S. Swann - Prophets

For now, at least, it would just be him and the enigmatic Ms. Columbia.

He switched on the monitors for her cell. Several displays came to life before him showing various angles from various spectra, all showing an athletic, dark-skinned woman, naked and restrained on a large table. Tubes attached to her body fed her, while other tubes removed her waste. Wires connected to her nervous system and gave him feedback on other displays showing biometric data, life signs, and cerebral activity.

He opened the comm channel to the cell and spoke. “It is time for you to answer some questions, Ms. Columbia.”

Her head was encased in a helmet, a wire-studded white hemisphere that hid most of her face from view, so she would see and hear only what he wanted her to see and hear. Even so, he saw the hint of an ironic smile cross her lips.

“Yousef? I’ve been waiting for you.”

Yousef frowned. His voice was altered through the system. Anyone who sat in this chair would project exactly the same flat, authoritarian voice into the chamber. The filters were designed not only to remove identifying tonal characteristics, but emotional inflection as well. She couldn’t possibly identify who was speaking to her, so she was guessing.

Reacting to that guess would be providing her information. He wasn’t about to play that game with her.

“You will need to answer our questions fully and accurately, or we can make this experience unpleasant.” Still that damn smile. “You have sold the Caliphate large amounts of intelligence information over the past decade. Who else have you sold this information to?”

His hands hovered over the control console, prepared to encourage a response from her. He had prepared for a long and arduous interrogation session, and expected that he would need to resort to invasive techniques that would leave little of his captive left.

He was quite surprised when he heard her respond. “Of primary interest to you would be my contact in Rome, Cardinal Jacob Anderson who is, more or less, your equivalent in the Vatican. I have been working with him as long as I’ve been working with you. However, the information he’s received over the years has been slightly different. He only received the specifications for the Ibrahim-class carriers after you had a fair complement available.”

Yousef sat stunned for a moment. He had discovered her duplicity through his own agents in Rome, but he had no clue that it had gone on for so long.

“Once Cardinal Anderson knew of the Caliphate’s new strategic reach, the information was disseminated to Centauri, Sirius, the Union of Independent Worlds—”

“Why?” Yousef snapped, forgetting his professionalism for a moment.

“You always knew I served my own master. Your surprise does not become you. I couldn’t betray you. I was never your servant in the first place.”

He pulled his hands from the console and breathed deeply, reining in his emotions. She knew, somehow she knew he was here, and exactly how he was reacting to her revelations. Somehow he had failed in the basics of the interrogation; he had allowed the prisoner to take control.

He needed to leave now, delegate the questioning. Even if it would reveal his own embarrassing connections to this intelligence fiasco, he couldn’t trust himself to continue.

“Yousef, you haven’t asked what you really want to know.”

She was prodding him. He almost reached over to start the automated interrogation, the painful and irreversible stripping of her mind. His hand hesitated over the console. Does she want that?

Could she have allowed him to capture her on purpose?

“Yousef, you want to know who I work for. Why don’t you ask?”

Why don’t I? Because she wants me to ask?

He needed to regain control of the questioning. He moved his hand to the more pedestrian “incentive” controls. He could manufacture any level of pain he needed, nondestructively. He couldn’t allow her to provide him information as a means of control.

He switched on a minor burning sensation across her right arm, strong and prolonged enough to show her who was controlling the situation.

Her biometric readings, heart rate, brain activity, blood pressure, none of it changed.

What?

“Why don’t you ask me?” she prompted, still smiling.

He upped the level and incorporated all her limbs. No change. He turned it up until her whole body should have felt as if she was trapped in a bonfire that never completely consumed her flesh.

Not so much as a tensed muscle.

He wasn’t a technical person, but he called up the diagnostics for his equipment and his connection to the prison cell. He couldn’t see anything wrong. His controls appeared responsive, but nothing he did showed any effect in the feedback from the prisoner.

What is happening here?

“Poor Yousef,” she said. “So predictable in your devotion, your assumptions, your confusion. Do you remember, you asked me once if I believed in God.”

He looked up at the holo display and realized something was wrong with the image.

Her lips weren’t moving.

“I told you I did, but not the same as yours.”

Her voice came from the system, but the prisoner on the holo wasn’t speaking. He touched the controls for lighting, sedation, rotating the table . . .

Nothing.

“Ask me who I work for, Yousef.”

He shut off all the monitors and the audio feed.

“What is this?” he whispered. The console and the displays were dark and silent in front of him. Scenarios whirled in his head. Could a rival agency have compromised this facility? Perhaps someone from the Caliph’s staff? Could—

“Yousef.”

He jumped at the sound of his name, sending his chair spinning and throwing his body into a slow, low-gravity arc toward the ceiling. He grabbed the quiescent control console to stop his movement. He turned his head in the direction of the voice.

She stood in the doorway, facing him, naked, unarmed, and terrifying.

“What is this?” he repeated.

“Ask,” she said. “Ask for the name of my master, the name of your fate.”

Yousef slammed his hand down on the emergency alarm button.

Nothing happened.

She stepped forward, smiling. “Do not rely on your machines. The three days I’ve been here have been long enough for my spirit to traverse the whole of this small moon.”

He slammed the alarm button again, and a sharp blue arc of electricity leaped from the console, searing his arm and throwing him back to fall, slowly, onto the floor. He clutched his chest, gasping for breath, barely able to get the words out. “Who . . . are . . . you?”

She knelt slowly over him and touched his cheek.

“There is no God but Adam, and I am his prophet.”

Her skin against his was warm, then hot, then burning. He tried to pull away, but she grabbed the other side of his face, forcing him to stare into her eyes. He grabbed her wrists, but her hold on him was impossibly strong. Inside his head he felt as if her long fingers caressed the surface of his brain.

“Choose to serve my God,” she whispered to him. “Abandon your superstitions, your naive bonds of the flesh, partake of paradise within this world.”

No voice came from his lips, just ragged shallow breaths as he felt her flesh melting against his, penetrating his. His heart hammered as his universe shrank to encompass only her dark, smiling face.

There is no God but God!

“I offer you life and an existence beyond imagining . . .”

Somehow he retained enough of himself, enough mind and motor control, to spit into the demon’s face.

Saliva dripped down the sharp edge of her nose. She gently shook her head and whispered, “Pity.”