Thinking was hard; the only thought Clover's mind still had any sort of grasp on was that she'd chosen silence.
"I don't know!" Clover's knees buckled as the snapping sensation reverberated up her arm.
She gritted her teeth around a scream, her body collapsing back into her chair, her knees rising to touch the underside of the table. It was more bearable this time, but she was still sweating, and as she caught her breath the sound of rummaging in what she could only guess was a tool bag registered through the fog of pain. A fist caught in her hair and wrenched her head off the table. Her vision swam in and out of focus through her tears, and she recognized the change in Rainer's face. He was done playing.
"Let me be very clear." His voice was level, but at such close proximity, Clover saw a flash of madness in his eyes, a flicker of absolute sadism. "You can take your secrets to the grave, but if you do, believe me, I'll find the pathetic hovel you animals call a home. I'll slip inside when they're all locked in their little cages and shoot them like sick dogs." With a clatter that made Clover’s body jerk, Rainer slapped four bullets onto the table in front of her. As he pushed her face toward them, using her hair as a handle, she felt the itching, tickling burn start—silver bullets. She squirmed, trying to put distance between the little nubs of metal and her skin. She’d never felt silver burn first hand, but she didn’t need to know what it felt like to recognize them. She remembered the scars that littered the bodies of some of the oldest members of her pack and felt her stomach clench around her growing panic. How had he gotten them? Was he so influential that he could find somewhere that would actually sell him the stuff?
Seeming satisfied, Rainer wrenched back on her hair again. He leaned over her, his breath wafting over her sweaty face. "That's how I put down the pack on the west end, you know. I waited for the full moon, when they were all tucked away, and I shot every one of them through the bars of their own cages."
Clover thought of the culvert under their freight car tower that was lined with cages they'd made and repaired over the years. She hated those cages. But every month, she locked herself inside, as did everyone in her pack, to keep those who hunted and killed them safe. Now she wished that she'd let herself loose instead.
"Now tell me." Rainer's voice had steadied again. He leaned his head back before brandishing a pair of wire cutters inches from her nose. "What is my brother looking for?"
Fear wasn't something new to Clover, and she'd thought she understood what it was in its purest form. She'd felt it when she'd helped her father take Byron's arm; when she'd watched that girl beaten to death in the park; when she'd squeezed into the sewer. Now she realized that she'd never come close to understanding. None of it compared to the cold of the wire cutters that Rainer used to trace her jawline.
"I was watching you in your cell," he whispered, his fist twisted in her dirty hair, holding her head completely still. "You seemed most upset when I used these. Do they scare you?" He drew them along the lower curve of her quivering lip.
"Please..." Clover didn't realize she was speaking until the tiny plea had slipped out.
"Please what?"
She knew what she was going to ask for—mercy. The chill of metal had seeped in and was numbing her willpower. She was going to tell him what he wanted. She pressed her lips together and tried to squeeze the tears out of her eyes so she could see clearly, as though banishing the fog in her eyes would also clear the blurring of her resolve.
Rainer waited, seeming riveted to the struggle going on inside his victim. "Let me make this easier for you. Every time you tell me a lie..." He touched the tip of the wire cutters to Clover's nose. "You're going to lose a centimeter from somewhere on your body."
A sob finally shook Clover, and once she'd let the first one slip, the cascade that followed was unstoppable. What was she doing? Why was she enduring this? For her pack? She didn't have to tell him where her pack was, she could tell him about the data. She could tell him everything that she'd done and planned to do. It didn't matter if he knew any more. She’d already lost her chance to save her family. She'd lost it when she'd stupidly wandered into that hallway. She looked past Rainer and his weapon, at the door she willed to open. She'd lost her chance when she'd expected Elliot to clean up her messes for her.