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The interrogator wasn't sure whether to feel pity or amusement. He would have expected his prisoner, stripped and hanging from the ceiling by her wrists, to feel uncomfortable and apprehensive. But he hadn't even laid a finger on her and she was already sobbing. Of all the rebels who had come through here, he had never seen such an... amateur. Most told more convincing stories, and the ones who didn't usually put up a bit of an arrogant attitude in the face of their impending torment. Not this one. This was the behavior he usually saw in the civilians who were mistakenly brought in from time to time. Except she was certainly no civilian -- they had photographic and eyewitness evidence to the contrary.
True, Irina was scared. Horrified would be a more accurate description. She had never experienced humiliation remotely close to this, and it was certain that she was going to shortly feel pain worse than anything she had felt in her life. But behind the tears, her mind was spinning with a plan to get back at these bastards who had managed to take her without a fight. While her gang of rebels hadn't prepared her for humiliation and torture, they had provided her with one possible way to get back at the occupiers in the event that she got caught.
Trying to shut out the prisoner's annoying sobs, the interrogator walked to one of the cabinets in the back of the room and filled a hypodermic needle from a small container. Displaying it casually in front of him, he walked back towards the dangling woman.
"What are you gonna do to me!?" Irina cried upon seeing him advance with the needle. "I didn't hurt anyone, I'm not a killer! Please don't do this! Just let me go!"
"You say that now," the interrogator said while trying to keep his cool. "But half a day ago, you were willing to send my countrymen to their painful deaths with a white phosphorus-based weapon. Who's to say that if we let you go, you wouldn't go out, get a little better-trained, and try again? I know you don't want to hear it, but we're not going to let you go any time in the foreseeable future."
More wails from the prisoner. It was getting old to the interrogator. But the assurance that she would never be a free woman again hardened Irina's resolve to carry out her plan.
"Anyway, back to the matter at hand," the interrogator said as he held up the needle. "This needle contains what people in my line of business refer to as a pain amplifier. Without getting too technical, it will fool your brain into thinking I'm dealing much worse injury to you than I really am. It will make getting answers out of you a little bit easier."
Above Irina's continued sobs, he walked behind her and injected the chemical into her bare left buttock. He returned to the cabinets in the back of the room. "I'll let that settle in a bit while I get ready." As he rummaged through the cabinets, Irina slowly felt the pain in her arms growing a bit harsher. It felt as if her body weight was slowly and inexplicably increasing, causing more and more weight to hang from the manacles that bound her. She winced and let out a small groan.
"Feeling it?" the interrogator asked as he turned back towards Irina. In one hand, he was holding a cylindrical device that looked much like a flashlight. In the other, he carried pliers as well as a piece of thick rope, maybe a foot long, that was knotted in several places along its length. "I'm sure it's almost reached its full potency. So tell me, are you going to let me know who you're working for?" He walked directly in front of Irina's dangling body and set his implements on the table. Even though she was suspended half a foot from the ground, he stood eye-to-eye with her.
Irina didn't answer. She had to appear reluctant to give up any information at first.
"Giving me the silent treatment now? Tsk tsk... you've been given ample opportunity to assist us."
The man wound back his arm and delivered a slap across Irina's cheek that landed with a loud smacking noise. Irina let out a startled yelp, but held her tongue otherwise. He delivered a harder blow to her other cheek. Irina winced in pain. Two slaps across the face and she was already reeling. Irina saw the interrogator wind a third time, and it looked like he smacked her about as hard as he could. It felt almost like she had been hit with a wooden plank. She yelped and cringed in agony -- her vision blurred for a moment. If a slap on the face felt this bad, how would she cope with whatever he had in store for her?
"Still not talking?" The interrogator balled his hand into a fist and delivered a nasty blow to Irina's stomach. Another yelp and a few choked coughs from the prisoner. He slugged her a few more times in the stomach and then jabbed her in the ribs a few times. Between fits of coughing, her breathing had become rapid and shallow... but she wasn't offering any information. Yet. He smashed his fist into her jaw, eliciting a loud cry but little else. She rested her chin against her chest, continuing to breathe rapidly. A few beads of sweat were starting to form on her brow, but she wasn't offering anything. Time to turn things up a bit.
