Stars Rain Down (32 page)

"I see. And this shit is just business as usual?"

"Pain is fleeting and impermanent. With time, the memory fades and the mind heals. Not so with mutilation. It renders parts of the subject forever unusable, and the possibility of total collapse is always close at hand. It's a point of no return, beyond which atonement becomes unreachable."

"Nice to know you have limits," Jack said.

"All life has limits, Nefrem. Even you." The interrogator said such things often, and they always took Jack by surprise. Whatever these Nefrem were, the interrogator held them in high regard. They were mythical to him, and Jack held the same status by association.

"So, what now?"

The interrogator considered. "If you give me what I want, I will release you. To the outside or death, whichever your preference."

"What do you want?"

"Information."

"I don't have any." Jack spaced his words deliberately, like he was speaking to an unruly child.

"But I know you do... Your species is guarding a very dangerous secret, and I will uncover it by any means necessary. If you will not assist me, then one of the others will."

Jack's mind raced but he tried not to let it show. What others? Could the rest of his team have been captured? No, he told himself, he was being played. He retreated from the thought and stuck to his guns.

"Tell me what I wish to know, Nefrem. Tell me where your battle fleet has gone, and when it will return."

"I am not a Nefrem," Jack said, "I'm a free man."

"Then we are done," the interrogator said. He stood and walked from the room, saying, "Farewell. You will not see me again."

The bastard left him alone in silence, and for some reason he'd never fully understand, he began to weep. His body quaked. Tears ran down his nose and splashed onto the floor below, where they formed a shallow puddle. He cried until the darkness once again came to take him away.

The next time Jack opened his eyes, he was on the floor of a different room wearing rags too threadbare to hang himself with. The place was stark and empty with smooth walls in a perfectly inert shade of grey. The only noticeable details were a hole in the floor for waste, a small dish attached to one wall that was constantly full of water, and a deep slot beside it just wide enough to fit a hand inside.

This was Jack's new world.

Stuff came out of the slot every so often, and turned out to be food. It was a curious smelling pile of lukewarm chunks that may have been meat, vegetable or neither. It came in different colors, but always tasted the same.

His first attempts at eating resulted in vomiting, but it wasn't a problem with the food. Jack had been fed intravenously for so long that his stomach wasn't yet up to the task, but he kept at it, and by the fourth meal was finally able to keep something down. Things only improved from there.

He suspected the food was dispensed on a timed interval, but he had no way to know for sure. Regardless, he used bits of each meal to mark the walls so he could have an idea of how much time had passed.

Otherwise, there was a perplexing sameness to his days. No one ever came to check on him, and he never heard anything outside. The cell was his own personal purgatory, and after scouring every last millimeter of it, he decided there could be no escape. He couldn't even figure out how they got him in.

His body was a wreck. The time spent attached the ceiling had taken its toll, leaving him weak, emaciated, and covered from head to toe in deep discolored bruises. His shoulders were especially sore from holding his weight, and it took some time before he could raise his arms without discomfort.

He realized that a strong breeze could have blown him over, and restoring his health became a top priority.

Each
day,
he woke up, exercised as much as he could, then rested and ate. After his meal, he exercised to his limit again, then broke for his second meal, and returned for one last exercise session, this time only stopping when he collapsed. He was always so exhausted by then that sleep came easily.

The interrogator's torture had altered Jack's relationship with pain, and he found himself working straight through exhaustion and muscle fatigue, right up to the point when he literally couldn't move anymore. As time passed, that point stretched further and further out, until he could work himself virtually non-stop.

In truth, he wasn't just used to the pain; in some weird way he craved it. Trapped in that grey box, it was the only thing he had left and he never let it far out of his grasp. It was the last thing grounding him to reality.

His life went on like this through one-hundred and thirty seven meals, each day the same as the one before it, and then it changed. He passed out as usual in a pool of his own sweat, but when he awoke, he wasn't alone.

The other man was huddled in a ball against the wall, shivering even though the room was stuffy and warm. He was dressed in rags like Jack's, and was both badly bruised and malnutritioned. His gaunt physique reminded Jack of Jewish prisoners in German concentration camps.

