Toxicity

by Andy Remic

  Svool glanced across at Lumar. Fear filled his face.

  “Why didn’t you run and fetch help, you idiot?” she snapped.

  “That’s what I was trying to do!” wailed Svool. “And then I felt all guilty and stupid and like a cowardly idiot, and I knew I had to do the right thing so we could both escape!”

  “So facing down seven gunslingers is the right thing?”

  “Shut that bitch up,” growled Bronson, and there was a thud.

  Svool’s teeth clacked shut. His eyes narrowed. From nowhere surfaced the words, “You’re going to regret hurting the little lady.”

  What? mouthed Lumar silently.

  “That may be so, or it may not be so,” growled Bronson. “But - you hear the music?”

  “The tinkly, jangly, crappy, cheap elevator music?”

  “Yeah, son. When the music stops, then draw and fire. I’ll do the same. Whoever is left standing, well, he gets the fun with the little lady.”

  “Will you all stop calling me a little lady!” hissed Lumar, struggling on the rough-planked porch.

  “Er, Mr Bronson?”

  “Yes, son?”

  The watch tinkled away, the tune getting slower, and slower, and slower...

  “I have a question?”

  “Yes, son?”

  “About this music, about when it stops...”

  But it was too late.

  The music stopped.

  ~ * ~

  EIGHT

  SLOWLY CONSCIOUSNESS DAWNED, and with it a bright, brittle fear. Jenny Xi was still in the glass-walled cube beneath the ocean. It was dark now, the ocean a gloomy, murky black.

  Night.

  The real fear came when she tried to move. Her arms were strapped by her sides, wrists and ankles tightly manacled to the cold black obsidian slab. A steel band across her brow pinned her head. The steel dug into the flesh of her forehead, biting her like teeth.

  She wanted to cry out, to thrash, to scream, but she controlled herself. No. Why give them the satisfaction?

  Jenny had been tied up before, of course. As part of kinky sex games, or even when she’d been arrested in her younger days; but never like this, never with such cold callousness, and with the stakes so high.

  There came a cough, signalling that she wasn’t alone. Jenny was itching to turn her head, to focus on the sound, but she could not. She had to wait for the figure to come to her.

  It was Vasta. The blonde woman was smiling. Jenny couldn’t help but note she was wearing thin leather gloves.

  “How are you feeling, Jenny?”

  “Like I was hit in the face by a train.”

  Vasta pulled out her lower lip, as if sulking. “Oh, dear me. Well unfortunately, that’s as good as it’s going to get. From here, it all goes downhill. Very, very quickly.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Not me, my little sweetie. But I am sure fucking will feature high in our priority list when we get down to the real... torture.”

  She left the word lingering in the air like a bad smell. The effect was not lost on Jenny.

  Jenny, her squad, and the entirety of the Impurity Movement had been through “torture training.” How to react in these situations, the do’s and don’ts for when they start stripping skin from your bones... of course, it was all well and good in theory, and even in the role-play exercises they did, very much in the manner of military special forces. But Jenny knew, deep down inside - as she was sure most human beings knew - that when it came down to it, when it really came down to it, everyone had a breaking point, everyone had a trigger. Jenny always said she would rather kill herself than be tortured. She cursed herself now. She’d had the gun, and put a fucking bullet in Randy, when she should have been putting a bullet in her mouth.

  “Let me explain your situation very, very carefully,” said Vasta. “By attacking and shooting Randy, you have condemned yourself to our care. We were, of course, filming the meeting, and by attacking the recently seriously wounded and highly honourable and decorated Greenstar Company Governor of Internal Affairs, you highlighted your guilt within the eyes of the law on this planet. Under Quad-Gal Military Policy, to protect the rights of Greenstar against further terrorist attack, we are allowed to detain you for questioning for six months.” She let that sink in. “Six months, Jenny XL”

  Jenny said nothing. Her lips compressed harder.

  Vasta came close then, looming into view. Jenny would have twisted her head away, but the steel strap held her tight, pinned like a butterfly awaiting scrutiny on a lepidopterist’s examination board. And, no doubt, impending dissection.

  “You obviously do not know my name,” said the pretty blonde woman, and it just didn’t fit with Jenny. This beautiful little lady, and the words that poured from her mouth like filth. “I am the chief torturer for Greenstar Company. Obviously this is not a position they broadcast or acknowledge; I am simply referred to as Head of Security. But let me assure you, I have thus far tortured nearly two hundred prisoners for The Company. Some of them even lived.”

  Vasta’s face disappeared, and Jenny realised she was panting softly. She forced her breathing to calm. The woman appeared again, and her face was a perfect mask of concern. Her eyes seemed to soften, and she leant forward, intimate, until her lips were only an inch from Jenny’s. So close Jenny that could smell her sweet breath, the musk of her skin. So close, so intimate, and yet so far.

