Todd opened his eyes, smiled at her, and then led her to the sole door that provided entrance to the facility for people who did not have bags tied over their heads. He used his own entrance code, something he almost never did. When he went back, in the evenings, he always used the dummy code that the techs had doped up years ago, so that it would not go on record. He knew that the system would log him opening the door in violation of procedure, but he was certain that Rebecca could fix that, too. He just needed to remember to ask her about it before she left. First, he knew, his priority was to get Rebecca to the cell as efficiently as possible. She was obviously important, and who knew, maybe there was the possibility of a promotion in all of this, even for someone as unimportant as himself, if he was helpful enough. He led her down the short hallway to the elevator, walking purposefully, trying to act as if he did this every day, hoping to make a good impression.
“Hey, Todd?” Rebecca asked, dropping her cigarette casually on the floor and then grinding it out with the toe of her sneaker. “How come you know about the tattoo? You don’t check the prisoners in, right?”
“Uh, no,” Todd said, sweat breaking out on his brow. He pushed the call button for the elevator again, to have something to do. “No, they bring prisoners in through the secured area downstairs.”
“So, what’s up with that?”
Todd continued to hem and haw until the elevator arrived. Once inside, she put a finger on his forehead, and asked him again, and this time, Todd came clean. After all, if he could not trust Rebecca, whom could he trust?
It had all started five years ago, on a cigarette break with a couple of the guards who worked in the back, Miguel and Reggie. They were scary guys, ex-military types with hard faces and curt, ugly laughs, but they had warmed up to Todd over time, particularly after he revealed that he could cover for them when they clocked out early. After a while, they started talking about what went on in the back.
There were rumors, of course, and everyone who worked there knew it was a holding facility for some corporate, quasi-governmental group called Terrie. Todd wasn’t exactly shocked when he found out that Miguel and Reggie were part of a team of interrogators who worked at the facility, or that their job amounted to torture. Initially he was bothered by the way their eyes lit up when they told him stories in hushed voices, descriptions of beatings and water boarding, starvation and humiliation. However, after a short while, he found himself looking forward to the little talks, and imagining the stories while he sat, watching endless hours of ESPN on a jumpy camera monitor. Eventually, he had an opportunity to fix something for Miguel, an unfortunate incident where he had clocked in late and faced termination. Todd saw to it that the report filed that day was incomplete, and suffered a demerit of his own as a result, but earned the gratitude and respect of the entire back room staff. The next day, Miguel invited him down after work, and told him about the dummy code.
No one who was put in one of those cells ever left the facility again. Instead, they ended up in the high- temperature furnace that operated on the facility’s lowest level. The prisoners were there to be interrogated, and some of the women were sort of pretty, behind the bruises and terrified expressions. A small circle of guards took advantage of this. The first time, the whole elevator ride down, Todd had thought he would be sick. However, in that claustrophobic cell, stinking of piss and despair, he had felt something else entirely…
Todd was torn from his reverie by a feeling of dread. He knew that Rebecca was glaring at him furiously before he turned to face her. He wanted to explain, but he could not find the words. He felt as if he had been caught masturbating by his mother; shame, fear, and desperate belief that this could not actually be happening.
“Did you hurt her?”
“What? Who?”
“8B,” Rebecca said, through gritted teeth. “Was she one of the ones you ‘visited’?”
“It’s not… It’s not what you think!”
Seeing her face, he raised his hands defensively and pleaded for the opportunity to explain, feeling such tremendous fear and shame that he wet his pants without even realizing it, only noticing that his damp crotch moments later.
They had visited the woman in 8B. She hadn’t spoken a word since she arrived at the facility, and according to the guards who watched her, she lay on the floor of her cell all day without moving. She was a bit freaky looking, with the tattoos and all, tall and too muscular for Todd’s tastes. They hadn’t gotten a new girl in a while, so there was no way he was going to pass up Miguel’s invitation. She had been complacent, even apathetic, when Reggie ordered her to strip.
Then Reggie tried to touch her, and she’d gone after his eyes with her thumbs. The only reason she didn’t blind him was that her fingernails had been removed a few days earlier for exactly that reason. Miguel had stepped in with his baton, and managed to knock her away before she killed Reggie, but in the process, she pinned Miguel’s arm to the wall and then hammered it with her knee, fracturing it at the elbow. Todd intervened in time to prevent them from beating her to death, but it was a near thing. They could have forced the issue, but they all realized that any further struggle might lead to the prisoner’s premature death, and would cause serious consequences. They’d left to take Miguel to the hospital (written up as a classic trip-and-fall, probably the first time this had happened to a member of the staff), pausing on the way out to instruct the guards on duty to deny her food or water until she felt more compliant.
That had been two days ago, and Todd hadn’t been back downstairs since.
He waited for a moment, eyes closed, while the elevator chime dinged to indicate that they had arrived at the holding level. When nothing happened, he cracked his eyes, stealing a glance at Rebecca. She looked impatient and disgusted, but not nearly as threatening as before. She waved him to his feet curtly, and he stood back up quickly, grateful and eager to please.
Todd followed her down the halls, giving occasional directions. They passed through two security checkpoints where the guards were too busy screaming and crying to challenge their passing. He wondered about that, what could have been happening to create such panic in the facility, but keeping up with Rebecca was clearly more important. Occasionally, curious functionaries and roving guards tried to stop them, but Rebecca turned them aside with a few brisk words, at which point they fled down the halls, sobbing hysterically. It took only a few minutes to reach the holding cells.
They were twelve dull metal doors arranged in a rough circle around the chamber. An interrogation platform, strewn with the tools of the trade, sat in the middle of the room, where it could be seen from every cell. They didn’t do any actual work there, Todd explained nervously, but it was effective psychologically as a reminder of the prisoners’ eventual fate.
“Never mind that,” Rebecca snapped, striding past him, walking around the perimeter of the room. He noticed that she trailed her hand along the cell doors as she passed, touching each one, but he could not imagine why. She glanced inside the little observation window inset in the metal door labeled ‘8B’, and then snarled at Todd.
“How do I open this?”
Todd rushed forward, glad to be of use. He keyed the code into the terminal mounted flush with the concrete wall next to the cell, and the magnetic locks clicked open with a sigh. Rebecca stepped inside, wrinkling her nose at the smell, while Todd watched through the partially open door.
Prisoner 8B was lying on the concrete in the corner of the cell, as far as she could get from the hole in the floor that served as the toilet. The sheet draped across her shoulders was torn and dirty, her clothes underneath little more than rags. Rebecca crouched down, brushing the woman’s tangled hair back from her face, revealing black eyes and a bloody nose. For the first time, Todd noticed that the prisoner’s hair was not actually black — there was a half-inch of pure white at the roots, and he stared at it, trying to wrap his mind around it. The woman didn’t look much more than thirty, but her hair was as white as the paint on the walls.
“Oh, poor thing,” Rebecca clucked, cradling the prisoner like a child. She reached into her sweatshirt pocket and came up with a black bandana that she tied around the unconscious woman’s head. “That should protect your little secret, you conceited bitch,” she said, with obvious fondness.
The prisoner’s eyes fluttered open, and Todd felt a sense of genuine shame for a moment. Then fear reasserted itself.
“Alice? Do you recognize me?”
The prisoner stared blankly for a long while, and then she gave a slow, hesitant nod.
Rebecca smiled and patted her forehead.
“You don’t have to talk, sweetie, I can hear your thoughts just fine. You don’t have to remember anything. My name is Rebecca Levy, and I am your friend. I have been your best friend for years and years, and I am here to take