The man had his knees drawn up and his head buried in them. He was sobbing, and Jack couldn't get a look at his face.

Jack was so surprised, he didn't know what to do. He felt like his space had been invaded and his first urge was to attack, followed quickly by a wave of self-disgust that left him silent and alone.

So Jack went about his daily business and tried to pretend nothing had changed. He stretched until he felt good and limber, then dropped to the floor and did push-ups. After working up a good sweat, he stood, spread his feet and lowered himself into a horse stance, then stood there until his quads felt like they might catch fire.

Meanwhile, the other man sat on his side of the room. He never looked up or pulled his face away from his knees. He did nothing but sob for hours on end.

Then lunch showed up. The slot in the wall produced a pile of multi-colored food chunks, which Jack attacked voraciously. He stuffed his cheeks full like a chipmunk, and was piling more food in when he stopped himself. He chose to be more than just an animal in a cage.

He grabbed a handful of food-bits and carried them over to the other prisoner. "Hey," he said. It didn't come out easily. He hadn't spoken in so long he could hardly remember how.

The other man didn't respond.

"Hey... you should eat," Jack said. His words were hurried and sloppy. He sounded like a caveman. "Gotta keep yer strength up."

The other man finally looked up with yellowed eyes, and a face just as gaunt and wasted as his body.

Jack held out the food. "Gotta eat. Need strength to fight 'em."

The yellow-eyed man reached out with a shaking hand, took the food and returned to hiding behind his knees. It was a first step, and Jack returned to his own side of the cell, mindful not to push too hard.

He exercised until dinner came, then again portioned out food and brought it to the other man, who took it and went back to hiding behind his knees.

Jack finished his own food fast and skipped that evening's exercise regimen. He tried to sleep with one eye open but didn't get much rest, only managing short bursts before waking in fits of heart-thumping paranoia. It was hard to be sure, but he didn't think the other guy slept much either.

The next day, he went about his morning exercises as usual until lunch rolled around, and then made another attempt at diplomacy. He gathered up a handful of food and delivered it to the huddled-up man, and said, "Heya, food time."

The other grunted and took it.

"You speak English?"

The man's eyes were full of fear and confusion. He stared at Jack for a long time while he nibbled at the food like a rat. "A little," he finally said.

"Hey. That's great. Really great. I'm Jack. What's your name?"

The other glanced around like he thought someone else might be listening. "Kai," he said. "My name's Kai."

"Pleased to meetcha, Kai."

Jack had known a fellow named Kai who was from Finland, but when he looked, he honestly couldn't figure out what ethnicity this new Kai might be. He had the most forgettable face Jack had ever seen.

"Are you from Finland?" he asked.

"Yeah.
Puhutko suomea?
"

"What? Um... I don't speak Finnish."

"Oh."

Silence, and Jack was kind of glad for it. He didn't remember conversations being such a damned struggle. "So... How'd you get here?" he asked.

Kai shook his head. "Don't want to talk about it."

"That's right... right. Okay. Sorry. But you're okay, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well... ummm," Jack droned, "I uhhh... I'm just gonna go back to doin' what I was doin'. Stay cool, right? Right."

Jack didn't used to repeat himself so much before his incarceration. He'd have to work on that.

He went back to his exercise, and attacked it with a renewed vigor. It'd been months since he last saw another human being, and he never imagined how important other people were to him. Better still, he'd made some headway this time. The sense of accomplishment was more filling than a home cooked meal.

When dinner rolled around, Kai met him at the dispenser and they both ate like hungry animals. The frenzy might have lacked culture, but it was still infinitely better than being alone. Anything short of torture was better than being alone, and over the following weeks, things improved.

"...and when the time came, I couldn't do it. I refused to have millions of deaths on my head, alien or not. In return for my mercy... I ended up here."

"No kidding. What did you do before the invasion?"

