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Irina woke to the sound of her cell door opening with a creak. There was a guard standing in the doorway, looking down over her. "Already...?" Irina found herself mumbling. A metal bench wasn't the most comfortable place to sleep. She had woken up several times in the middle of the night and her back was now very stiff.
"Afraid so," the guard said plainly. He approached the still-prone Irina with a pair of handcuffs, which he quickly used to secure her wrists behind her back. "Let's get up." He effortlessly yanked her to her feet. Once she was standing, he produced a hood of the same type that was used during her transportation to the prison. She tried to squirm her head away, but he placed the hood over her head and secured it tightly. Grabbing her by the arm, he led her out of the cell.
Irina's bare feet were stubbed against the concrete floor more than once as the guard tugged her around several corners and through multiple metal doors. After clumsily descending a long flight of stone stairs, Irina was brought through a final pair of doors before the guard brought her to a stop. He let her go, and she heard him turn to leave, slamming a door behind him.
"H... hello?" Irina asked, wondering if she was alone. Her question was answered as her hood was abruptly pulled off. She found herself standing in a room, perhaps ten feet on a side. The floor was bare concrete, and the walls were made of aging cinder blocks. In the back of the room were two metal cabinets and a chest; immediately before her was a wooden table behind which a middle-aged man, dressed in a shirt and tie, sat. Above the table, a chain dangled ominously from the ceiling.
"Please, Savitsky, have a seat," the man said as he pointed towards a chair on her side of the table. Irina apprehensively walked towards the table and sat down. She noticed that there were two armed guards in the room -- the one who removed her hood, and another who stood against the door.
"You should know that you are potentially in quite a bit of trouble," the interrogator said sternly. "Terrorism charges are dealt with most severely." He pulled out a handheld computer and began to use it as he spoke.
"But you know... you are a nice girl -- no criminal record, steady employment. I don't know how you got tangled up in the rebellion. If you are cooperative, we might be able to work something out. So why don't you be helpful and tell me what you were doing last night?"
Irina's mind raced. She hadn't ever been prepared for an interrogation. Was he telling the truth? She couldn't betray her friends among the rebels after getting caught on her first solo assignment. Their lives would be on her hands! She concluded that she would try her hand at a lie.
"I wasn't doing anything," Irina said as calmly as possible. "I mean, yeah, I was out after curfew. I saw a package lying in the middle of the road, and I was curious to see what it was. So, I bent down to get a closer look and before I knew it, I was staring at a patrol vehicle."
"Interesting story," the interrogator said in a completely unemotional voice. "But tell me, how do you explain this?" He tilted his small computer towards her and she was presented with an infrared picture of her walking from her moped, carrying a bag. He pressed a button, showing another picture of her standing at the intersection, still holding the bag. Another picture showed Irina walking towards some underbrush. A fourth picture showed her running away from the camera, the package left behind her.
The interrogator stared at her, waiting for an answer.
"Those pictures are out of order," Irina said, rambling off the first thing that came to her head. She knew it sounded idiotic before she even completed the sentence. "I saw the device on the ground, and I was trying to take it with me -- it looked dangerous. You know? I wanted to take it to the authorities."
"Nice try," the interrogator said, his neutral face turning into a sharp frown. "But I'm not that stupid. Not only were these photographs timestamped, but they show you walking away from your moped while holding the package. Explain that?"
"All right! All right!" Irina exploded, small sweat droplets starting to form on her brow. "I was planting it, all right!" She still couldn't let him know who her associates were. "I bought the bomb, you know, on the black market! I can give you a description of the guy I bought it from if you like, you can match him up in a database or whatever, you know?"
"Your story isn't convincing me," the interrogator said, his face turning into a frown once more. "Your excuses are inconsistent. Your tone of voice betrays you. Now are you going to be honest with me, or are we going to have to make things a little more unpleasant?"
"I swear, I'm telling the truth!" Irina cried. "I don't know what I can say to make you believe me!"
"I think we'll be able to get you to give us a compelling enough explanation," the interrogator said. He looked past Irina towards the back of the room and nodded at the two guards positioned there. On cue, the two guards in the room holstered their weapons and walked towards Irina, taking positions on either side of her.
