Chapter Four: Tales of Babylonia
I am uncomfortable. I am in a bumping vehicle. I bounce. There is cloth over my face; smells bad.
People around me – I struggle with them! "No! - Too strong – Another dose!" a man's voice shouts.
There is an acrid smell, probably chloroform, and I lose consciousness.
Eventually the effects of the drugs wore off and, as if the world was repeating itself, Alex found himself again on a bed surrounded by walls. He closed his eyes for a moment, imagining that he was back at home in his own room, and then he opened his eyes to the reality of it.
Getting up, he found that he was in a bedroom, although nothing like the one he had at home; no light came from anywhere except a small aperture at one end of the space, and it was not enough to see the room's features. Walking with his hands out in front of him, he found the walls and estimated that the dimensions were eight by nine feet, with a grille at one end that blocked a space through which cool air wafted in. At one end there was a metal toilet, and above it, a mirror which he touched when he stumbled over the former; nothing he could use, since the mirror appeared to be firmly bolted into the wall and he couldn't break the toilet into shards as he could if it were porcelain.
The only other thing of interest in the room was the light source, which unfortunately was placed behind a layer of Plexiglas in an alcove built into the wall. It was alright, though; he didn't know what he would have done with a night light anyway. Having found nothing that he could think of as an escape tool, he groped his way back to the bed.
He stared upwards, not at the ceiling, but at the enormous shadow that obscured it, and became thoughtful. When he got into the right gear, he could think relatively quickly of plays that were surprisingly workable without being transparent to the other squad; this wasn't football, but the principle was the same.
He concentrated. Firstly and obviously, he was in a prison cell, and from the little that he could remember of the time between here and the scene in his uncle's office, he knew that his passage had been overland, probably in the back of some false ambulance or some other large vehicle. He'd awakened and struggled until they had to put him out again. He smiled grimly, knowing that he'd given them a run for their money, especially considering that he had been able to see fuck all and was still disoriented from the tranquilizers.
The cell that he'd woken in was a fairly well-furnished one, although in view of what he'd done regarding the government, he supposed it was lucky that it had allowed him to wake up at all. His captors might, of course, only be waiting for Alan Blunt's approval on his execution. He had no doubts that they could get away with it; not now. He only hoped that it would be quick if it happened, and if it didn't…well, he just wanted to get out without being tortured. Considering that unlikely thought, he closed his eyes. It was with a very uneasy mind that he went to sleep.
After what seemed like only a moment, he was roused by the scream of a bell. He blinked rapidly for a few seconds (what? Where am I?), trying to collect himself, thereby missing the announcement that followed almost immediately. He only caught the end of it, a woman saying something like "please stop misusing the soap," and he was still lying on the bed, blinking, when a dinging sound came from the speaker system and the bar wall retracted into the ceiling.
A Black man with curly dark hair and a short beard stuck his head round the corner. "Coming?"
Alex nodded. He felt the situation was too surreal to speak, and anyway, this unknown man would forgive him for being confused. He got to his feet, still a little groggy from the lack of sleep, and followed the man down the corridor. Before he got too far away from it, he glanced behind him to see that it was still there.
One of the things that Alex noticed right away about the prison in which they were staying was that their section consisted of a long row of identical cells that ran along a wall on only one side of the corridor. It had about twenty cells, most of which seemed to be occupied as, of the people who occupied the hall; he counted about twenty inmates in that number. They were identifiable by the cheerful mint jumpsuits they wore and the fact that they were moving slowly down the hall, glaring pointedly at the ones who guarded them.
Seeing this, Alex felt himself tense and his senses go on high alert. He had to know how much danger was here. He had heard horror stories from Simon of prison riots in which hundreds of people were killed, others tortured, guards raped. His head swiveled, seeking out the angriest ones, and pinpointed one: one man of Arabic descent. He looked to be the most vehement glarer.
Alex felt a tap on his shoulder and started violently, spinning around. The man who had spoken to him earlier was looking at him curiously. "What?" He smiled and started to say something, and then his eyes flicked away momentarily. When they returned, they no longer held a laughing expression.
"You're very young to be in this place," he said instead of whatever it was that he was going to. He had an accent that added a slight slurring to the end of each word.
Alex nodded. "Not too young for the people who sent me here." The man nodded gravely. "And is that not the truth? No one is ever old enough to be imprisoned, and no one is ever too young for those that imprison them." He gave Alex a sidelong glance. "My name is Yasir." He extended a hand and the boy shook it. "Alex."
