by Gold, Amelia
As he pulls, he pushes into me with his weight and I can feel myself crashing into the wall behind me. I stay on my feet barely and my head feels like it’s about to explode again. I’ve only been choked once before. That was by Padd. I try to keep my eyes open as Zeb continues to apply pressure to my neck. In that moment, I learn two things as I look into his eyes. First, unlike Padd, Zeb did not enjoy doing this at all. He was choking me to “help” his friend get comfortable enough to use me. Second, despite telling the same story of how he had killed his boss to anyone that cared to ask, he did not kill him.
*_*
I am in the room where I shot Lyth. My hands have been strung up above my head and my feet are suspended off the ground. There is a camera in front of me so I know that I am being recorded. Someone is being forced to watch what is being done to me just like I was being forced to watch Lyth. The guards are taking it in turns to strike my torso with wooden bats and then asking me ridiculous questions like whether or not I was enjoying the experience.
I don’t say anything in reply to them because I know that it won’t make any difference. Yes, I am in enormous pain. But they already know that. I’ve started to disassociate my mind from my body. Knowing that I can’t stop the pain helps me to deal with it. I’m putting less energy into trying to get the pain go away and more energy into trying to stay alive and trying to stay sane.
The door opens and I’m not surprised to see another person being brought into the room. Just like how I was being forced to shoot Lyth, the guards are going to make him torture me. He’s not a Knax that has been forcibly detained. He’s a fresh inmate who has been convicted of whatever crime and the guards are going to break him on his first day.
He might be a hardened criminal or whatever but even he finds it difficult to stomach what they are trying to make him do.
“I’ve never tortured anyone before and I’m not about to start now.” He says.
“But you’ve killed someone before.” Says Vyr.
“Under completely different circumstances.” The prisoner replies. “And I did not drag out his death.”
“All the same. He’s dead now.” Vyr laughs. “Do you think it matters to his family how he died when they know that they will never see him again?”
“It’s not the same. I killed in self defence.” The man replies.
“So you say.” Says Vyr. “Why is it that every time someone kills someone else, it’s never that they actually intended to take a life? It’s always done in self-defence.”
“Say what you like.” Says the inmate. “There’s no way that I’m going to hit her.”
“You want to hit her. And there’s nothing to stop you from doing that here.” Vyr smiles.
“Why would I want to hit her?” The inmate is flabbergast.
“Because you are human. If you did not want to lash out at someone, I’d question whether you were capable of any feelings at all.” Says Vyr.
“Excuse me?” The prisoner raises an eyebrow.
“It’s called transference. You deliver onto someone else the pain that you feel. It’s very cathartic. You should try it some time.” Vyr explains.
“Who says that I’m in pain?” Asks the man.
“You’ve just been marked. Your closest friends and family are starting to wonder if they knew you at all.” Says Vyr. “If and when you do get out, you will be a leper. People will be more cautious in their dealings with you. Decent employment will be next to impossible. And in the meantime, prison itself will change you. You will not be the same man when you are free again.”
“I think I’ve heard enough.” The man is visibly upset.
“If you think you’re going to spend your sentence in a hotel with bars, you are mistaken. There are people here who have done things that you would not imagine to be possible.” Says Vyr. “You will be sharing the same living space with them and you will have to befriend them. These people, whom you would not normally give a second look, you will have to come to rely on them. And you will have to learn to think like them.”
“Stop!” The man yells. “Please I don’t want to hear it.”
“Then prove that you have what it takes to make it in here. Because if you are unable to hit them, they will hit you. You have a long sentence ahead of you.”
The man swings the bat that he’s been given wordlessly and I scream because I know that he still cares. I scream because I want him to remember that this is who he is – not the cold prisoner that he’s going to become.
*_*
In the nights that I am being passed around from cell to cell, I come across many Gavs – prisoners who have been mostly forgotten by the system and are now telling their stories to the only people that will listen: the girls who are being forced to accompany them. I haven’t come across many Zebs though – guys who not only are innocent of the crime that they have been incarcerated for but who want everyone to believe that they are psychopaths.
The guards would also use me when it suited them. From conversations with the inmates, I become aware that there are other girls like me in this place. Of course there would be. But I haven’t seen any of them. We are kept and used well away from one another so that none of us knows how many of us there are at any given point in time.
In the time that I spend waiting between “assignments” in my cell, I come to understand what actually destroyed Lyth. It wasn’t the constant abuse that pushed her over the edge. It was the silence. Specifically, it was the lack of a median between the two. There was only intense violence and then absolute silence. Though the violence is painful, the real killer is the silence.
Experimentation
“What’s with him?” I ask Zeb, pointing to Gav who is passed out on his bed.
“He’s drunk.” Zeb replies.
“How does he get access to alcohol?” I ask in surprise.
“His girlfriend smuggles it in for him.” He tells me.
