Even amidst horrifying pain. One expert in counterinsurgency ops explained there can be good no matter what was happening. Focus on that.
Focus on the very fact of existence.
But no one in that room ever hoped to have to experience that, to have the need to try that technique. Marshall wasn’t that lucky. What was happening now, he guessed, was a warm-up. Setting the stage for the morning’s interrogation by the Visionary himself.
“We will stop this for now, Marshall. Want you fresh, alert, in the morning. But before you go back to your ‘room,’ you should know what the Visionary will be asking about.”
The Visionary. It always came back to the Visionary.
A man Marshall knew. A bastard he hated a century ago, for what he did, for what he stood for.
Now he’d be questioned and tortured by that man.
“What is that? My name, rank, and fucking serial number?” Marshall didn’t know this Authority officer standing before him, but all he could think about was how great it would be to make that sneering face squirm and twitch with pain.
He caught himself.
In the moment, he thought.
“Unlikely, considering your rank means nothing to the Authority. No, he will ask about your various secret bases. About the key people you work with, the settlements not to be trusted. Where you keep your supplies. In short, Captain Marshall,” he snarled, “ everything you, the pathetic Resistance leader, know.”
In answer, Marshall spat on the ground.
The man turned aside.
“Take this piece of garbage away. Give him nothing. No food. No water.”
The two Enforcers grabbed Marshall and began dragging him back to his cell.
Those guards disobeyed their orders, though, and thoughtfully gave him a boot to the head the next day. Not full force, but hard enough that Marshall saw stars as he awakened blinking, taking a few seconds to see where he was.
Right. It’s morning.
He was curled on the floor of the cell, competely empty except for his battered body. Not even a hole in the floor for a toilet, as if making him as much of an animal as possible would help the process of interrogation. As far as he could tell, it wasn’t working-he wasn’t an animal yet.
But he was surrounded by them.
“Get up.”
He could fight them, become a dead weight and force them to rough him up and then pull him to his feet. But what was the point?
To tell them they can kiss his ass, that’s what.
But instead he pushed off his hands and got to his feet. If he still had nanotrites coursing through him, he’d be in a lot better shape. Not that it was a real possibility.
“Let’s go boys,” he said. “Guess your Visionary is waiting.”
The Enforcers’ helmets prevented Marshall from seeing if there was any reaction to his words.
Clever idea, making the people in uniform… faceless. Not only rendering them scarier than the freakiest bandit tribe, but also making it hard for them to ever see each other as anything but part of the army of the Authority.
And who were they, really? Recruited from settlements? Ark survivors who preferred life with the Authority rather than being on the run from them? Supposedly, more and more were choosing life with the Authority.
The Visionary’s goddamn vision… coming true.
The Enforcers cuffed Marshall and then led him out of the cell. If he had been a religious man, he would have prayed.
And then, as he walked-despite everything-he did just that.
As Marshall entered the room, he was momentarily blinded by massive lights that dotted the ceiling and bathed the polished metal floor with a brilliant light.
It took him a few seconds to see what was here: a chair, a few tables, computer monitors-all probably removed from Arks. The monitors appeared to show different areas surrounding this building, the heart of the Authority.
He also noticed that one table had instruments on it. His eyes tried to make out exactly what those items were, and he found that his very inability to determine that made him anxious.
Steady, he told himself. Don’t let your thoughts race ahead.
He saw someone sitting in the chair, two Enforcers on either side. The first inquisitor from yesterday stood to the left.
His two Enforcer escorts held his arms tightly.
“Anyone else coming to this party?”
The two guards holding him pushed him forward until he was meters away from the man in the chair.
The Visionary.
Or as he was known back in the day…
General Martin Cross.
“Colonel, see that he’s uncuffed. He is a captain after all.” Surprisingly, Marshall didn’t detect any disdain when Cross said his rank.
The colonel signaled to the Enforcers behind Marshall, and one stuck a key in the cuffs. Marshall’s hands slipped free and he rubbed his wrists, red and bruised.
“Am I supposed to kneel now?” he said.
The colonel walked forward and slapped Marshall with the back of his hand.
“You will speak with respect, Marshall. Or-”
“Colonel, please. Really. Marshall is not used to the ways of civility here in Capital Prime. No, Captain, you do not kneel. Or even salute.”
“That’s good, General. Since I plan on doing neither.”
“You will-eventually, though-talk. That I can promise you. Just as others have.”
Marshall knew that one of the key cell leaders-not an Ark survivor, but head of a small trading settlement to the north-had been captured weeks ago. He spoke. Good people were lost. In the end the Authority sent in Predators to torch the settlement. Killing everyone.
A message sent.
For some it signaled that the Resistance was dead. For others it signaled that the Resistance had just begun.
“We’ll see, Cross.”
Cross.
He had been hostile to the new President from the start of her administration, and then became a constant roadblock to President Campbell’s foreign policy, until he was removed from that position by her. Then he was given responsibility for training, a bureaucratic job that took him far away from Washington, away from where he could stir up trouble and opposition to the President as she attempted to exit the wars that had spread to every continent.
That was her plan.
Was that how Cross came to be in charge of one of the Ark sites? Was that how the bastard got himself here? Who did him that favor, and did that bastard survive?
Because if he did, that was someone he would like to have some one-on-one time with.
The man who changed the future.
Or had Cross had his own network, planning this all along when the Ark Project became known to the upper levels of military brass?
Marshall didn’t know. Perhaps he never would. He just knew that if there was one twenty-first-century maniac that should not be running anything, it was Cross.
“Colonel Casey, have you explained to the captain what I will want to talk about?”
“Yes, General.”
Casey.
Marshall knew that name. That’s how Cross made this happen. Casey had been a key security advisor to President Campbell. He would have had tremendous pull with any of the Ark sites.
If he had been secretly allied to Cross, everything fell into place.
“Good.”
Cross stood up. He was dressed in a uniform similar to the Enforcers, save for insignia and medals. He walked closer to Marshall.
“You see, Captain, I know this can’t be a rushed process. You know so much. And I must be patient to learn it.”
Marshall thought of firing off something else to irritate Cross. But that would only trigger more punches and kicks, and he was sure there would be plenty of them without actually asking for more.
“So-we will begin today, and take our time. Everything you know, all the places, all the cells, all the people-everything. I will know it. It will be a great gift to the Authority.”
He turned away and walked back to his chair as if to sit down and watch a show on television.