For the first time in his life, Alex found himself the most popular person in the room. During breakfast, everyone in the cafeteria came forward to shake his hand. They were inclusive, even solicitous towards him and he heard many of them volunteer to be his guide around the prison. It was Yasir that took the position, though, and he was supremely helpful throughout breakfast, teaching him the best way to eat his oatmeal without tasting or smelling it and other useful things. He had just begun a roleplaying monologue on how best to charm the cooks, when a bell rang and the voice came on again.
Later, Yasir guided Alex to a recreation yard which had plenty of equipment but no anal rape; a welcome surprise, he was sure. He spent most of the hour bitching about the communal showers and not exercising at all. When the time came for the post-recreation shower, he was handed a matching mint jumpsuit by one of the guards, corralled into a gigantic room that reminded him of the gas chambers he'd seen in documentaries, and ordered to strip off.
He felt at first that he would die of mortification, in which case, he noted, his Holocaust comparison had not been too far off the mark. Showering turned out alright once he'd wedged himself into a corner next to the protective figure of Yasir. They all seemed to be mostly avoiding looking at each other anyway, and Alex felt more secure in the fact that if they did let their eyes wander, they certainly wouldn't bother resting on him, the underdeveloped white child, not when there was so much bronzed and glistening muscle available. However, when they'd been let out and he had dried off and changed into his jumpsuit, he was nevertheless so happy not to be naked that the loss of his own clothes hardly bothered him.
A rest back in his cell soon followed, and after that, lunch; later there was group therapy, which took place with a nurse, surname Hatchet. Her style was like her name, and as such he would have happily sunken one into his skull by the end of the meeting.
Hatchet conducted "therapy" this way: she asked an inmate perfunctorily how he felt, he told her, and she diagnosed the inmate with a random mental disorder. If anyone disputed her…well, that was what the guards were for. They loomed menacingly on either side of her, as if she wasn't intimidating enough on her own. Alex got away easily by pulling the age card and she left him alone once he agreed with her diagnosis. Soon the bell was ringing and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
At dinner he flirted outrageously with the aged cook, which won him the best piece of chicken and an almost-soft bread roll, which he ate raucously. Yasir sat beside him at the table with a look of distaste on his face, as well as no small amount of envy. His pointed looks and huffing sighs grew louder and louder until he finally dropped his spoon with a clatter.
"Must you masticate so loudly, Alex?" Alex snorted, his teenage brain going off again,and promptly respired half of his mashed potatoes into his windpipe. He choked and Yasir, with a bored sort of sigh, pounded him on the back until he dislodged them. "Hurk…hurk, sorry," he choked. "I haven't had anything to eat since lunch," he grinned. Yasir rolled his eyes. "Of course you haven't. None of us have eaten since lunch, this being dinner." Alex reached for the chicken and let his smile fade.
"Actually, I meant to ask you about that," he said, stuffing the entire drumstick into his mouth just to be annoying. "Dis is," he declared through a mouthful of chicken, "a nice pwison." He was answered with another eye roll, but then Yasir leaned closer, looking serious.
"Why would you think that?" Alex put the drumstick down, all jokes forgotten, and thought about his answer while he chewed.
"Well, I noticed that the cells go down only one side of the corridor, that's a nice design: we all have perfect privacy from one another." He waved his hand at the food. "No starvation, that's not what I'd expect. Or sleep deprivation, for that matter. The guards don't beat us. And, everyone's been really nice to me."
"Is that what you think?" Yasir smiled at him almost pityingly, and then suddenly he was turning and pointing at the hall that led to their rooms, one of many.
"You see that? All rooms in every cell block are on one wall. Perfect privacy, you say, but also a clever trick so we are isolated from one another. It may be hard to imagine now, but you'd understand after four or five years in prison, what loneliness really is." Alex opened his mouth. Yasir pointed again.
"See?" A guard was hassling the Arab man from earlier in the hallway, the one who'd been glaring so heatedly. "It is because he, in the last therapy group" - (his voice grew sarcastic over the word) -"dared to contest Nurse Ratchet'sdiagnosis of schizophrenia. Bharti never knew how to keep his mouth shut," Yasir went on with a tiny strain of affection. He shook his head as if clearing it. "They don't starve us, or beat us, or keep us from sleeping, because they have something else to hang over our heads. We aren't regular prisoners. We're-"
A guard who had been making his rounds dangerously close to their table swooped in as if he was going to intervene, and Yasir shut himself up quickly. "So, who is this Nurse Ratchet?" Alex asked him not loudly, but a few decibels above normal. "I've never met her. Is it possible that you mean Nurse Hatchet, whose name you confused for hers because you're so old?"