“But she called the cops on him.” I say with disbelief. If it had been me, I would not have continued to see him.
“Don’t try to understand what’s going on between those two. It will give you a headache.” He laughs.
“What I really don’t understand is why you’re here.” I tell him.
“You know why.” He tries to end the conversation.
“I know what you want me to think – what you want everyone to think. But that’s not what actually happened.” I tell him.
“How would you know what actually happened?” He smirks.
“I don’t.” I reply. “But I know what it’s like to be strangled by someone that actually wants to kill me. I also know what it’s like to be the one doing the killing. I was looking for a killer when you faux strangled me and I couldn’t find one.”
“Keep saying that and I just might strangle you for real.” He says, becoming impatient.
“You can say that but you won’t do it.” I tell him with confidence.
“Why wouldn’t I?” He asks me.
“Because you are a Knax that’s pretending to be a Venry and if you kill me, they will reopen your file and reassess you. You’re not going to risk that happening. That’s why you’re not going to kill me.” I explain.
He hasn’t noticed that during our conversation, we have both switched languages. He hasn’t noticed that he has been conversing in Knav to me for a while now.
“Unbelievable.” He smiles. “No one has ever picked that up. How did you know?”
“I didn’t.” I tell him. “But when you answered my questions in Knav, I knew that I must be getting closer to the truth.”
“You’re right.” He replies, shaking his head.
“So you didn’t kill your boss?” I ask him.
“No. I went to him to ask for protection. We all knew that the army was coming. He gave us a severance payment and told us to leave.” He explains. “One of the guys strangled him by accident. He just thought that physical persuasion might be more powerful than verbal persuasion and he over
did it. Someone had to stay at the crime scene to give the others enough time to get away. I volunteered because I didn’t like our chances on the road.”
I nod to show that I understood his reasoning. He was not making a valiant sacrifice for the team. He was doing his best to save himself.
He continues. “When the police came, they didn’t see a Knax that needed to be handed over to the army. They saw a murder that needed to be investigated so I told them what they wanted to hear. They were really happy to get it over with.”
“And you’ve been biding your time in here ever since.” I smile.
As far as survival strategies go, it was brilliant. Possibly one of the best that anyone has ever come up with. The most dangerous place in civil society has become the safest place in a civil war – because I agree with Hash. This is a war.
“I keep up though. I get through as many newspapers as I can grab my hands on and I read the articles that nobody else wants to read.” He tells me. “Which reminds me. You’ll be happy to know that thanks to your little stunt in the snow, the ‘selection’ process has become obsolete.”
“What?” This was actually more shocking than comforting.
“Your selection was by far the most violent. There was enormous backlash from the Venry general population. They don’t broadcast any of that stuff anymore.” He informs me.
“But how are they recruiting them?” I ask him because I know that girls were still being recruited after me. I had met some of them in the truck ride between the base and this prison.
“They are taken by force. There are no volunteers anymore.” He explains.
“Then what happens to their families?” I ask him.
“They are air lifted. To where I do not know.” He replies. “You’re not taking this news very well.” He laughs at my reaction.
“Are there any of us left?” I ask him.
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “I’d like to think that there are.”
*_*
Some of the prisoners at the facility have become involved with medical testing under the false pretense that they will get an earlier release as compensation. I get roped into it because I don’t have a choice either way. There is apparently a growing market for sexual enhancement drugs and they are using prisoners and forcibly detained persons (like me) for research.
I’ve stopped accompanying the inmates in the evenings altogether. There are doctors supervising the drugs and the experiments. They monitor us using biofeedback throughout the process. Details of our sexual activity are recorded and I spend most of my time trying to stay awake. Fatigue has hit me like I’ve never experienced it before. I am totally exhausted.
It is here that I meet some of the other girls involved in my “program”. Like Lyth, many of them do not have long to go before the guards will want to replace them with fresh girls. I am trying my best to hold it together but it’s becoming harder and harder by the day. I am glad to be out of the cell that I was kept in before.
There is a “recovery room” in the medical laboratory attached to the prison where we are given limited freedoms like actually having enough space to lie down fully and sleep. The room is shared by all the test subjects so although we could have used it to socialize or at least to comfort each other, none of us has the energy to hold that kind of conversation. We mostly just lie there in silence.
This room is the opposite of what I had in the previous cell. Whereas before there was no light, now there is always light. The light never gets turned off. I can feel the end coming. I am still sane enough to know who I am and where I am. I have trouble conversing with people though. I cannot hold myself together when I have to talk and I’ve lost the ability to express pain.
It’s now only a matter of time before I will meet the same fate as Lyth. I can see now that she welcomed the end and I probably will too, when my time comes.
Passage
“Myc!” Someone is whispering fiercely into my ear.
I open my eyes to see Zeb, who has apparently volunteered himself for the program.
“What?” I gasp.