  Vasta said, “We are going to grow very close, you and I. It will be a relationship of love; my love for you. I do not want to do the things I am going to do to you. I want only that you tell me the information I seek. If you do not speak to me, Jenny, then I cannot help you with your pain.” She kissed Jenny then, a long, lingering, passionate kiss. There came a dart of her tongue, and then she pulled away, and Vasta’s hand came to rest on Jenny’s belly. With a start Jenny realised she was naked. Idly, Vasta started to stroke Jenny’s skin with long, gentle strokes.

  “What are you going to do?” snapped Jenny. “Torture me or fuck me?”

  Vasta smiled, a genuine look of humour. “Probably both. Now lie back and relax. Sleep if you like. But consider my words. I will give you an hour before I begin. If you choose to co-operate, then there will be no pain. If you choose not to tell me everything concerning your friends in Impurity5, the Impurity Movement as a whole, your Cell Commander McGowan, and his contact with the higher echelons of Impurity, Mr Candle; well, then we will not be friends. If you cooperate fully, who knows, maybe Greenstar will be thankful and allow you to live.”

  “Get fucked,” said Jenny.

  Vasta tutted, and held a finger against her lips. “Spoken like a terrorist,” she said. “Now don’t go anywhere, my sweet. When I return, I will bring my tools. Then, we will dance together. You shall see.”

  ~ * ~

  IT WAS PERHAPS the longest hour of Jenny Xi’s life. It was up there with the death of her father and the subsequent funeral in terms of sheer enjoyment. She lay still on the obsidian bench, the dark ocean above her, all around her, shifting and dancing and coalescing. Cramps gradually wormed into her muscles, into her calves and thighs, into the intercostal muscles between her ribs, into her forearms and shoulders and neck, every single cramp making her want to writhe in agony as her muscles rebelled, turned against her own physiology, and she spasmed, rigid, in agony, unable to move, unable to break free. The pain was incredible, but one by one her muscles eventually relaxed, leaving just a dull throbbing and her own panting loud in her ears.

  How long has it been? How long before the real fun begins?

  As part of her anti-torture training, they had been lectured by a man, a broken man, a bent and hammered and twisted individual who had been the unfortunate victim of the heartless junks, the scourge of the galaxy, during the long-distant, half-forgotten Helix War. The man, Jabez, had been the victim of an interrogation he could not answer - simply because he did not have the answers. As a result, he had been permanently crippled. All fingers and toes that sti
ll remained were bent and broken, deformed, bones allowed to fuse at odd twisted angles during the length of his incarceration and sustained agony. His legs, also, had been broken and forced to set at odd angles. His knees had been smashed with sledgehammers, he told the group.

  They had sat in a chilled silence, in awe at this broken wreck presented before them in a tiered, sterile lecture theatre, like some circus freak on a stage for their pure entertainment. Jabez showed them scars from where his skin had been stripped from his body. He showed them scars in his legs, where whole veins had been teased free like strings of spaghetti. His fingernails had been torn off, each knuckle cracked with pliers, his testicles ripped free with tongs of steel, the end of his penis slit with a scalpel over and over and over again; they’d let it heal, and scar, then slice it again. He joked with the recruits, said it gave him extra holes to piss out of. Said that when he peed, it was like a sprinkler for his hosepipe. Nobody had laughed. How could they? This man before them was destroyed. They’d put out one of his eyes, shaved his ears with a cut-throat razor, striped his neck and his wrists, allowing him to bleed like a pig. They’d cut off his lips, smashed out his teeth, cut off half his tongue -not all of it, you understand, because they still expected him to talk. But he couldn’t talk, he said to his horrified watchers. How could he tell them what they wanted to know, when he did not have the answers?

  “Did you tell them what you did know?” asked one young man with wide, horrified eyes.

  Jabez explained, then, how he had told his diseased, decadent tormentors everything. He had screamed answers, told them anything and everything whether he thought it was relevant or not. When he realised they would not stop, and he did not have their answers, he had made up things... but this was worse, for they went away, and checked his lies, and came back with triple the fury, triple the ingenuity.

  Exhausted, of answers, of energy, of strength, and tip-toeing along a razor-edge of sanity, he had finally thought they had finished with him. Left him broken and massacred. But that had just been the start... that was when they began to remove his internal organs before his very eyes, replacing them with artificial units and force-feeding him his own liver, and kidneys, and spleen, and heart...

  Now, every word Jabez had spoken came back to Jenny with chilling clarity. But that had been the junks, right? The most despised and evil race in the whole of the Four Galaxies. They hated all life, hated all love, and simply existed to spread their toxic existence, their organic pestilence, their festering disease to every other living organism in totality. What they didn’t infect, they sought to destroy. Surely, surely a human being couldn’t do that sort of thing to another human being? Surely this Vasta was simply boasting of her talents in order to crack Jenny before the real pain began... hence the hour in which to make her decision. Psychological torture. Present you with some facts and leave you for the longest hour of your life to make a decision. But a streak of stubbornness ran through Jenny Xi a mile wide, a lodestone of strength born of her father, broken and destroyed by the destruction of the planet he loved; and a belief, a true, pure belief, that what she did was right. Not just for herself, or her family, or the human beings on the planet; but for the planet itself. For the good of the World.