It was a lousy quip, not even worth the bit of thinking that it cost him, but it was enough to make their eavesdropper withdraw to patrol another table, his left hand still fingering his gun. Yasir only shook his head. "From one who has read Singer and Melville and Hemingway, I would have expected better. Haven't you heard of Kesey?" Alex goggled at him, but Yasir only nodded.
"For such an educated boy, you are not yet very wise," he murmured, and Alex had a feeling that he wasn't speaking, anymore, about books.
The words haunted him the rest of the night.
It was around nine o'clock the next day, and he was sitting in front of the television when he decided it: he actually liked being in prison. Yes, the nurse was diabolical and the new insight that Yasir had given him about the placement of cells made the whole place seem sinister, but there was a television, and on it, fucking Chelsea F. playing!
He'd thought it was too good to be true when Yasir had first told him about Television Thursdays, but now he was sitting on a red leather couch with a fifty-inch screen before his eyes, and he was believing. About fifteen other men were gathered around the screen as well; they leaned on the back of the couch and crowded in on the cushions. A few, in a desire to get even closer to the action, were sitting on the floor directly in front of the screen.
There was an endless dialogue of heckling going on between the two sides, on-screen and off: It went on in two languages, perhaps three. Alex wondered for a moment why homeland Muslims would follow English football, and then he realized that some of them had probably been imprisoned for years. They'd had the time to pick a favorite team.
He watched as the Chelsea supporters cheered on the blues with swears and cries of "Celery!" Those in the room with him responded with equal measure of booing and cursing, in which Alex didn't participate. It wasn't as if he didn't want to join in; he'd always been a fan, and the way they were playing tonight deserved some abuse, but, it was just…his uncle.
If he closed his eyes, he could always remember the lesson his uncle had taught him. They had been standing on the top of a waterfall in the Amazon, and Ian had just been attacked by an enormous and uncharacteristically violent python which he had wrestled into submission. Alex had done the natural thing during the fight, which was doing everything he could to distract the snake; poking fingers in its eyes, swearing at it, etcetera.
Finally, with Alex's help Ian had grabbed it around the neck and, with a mighty heave, tossed it into the forest; it slunk off, quivering. Ian had stood there panting, with red marks around his neck, and then he was suddenly giving Alex the ass-kicking of his life.
Alex still remembered what, in a voice much altered by exertion, Ian had told him.
"Your language is the outward reflector of your personality. It shows maturity to be collected, couth and concise at all times. Swearing reflects a lout. What do you want to be, Alex? A man or a lout?"
When one was hanging upside down and smarting from back to bottom, it was hard to answer any question, but he had shouted "Man! I want to be a man!" and Ian had dropped him. He had been five.
That was the first and last time that he ever swore in front of his uncle, and Alex had, since then, thought himself incapable of using that kind of language out loud. And then Vialli, that Italian rat bastard, showed up on the screen, and be a man, be a man, be a man – and he really was a terrible manager, but he couldn't swear at him, don't do it –
And Hasselbaick found the net again and Alex jumped to his feet, screaming his joy:
"YES! YES! FUCKING YESSSSSSSS!" he roared, and the blues around him erupted in jubilation.
And then Yasir gave him a hawkish look from the corner of the recreation room, and Alex slumped back onto the sofa. "Sorry," he said.
Yasir only sighed in the long-suffering way that he always did. He had done it so much recently that, in only a day and a half, it had become something of a comfort – much in the way of the prison soap.
"Hey, why do they give us soap?" Alex asked Yasir, hanging his head backwards off the sofa. "Isn't it a suicide risk, 'cos we could swallow it to choke ourselves?"
Half of the room looked up and Alex winced. "Er, not as if any of us would do that…" he said loudly, mostly for the guards' benefit. Yasir stalked over, gripping the bridge of his nose with one hand, and with the other forcefully dragged Alex into a corner of the room, where they managed a sort of awkward crouch by the snooker table. Yasir squatted down.
"You idiot…" he murmured. He let go of his face and shook himself off. "All right. Barring the fact that you shouted it to the whole room," he glared at Alex, "that was actually a quite brilliant piece of insight. But, you also didn't notice another thing about the showers." He sat down outright on the floor and placed a comforting hand on Alex's shoulder. "I didn't mean to tell you this, and it might come as a bit of a shock, but there's a measure in place that would keep us from doing anything…"
"Spit it out…"
"There are cameras placed in the washrooms and all of the showers."