"What do you want me to say!?" pleaded Irina. "I told you, I'll let you know what this guy looked like, and where I found him!" The interrogator remained silent as the guards pulled Irina to her feet and knocked the chair out of the way. One of the guards attached her handcuffs, which still bound her hands behind her back, to the chain that dangled from the ceiling. He pushed a button on the wall, causing the chain to retract into the ceiling by several feet. Irina found herself suspended in the air by her arms, which were now unnaturally raised together behind her back. Already, a burning pain filled her shoulders, her upper arms, her chest, and her upper back.
"Oh God, oh Jesus, please stop!" Irina cried as she tried to struggle, but it only increased the pain in her upper body. "What are you monsters doing?! My arms are gonna be torn out of their sockets!"
"I don’t know about tearing your arms out of your sockets, but the longer you hang there, the greater your chances of suffering dislocated bones and serious tissue damage," the interrogator said. "So... I highly advise you talk quickly."
"You can't do this to me!" Irina cried, as she choked back tears that were starting to well up in her eyes. "This is against the law!" The pain grew more intense and more unbearable by the moment. Irina felt like she was going to be sick.
"I don’t think anyone would shed a tear over a terrorist being coerced into spilling her secrets,” the interrogator said. “I’m trying to save lives here.” He stood up and walked towards her. To his amusement, Irina began sobbing. He hadn't even laid a finger on her yet. Very amateurish. She shouldn't take too long to break.
"What are you going to do to me!?" Irina cried. "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 calmly. "But half a day ago, you were willing to send my countrymen to their painful deaths with an incendiary bomb. 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 you’re not going to go free any time in the foreseeable future." This elicited a tortured cry from the prisoner.
Ignoring Irina's sobs, he walked to the cabinets in the back of the room and rummaged through them. When he turned back towards Irina, his hands were full. In one hand, he was holding a rather large pair of pliers. In the other, he carried a piece of thick metal cable. He walked directly in front of Irina's dangling body and set his implements on the table. Even though she was suspended a foot from the ground, he stood almost eye-to-eye with her.
"You can end this," said the interrogator. "Tell us what you know. We'll let you down and send you back to your cell. No more pain." Irina didn't answer. She merely continued to breathe heavily as she softly wept.
"Giving me the silent treatment now? Tsk tsk... well, 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 smack. Irina let out a startled yelp, but held her tongue otherwise. He delivered a harder blow to her other cheek. Irina saw the interrogator wind a third time, landing a blow on her left temple. She cringed -- her vision blurred for a moment as she swung slowly in her restraints, the pain from her suspension quickly becoming unbearable.
"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 ribs. 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 held her head low, eyes closed, and continued to whimper as she breathed rapidly. Beads of sweat were forming thickly on her brow, but still she held her tongue. Time to turn things up a bit.
Irina's eyes went wide as he seized the zipper of her jumpsuit and pulled it all the way down, just past her navel. She wanted to resist, but any movement made the pain in her arms even worse. It was impossible to remove the jumpsuit entirely while she was suspended, but the interrogator peeled it back towards her arms as best as he could. Her small breasts, covered in a thin sheen of sweat, dangled ever so slightly as her delicate pink nipples hardened in the cold air.
Wordlessly, the interrogator reached behind him for the thick piece of cable and abruptly swung it, striking the prisoner's left breast. She let out a sharp scream -- now they were getting somewhere. Relentlessly, he swung it again and again, aiming for her left nipple each time. More screams, more tears, more pleas, but no confession as her entire breast grew reddened and scraped from the beating.
She was holding out a bit better than he thought, but he sensed they were getting close. Her choked sobs were growing louder, and sweat glistened across every exposed inch of her body.
He put the cable down on the table and picked up the pliers. He tauntingly held them up in front of her face, watching her reddened eyes bulge with fear. Without hesitation he opened them, positioned them over her reddened left nipple, and squeezed with a firm grip.
That seemed to be doing the trick. The wailing was loud and constant. Grabbing the handles with both hands for better leverage, the interrogator twisted and pulled the pliers a bit, tugging the nipple around, and eliciting more tortured screams.
"Stop, stop stop!" Irina cried. The crushing pain was beyond what she could tolerate. "You're gonna tear it off! Stop!" He didn't stop, but looked up into her eyes without remorse.
"You know what you can do to make it stop," he said.
”I’ll talk, I’ll give you addresses… please…” she cried out between tears.
"Now we're getting somewhere," the man said. He released the pliers, bringing a sigh of relief from the prisoner as a trickle of blood wept from the wound. He walked back to his handheld computer. Irina blurted out an address, and he punched it in to the handheld.