“Shh.” He shushes me because there is every chance that we are being recorded somewhere.
“We don’t have a lot of time.” He continues to whisper into my ear. “I have just one question to ask you. Are you willing to die?”
Too shocked for words, I just stare at him.
“Are you willing to die so that you can live?” He asks me.
“Yes.” I reply. My subconscious is comprehending more than what I am aware of and I start to run on autopilot.
“Good.” He says, relieved. “Now, I need you to slap me.”
Again I can only stare at him.
“For the cameras.” He prods me.
I lash out at him wordlessly and I hit him harder than I had meant to.
“What the hell?” He yelps loudly, waking some of the other test subjects.
“What?” Some of them ask groggily.
“She hit me!” He protests.
I am supposed to be feigning anger but I can barely keep my eyes open.
“What’s going on?” Someone asks, opening the door.
“She hit me.” Zeb repeats, feigning frustration.
“Come here.” The night supervisor gestures to me.
I stand up on shaking legs and I follow them out of the recovery room.
“The rest of you stay put.” Says the supervisor.
After we get out of the recovery room, I am taken into an empty office. I think I’m dreaming but I swear that the doctor who is on the graveyard shift is Hash. He can see that I recognize him, even though I’m too weak to actually say anything to him. He just smiles at me without speaking.
“Did they buy it?” Asks another vaguely familiar voice.
“Yes but we need to be quick.” Says Zeb.
“Here, let me put this on you.” Iv is holding a tube of some sort of paste.
What is going on?
“I’m really sorry, Myc, but we’re going to have to kill you.” Hash tells me.
Then he injects me with a substance that causes my whole body to go numb. I can feel the absence take over my body and then sleep takes me away.
*_*
I am gasping for breath. I feel like I’ve been held under water for a long time and am resurfacing to breathe for the first time.
“Where am I?” I ask loudly, sitting up too quickly.
“Myc, calm down.” Says Iv as she pushes me back. “You have to relax or the medication might cause you to have a heart attack.”
“What happened?” I ask them.
After my vision clears, I can see that I am in the back of a small van. Iv is hovering over me, trying to straighten my top which has been creased by my sudden upward motion, and Hash is in the front passenger seat. There is another person driving that I don’t recognize.
“We got you out.” Says Iv.
“Where’s Zeb?” I suddenly remember.
“He’s going to cover for us.” Hash tells me.
“That’s horrible.” I reply. “They’re going to kill him.”
“They might not.” Hash laughs. “Have you noticed how good he is at talking himself out of situations?”
“How can you laugh at a time like this?” I say with disbelief.
“Don’t you want to know what happened?” Iv reminds me.
“Yes.” I nod.
“Pav shot you.” She tells me.
“Who’s Pav?” I ask her.
“The driver.” Says Hash.
“When Hash told you that we were going to kill you, he wasn’t kidding.” Iv explains.
“What?” I ask them, trying to comprehend the impossible.
“You were clinically dead.” Hash informs me. “We got Iv to add some makeup for realism but makeup can’t fool machines and monitors. Only drugs can do that.”
I remember the drug – whatever it was that he shot into my arm.
“What did you give me?” I ask him.
/> “A very advanced depressant. It repressed all your systems enough to fool the machines but not enough to actually kill you.” He explains.
“You were in the in-between.” Iv tells me.
“That was so dangerous.” I tell them, angrily. There was every chance that the drug might have worked too well and actually killed me.
“Consider the alternative.” Says Pav.
He was right in that had I stayed at the prison, I would have died from the final phases of that program and there would have been no way to come back from that.
“Hey be nice.” Iv protests on my behalf.
“People are dying. I’m sorry if I don’t have the time to be nice.” He replies.
“Don’t mind him.” She tells me.
“So, you put makeup on me. Pav provides the gunshot sound for everyone to hear. Zeb takes the blame. And once we’re out, Hash injects me with some sort of a stimulant to bring me back to life again.” I tell them what I understand of their elaborate operation.
“Yes, that sounds about right.” Hash laughs.
“Can you do me a favour?” I turn to Iv. “Can you slap that crazy doctor across the face for me?”
“Come on Myc. The important thing is that you survived and you’re alive now and out of that prison because of what we did.” She tries to reason with me.
“What about Zeb?” I ask her. “How is he going to explain what he did with my body when there isn’t one?”
“We gave him your DNA mixed in with ash and bone. He’s going to start a bonfire.” Hash tells me.
“Did any of you think that I might have actually wanted to know about the plan before it was implemented?” I ask them loudly. “Sure, we don’t need to consult Myc – she’s halfway to insanity anyway.”
“I told you she wouldn’t take it very well.” Says Iv.
I should be grateful that my friends have somehow managed to find me at all, let alone come up with a way to get me out in what I assume to have been a very short amount of time. But in my current frame of mind, I can’t. At least not until I’ve calmed down a bit.