CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I have been in my cell for three days. I have nothing in here
with me but a bucket of water, another bucket to use as a
toilet, and an empty metal tray from yesterday’s meal.
There is not a speck of food left on the tray: I licked it
clean yesterday. When I woke up in my cell three days ago
it had been my intention to mount a hunger strike against
my captors, to refuse all food and water until they let me
see my Katarina. But two days passed with no food or
water from them anyway. I had begun to imagine I’d been
forgotten in my cell. By the time the food arrived, I was so
far out of my mind with hopelessness that I forgot my
original plan and wolfed down the slop they shoved through
the little slot of my cell door.
The odd thing is that I wasn’t even particularly hungry. My
spirits were low but I didn’t feel weak from hunger. My
pendant throbbed dully against my chest during my days in
the dark, and I began to suspect the charm was keeping
me safe from hunger and dehydration. But even though I
wasn’t starving, or dehydrated, I’d never gone so long
without food or water in my life, and the experience of being
deprived drove me to a kind of temporary madness. I
wasn’t hungry or thirsty physically, but I was mentally.
The walls are made of heavy, rough stone. It feels less
like a prison cell and more like a makeshift burrow. It
seems to have been carved out of a natural stone formation
instead of built. I take this as a clue that we’re in some
natural structure: a cave, or the inside of a mountain.
I know I may never find out the answer.
I have attempted to chip at the walls of my cell, but even I
know there is nothing I can do. In my attempts, all I
accomplished was to wear my nails down until the tips of
my fingers bled.
The only thing left now is to sit in my cell and try to hold on
to my sanity.
That is my sole mission: to not let my solitary confinement
drive me to madness. I can let it harden me, I can let it
toughen me, but I must not let it make me crazy. It’s a
strange challenge, staying sane. If you focus too hard on
maintaining your sanity, the slipperiness of the task can
only make you crazier. On the other hand, if you forget your
mission, if you try to maintain your sanity by not thinking
about the matter at all, you can find your mind wandering in
such dizzying patterns that you wind up, again, at madness.
The trick is to forge a middle ground between the two: a
detachment, a state of neutrality.
I focus on my breathing. In, out. In, out.
When I’m not stretching or doing push-ups in the corner,
this is what I do: just breathe.
In, out. In, out.
Katarina calls this meditating. She used to try to
encourage me to do meditation exercises to keep my
focus. She felt it would aid me in combat. I never followed
her advice. It seemed too boring. But now that I’m in my
cell, I find it is a lifeline, the best way for me to keep my
sanity.
I am meditating when the door to my cell opens. I turn
around, my eyes straining to adjust to the light coming in
from the hall. A Mog stands in the light, backed by several
others.
I see he’s holding a bucket, and for a second I imagine
he’s brought fresh water for me to drink.
Instead, he steps forward and empties the bucket over
my head, dousing me in cold water. It is a harsh indignity
and I shiver at the cold, but it’s also bracing, restorative. It
brings me back to life, back to my pure hatred of these
bastard Mogs.
He lifts me off my feet, dripping wet, and wraps a
blindfold around my head.
He drops me again and I struggle to stay upright.
“Come,” he says, shoving me out of my cell and into the
hall.
The blindfold is thick, so I am walking in total blackness.
But my senses are keen and I manage a nearly straight
line. I can also sense other Mogs all around me.
As I walk, my feet cold against the rough stone floors, I
hear the varied screams and moans of my fellow prisoners.
Some are human, some are animal. They must be locked
inside cells like mine. I have no idea who they are or what
the Mogs want them for. But I am too focused on my
survival right now to care: I am deaf to pity.
After a long march, the Mog leading the guard says
“Right!” and shoves me to the right. He shoves me hard,
and I land on my knees, scraping them against stone.
I struggle to get to my feet, but I am picked up before I
can, two Mogs throwing me against a wall. My hands are
raised and chained to a steel cord dangling from the
ceiling. My torso is stretched, my toes just barely touching
the ground.
They remove my blindfold. I’m in another cell; this one is
lit, brightly, and my eyes feel like they will burn out adjusting
from three days of nearly total darkness. Once they do, I
see her.
Katarina.
She is chained to the ceiling, as I am. She looks far
worse than me, bloody, bruised, and beaten.
They started with her.
“Katarina,” I whisper. “Are you okay … ?”
She looks up at me, her eyes brimming with tears. “Don’t
look at me,” she says, her eyes drifting down to the floor.
A new Mog enters the room. He is wearing, of all things,
a white polo shirt and a crisp pair of khaki pants. His
haircut is short. His shoes—loafers—scuff quietly across
the floor. He could be a suburban dad, or the manager of a
neighborhood store.
“Howdy,” he says. He grins at me, his hands in his
pocket. His teeth are white like in a toothpaste commercial.
“Hope you’re enjoying your stay with us so far.” I notice
the bristly hair on his tan arms. He is handsome, in a bland
way, with a compact but strong-looking build. “These caves
can be awfully drafty, but we try to make it as cozy as
possible. I trust you have two buckets in your cell? Wouldn’t
want you to go without.”
His hand reaches out so casually that for a second I think
he is going to caress my cheek. Instead, he pinches it,
hard, giving my flesh a twist. “You are our guests of honor,
after all,” he says, the venom at last creeping into his
salesman’s voice.
I hate myself for doing it, but I begin to cry. My legs give
out entirely, and I dangle hard against my cuffs. I don’t allow
myself to sob audibly, though: he can see me cry, but I won’t
let him hear it.
“Okay, ladies,” he says, clapping his hands together and
approaching a little desk tucked into the corner of the cell.
He opens a drawer and pulls out a vinyl case, which he
unwraps on the surface of the desk. The ceiling light glints
off an array of sharp steel objects. He picks them up, one at
a time, so I can see them all. Scalpels, razors, pliers.
Blades of every kind. A pocket-size electric drill. He gives it
a few nerve-shattering whirs before putting it down.
He strides over to me, putting his face right up in mine.
He speaks, and his breath forces its way into my nostrils. I
want to retch.
“Do you see all of these?”
I don’t respond. His breath smells like the breath of the
beast in the cage. Despite his bland exterior, he’s made of
the same foul stuff.
“I intend to use each and every one of them on you and
your Cêpan, unless you answer every question I ask
truthfully. If you don’t, I assure you that both of you will wish
you were dead.”
He gives a hateful little grin and walks back over to the
desk, picking up a thin-looking razor blade with a thick
rubber handle. He returns to me, rubbing the dull side of the
blade against my cheek. It’s cold.
“I’ve been hunting you kids for a very long time,” he says.
“We’ve killed two of you, and now we have one right here,
whatever number you are. As you might imagine, I hope you
are Number Three.”
I try to inch away from him, pressing my back hard
against the cell wall, wishing I could disappear into the
stone. He smiles at me, again pressing the dull side of the
razor into my cheek, harder this time.
“Oops,” he says, tauntingly. “That’s not the right side.”
With a single dexterous motion, he reverses the blade in
his wrist, the sharp side now facing me. “Let’s try it this way,
shall we.”
With reptilian pleasure he brings the blade to the side of
my face and swipes hard against my flesh. I feel a familiar
warmth, but no pain, and watch with shock as his own
cheek begins to bleed instead.
Blood flows from his wound as it splits open like a seam.
He drops the blade, clutching his face, and begins
stamping around the room in pain and frustration. He kicks
over the desk, sending his instruments of torture scattering
across the cell, then flees the room. The Mog guards who’d
been standing behind him exchange indecipherable
glances.
Before I even have a chance to say anything to Katarina,
the Mogs move forward, unshackle me, and drag me back
to my cell.
