Matthew Costello - Rage

“Fuck you.”

Now the other Enforcer’s boot was kicked into Marshall’s side, knocking the wind out of him. Marshall gasped, choking to get air back in his lungs, still with a heavy boot stepping on his back.

“Y’know, it’s too bad you won’t cooperate. The Visionary could have use for someone like you. We have… openings.” The man paused. “Let him up.”

The boot came off, and now the only thing holding Marshall to the ground were the spears of pain he felt all over his body. He guessed the plan was to leave him in such battered shape that in the morning he’d just stand-if he could-in front of the Visionary, listen while the Visionary asked his questions…

And tell everything.

Marshall wondered how far they would go to get information from him. How much pain, how much time?

He had been tortured once. Captured by a small antigovernment tribe in the hills of Waziristan. Old school, they used their knives to keep him in agony for days.

They had been real amateurs. It doesn’t quite work that way, he had wanted to explain to them. You got to go back and forth until it becomes clear to the subject that there was only one thing they wanted. For the dance of pain and remission to end. Nothing else mattered-the lives of friends, the safety of other soldiers, the mission, and even the fate of the goddamn world-you just wanted the pain to stop.

In the morning a squad of Rangers had parachuted nearby and raided the cave dwelling. The terrorists were dead in minutes; he had said nothing.

But now?

How long could he hold out?

One technique taught in Ranger school and drilled into the covert ops leaders was that you had to stay in the goddamn moment. Don’t think about the past, of warm beds, meals, lovers… and don’t think about the future, about what you want, how you want this to end one way or the other.

Concentrate on the small details in that moment.

Even amidst horrifying pain. One expert in counterinsurgency ops explained there can be good no matter what was happening. Focus on that.

Focus on the very fact of existence.

But no one in that room ever hoped to have to experience that, to have the need to try that technique. Marshall wasn’t that lucky. What was happening now, he guessed, was a warm-up. Setting the stage for the morning’s interrogation by the Visionary himself.

“We will stop this for now, Marshall. Want you fresh, alert, in the morning. But before you go back to your ‘room,’ you should know what the Visionary will be asking about.”

The Visionary. It always came back to the Visionary.

A man Marshall knew. A bastard he hated a century ago, for what he did, for what he stood for.

Now he’d be questioned and tortured by that man.

“What is that? My name, rank, and fucking serial number?” Marshall didn’t know this Authority officer standing before him, but all he could think about was how great it would be to make that sneering face squirm and twitch with pain.

He caught himself.

In the moment, he thought.

“Unlikely, considering your rank means nothing to the Authority. No, he will ask about your various secret bases. About the key people you work with, the settlements not to be trusted. Where you keep your supplies. In short, Captain Marshall,” he snarled, “ everything you, the pathetic Resistance leader, know.”

In answer, Marshall spat on the ground.

The man turned aside.

“Take this piece of garbage away. Give him nothing. No food. No water.”

The two Enforcers grabbed Marshall and began dragging him back to his cell.

Those guards disobeyed their orders, though, and thoughtfully gave him a boot to the head the next day. Not full force, but hard enough that Marshall saw stars as he awakened blinking, taking a few seconds to see where he was.

Right. It’s morning.

He was curled on the floor of the cell, competely empty except for his battered body. Not even a hole in the floor for a toilet, as if making him as much of an animal as possible would help the process of interrogation. As far as he could tell, it wasn’t working-he wasn’t an animal yet.

But he was surrounded by them.

“Get up.”

He could fight them, become a dead weight and force them to rough him up and then pull him to his feet. But what was the point?

To tell them they can kiss his ass, that’s what.

But instead he pushed off his hands and got to his feet. If he still had nanotrites coursing through him, he’d be in a lot better shape. Not that it was a real possibility.

“Let’s go boys,” he said. “Guess your Visionary is waiting.”

The Enforcers’ helmets prevented Marshall from seeing if there was any reaction to his words.

Clever idea, making the people in uniform… faceless. Not only rendering them scarier than the freakiest bandit tribe, but also making it hard for them to ever see each other as anything but part of the army of the Authority.

And who were they, really? Recruited from settlements? Ark survivors who preferred life with the Authority rather than being on the run from them? Supposedly, more and more were choosing life with the Authority.

The Visionary’s goddamn vision… coming true.

The Enforcers cuffed Marshall and then led him out of the cell. If he had been a religious man, he would have prayed.

And then, as he walked-despite everything-he did just that.

As Marshall entered the room, he was momentarily blinded by massive lights that dotted the ceiling and bathed the polished metal floor with a brilliant light.

It took him a few seconds to see what was here: a chair, a few tables, computer monitors-all probably removed from Arks. The monitors appeared to show different areas surrounding this building, the heart of the Authority.

He also noticed that one table had instruments on it. His eyes tried to make out exactly what those items were, and he found that his very inability to determine that made him anxious.

Steady, he told himself. Don’t let your thoughts race ahead.

He saw someone sitting in the chair, two Enforcers on either side. The first inquisitor from yesterday stood to the left.

His two Enforcer escorts held his arms tightly.

“Anyone else coming to this party?”

The two guards holding him pushed him forward until he was meters away from the man in the chair.

The Visionary.

Or as he was known back in the day…

General Martin Cross.

“Colonel, see that he’s uncuffed. He is a captain after all.” Surprisingly, Marshall didn’t detect any disdain when Cross said his rank.

The colonel signaled to the Enforcers behind Marshall, and one stuck a key in the cuffs. Marshall’s hands slipped free and he rubbed his wrists, red and bruised.

“Am I supposed to kneel now?” he said.

The colonel walked forward and slapped Marshall with the back of his hand.

“You will speak with respect, Marshall. Or-”

“Colonel, please. Really. Marshall is not used to the ways of civility here in Capital Prime. No, Captain, you do not kneel. Or even salute.”

“That’s good, General. Since I plan on doing neither.”

“You will-eventually, though-talk. That I can promise you. Just as others have.”

Marshall knew that one of the key cell leaders-not an Ark survivor, but head of a small trading settlement to the north-had been captured weeks ago. He spoke. Good people were lost. In the end the Authority sent in Predators to torch the settlement. Killing everyone.

A message sent.

For some it signaled that the Resistance was dead. For others it signaled that the Resistance had just begun.

“We’ll see, Cross.”

Cross.

He had been hostile to the new President from the start of her administration, and then became a constant roadblock to President Campbell’s foreign policy, until he was removed from that position by her. Then he was given responsibility for training, a bureaucratic job that took him far away from Washington, away from where he could stir up trouble and opposition to the President as she attempted to exit the wars that had spread to every continent.