Page 51 of Talk to Me

If there had been blood from earlier interrogations, it was washed clean. Everything sparkled. Sanitized. When they killed me, they’d do it again. Erasing any sign of me from the world.

Then I would just be gone.

Like I never existed.

The second interrogator appeared in front of me. He shoved my head up and stared down. Right. I didn’t need to have a memory of his face.

There was something inherently cruel in his expression. A scar bisected his upper lip and down through the lower at a diagonal before disappearing under his chin. Pock scars marked his cheeks, and his eyes were dark and sunken in. The shadows under his eyes added to the impression of darkness.

His slap ripped across my face and set my cheek on fire. I just let my head flop. When he straightened me again, he stared silently. His next move involved backhanding me, it toppled the chair and I hit the floor.

It hurt. Another bruise atop a layer of bruises. I refused to react though. It took everything to not try and save myself. But why bother?

Maybe if I pissed them off enough, this would just be over.

“This could be a problem,” the first interrogator said and his companion kicked my leg. The blow rocked through to the bone and shoved my leg to the side.

“You think, we still don’t have the answers we need yet. If she’s shattered then we won’t get them. Failure is not an option.” They weren’t talking about me so much on that last one. There was actually a kernel of fear in the second man’s voice.

Huh. Well, I hope they didn’t expect sympathy from me if they got killed over this. Too bad, so sad, and I wouldn’t be mad. A laugh escaped me. A titter of a sound.

It yanked their attention back to me. Their scowls were almost mirrors of each other. Where tormentor one was buttoned down and cold, tormentor two was dark, unkempt, and violence seemed to just eddy around him.

Of the pair, he scared me less. Nothing about him offered safety. In truth, nothing about the first guy did either—but he played perfectly pleasant while filling my veins with drugs that set my skin on fire.

At least the second guy didn’t pretend to be nice.

“Take her back to her cell,” the first one said. “We’re not getting anywhere like this. We need a new plan.”

The guards seized my arms in their bruising grips and dragged me back out. They didn’t turn me around, so I had full view of the room as they walked away.

For some odd reason, the trip back to the cell didn’t take near as long as the trip to the room. More warping time in my perception. At my cell door, one of the guards let go of me and I half-twisted, just hanging by an arm.

When he entered the code, I repeated the numbers and my guess for the missing digit had been correct. Door open, they dropped me inside and locked it. Then they left via a different door.

Same code.

Different door.

That was useful information.

Over my head somewhere, there was a bang and clank. Then another before the air began to move. Air conditioning of some kind. Didn’t do anything for the cold floor I lay on or the rapidly stiffening bruises on my leg and side.

My face also hurt, but the pain wasn’t that bad. Not when you considered all the other shit that’d happened. I listened for any movement or comments, but my neighbor hadn’t been in her cell.

Had she been there when they came to get me?

I really didn’t remember. Every time they took her to be tortured it just—felt wrong. Performative. When she came back, she had real injuries, so why didn’t I believe her?

‘Cause everything was a lie. Everything and everyone.

Instead of forcing myself up, I closed my eyes. I needed to conserve my energy. The more they thought I was through the less they’d watch me. They already thought I was useless.

Let them continue to think they’d broken me irrevocably. Then when dark came, I was getting out of here one way or another. I had the code to get out of the cell and to open the door. If I escaped, they would more than likely try to kill me.

Either way, I was out of this cell.

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