Alex's mouth dropped open. He knew he shouldn't feel this invaded; he showered communally with eleven other boys every week, for God's sake, when he went to football practices, but –
"That's just so gay!"
Yasir frowned at him and actually crossed his arms, looking a bit put out. "Alex, if you weren't aware, prison culture is extremely gay. Honestly, some of us have been imprisoned for years; do you expect us to be celibate for all that time? It's also very insulting when people use the word 'gay' in place of the word 'bad,' or in this case 'invasive'-"
"No, I meant gay."
"-and there's no reason to use it that way." Yasir gave him one last hawkish look. "Be careful what you say, Alex, because, just now, you did not sound very wise for one so obviously educated."
Alex, totally missing the part where he was given a compliment, skipped straight to unraveling Yasir's suspiciously defensive political correctness speech. "Wait," he leaned close to the man, jabbing a finger at his chest, "are you gay?" Suddenly he realized that he didn't want to know and cut the man off before he could speak. "Never mind, I don't want to hear your answer, don't tell me, please. It would make it too awkward to talk to you."
Yasir opened his mouth at the stupidity of this, and then he closed it with a soft snap. "What did you want to talk to me about?"
"I want to finish the conversation we had at dinner yesterday. You were about to say that we weren't normal prisoners. What are we?"
Yasir swallowed and tugged at his beard before he answered, a seemingly nervous habit. "All right," he said in a quiet, reluctant voice, "do you know what it means to be remanded?"
They talked for the remainder of free time, sitting under the table at first. Later, when the guards swooped round again, they pretended to play a snooker game which turned competitive. Alex was trounced, but didn't care; in that hour he learned more about his government than he had in ten-plus years of classes.
There were some very interesting things that Yasir told him; for instance, that remand, which he'd mentioned earlier, was the detention of suspects without a trial, and that, in the United Kingdom, prisoners falling under the jurisdiction of the Terrorist Act of 2000 could be remanded for a maximum of forty-eight hours.
This raised immediate questions about what, exactly, this prison was, and Alex asked the obvious one. "Wait," he whispered with a sense of growing horror, "does this mean that none of us have had a trial?" Yasir hushed him with a nervous glance around them. "Shh, you idiot, what did I just tell you? Remand can only last two days!" Alex frowned. "Then what are we?" Yasir frowned, and finally he finished the sentence that had been weighing on Alex's mind since the night before.
"We are, at least most of us, indefinite remand prisoners; our trials were suspended because our freedom would be considered a threat to the nation. Those of who received trials," he smiled grimly, "were given military judges. They're just here for holding." Alex opened his mouth and shut it. "Go ahead, ask."
"Indefinite. That means we're never getting out."
"Yes."
"And some of us are innocent."
"Yes."
"And I'm a child."
"Yes."
Yes.
Yasir's teeth had gleamed white even in the darkness under the table, and Alex looked at him; clean-shaven except for his short hair and neat beard, perfect hygiene; there were absolutely no wrinkles in his mint jumpsuit. He looked the furthest thing from a criminal that Alex had ever seen. He glanced up at the men around him, wondering about their innocence, and realized it didn't matter. One couldn't judge these things from appearance.
"What about the convicted ones? You said they were just here for holding." Yasir nodded. "No one knows where they go, but they never stay here for more than a few weeks. After that amount of time the guards come and fetch them." He showed Alex his 'suspicious' face. "Our best conjecture is that keeping them here is too much of a security risk. Although no one knows the location of this place, we assume it's in some urban area, where it would be a bit of a disaster if terrorists suddenly burst out and started knocking down signposts," he said ironically, "rather than some desolate pasture in Guernsey, where our only victims would be cows. No one knows where they take them, but wherever they go, they're never heard from again."
He shrugged. "Personally, I think the convicts are taken to another country, I don't know where, in which Muslims have even less civil rights – where they don't have to bother with the Geneva Convention."
Hearing the word "Muslims" used as a collective descriptor, Alex looked around and realized what he'd known all along.
"We're mostly Arabs, yes, and of those a great percentage is Muslim." Alex turned around and saw Yasir giving him a contemplative look. "I'm surprised you didn't notice earlier; it either means you are not very racially conscious or are very naïve as to why inmates in a prison for so-called terrorists are mostly of one color." He took a moment to frown. "I'm not sure which of those is worse."
