He yells the word and it echoes around the empty room, but I’m more distracted by something he said. He goes on.

  “Then he’s sent on a practically suicidal mission to take back an international airport, then he disappears, leaving a bunch of bodies and a smoking tower in his wake.”

  “Look, I—”

  He cuts me off again; evidently he doesn’t care what I have to say right now.

  “I mean, yes, he then brutally murdered his own leader, but—”

  “Not single-handedly,” I cut him off to say. He looks back at me quizzically.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t kill that general single-handedly,” I tell him as authoritatively as I can with a handcuff around my wrist. “I had help. I had friends. Mikey and Dina.”

  “Oh, right,” he says. He looks confused. “Well, I’m happy to be corrected.”

  He pauses for a second, thinking to himself. I can almost see the cogs in his head twisting and turning, deciding on a new path.

  “We took a blood sample from you. We wanted to know you were healthy; that you had escaped that war unscathed.”

  I scratch my left arm nervously; I don’t even realize I’m doing it until I’m halfway through the motion. I had enough bloods taken me from when I was a kid so that I learned not to fear needles, so why does this feel like such a violation?

  “We found you to be in perfect health,” he says with something of a smirk on his face. “In fact, far better than healthy. You have a greater number of functioning red blood cells running through your veins than anyone our doctor had ever seen before. He asked if you were an Olympic athlete.”

  I snort with amusement. An Olympic athlete? This guy should see my old gym report card.

  “You have the fast-twitch muscle efficiency of a star baseball hitter. And not one of the old ones, either. One of the newer guys, juiced up on more steroids than you can count.”

  I shift around in my seat somewhat nervously. They seem much happier to believe I’m an undiscovered world-class athlete than my true otherworldly origin, because of course they do: it’s the only explanation that makes any rational sense. But the fact they’ve tested me and found me abnormal feels concerning enough right now.

  “You know some of those rebel soldiers thought you got shot and that you healed overnight? Another guy we spoke to said you were bulletproof: that shots just bent around you.”

  “Where are you going with this Baynes?”

  “You were something of a legend in the couple of weeks you were there Kris. And, well, now you’re infamous.”

  He pushes his chair back slightly; the grinding of the metal leg on the floor makes me wince a little. Then he leans forward, still staring directly at me.

  “You’re a natural assassin my friend.”

  For the rest of the interview we imprecisely go back and forth about me, my history, and my intentions in Aljarran.

  I tell him about Alfred Burden; how I’d tired of my job at the sandwich packaging plant and decided to do some underground investigation of my own. I tell him I discovered some information the police missed that led me to Burden’s house and then to the parade.

  I tell him I pursued him onto the train, and when I saw he had the bombs strapped to him, I ran away as quickly as I could. I say he triggered the bomb, killing all those people, and barely even wounding me.

  I tell him I was ashamed to have escaped with my life, so stole a passport and went to a place I could fight to redeem myself: Aljarran. He sits there the whole time, nodding his head and arching his eyebrows skeptically.

  He looks like he believes none of it.

  “Right,” he finally says, scribbling something on a notepad with a small pencil. Then he picks up the smartphone and puts it back into his pocket.

  “Right?” I ask.

  “Thank you for telling me your story, Kris. I won’t be handing you over to the FBI or to the Aljarrian government, at least for now.”

  Am I supposed to thank him? Last I checked I was still handcuffed to this table. Whether I’m handcuffed to a table in the FBI’s headquarters, or handcuffed to a table in Rachiya’s Alpha Base, or handcuffed to the table here doesn’t particularly feel like a difference I should be grateful for.

  “So,” I finally reply, after letting a few moments pass awkwardly by, “what happens now?”

  “What happens now,” he says, standing up and pushing the chair backward as he moves, producing that ear-splitting screech again, “is that you leave this with me. I’m going to ask some questions and put some ideas out and about. And if I’m right, you can prove useful.”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about; this clandestine CIA speak is useless to me.