“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 refrigeration room 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 -- Victoria, Josep, Antoli... those are the ones I met. Please, please just let me down!"
"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, 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 cup of water, but no food. She gratefully gulped it down.
-----
That same night, a squad 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 that obscured a small hatch. One of the squad members pulled out a small scanner.
"I’m not detecting anyone else in the vicinity, although they might have a shielded underground compartment. I am picking up a very small amount of electrical activity, and it appears that a weak radio transmission is coming from the general vicinity.” He probed the hatch with the scanner. “Seems clear of any explosives or toxins.” The squad leader gestured his men towards the hatch.
“Weapons ready. We don’t know what to expect,” he said, gesturing to one of his men to open it.
“There’s nothing in here!” said the soldier. He produced a flashlight and scanned the hatch. “Totally empty… wait! There’s something in here, something small.” He reached out and retrieved a tiny metal cylinder, holding it up for the squad to see.
“Looks like the source of the radio transmission,” said the man with the scanner. “Probably activated when we came in here – letting the prisoner’s associates know that there was a disturbance. Probably the prisoner’s way of letting them know she was compromised.”
“Shit,” the squad leader said. “Bring the transmitter. I’ll call in a report that the prisoner likely tipped off her associates.”
-----
Early in the following morning, Irina's sleep was interrupted by her cell door swinging open. As her eyes adjusted to the light streaming through the door, she saw two guards standing above her.
"I bet you thought that was really clever, tipping off your friends," the guard said with a look of rage on his face. “Thought you’d give your friends time to relocate, did you?”
"I don't know what you're talking about," Irina said. "I gave the man the best information that I knew. What happened?"
"I think you know what happened," the guard growled.
"I can’t say that I do," Irina said nonchalantly. "I told you everything I know, what more do you want from me?"
“We want the truth!” said the guard. He pulled the steel baton from his belt and rushed at Irina; before she could react, he smashed her across the shoulder with it. Irina screamed in pain and terror and darted across the room. There wasn't much of a place to hide. The guard delivered another blow to the side of her face. The room was spinning… Irina tried to get away, but fell to the floor in a daze.
She was unable to pose much of a resistance as the guard grabbed her by the neck, pulling her to her feet. She tried her best to flail and kick as the second guard grabbed the zipper of her jumpsuit, pulling it down. Her efforts were in vain as the two guards, despite her struggling, peeled her jumpsuit off and left it on the floor.
One guard grabbed her underneath her arms as the other grabbed her ankles. They carried her, resisting her constant wiggling and twisting, through the hallways of the prison.
“Where… are… you… taking me?” she screeched. Her answer came soon enough as she was returned to her feet, still held under her arms to limit her movement. She stood naked in a hallway in front of a door, face-to-face with the interrogator who had tormented her a day before.
"Hello," the interrogator said with a slight grin as he scanned her from head to toe. "I bet you thought that was pretty clever, but your deception isn’t going to go over so well with a tribunal."
"I don't know what you're talking about..." muttered Irina, blushing with embarrassment. She knew damn well what the interrogator was talking about, of course. But she tried to sound as convincing as possible.
"Shut up," the interrogator said. "Time works against us now, and we need to discover where your friends are holed up before they relocate and we lose their trail. We’re going to require more drastic measures. I believe that this will do a good job of loosening your tongue... and other things, as well."
Irina tried to figure out what his cryptic statement meant as the interrogator opened the door she stood in front of. Irina's eyes bulged -- it was no regular cell. It appeared to be a holding cell for male prisoners, who sat around on benches and cots. All wearing orange jumpsuits, many appeared to be quite rough around the edges.
"Welcome to the preprocessing center for male civilian prisoners," the interrogator said with a disgusting smirk. He called out into the cell: "I have a little present for you guys!"
Several of the prisoners roared at seeing the naked young woman at their cell door. As Irina screamed curses and pleas at the top of her lungs, the guard shoved her inside and locked the thick door behind her.
Irina fell flat onto her stomach, and scrambled to her feet. As members of the lecherous mob approached, she tried in vein to scoot into a corner.
Outside the cell, the two guards turned back towards the interrogator.
"Didn't let us have any fun with her first?" the first guard complained, half-serious.
"I'm convinced that these thugs will do a much better job of breaking her than you could, Corporal." The interrogator grinned. "Give them a few hours, and we’ll see if she’s willing to talk, now, won’t we?"
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