Jonathan Howard - Katya's War

Katya noticed the slight smile had reappeared. “Don’t you dare kill her!” she whispered.

“Can’t promise that, Kuriakova,” said Tasya with an easy complacency that frightened and sickened Katya. “Only as a last resort, though.” She smiled a little mockingly as she sketched a cross over her heart. “Promise.”

Katya knew Tasya’s list of alternatives to killing people who might present problems was very short, so it wasn’t much of a promise. It was, however, the best she was going to get.

“I’d better go and wander around. It’s not a good idea for us to be seen too much together,” said Tasya. “Keep watching for anything unusual and, unless things move ahead quickly, I’ll see you next time.”

“I can’t believe you’re fine with staying in this cess silo for as long as that,” said Katya.

Tasya shrugged. “Do you know if the unit activated properly?”

“Yes. They actually showed it to me. The inside was molten slag.”

“Good job, Kuriakova. Then the war’s as good as over. Might take a few months, though, and here’s as good a place to wait that out as anywhere. Take care, stay out of trouble, and I’ll see you in a month.”

“If Secor haven’t got around to interrogating and killing me before then.”

“They won’t. You worry too much, Katya. Be cool.” And so saying, Tasya wandered off amongst the chattering groups.

Katya didn’t know how Tasya could be so confident, but events proved her right. The days after the so-called “Freedom Day” mounted up and still Secor couldn’t seem to develop any sense of urgency.

Dominika had wanted to talk to Katya immediately after the inmates returned to their respective wings (“All inmates have five minutes to return to their correct wings. Any inmate found in the wrong wing or on the stairwells after that time will receive a Level Two demerit and associated punishments”), but the governor called a general appel — the name used for a head count in the Deeps — and there was no time.

After the evening meal, however, Dominika managed to take Katya to one side. “That woman you were talking to, she’s dangerous, Katya. Just a piece of advice, but you should stay away from her, as far as you can get.”

“She’s just a thief. Misallocated food supplies for the black market or something. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

Dominika shook her head emphatically. “Katya, you have no idea…”

Katya took Dominika’s hands in hers and looked her in the eyes. “She’s just a thief. She’s nobody special. I wouldn’t give her another thought if I were you.”

Finally Dominika understood. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Katya.” The evening tidy up was called at that point. Dominika squeezed Katya’s hands and let them go. “Be safe.”

Then, ten days after Tasya had assured her that Secor had lost interest in her, guards came to escort Katya to the interrogation section.

The guards turned up midmorning during a citizenship lecture. That most of those present would never again be a free citizen was not an irony that escaped them, and the presentation did not go without a commentary from the inmates. They grew quiet when the guards entered, identified Katya, and took her away with them. Katya had believed Tasya, and was so shocked she had trouble standing when they called her name. They led her off and the lecture continued more soberly than before.

It didn’t help that one of the guards was Oksana Volkova, because the other was not Alina Shepitko, and so they could not talk openly. The only comfort to be had from Oksana’s presence was a sympathetic glance from her when the other guard was looking away for a moment. Otherwise, the group walked in silence to the Deeps hub to take a lift down to the lowest level of the administration wing.

Down there the corridors were grey-walled and contained only utility lighting, apparently a legacy of their original intended function as drive rooms. The bleakness of the echoing walls may have been as much a reason for their retention as economy; it was impossible to walk them without sensing something terrible waiting around every corner.

They took her to a room much like the room in which she had been beaten in Atlantis. Two seats, one of them bolted to the floor, a table also bolted down, restraints straps on the secure chair, and a steel hasp on the table surface to hold a manacle’s cable. Sitting in the interrogator’s chair was the pale, fragile-looking woman Katya remembered from her welcoming committee over a month before. The woman looked up briefly when Katya was brought in, but promptly lost interest, studying her memo pad and drinking water from a plastic cup as the guards shackled Katya and then restrained her in the chair, locking her manacles’ cable down, her ankles and waist held in the chair.

When they were done, Oksana and the other female guard stood by the door. The Secor agent looked at them with faint surprise. “You’re dismissed. You’ll be called when I want you to remove the prisoner.”

Oksana looked uneasy at the phrase “remove the prisoner,” an uneasiness Katya shared. It sounded like an order to remove something inanimate. The other guard said, “Are you sure, ma’am? We could wait here in case you need us.”

“I don’t require an audience,” said the interrogator. “Besides, these are early days. Ms Kuriakova and I will just be getting to know one another.” To punctuate the thought, she lifted a medical case from the floor and laid it on the table.

Katya remembered something Kane had once said about Secor interrogation techniques, “Sensory deprivation, psychotomimetic drugs, RNA stripping, the usual. They’re quite old fashioned in their ways, bless them.” Now some of the tools of torture were sitting before her, she couldn’t find it in herself to be as flippant as Kane.

Nor was she the only one affected by the case’s appearance. Oksana flinched and the second guard took an involuntary step back.

“There’s a guard room by the lift,” said the interrogator. “Get yourself some food. I shall be a little while here. I shall call you when we’re done.”

The guard Katya didn’t know didn’t need any further encouragement and was out into the corridor in a second. Oksana lingered a moment, her anxiety evident, but then she was gone too.

Katya looked back to find the interrogator looking keenly at her. There seemed something disarranged about the woman, as if great passions surged behind that placid face. Her skin was pale, her cheekbones pronounced, her red hair pulled back into a bun that was just short of perfect, the few stray strands adding to the impression that all was not well within her.

“That guard seems very concerned about you, Kuriakova. Why do you suppose that is?”

Katya had made her mind up that she wasn’t going to give anything up to Secor, not even the time of day. She would make them drag each syllable out of her with iron pincers if need be. Thus, she sat there in hostile silence, and glared at her tormentor.

The interrogator found this amusing. “Oh, I know why, of course. Three young women shut up in a shuttle for that length of time, naturally you talked.”

She reached inside her jerkin and produced a recorder that she set down on the table between them. She watched Katya’s face as she pressed the “Play” stud.

It took a moment for Katya to realise what she was listening to, to place the disembodied voices. She remembered the conversation before she realised one of the voices was her own. It was Oksana, Alina, and herself aboard the shuttle. Katya recognised the tail-end of Alina’s anger with Oksana for leaving her pistol out where Katya could have taken it, and with a sudden sick feeling remembered what they had spoken of next.