  He puts his hand out to shake mine. Apprehensively, I do so.

  “Do everything I say, and I can make your problems go away Kris. I’ll see you soon.”

  With that he turns and leaves, opening the door and walking past the two soldiers guarding it with a nod. I sit at the table for a moment before motioning toward them with my handcuffed hand.

  “Well? What now?”

  They both stand there, staring straight ahead with their backs to the walls beside the door. I sigh and sink back down into the chair, wondering whether I’ll be treated to the black bag or the stun gun next.

  Eventually, another soldier walks in – the blond, blue-eyed guy who led me out of the cell earlier – and approaches the table. He fumbles with a small key and begins to unlock the handcuffs. As he does so, I see that his knuckles are somewhat scarred.

  In a matter of seconds I’m freed, and I stand up compliantly. I follow him back through the door – the two soldiers following behind us as we pass – and back down the white corridor.

  But the man in front of me walks straight past my former cell. I keep on following him, conscious of the heavy bootsteps behind me. We make it to the end of the corridor – passing innumerable white steel prison doors – and turn a corner, behind which a conspicuously red door lies.

  I begin to feel nervous. In a world of white doors, white corridors, white faces, and white food, what the hell does the red door signify? I straighten my posture and begin to slowly clench my fists. These three soldiers around me are armed with rifles, but it’s not as though I can’t handle them.

  But whatever lies beyond that door is a different story…

  I watch the blond soldier in front of me fumble around for yet another key before unlocking it; the sound echoes up and down the walkway. With the click of the lock, I squeeze my fists closed and wait.

  The door swings open, and my eyes are greeted by even more red. But not just red. Black steel bars across red steel frames are the pervasive sight, but my eyes are soon drawn to the painted red tables in the center of the space, with playing cards splayed out on the surface and dour-faced men sat around it, barely taking the effort to look up from their game.

  It reminds me of the first base camp in Aljarran.

  “You can make yourself at home with the others, Mr. Chambers,” the blond soldier says, nodding at the room ahead of me.

  I walk through the doorway and look up. The room around me is a large circle, extending several floors above me. I count a dozen or so jailcell doors – each one with red frames and dark steel bars – on this floor, along with a staircase to the next, and presumably another dozen jailcell doors up there too, and above that, and above that.

  The height of this room is so great I can’t even make it out; it extends beyond the sixth or seventh floor and disappears into hazy darkness. There are walkways on every floor, and the same red and dark metal color scheme on each. Each floor seems to be secured vertically with chicken wire; I can see through it, but presumably not throw myself through it.

  There are no windows and no obvious door out of here, other than the one I just entered. I hear chatter from upstairs, along with the unmistakable sound of a ping pong ball. I guess I qualify for recreation now.

  Elsewhere, the squealing and wailing of doors sliding open and closed in the levels above echo out like the ghosts of prisoners past.

  The floor is deep red, with rusty scratch-marks pervasive throughout and red paint flaking away at regular intervals. Occasionally I see a dirty brown stain that reminds me of the many pools of dried blood I’ve seen.

  It looks like some unbearable developer bought a massive, underground nuclear missile silo and made it into a trendy new residence for hipster drug dealers.

  But there are people. I count nine, dressed in the same white joggers and long-sleeve T-shirt combo as I am. There’s a range of ages – one guy looks my age; another looks like he could be in his sixties – and races.

  Some people look up at me – the guy my age turns his head and gives what might be a guarded half-smile in my direction. Two of the guys at the table – Middle Eastern in appearance – look up at me before going right back to their card game. Another man, middle-aged, tattooed, and bald, stares down at me from the second-floor walkway.

  Not exactly the most welcoming reception, then, but what can I expect? I’m in jail, and not just any jail; a jail that doesn’t officially exist.

  CHAPTER 5

  The blond soldier leads me to a cell on the first floor, looking at the two guys playing the card game on the table. He stands by the door and points his rifle inside. I guess that’s my instruction to enter.