  ~ * ~

  TIME CRAWLED BY. Jenny tried not to think about her future. Instead, she regressed, and thought about the happy moments in her childhood. Eventually, through exhaustion and fear, she drifted off into sleep. She slept lightly, dreaming about meadows filled with flowers back when Amaranth was a place of joy and warmth. Before Greenstar moved in. Before the pollution began.

  She awoke to a tiny click and saw a table had been erected, just at the periphery of her vision. On the table was a small black case, like a briefcase, matt in finish, terrible in its sinister implications.

  “Welcome back to reality,” said Vasta, smiling in a friendly manner as she moved into Jenny’s view. “You’ve had your hour, my sweetie. Have you decided whether you will answer my questions?”

  Jenny considered this. “I’d rather fuck myself with a chainsaw,” she said.

  Vasta’s smile widened. “That can be arranged,” she said. “Okay, then. So be it. You have made your decision and now we must play the game. I apologise in advance for the agony I’m going to put you through. But, hell, I just work here, right? And somebody has to do the job I do - to make the world a safer place.”

  ~ * ~

  “TELL ME ABOUT your family,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Tell me about your family, Jenny. What have you got to lose? I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to take this gently heating needle and push it through your eyeball. But I will.”

  It wasn’t fear of pain or torture or death that started Jenny talking. It was a regression, from this bad place into that bad place. A stepping back through time to remember.

  “I had a brother. Called Saul. We grew up together, had a happy family time together... until Dad died, of course. I suppose there were cracks in Saul’s character even back then, for father had become a very heavy drinker and these things always rub off. We’re influenced by our parents, right?” Jenny gave a small laugh. “But as time went on, he showed his true colours. The true nature of the beast. Always small, petty things that took away from the nobility of his humanity.”

  “Such as?”

  “Saul would never help people. Not even with the smallest thing. He’d sit by and watch somebody struggle, or suffer, and never lift a finger to help. At the time I told myself it was because he didn’t notice these things; he was just being vague, you know, being Saul. After a while you accept him for that, accept the lack of a present or card, accept the lack of a thank you, accept his miserly nature. ‘Oh, that’s okay, it’s just Saul.’ But in truth he was a tight motherfucker, not just in monetary terms, but in human terms. He didn’t have it in him to give. He didn’t have it in him to share. Most people enjoy watching other people have pleasure; so by giving, you also receive. Not my brother. His mind mechanics were wrong. Fucked up. He was not a very nice person.”

  “Is he part of the Impurity Movement?” Vasta’s words were a soft winter chill.

  Information. That’s all this game is about. Information on Impurity. Well, tell the fuckers nothing... because to tell them anything is to betray the cause, betray your friends, betray your brothers - your real brothers, not the fake fucking water-for-blood decrepit family flesh that should be buried six feet under...

  But what if I crack under the pressure? The pain?

  You must not tell them anything... they are The Company! If they close down Impurity, then Amaranth is doomed...

  I don’t know enough, realised Jenny. A kind of horror took hold of her then, freezing a rictus grin to her face. Even if she’d wanted to talk, what did she truly know? She was a cog deep in the machine. She was simply a tool used to do a specific job. Yes, she came up with ideas, came up with targets; but those above her were the ones truly in control...

  Jenny felt her eyes narrow, then she relaxed. There came a gentle hissing sound which she suspected was the heating of the needle.

  “No. We argued. He left. He was a... spineless man.”

  “Where did he go?”

  Jenny shrugged. Something glowing flickered past her vision, and she caught just a momentary glimpse of the red-hot needle. Then it was gone, leaving bright after-images burned into her retina; for a little while. She smiled. Just a tease. A prick-tease. Lest she forget...

  “Like I said, he was a weak, spineless creature. After our father died, he met a woman. Chelle. They seemed good together, for a long time. I always found her cold, distant; she’d brought up two children on her own and managed to turn them into criminals. Bank robbers, they were, although she absolved herself of all blame. She called it bad blood from the father’s side, ha, anything but take some parental responsibility. Anyway, Chelle cheated on my brother, repeatedly, fucking other men whenever she got the opportunity. Not only that, but she
started to clean him out financially as well, holding back money, squirreling it away. He knew it was going on; hell, he told me about it often, about his snooping around after her, checking her underwear for guilty signs, following her car, checking her mobile when she was on the toilet. Chelle had got rid of all his friends, forced them away, one way or another.” Jenny laughed. “There was a time, they were out with his best friend, Kramien, and Kramien’s wife. They all got drunk, had a great time. But afterwards Chelle said Kramien had made a pass at her, and persuaded Saul to dump his mate... and Saul, being a spineless fuck, never said anything. Just cut Kramien out of his life like a cancerous growth. Cut out his best mate like a loop of necrotic bowel. Chelle got what she wanted - an ever-tightening stranglehold. Saul got good sex. It was as open a trade as prostitution.”

  Vasta came into view, then. She held no implements of torture, but she did not have to. Jenny was talking, rambling, her mind in a different place, a different world. Jenny suddenly came into focus, like a manual camera lens being adjusted. She coughed, almost selfconsciously.