Paranoia

For once, the heater was doing its job well. The modestly sized bachelor pad was pleasantly toasty. Combined with the lack of vehicles rumbling across the twenty-five-lane freeway deck just ten feet above my head, these factors had me well on my way to a dreamless sleep.

That is, until something exploded with enough force to shake the entire building.
Any inklings of further sleep vanished in an instant. The explosion had gone off in my apartment. Flashlight beams were ransacking the place. Men packed beneath armour and powerful weapons were following the beams, apparently in search of something. Police. I made a move to hide, but one particularly massive cop-an equally large shotgun in his hands-was already halfway up the steps to the balcony on which my bed sat.

I stood up with the idea of asking just why the hell they were playing at, barging into my apartment at one in the bloody morning. Once close enough, the huge cop swung the shotgun in a mighty horizontal arc and buried the stock into my diaphragm. The wind completely left me. My mouth instantly tasted of blood as the force of the blow sent me crashing over my nightstand, the railing, and through the glass of my coffee table below. The police scattered.

The ability to breathe had completely left me. Blood foamed from my mouth into the shimmering pool of broken glass. My entire body pounded with pain unlike any I’d felt before, and I was quite unable to move. The cops regrouped with their guns trained on me.

“Bag ‘er!” a commanding voice ordered.

One of the officers grabbed me, seemingly without care that I’d been seriously injured, and began to force me into a pitch-black body bag. Darkness shut over me as I slid down the coarse material.

ZIP.

After being unceremoniously thrown in the back of some sort of vehicle, and a harsh ride that seemed to take an eon, I was again slammed to the ground, an act which further aggravated the crippling pain in my stomach. The bag I’d been shut in reopened, and two policemen grabbed me by my arms and essentially dragged me to a room with a door the same colour as the body bag, save for its red security lock. One of the officers punched in a few numbers on a keypad. The light switched to green, and the door slid into the wall to reveal an extremely stark room adorned with a single spare table and two chairs. I was dropped into one of the chairs and commanded to wait.

Boots clacked on mineral-based floors as the officers left. The door slid shut and locked.

Another eon seemed to have passed before the door finally opened again, and a tall man entered, one hand holding a thick vidpaper document marked OFFICIAL RECORD OF EXISTENCE. This man was dressed in an impeccably crisp black uniform, adorned with only a simple pair of bloodred bars at each end of his collar and a glittering silver star pressed into each shoulder loop. A menacing leather holster across his chest held what had to be a powerful semiautomatic pistol. He possessed no badge.

His nametag caught my eye.

HARRELL.

I’d seen this man on television before, standing ominously behind then-President Carson as he vowed over and over that the Special Investigative Force would not stop until all those behind the Twelve-Hour War were caught. When I’d first heard of how well in tune he was with all the premium techniques to make someone talk, I hoped I’d never meet him…but here he was. Constable James Harrell, leader of the SIF for thirteen years. My stomach dissolved.

Harrell dropped the Records of Existence, as well as another document previously unseen, onto the table and sat down across from me.

“So…” he said, his very strong Canadian accent biting my brain. “You are Warner, Elizabeth Nicole, correct?”

It was a chore to make the words swim through the blood caking my mouth and throat. “Yes,” I finally managed, sending a spray of Victory Red onto the table with the ‘s.’

His expression shifted a bit as his eyes fell upon the blood soaking my nightshirt. It almost seemed like…one of sympathy. It did not last long. “As per Paragraph Three of Statute of Guardianship 238, we are authorised to question you of any possible familial or otherwise friendly connection you may have had with an enemy of the security of this nation, more specifically, Elric Keith Scott, the prime suspect in the bombing of the temple three weeks ago. That is why you are here tonight.”

He paused to let those words sink in-Elric did what?-then continued: “If no evidence of your aiding said suspect is found, you will be released immediately and all charges will be cleared. If such evidence is found, then you will be charged, at least, with one count of aiding an enemy of the security of this nation, the minimum penalty for which is permanent exile from this state. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

I took a ragged breath. “Y-Yes.” More blood spattered the table.

Harrell stood up. “Good.” He pressed his chest just above his nametag, then spoke to it. “Come.”

The door whirred open again. The same two officers who pulled me out of the bag reentered to retrieve me. Harrell collected the Records of Existence and the other document and began to exit the room. He stopped just outside the door.          

“Stennis, escort Miss Warner to the medical wing,” he said, then continued on his way, his boots thudding ominously against the hard floor.

“Yes, sir,” the addressed man acquiesced.


I am not entirely sure of how much time bridged the gap between my first meeting Harrell and his visit to my hospital bed. Whatever the case, I would awake to find him sliding a thick curtain shut around my bed. I noticed a rather austere expression on his face, and I began to worry.

“The doctors inform me that the MediGel is taking well,” he said, placing his hands behind his back. His lips moved fractionally upward from their normal position, but quickly returned. “Given no complications, you should be released from this wing within forty-eight hours.”

There was a pause. Harrell swallowed and began to pace back and forth from one end of the new enclosure to the other. He almost didn’t want to tell me what he was about to tell me.