  Inside is a bed and mattress which I’m utterly delighted to see, as well as a toilet, obscured from the view of the rest of the jail by a small wall, maybe waist height. There’s an empty table, an empty bookcase, and a dirty-looking steel sink. Everything is various shades of red, from proud crimson walls to slightly rusty table legs.

  “Enjoy your stay,” the blond soldier says to me in an unmistakable upper New York accent. He turns to leave, passing a little too close to one of the card players at the table outside, who fearfully flinches as he does so.

  I hear a vague, indistinct talk as well as the muffled sounds of footsteps from above. Every so often there’ll be the resonant clanging of pipes or a toilet flush, but the mood in this place is suspiciously muted.

  I sit on the bed, feeling its springiness. The mattress is plastic, covered with a paper-like bedsheet, but overall it doesn’t feel bad at all. Exorbitant luxury compared to the shipping container or squalid corner of a gas station.

  I lie in the bed, pull the sheet over me, and close my eyes.

  “So,” I finally mumble into the abrasive bedsheet. “What the hell was all that about? Natural assassin? Making my problems go away?”

  It’s clear he wants you for something, Vega says, Baynes has evidently worked out you’re not the average American citizen. He knows you have experience and skills that go far beyond an elite soldier. You’ve managed to assassinate two military leaders and get away unscathed.

  “So what, he’s going to recruit me to do some of the CIA’s dirty work somewhere?”

  I mutter as quietly into the sheet as I can. This entire jail will doubtless be covered in cameras and hidden microphones.

  It certainly sounds that way.

  “Hell no,” I spit into the sheet, feeling sick to my stomach at the thought of murdering anyone else without them first sticking a gun in my face. “I never set out to be some hired murderer.”

  Unfortunately, it seems that’s what you’ve become. Something you never intended, but something you’ve undeniably grown to excel at.

  I turn onto my side, providing enough dismissive body language for Vega to stop talking. That feeling of sickness is building within me again; a fetid poison, rising from my bowels into my stomach.

  My eyes are closed and I try to put the thought of organized, planned murder out of my mind. None of this has gone how I wanted; for every bittersweet, ‘heroic’ victory I’ve tasted, there’s been a body. Mikey, with that smile on his face. Cantara, and the murderous lies. Dina, and the feeling that’s worst of all: that I don’t know how it ended for her.

  I pull the sheets off me and sit up; I’m sick to my stomach. I try to focus – to control my breathing and stay perfectly still – but it doesn’t work, and I soon have to rush over to the toilet and empty my stomach of all of that awful white food.

  It’s been a while since I did that. Since before Dina disappeared, I think.

  I wipe my mouth and get a drink of water from directly out of the faucet. When I pick my head up from the sink, I see there’s someone standing outside my cell.

  “Hey man, are you okay?”

  He’s the man I thought looked my age, but now that he’s close I can see that he’s older. Maybe mid-thirties, but he looks good for it. He has slight wrinkles by his eyes, a full head of messy brown hair, and a vaguely American accent.

  “Yeah, I will be,” I say to him. “They gave me a sedative, it’s nothing.”

  He leans against the doorframe with his arms crossed and a look of friendly concern on his face.

  “Oh yeah, they’ll get ya with the needle all right.”

  He sounds like he could be from one of the upper midwestern states, or maybe Canada. He has his sleeves rolled up past his elbows, and I can see that his skin is pale. No wonder I thought he looked like me.

  “It’s Kris, by the way,” I say to him after spitting into the sink one last time.

  “Jack,” he says in reply. “Excuse me for saying this, but you’re not the usual type I see around here.”

  The usual type? I hadn’t given one moment of thought to the usual types who pass in and out of CIA black sites. International terrorist masterminds? Foreign mob bosses? Crazed, murderous warlords?

  “Yeah, I guess it’s been quite the journey.”