Wordlessly, the interrogator reached behind him for the knotted piece of rope and abruptly swung it, striking the prisoner's left breast. She let out a sharp scream -- looks like they were getting somewhere. Relentlessly, he swung it again and again, aiming for her left nipple each time. More screams, but no confession. She was holding out a bit better than he thought, but he sensed they were getting close. Her rapid breathing was mixed with sobs, and sweat was starting to glisten across her entire body.
He put the rope down on the table and picked up the pliers. He tauntingly held them up in front of her face, watching her eyes bulge with fear. Without hesitation he opened them, positioned them over her bruised left nipple, and squeezed tightly.
That seemed to be doing the trick. The wailing was loud and constant. The interrogator twisted and pulled the pliers a bit, eliciting more tortured screams.
"Stop, stop stop!" Irina cried. The pain was unbearable. "You're gonna tear it off! Stop!" He didn't stop -- he looked up into her eyes without remorse.
"You know what you can do to make it stop," the interrogator said.
Irina couldn't take it any more. Betweed tears, she offered a street address where her collaborators were known to hide.
"Now we're getting somewhere," the man said. He released the pliers, bringing a sigh of relief from the prisoner. He walked to his tablet computer and punched in the address she had just mentioned. "It looks like this used to be a flower shop. Are you sure about that?"
"I swear, I swear to God," Irina said between labored breaths. "There's an old refrigerator in the back that was once used to store flowers. There's a hatch inside that leads to a small storage cellar -- the hatch is probably covered by some decomposing flowers that you'll have to push aside. They keep a base of operations down there."
"All right," the interrogator said. "What about names? You have any names to offer?"
Irina shook her head. "First-name basis only... I can let you know if you want -- Natalya, another Irina -- Josep, Antoli... those are the ones I met. Please, please just stop hurting me!"
"That will hopefully suffice. Guards, take her back to her cell. I'll let my superiors know this information." The interrogator looked up to Irina. "If your information is deemed helpful, a tribunal will hopefully go easy on you."
The guards lowered Irina to the floor, zipped her jumpsuit back up on her, then re-cuffed and hooded her. They led Irina back up the stairs and through the twisting hallways before arriving back at her cell, where they un-hooded and un-cuffed her before tossing her back inside. Irina was left with a small plate of food and some water -- the first she had in nearly a day.
** LATER THAT NIGHT **
The platoon descended upon the old flower shop in cover of darkness. With silent expertise, they broke inside and crept towards the back. True to Irina's word, there was a flower cooler strewn with rotten flowers. One of the platoon members pulled out a small scanner.
"I'm picking up three ID chips from down below... it looks like their first names match the intel we received."
The platoon leader brushed some flowers out of the way, revealing a small hatch in the floor.
"I hear voices underneath it," he whispered. "Let's move in." The platoon leader readied his weapon and pulled the door open.
When the hatch opened, an armed trigger was pulled. The flower shop and the entire platoon were vaporized in a massive explosion that consumed the unused cellar which contained little more than three fake ID chips, a stereo playing an endless loop of hushed voices, and a very nasty booby trap.
Hours later, Irina's sleep was interrupted in the very early morning by her cell door swinging open. As her eyes adjusted to the light streaming through the door, she saw a soldier standing above her.
"I bet you thought that was really clever, pretending to be an innocent and inexperienced rebel in order to lure us into a trap," the guard said with a look of rage on his face.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Irina said. "I gave the man the best information that I knew. Had they moved on?"
"I think you know what happened," the guard growled.
"Afraid not," Irina said nonchalantly. "I told you everything I know, what more do you want from me?"
With a roar, the guard pulled out his steel baton and smashed Irina across her backside. She screamed in pain and darted across the room. There wasn't much of a place to hide. The guard delivered another crushing blow with his baton across her back. She screamed and rolled up in a ball, trying to shield herself as best as she could from her attacker.
The baton came down with another crack across the top of Irina's skull. Everything went black.
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