Sean Black - Lockdown

He examined Mareta. In a straight fight it would be no contest, despite her reputation. But she had the knife. Guys who watched the Ultimate Fighting Championship might talk about knife ‘fighting’, but in reality there was no such thing. There was only getting stabbed. Quickly followed by bleeding to death.

‘OK, you’re right,’ he said.

She listened calmly as he told her about working for Meditech and filled in the details leading up to his being taken prisoner at the facility. She said nothing, remained resolutely expressionless, only occasionally stopping him to seek clarification of a word or phrase she didn’t understand. The only time she reacted to Lock’s story was when he mentioned the animal rights activists and their cause. The very idea seemed absurd to her. Lock understood her scepticism. For someone who’d witnessed and enacted the slaughter of human beings, it must have seemed a foreign concept. He considered repeating the Gandhi quote that Janice had fired at him from her hospital bed, but thought better of it.

He finished, and waited for Mareta to say something. Silence filled the space between them. Normally he would have been content with that, but what was needed now was rapport. Storytelling was about as good a way to establish that as he knew.

‘So, what about you? Why are you here?’

‘You already know who I am,’ Mareta replied.

‘Yes, I do.’

‘But you don’t seem scared.’

‘Should I be?’

‘Everyone’s afraid of ghosts.’

Lock mulled it over. ‘Maybe I’m different.’

Mareta studied the walls of the cell, equally reflective. ‘That’s true,’ she replied. ‘You’re still alive. And if you want to stay that way you might want to think about how we can get out of here.’

Lock was the first to hear the door being opened at the far end of the corridor. He waved Mareta to her feet. They flattened themselves either side of the cell door as two sets of footsteps made their approach, accompanied by the rattle of a metal trolley. There was more clanking of metal, followed by a man shouting something in a language that Lock didn’t understand.

‘What’s he saying?’

‘He’s asking who else is here.’

Mareta pressed her face to the cell door and shouted something back. Lock picked out that it was her name. In her own language it sounded more guttural, and laden with threat.

‘Proper little reunion you got going on,’ Lock noted.

Mareta shouted something else, this time maybe in Chechen. He could hear the man laugh at whatever it was she’d said.

‘What did you just say?’

‘I told him that we would wash in the blood of our captors.’

‘No wonder we don’t get any Chechen stand-ups playing the clubs here. Why don’t you try asking him how many of you there are?’

She shouted something else, and the man roared a reply.

‘Ten. Maybe more.’

‘What’s happening now?’

Mareta pressed her face to the access panel at the bottom of the door. Lock grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back. She glared at him.

‘Get too close and they might open that thing and give you a good dose of mace,’ he warned.

Another shouted exchange.

‘It’s feeding time,’ Mareta told Lock.

Sure enough, a few moments later the flap opened and a tray was shoved inside — metal, so it would be difficult to break to form a weapon. Filling the tray’s ridged compartments was what Lock imagined to be standard-issue prison food. Two slices of bread. Orange juice. Some kind of a stew with rice. A square of low-grade cooking chocolate, and a banana. Not bad. Better than economy in most airlines he’d flown.

He took a slice of bread, handed the other one to Mareta.

She pushed it away, wrinkling her nose. ‘You eat first.’

He was guessing this wasn’t a sign of hospitality on her part. ‘You’re not hungry?’

‘I don’t know what’s in it.’

‘So if it’s rat poison you’d like me to find out first?’

‘Exactly,’ she said.

Lock put the bread back down on the tray.

‘You don’t think about these things,’ Mareta observed with a sneer.

She was right. Lock hadn’t.

She picked the bread back off the tray, tore off a hunk and handed it to Lock. ‘They didn’t bring me here to poison me. But there could be something in it to make us sleep.’

‘So why do you still want me to taste it?’

‘You’ll see.’

Lock took the bread and popped it in his mouth. As he chewed tentatively, it turned sweet in his mouth. He swallowed. Took a tiny sip of orange juice to wash it down. It tasted funky. He poured the rest of the juice into the tray compartment. A gritty residue floated at the bottom. He swirled it round with one finger.

‘They could at least have sprung for some Rohypnol. Least that dissolves.’

He sat on the floor, his head resting against the cold concrete.

‘So, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’ Lock asked her, the question designed to kickstart some more conversation and stave off the frustration that he could feel creeping into his bones.

‘You’re not interested.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong. I mean, I’m presuming you weren’t born an evil bitch who thinks it’s acceptable to brutally slaughter civilians.’

‘You want to know why I cut the head off Anya Versokovich?’

Lock shrugged.

‘I did it because. . she was there.’

Lock was feeling tired, more likely as a result of the hectic week he’d had and the after-effects of repeated adrenalin dumps than anything surging through his bloodstream from the tiny sip of juice. ‘That’s it? That’s your big reason for beheading the Bolshoi’s prima ballerina?’

‘It’s the same reason the Russians gave me.’

‘Gave you for what?’

‘What they did to me. You want me to tell you?’

Lock laid his head back against the wall of the cell and closed his eyes. ‘Sure.’

‘You know of my dead husband?’

‘I know of his reputation.’

‘I was bathing my two children when they came. My son was four. My daughter was three. When the commander of the Russians couldn’t find my husband, he left two of his soldiers in the room with us. He didn’t want anyone to say later that he was there.’

With a grim predictability, Mareta went on. Lock kept his eyes shut. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be looking at her as she finished her story.

‘While one of the soldiers raped me, the other put a knife to my children’s throat. Forced them to watch. When the first man was finished, the other took his turn. Then they tied my hands behind my back and made me watch. They drowned my son first. And then his sister. Afterwards, I was taken downstairs to speak to the commander. My husband had killed Russians, but what had I done? So I asked him, “Why did you do this?” And he told me, “Because you were here.”’

Lock opened his eyes. Mareta’s face was set. Expressionless. Only her eyes betrayed any feeling. His voice broke a little as he spoke. ‘What happened after that?’

‘They left me, but I followed.’

‘You killed them?’

‘Every last one.’

‘So where does it end, Mareta?’

‘It doesn’t.’

‘You know there’s no way out this time.’

‘There’s always a way out,’ she said, staring off into the middle distance.

‘Always?’

‘Death is a way out.’

‘True, but what I don’t understand is how come you were always the only one to make it out before?’

‘It’s simple. The harder someone looks, the less they see.’

More riddles. ‘And what does that mean?’

‘When they look high, I stay low. They look low, I stay high.’