  He smiles guardedly and somewhat fretfully. I can tell he’s still sizing me up. He doesn’t know what to make of a pale, early-twenties American landing in here. He’s probably thinking it’s all one big mistake; some CIA guy picking out the wrong guy in a lineup. Either that or he’s thinking I’ve committed untold atrocities to get here.

  “I don’t expect anyone to tell me how they landed here,” he goes on to say, grabbing the collar of his shirt and rubbing it between his fingers. “I don’t really care what they think you did on the outside. I’m happy enough to be friendly with anyone, if they’ll do the same for me.”

  Huh, someone proposing friendship on day one? That’s gotta be a new record for me.

  I walk over and hold my hand out. He takes it, and we shake. His hands are cold and calloused, like he works with them; or rather, used to.

  “So, what is this place?” I ask, looking up at the circular walkways going up innumerable floors above.

  “They don’t give it a name. At least, not a name they’re willing to tell us. We – well, those of us who speak English at least – just call it The Pit.”

  “Right,” I say, looking up and trying to count how many floors I can see. “What time is it?”

  “That’s another thing they don’t tell us,” Jack says. “Lights come on; lights go off: that’s our day. Two meals are served in between, and we’re given access to the shower room once a day. Those are the only ways you’d ever be able to guess the time.”

  “Huh,” I murmur out loud. I’m mostly just wondering if the food is going to be red. Speaking of which: “How come everything is red? And the room I was in beforehand, that was white?”

  “Hell if I know,” Jack says, shrugging his shoulders and turning to look at the surroundings. “I think they’re messing with us. Psychological warfare, sensory deception. Every room in this place is a strange color. The white rooms make you apathetic and depressed. The red rooms make you frustrated and irritable. And then that’s when they strike.”

  “They?”

  “The faceless goons in smart suits and pencils glued to their hands.”

  So, Jack is interrogated in here too. I suppose it would be naïve of me to assume that I’m the primetime attraction in this place.

  “Everyone in here is in here for a reason, even if some of us don’t even know that reason,” he continues. “Sometimes you have something they want, or sometimes you might represent a piece in a puzzle they’re trying to solve, or if you’re really, really unlucky, you’re ransom, imprisoned here forever or until someone else chokes and gives in.”

  I rub my eyes, thinking about Baynes’ vague talk earlier. When I look back at Jack, he’s smiling tiredly, like he’s fatigued even thinking about the interrogations.

  “How long have you been here?” I ask him. He grins even wider and shrugs.

  “I don’t know. A year? Maybe? I stopped counting the days when I got to triple figures.”

  He pauses, thinking to himself.

  “If those even were days. I haven’t seen the sun rise and fall in a long time. Days have no meaning here. Get used to it, it’ll help.”

  It’ll help? He says it like I should be getting used to a long stay here.

  I look beyond him and around our accommodation; there’s a soldier posted on each floor carrying an assault rifle, and there’s a large array of small-lens cameras I can see already, as well as countless more I probably can’t.

  Yeah, I think we’re locked down tight, but I’ve disentangled myself from worse places than this.

  Jack begins making small talk about something else when a loud siren cries out for a few seconds before ending as abruptly as it began.

  I see the two guys at the table immediately begin to stand; one of them heads for the stairs up to the next floor and the other begins walking slowly to a cell on this floor.

  “Ah, see,” Jack says, springing off the doorframe. “Lights out.”

  “This is it?” I say. He nods and says his goodbyes, making his way upstairs.

  I go back to the bed and lie on it, throwing the abrasive paper sheet over me. One by one, I see the lights begin to dim outside as the higher floors are switched off.

  The door to my cell – a red frame with black bars – slides itself forcefully shut, and after a couple more seconds the lights on the ground floor go out, bathing us all in darkness but with the occasional dim red light.

  If you were wondering, it’s 9:34 PM local time, Vega suddenly says. I’d forgotten he must have an internal digital timer of some sort.

 

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