Nightmare: Alex
I coped with the nightmares by looking them right in the eyes and by making space for them in my mind. I was stronger than the trauma. I was bigger and more powerful than whatever shit my brain could throw at me.
I…had to be.
***
That night, I dreamed of my first day at Cleanse Camp 7. My cell was at the far end of a long, bare hall built out of titanium and red rock from the planet’s core
There were no windows, only screens, and the screens were all blacked out. The cell wasn’t soundproof, though; I could hear footsteps on the other side of the door. That was a relief, until I remembered the rumors I’d heard about this place, and about the specific forms of auditory torture they’d used on a blind woman who’d once been an award-winning biochemist.
Now, apparently she couldn’t even remember her own name.
“Imogen,” I rasped, discovering my throat hurt like hell.
What was the last thing I remembered? I couldn’t form any clear image of who had come for me or of how I’d been taken, but the feeling of knives in my throat was a solid clue. I’d probably been drugged or poisoned, and then teleported.
Where would I have felt safe enough to eat or drink that also had a teleportation capsule ready to go? We didn’t keep one in the apartment for exactly this reason.
“Imogen,” I yelled, louder this time. “Where the hell are you?”
“Alex?” Her voice was faint, but definitely nearby, and when I heard it, something twisted hard inside me. So, we were here together, which meant she was alive. That was everything.
I’d been hoping, though, that maybe they hadn’t found her; that maybe she’d escaped.
No such luck.
“Alex,” hissed Imogen, “what did they do to us? My voice aches, and my head aches. Everything aches! I’ve been brutalized!”
“Yeah,” I said. “Me too. How bad is it? Can you move? Try banging on the wall of your cell; let’s see if I can find you.”
“I, uh, wouldn’t try that,” came an unfamiliar voice from the other side of the door, and then my screen switched on, displaying the image of an exhausted male Inrai in his base form, his bright, green and blue scales flecked with grime and some kind of bright red dust. He wore a black and blue prison guard’s uniform, complete with bullet -proof vest and thick, metal-heeled boots.
“You’ll get zapped if you touch the walls,” he continued, shaking his head. “You’ve got implants in your arms, legs, and head, now, that activate if you act out. The electric pulse they start with isn’t too strong, but it’ll get worse the more shit you try to pull, so…save your big moves for emergencies.”
“Who in the hell are you?” I snarled. “Are you the fucker who put us in here? Why don’t you come on over and see how well that costume protects you from my fists, huh?”
It was a stupid thing to say; I was trying not to panic.
I wasn’t succeeding.
The Inrai sighed.
“Save it,” he muttered. “I had nothing to do with bringing you in. I’m this block’s warden, and I’m…I’m gonna be your interrogator. That’s all.”
“Do you have a name, traitor?” Imogen spat the words at him. “Goodness, you should be ashamed of yourself; you’re Inrai, aren’t you? The Cleansers hate your people almost as much as they hate mine. I imagine that this prison is full of Inrai. What gives you the right to -?”
“They have my … my best friend, ma’am,” said the warden, so quietly that I almost couldn’t make out the words. “Best friend isn’t the right word, but … there’s no word in any of your languages for what he really is. He’s more like … like my brother, I guess. They’ve got him locked up six floors down.”
We all spent a moment digesting that.
“As a matter of fact,” murmured Imogen, “Alex and I do understand what that means. I’m … sorry to hear it.”
“Right.” He shook his head. “So understand this, then; I don’t got a choice when it comes to what I’m gonna do to you.”
He twitched suddenly, grimacing and pulling in a sharp breath.
“Wait,” I demanded. “Do you have one of those implants, too?”
This time, he said nothing, probably because he didn’t want to be electrocuted again.
“Okay.” I took a quick breath, and lowered my voice a little. “Okay, I get what’s happening here. I’m Alex, and that’s Imogen. Who are you?”
The Inrai cleared his throat.
“My name’s Zeke,” he told us. “My job is to torture the living shit out of you until you give me names. We’re going to, uh …” He coughed, looking miserable. “We’re gonna play some games.”
He wasn’t even looking directly at the screen when he said that. Instead, he gazed down at his own claws, gritting his teeth.
“Names?” Imogen scoffed. “What names? We do not know any names!”
We absolutely did know names; names of some other members of the Dirty Resistance who were camped out on the planet Townshend, where we’d been picked up. Unfortunately, we know a LOT of names, as we’d recently been having dinner at the home of the woman who was responsible for the planet-wide student rebellions that had been taking place across Townshend for months, and the Cleansers probably knew that.
We were pretty fucked.
“We aren’t gonna give you any names,” I said quietly.
“That’s what they always say at the beginning,” Zeke returned, shaking his head. “But we’ll see. It’ll go easier for both of you if you cooperate, but…I guess I’ll have to prove that.”
“Good luck,” snorted Imogen, although I could hear the edge to her voice that meant she was holding down a lot of big feelings. “Alex and I are, in fact, quite good at games. We once won a Ardenian Battle Chess tournament against some of the planet’s masters. You may as well give up now on getting any information out of us through gamified torture.”
She was making a solid effort to intimidate Zeke, but I knew it wouldn’t matter. I could see in this guy’s eyes how desperate he was. He’d already come to terms with the devastating truth of what he was going to do here, and we had no chance of talking our way out of it.
“We’ll see about that soon enough,” he repeated, shaking his head. His swirling green eyes were clouded and distant now, as though he was disassociating. In his mind, he’d gone somewhere far away, or at least, he was trying to.
“Zeke,” I asked, “what’s your brother’s name?”
He blinked, refocused, and looked directly at me ..sort of.
“Gabriel,” he finally managed. “His name’s Gabriel.”
Again, he flinched, this time clutching his head and swaying for a second before regaining his composure. It looked like any time he mentioned his brother, he got zapped. That might be useful.
I felt bad for the guy, truly. If he was telling the truth, then he was just as much a prisoner here as we were
Still, I was going to get me and Imogen out of this place alive, and if that meant going through this poor fucker, then so be it. I wouldn’t enjoy it, but I wouldn’t think twice.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s get it over with, then. This one’s for Gabriel.”