“Our investigation has led us to believe you were engaged…in a platonic relationship with Elric Keith Scott,” he said, his voice having all the quality of an excessively starched shirt. “Is this true?”

As my entire midsection was jam-packed with MediGel, I couldn’t speak, so I nodded very slowly.

An even longer pause than before. His mouth tightened and his frightening violet eyes started to bore through me. At length: “Today, Mr. Scott confessed-” he placed much emphasis on this word “-to the bombing of the Masonic Temple. He told us everything, from what he made the bombs out of to how he got them in there.”

He stopped to let those words sink in. I suddenly felt as though someone dropped a white-hot knife into my abdomen and left it there to broil my insides. Elric? Elric bombed that place? Impossible.

He moved closer. “He also confessed to being Elric Joseph Kensington, a sergeant in the Thirty-Fifth Morehouse Militia…the second-in-command of the troops who invaded through Irwin Lake…destroyed Russell Sage, and attacked Swartz. Personally responsible for the deaths of over one hundred innocent civilians and Republic soldiers.

“You are now formally charged with one count of aiding an enemy of the security of this nation, one count of conspiracy to commit terrorism, one count of second-degree murder, and two counts of second-degree assault with a deadly weapon.” Harrell’s voice was now a stream of liquid nitrogen being poured over the hot knife in my belly. “Combined, these charges have a minimum penalty of death by scheduled demolition. Your detention within this facility is now indefinite. It would be…in your best interest…to cooperate with us.”

And with that, he opened the curtain and swept off.


The cell they tossed me into once I’d been given a clean bill of health would have had no trouble at all masquerading as a closet. Its appallingly inert steel walls supported a ceiling perpetually hidden by darkness. No light entered the space save for the murky rectangle that outlined the thick door. At one or two uncoordinated intervals each day, a plate with a tiny pile of what resembled sci-fi-movie military slop would be shoved through a mailslot in the door. The “food” was probably somewhat edible before it entered the cell, but it hardly ever showed up that way. Sometimes the pile would slide onto the grimy floor. Sometimes the plate would shatter, jamming the muck with hunks of glass. The few times it was decent for consumption, the taste-burnt hair marinated in acetone-drove me into convulsions, and it never bolstered my hunger. The malodor of quiescent sewage from the toilet stuffed into the corner didn’t help either. I’d been changed into a threadbare black…rag…when I was admitted into the infirmary. This poor excuse for a garment offered no respite from the insufferable cold that constantly filled the chamber. I couldn’t help but be reminded of books I’d read and movies I’d seen featuring the horrible prisons of dictatorships and other repressive governments.

Harrell would not come to grill me for a very long time. This afforded me plenty of time to mill over the gravity of what had happened to me. Elric was my best friend. He had displayed no signs at all of being a terrorist during the five years I knew and loved him. There was no way in hell that he could’ve been the one who blew up that building…who killed all those people…stirred up all those tensions, worry, and heartache. Even if he had, I didn’t do anything to help him with it…

Or did I?


A “torture expert” was standing next to Harrell the next time I saw the inside of the interrogation room. The paltry lighting of the room obscured the new man’s face, but I could tell he was a SIF cop by the indefectible sable uniform he wore, adorned with the same simple red insignia on the collar, and the chest holster. The nametag read MCANDREWS. He stood stock-still and silent during Harrell’s customary speech; this time, it was about the practical uses of a plasma cutter and how those virtues would be applied tonight. My heart began to step up its tempo.

Now, Harrell was standing more or less in that man’s place, a diagonal swath of black covering part of his head and left shoulder as he indifferently observed the spectacle. What light there was in the room bounced off the star on his visible shoulder, causing it to sparkle. It reminded me dimly of a music video I’d seen once. McAndrews was somewhere behind me, readying the cutter for its ominous work. I was hanging upside down by a network of ice-cold chains in the centre of the room. Tears ran down my forehead into my now grizzled hair.

A high-pitched scream signaled the activation of the cutter, a four-centimeter-long cone of blue-hot coherent heat, more than capable of cutting this prison into cubes. McAndrews moved in closer, his boots pounding loudly against the floor. My stomach solidified with each step.

“Just remember…” he said in a loose Southern drawl, “…this will stop whenever you want it to…all you have to do is tell us what we want to know. So-” He moved even closer, so I could feel the heat of the cutter. “-how did your fuckbuddy Kensington get the explosives?”

I shut my eyes tightly, steeling myself as best I could for the pain. “I…don’t…know…” I said, carefully suppressing the panic in my voice.

The torture expert sighed. “I guess I have to get this out of you the hard way.”
He wasted no time in slashing my back with the broad end of the cone. It was terribly cold, exactly as Harrell said. The squeal of the cutter’s coherence was soon joined by the sound of frying flesh.

I screamed.

“The next one isn’t going to be a glancing blow,” McAndrews said with deathly calm. “Remember, you can stop this at any time…just tell us what we’d like to know!”

