Jonathan Howard - Katya's War

There were voices elsewhere. Orders given and accepted. Still groggy, Katya was pulled back to her feet. She grimaced, tensing her stomach for another blow, but they only put her back in the chair and strapped her upper arms to it once again. There was a table, she saw, and another chair opposite to her. That one didn’t have restraints. The FMA officers left her then, leaving the door open.

A moment later the Secor agent entered. The door closed unbidden behind him as he walked over to the table and sat in the free chair, placing a metal briefcase by his chair.

He looked at her, and then at the discarded bag and pool of watery vomit streaked with blood on the floor.

“This isn’t how it works in the dramas,” said Katya, her speech slurred. “The hero on your side of the table asks questions, the fellow on my side lies, gets caught in a lie. ‘Curses, you caught me out. I’ll tell you everything.’ Maybe I missed where the hero beats the crap out of the fellow.”

“Oh, that wasn’t part of the interrogation, Katya,” he said. “That was just some patriotic citizens expressing contempt for a traitor. This,” he waved a hand back and forth to indicate the both of them, “ this is the interrogation. The first of many, I’m sure.”

He lifted the briefcase onto the table and opened it, the lid blocking Katya’s view of the contents. “We don’t get many traitors, Katya,” he said conversationally as he took out a memo pad and placed it on the table beside the case. “Not proper ones. Federal citizens are very loyal to their fellow citizens.” A recorder joined the memo pad. “You’re really something of a rarity.” He took out one last item and held it in one hand while he closed the case and returned it to the floor with the other. Katya’s felt cold; it was the Yagizban device she had planted.

He placed the device on the area of empty table between them, rested his hands on the table edge, steepled his fingers, and looked at her expectantly. Katya returned the look defiantly, although she was having trouble keeping one eye open. One of the punches to her face had caught the cheek bone, and the flesh was swelling. If she had seen him on the halls, she would have thought he possibly worked in engineering, he had that air of practicality about him. Dark, close cut hair, somewhere in his mid-thirties. Otherwise, it was difficult to get a grip on what sort of person he was. His clothes were the sort of thing an engineer might wear, too, right down to the sleeveless jacket. People who worked in the docks often wore them because it could get cold there, and the jackets provided extra pockets for gear.

He tapped the box. “What is it?”

Katya shrugged.

He watched her keenly for a moment, and then made a note on the pad. Then he asked again, “What is it?”

Katya shrugged again.

The Secor agent pursed his lips, thinking. Then he reached inside his jacket and produced a maser. He placed it carefully on the table and gestured at it.

“You’re a traitor, Katya. You will never be interrogated to find out if you are or not, because we know you are. It’s an empirical fact.” He smiled warmly, and laughed. “We don’t even care why. Maybe later, but not right now. Our concern at this immediate moment is what were you doing in the traffic control centre? What were you doing with this?” Again, the light tap of a fingertip on the box’s metal casing.

She looked at the gun, then at him, but still didn’t reply.

He looked at the gun with the mildest mannered surprise, as if he’d forgotten he put it there. “What’s this for? That’s what you’re wondering, isn’t it? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s your ticket out of this. I’ve seen your file, Katya. You’re no idiot. You know what happens to traitors, and you know what’s going to happen to you. There are still choices you can make, however. A maser bolt to the head, in the right place, will kill instantly. You’re not even aware of it.” He snapped his fingers, a life going out. “Or, you can live. Day in, day out. Week in, week out. Months, and years. The men who beat you, look at the mess they made. No training. We can make your every day a hell, Katya. Your every living day.” He laughed again, leaning back in his chair and shaking his finger at her. “I know what you’re thinking! You’re thinking, ‘Where there’s life, there’s hope,’ aren’t you?”

His smile slowly faded. He leaned forward again. “Life is pain , Katya Kuriakova. You can guess how much pain. Now, answer my questions, and I can save you living a life that is ten shades worse than death. The box. What was its function?”

Katya looked at the box. Then slowly, she turned her head to one side and spat blood on the table.

“I can see cut marks on it,” she said. “You’ve already had it open. You know what it is.” She could also see a band of discolouration across the bare metal where it seemed to have oxidised. She hoped it meant what she thought it did.

The Secor agent sighed. He peeled a few tabs of tape from the box’s edges and lifted off the top.

The box had indeed been opened, and its contents had told the FMA technicians precisely nothing. Inside was a mess of burnt wiring and components, the partially melted remains dusted with white powder and globs of metal.

Katya smiled, though her lip was split and the smile made it bleed again. “Oh, dear.”

“Oh, dear,” agreed the agent. “Yagizban design, of course. They’re very ingenious like this. It did its job, and then a thermite charge melted the processor and memory core. However, not to worry.” His eyes narrowed. “We still have you .”

Katya looked at him coldly. Then she giggled. “Do you always talk like that? ‘I’m with Secor. We’re so threatening’?” She couldn’t help but laugh. She shook her head, grinning at him. “You idiot. Thanks for that, by the way.” She nodded at the box. “Until you showed me that, I didn’t know if I’d succeeded or not. Now I do.”

The agent wasn’t smiling. “You don’t seem to appreciate exactly what is going to happen to you.”

“No,” she said. “No, you don’t seem to appreciate exactly what is going to happen to you . You joined Secor because it looked like a nice, safe berth, didn’t you? You get respect, decent money I would think, and you get to feel important. You’re probably a bit of a failure as a human being, aren’t you? Oh, and you get to work out those sadistic impulses you feel now and then, torturing prisoners.”

Now he smiled, but it was just a pattern of tightened muscles and stretched skin across his face. His eyes said something different. “This isn’t about me, Kuriakova…”

“It is exactly about you.” She couldn’t tell if she was being brave or just reckless. Either way she was as good as sunk, so she decided to just let herself go with the delightful flow of hatred that was running through her now. “The FMA is finished. Everything you have hung your little flag on is finished. It might take a while, but this war is as good as over. And when it is, and Secor is closed down, what’s going to keep you safe then, Mr Above-The-Law?”

The Secor agent’s eye twitched. Abruptly, he leapt to his feet, snatching up his pistol. He clamped the muzzle against Katya’s forehead, released the safety catch, and she would not, could not stop laughing.

“Go on!” she snarled at him through bloodied teeth. “Fire! Something else for the judges when they try you for war crimes! Fire, you bloody coward!”

The next Secor interrogator Katya had was interesting in that he barely asked any questions.

He came in and chatted at her. Not with her, because Katya had decided to maintain a stony silence when asked about anything to do with her immediate situation. If he asked her what she would like for lunch, she would tell him. If he asked her what had been the function of the Yagizban device, she would just look at him with her arms crossed.