– by Nukleanis

After five years of working with Gen and his slightly unorthodox methods of security, I still find myself in awe of how such an unhealthy frame can support the polluted mass he calls a body and move it at such pace. Most of the time he’s like a tightly-bound spindle of raw hate unleashed in careful measure for the good of our employers. Those who saw fit to invest in this marshy dump of a planet. Nothing ever fazes him. Not the rain, not the ceaseless expanses of grey that cloak the sky and certainly not the pain and suffering inflicted upon those we have stopped in acts of wrongdoing.

Like the man chained to the metal chair before us.

I don’t know his name, and neither would I care to. No part of me feels pity for him regardless of his crime. No part of my conscience prefers rehabilitation to incarceration, nor clemency in place of torture. It is necessary to inflict agony to meet my monthly targets and I feel no empathy or remorse about what I do. When I’m engrossed in such a task, I become a force of retribution and while I never feel like some champion, I do sometimes allow myself enjoy it.

Not as much as my colleague does, however. I can see him grinning as the sleeve of his dark overcoat cuts through the air, unveiling a tightened fist at the last moment that strikes a temple. Our guest has expended most of his energy shouting and screaming, and so only grunts at the impact. He’s used to this treatment by now. His body must be flooding with secretions and hormones to dull the sensations.

Four sterile, metallic walls enclose us three men inside this cell. There are no two-way mirrors, hidden recording devices or even a tiny window in the door. I suspect that the lack of chairs for officers is a ploy to antagonise us by the higher-ups. To keep us pacing, to build anger and frustration that can be vented upon the miserable scrap of humanity with the luxuries of a chair and a desk in front of him. The dull lighting casts no shadows, just a grey haze offering nowhere to hide.

The person under Gen’s tender ministrations was recently caught planting explosives near a launch pad just outside the city under cover of night. He may have escaped to a safe enough distance to set off the explosives had the capsuleer owning the facility not ordered a launch. The blinding light had cast against the ground, illuminating the heavy rain that soaked our clothes as we waited for signs of movement across the field. The officers and hounds tackled him to the mud without the need for fancy electronics or obtrusive drones.

Gen’s body is more animated than it is during a normal interrogation. He must be overflowing with adrenaline and, God forbid, burning more calories than he should. Something must be motivating him more than his love of his job. I can’t think what it might be, as he doesn’t have any of the normal clichés people use to exploit police officers. He has no loving wife or children awaiting him, nor any real regard for his continued existence in the universe and his apartment is a tangled mess of bottles and fast food packets. So what could possibly push him like this?

“Kel.” The voice resonates in his chest before breaking past his throat a split-second later. “Go to work on this nasty scrote. I need a break.”

I never received what others would call ‘formal training’ on interrogation techniques and I possess no qualifications or certificates for information extraction. I just have experience in the matter and a healthy imagination. As such, my superiors value the results I deliver. I close my eyes and yawn as Gen slams the door behind him. Close my eyes. There’s an idea. If I do that, he’ll have no recourse but to talk. It won’t be as if he could deny such a view.

My fingers grip the underside of the flimsy sheet metal desk and I shove it into the air to allow it to clatter against the wall for effect. I squat on the floor opposite him and flick him a mischievous smile. The cracks in the dried mud across his face have rapidly filled with blood under Gen’s ‘questioning.’ Behind his swollen and battered face his eye tracks my movements. I have his attention. Good.

He must think me inert as I have done little else than watch Gen go about his nine-to-five while leaning against a wall. I produce a small knife from my boot and look him in the eye. The type of approving ‘ooh’ I use when studying a woman’s curves escapes my lips. He doesn’t move. He just keeps looking at me as I saunter over to him and straddle his knees. The knife hovers in the corner of his vision away from a painful looking bruise.

“Would you look at this!” I exclaim. “Such a nasty swelling. Allow me to relieve it for you.”

I’m glad Gen’s not here. He’d stop me on principle. He prefers brute force and strength to the subtlety offered by my tools. I once argued with him that it was man’s ability to manufacture tools that allowed us to take to the stars. He argued back that it was man’s ability and unwavering vision backed by immeasurable strength of warfare that pushed us so far. We never finished the discussion. We were too intoxicated to continue after too long. Gen’s likely resting in the break room right now. Probably staring at the multitude of capsuleer’s installations across the horizon, each one belching black plumes that melt with seamless horror into this world’s sun-shrouding stormy season. Environmentalists care and protest every day on the streets outside. I’m indifferent to it all. It’s not my world, and it never was. It has always belonged to someone else. Since they came, our funding has increased and with it my pay. My pension is guaranteed, so I’m free to spend as much time and money as I can on women and drink.

Maybe that explains Gen today. Maybe he’s getting a pay rise? Maybe he’s striving for employee of the month? Sneaky devil. I’ll see that doesn’t happen.

He’s only expecting a tiny cut. He’s probably expecting it to be painful as it nicks a sensitive spot. I spare him this perception as I squeeze the wound around his right eye. He grunts and struggles a little, but the point of the blade makes progress toward the bone unrestricted.

Blood wells from the cut excitedly. The swelling diminishes. “There.” I say. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

He spits at me. A tooth bounces off the blood he has stained my shirt with and clicks raggedly across the floor. I look at the mess and then back at him. He doesn’t show much triumph, although my being in such close proximity to him has given him a little vigour.

I grab his head and force the blood free from his face. I can feel the mound squishing and flattening underneath my thumb as he shakes and curses. “That’s going to cost you, friend.” I say. The knife carefully glides toward him. Edging into the line of sight. The shrunken obstruction and the opening of the eye in fear aids me as I land the tip just between the eyeball and the socket. His vision locks on me as he dares not look away. “Now tell me, who do you work for?”

He says nothing, so I play a little wildcard. I move my face bare millimetres in front of his so he can smell my breath. “Prosthetics are expensive these days.” Again, he is not forthcoming with information. My little reminder that his blindness would be temporary has hardened his resolve. He thinks that he’ll lose his sight only for a few days, but my plan is quite the opposite. I’d like my turn to last a little while I use his own senses against him.

The edge drives deeper into the cavity, worming between eye and skull with tiny crunching noises. Expectedly, he screams and jolts in his seat and I sigh in frustration. “Keep still. The more you move the worse it’ll be.” He stops and breathes in exaggerated puffs, bubbling blood on his lips. His eyelid flits and dances away from my tool, revealing cuts along where it has previously made contact. I can see the little organ straining. Tiny veins swell. A knot of resistance marks my stopping point. He is as primed as he ever will be.

It creaks a little and the screaming begins anew. I move my face away from his in expectation. With a little more force than I expect, I liberate it. My dear guest is frozen in his seat and I can hear him muttering. I think he’s praying. His brain must be struggling to process the difference in the positions of his eyes. Without his ability to stop looking wherever his eye may point, my real work can commence.

Yes, my work. I admitted to being a detective and protecting assets, but I never once mentioned upholding any law. Private security is my domain. The torment I visit upon our suspects is limited only by my employers’ ability to keep the real police at bay and their immeasurable wealth.

They’re quite coercive when they want to be. As am I.