"I was ERC," Jack said, but Kai looked confused. Then Jack was confused, too. He was sure everyone knew about the ERC. "Emergency Response Corps? Global do-gooders. Firefighters and medics and stuff."

"Oh, yeah. Sorry. Didn't recognize the name."

"S'alright."

"You were a firefighter then?"

Jack shook his head and made big motions with his hands. "No, no, no. Those guys are crazy. The smokejumpers especially. Man, skydiving and firefighting. Might as well jam your hand in a blender. No, I was search and rescue. I tracked down lost hikers and mountain climbers. That kinda stuff."

"A lot of need for that?"

"Some. Not really. We spent most of our time backing up other teams, like the crazy ass smokejumpers."

Kai let out an awkward chuckle, then got a weird look on his face.

Jack said, "What? Why are you giving me that look?"

"I don't know. I thought you were a soldier for some reason."

"Nope. Not until the shit hit the fan, at least. Used to be against war of any kind. Hurting people, pain, and suffering... That stuff was the enemy. I was a true believer, but the invasion changed my outlook I guess."

"True believer?"

"In the mission, man. I helped people, and it's all I wanted to do. I didn't care who. Just help 'em, ya know? It was a different time."

"Yeah. Ever changing world, right?"

Jack looked at the other man, and could hardly imagine him doing work at all. "How about you, Kai?" he asked. "What'd you used to do?"

"A lot of things. Construction mostly. I was building an offshore drilling platform when it happened."

"Musta been nice... out on the oceans and all that. The bastards probably didn't pay much attention to you guys."

"Not at first. Took them months to come out for us. Where were you when it happened?"

"In the sky."

"What?"

"Sorry. The Corps... they flew us into China while the invasion was still happening. Didn't know what the hell was going on, and next thing I know, I'm in a busted ass helicopter falling out of low orbit."

"Intense."

"Yeah, I guess so... we crashed in the dust cloud, and hit the ground running. Just kept moving and gathering survivors, hoping to find some place that wasn't toast. We saw so many dead, though." Corpses piled up in Jack's head. "So damned many dead."

"I'm sorry," Kai said.

"No. No, it's alright. They... they didn't have to survive this. They were the lucky ones."

Kai nodded, and then neither spoke for a long time. It had taken them a while to get to this point, and Jack suspected Kai had suffered more torture than he had. The man was just short of catatonic when he arrived, but he came back to life after the first week.

He was a fast healer, too. Bruises had already faded to hints of their former glory, and he didn't look half as gaunt. His eyes were still discolored, but Jack chalked that up to allergies or malnutrition.

"Listen," Kai said quietly and moved closer, "did they ever ask you about the... the Nefrem?"

Jack couldn't figure out why Kai was acting so cloak and dagger. Maybe he knew something about the prison cells that Jack didn't.

"Constantly," he said, and shuddered at the memory of the torture sessions. "Wish I had any idea what a
Nefrem
was. It'd make stonewalling that much more satisfying."

"Yeah."

"And all that talk about a battle fleet. Did he mean in space?"

"I guess."

"I just don't get it," Jack said. "I mean, if we had a secret fleet, wouldn't we have used it to protect ourselves? These sons of bitches roll over us in five seconds and then have the gall to ask where our battle fleet is. It's like kicking a three year old and then demanding his car keys... I figured he was just messing with my head."

"Trying to keep us off guard? Makes sense."

"I don't know what the hell else it coulda been."

Kai had a particularly dead look in his eyes. "Who knows. Maybe the whole invasion is a case of mistaken identity."

Jack froze for a second, then laughed so hard it hurt. "Oh God, that's rich. You, my friend, officially have the bleakest outlook in the whole damned universe."

Kai asked, "How do you figure?"

"How do I figure? So, big bad space invaders drops trou on our planet and shit all over us. It's one thing if they're looking for a new home, or they're on some kind of religious crusade, out slaughtering infidels... or get this... maybe they're just mean bastards who can't stand the sight of us. I can believe that. But blotting out ten billion lives by mistake? Like a filing error or something? That'd be the most depressing thing in the history of damn depressing things."