“But I don’t!” I wailed. McAndrews growled and thrust the cutter forward again.
More cold. More frying flesh. I screamed even louder, forcing more sound through my throat than I’d thought possible. I struggled with the inert chains that bound me, hoping against even hope that I could get away somehow…my brain played such a wonderful scenario…Harrell unconscious and disarmed…McAndrews roasted in half by the plasma cutter…escape…freedom…

Panting, McAndrews snapped off the torture device and set it down on the table. My heart leapt. For a moment, our short, quick puffs of breath were indistinguishable from one another.

“Whooo…getting kinda hot in here, eh?” McAndrews said to no one in particular, his tone almost joking. The cutter screeched with life once more and the heat again approached my back. “I’m going to say this again…all you have to do…I know this can’t be fun…”

I couldn’t say anything. McAndrews hit me with the device again.

I didn’t scream.

This happened three more times before Harrell stepped forward. “I don’t think she’s in any state to give us any information now. Unchain her and escort her back to her cell.”

The cutter shut up. McAndrews approached me and unhooked my binders from the chains. I slammed to the floor. He stepped next to me, a wide smirk on his face as he twirled a half-melted cherry Popsicle in his right hand, spattering bits of cold flavoured water everywhere except his shirt. Harrell took me by the shoulders and got me to my feet, while McAndrews shoved the Popsicle in my mouth. On the table next to the chromed plasma cutter was a now very well done T-bone steak.

“I love that trick,” McAndrews said, moments before I passed out.


The interminable waits between Harrell’s visits were even worse than actually spending any time in that dank interrogation cell with that unflinching, uncaring man, his icy violet eyes, and that austere black uniform. I was left to sit in a corner for days on end, unprotected against the unseasonable December (was it still December?) cold and unable to see anything except the outline of the door. During these times, I wondered about my girlfriend…my friends…my family…my job…everything that had so abruptly been wrenched from me and tossed aside in favour of…this. Considerations of suicide were not by any means few, or far between.
The unmistakable click-clack of SIF jackboots began to pound down the corridor leading to my cell. My heart began to race. Were they going to really torture me this time? My mind tumbled over all the possibilities…dunking in ice water, electrical balancing acts, chemical baths…I threw up just thinking about it. The tremendous locks on the cell door banged and the huge structure swung open, filling the tiny space with blinding orange light.

It was just Harrell this time. He was holding my Records of Existence under his right arm and looked extremely angry. A tear began to run down my cheek.
“Come.”

Fearing the weapon on his chest, I obediently stood and walked toward him. He took my arm in a vice grip the moment I was close enough. He led me down the all-too-familiar series of corridors out of the cellblock, through the very dank stairwells, to the end of the interrogation corridor, and into the exact same room we always entered. But something just seemed…different tonight. Harrell’s normally firm, dictator-like comportment had been replaced by something resembling regret and…dare I say it…embarrassment.

He lowered me into the chair, slammed my Records of Existence onto the table-they slid off-and began to pace.

“Once again, this government has sent us on a wild goose chase,” he snapped.
I said nothing. What was there to say?

“Kensington was executed this morning,” he said, causing my heart to sink into my colon. “As he was being led to the firing chamber, he…” He paused, apparently unable to come to terms with what he was about to say. “…he said that no one else assisted him in the attack…not monetarily…verbally…anything. That means…that you have been falsely imprisoned here.

“Luckily…you…haven’t yet subjected to any of our real interrogation methods. Otherwise, we’d be completely fucked. Game over. No one would let the SIF stand if they knew the rumours were actually true.” He picked my records off the floor, took a stylus from one of his holster pouches, and began to mark out portions of the file.

“As of 21.20 on 22 December 2060, you are officially cleared off any and all criminal charges relating to this case and all record of said charges has been deleted. As far as your ROEs are concerned, this never happened. This also means that you’re completely free.” He paused for a very long time, replacing the stylus to the pouch with a hand I could’ve sworn was shaking. “We…we apologise for this…misunderstanding.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He said that I was free…that I had nothing to do with it…I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t speak. All I could do was stare at Harrell in complete shock. He swallowed and his eyes bored into me.

“Looks like we’ll have to do this together,” he said at length. “Come on…”

He grabbed me by the shoulder, much more gently than he had previously, lifted me up, and steered me out. We walked down an unfamiliar series of corridors this time, all twice as welcoming as the one before it. Finally, after some length of time, we passed through a set of security doors-neither of the operators flinched one bit when they saw me-and walked out into a crisp, snowy night. The expansive spiderweb that was Monroe’s lights spread out in every direction away from the artificial hill and glittered in the cold.

All the while, the reality was slowly creeping into my thoughts.

I was free.

We approached the front gate. No…not just yet…

One guard stepped out and gawked at us for a moment from behind a flashlight beam. He was just about to say something when he noticed the SIF insignia on Harrell’s jacket. No time was wasted on the guard’s part to open the massive gate. He did not acknowledge us further.

Harrell led me to a point about six meters from the gate and stopped. I still was unable to speak. We stood there for a while, then he spoke.

"It’s a big world out there,” he said, his impenetrable voice cracking a bit at the edges, “and it’s been waiting for you to return. Don’t keep it any longer.”

And with that, he turned briskly on his heel and walked off.