"Anyway, though," he gestured around him, "you see that we do what we can to survive, following the trivialities of football and so forth. Most of us have known each other for at least a year."
"So, then, what am I?" asked Alex. " I didn't have a trial. And I'm not a, um, Muslim." Yasir looked at him gravely and with something like pity. "But I thought you knew, Alex. Didn't I say that people here are all suspected and convicted terrorists? You're in remand until you are either released or given a trial, or…" He gave Alex a very shrewd once- over and Alex felt as though he was being sized up.
"You didn't happen to run afoul of any important people in the Home Office, did you?"
Indefinite remand.
Alex sat on the bed, his mouth open in an expression of distinctly mind-fucked, or, as his uncle would have stated it, "rather wrongfooted."
Years would pass before he stopped dwelling on what he learned that night. He'd never imagined that anyone, especially a kid, could land himself – or herself – in this kind of trouble, but he'd always had a knack for getting into things that he shouldn't.
He'd not known, not had any idea of what he was playing with when he met Alan Blunt. Now he knew. The man was a demon of the ninth circle, a god in all levels of politics, a major player in everything from Britain's immigration policy to determining who swept the streets.
Maybe that was exaggerating.
Alex took off his shoes. Okay, so maybe not that level of control exactly, but he still headed international intelligence and had vast influence over the Home Office, which controlled all manner of prisoners of the state who fell under the Terrorist Act. He'd dropped those papers unaware of the danger he was facing; it was as if he'd poked a sleeping giant only to find it breathed fire.
Or something like that. His brain was flippant and became metaphorical in the worst situations.
Whatever he compared it to; this one was a 'ten' on the one-to-five scale of catastrophes. He lay down, cursing himself and his luck. Good job, Alex. You are now the youngest terrorist in Britain. Alex rolled over and told his brain to shut up.
How could he have known that certain people in the Home Office had the influence to have anyone incarcerated without a trial? Somehow he thought that this kind of information should be included in the curriculum, seeing as not knowing about it could ruin your life. In Alex's opinion, the secrecy around the unwritten rule was the only thing more ludicrous than the rule itself.
However ridiculous and obscene it was, indefinite remand was still far from being an impossibility. This being a secret military prison and therefore by definition ridiculous and obscene, it was only natural that most of the prisoners claimed to be victims of remand.
Lastly, and it was just his luck that it applied to him, Yasir had read out a mental list of certain people who had been blamed for the prisoners' unjust incarceration. It must have taken months of talking to fellow inmates, gaining their trust, to get this information, and the result was a short recitation of names. Very short, because very few people had this sort of power and of those, even fewer were ruthless enough to use it.
Alan Blunt was on this list.
He brushed his teeth, changed into a new set of prison pajamas, and lay down with the same dumbfounded expression on his face. He felt unfamiliarity, shock, and indigestion. Hours of insomnia later, he felt déjà vu of the night before, the only thing changed being the thoughts that he was tossing and turning to.
I am a political prisoner. I pose a threat to the nation. I had no trial. I could be killed. I could be given a rigged trial and stay in the system forever. And the worst part is that it would all be legal.
But even a brain in the fog of terror had to go to sleep, and his more coherent thoughts evaporated, replaced by vivid reimaginings of their subjects. From the viewpoint of a spectator, he watched himself die; he watched himself growing old and bearded; he watched himself being dragged away. Finally, fantasy dreams replaced those half-realistic. He heard wild shrieks. He walked through a jungle and long-toothed animals dragged him; they tore chunks out of his body with fang and claw. The scene changed to that of a church that was also a slaughterhouse and a cemetery strewn with unburied corpses. He felt sick until everything finally disappeared.
He lost consciousness for a few hours.
This night was different from the one before, because Alex awoke to the sound of whispering. He paused for a moment, disoriented, and that was when the bag was forced over his head. Alex was shoved bodily out into the hall, where he was spun around several times by the hands that held his shoulders. Then they marched him through the building.
Alex tried to memorize the path they took, but it was made impossible by the fact that they repeated the disorientating process at every turn. After a short walk, he found himself inside of an elevator (he could guess this from the dinging noise and the fact that they weren't walking), and then, probably several floors up, he was dropped onto the floor of a room, the bag whipped off of his head.
Certain questions flooded through his mind, some that he didn't dare to answer and others that he already knew the answers to. He looked wildly around for someone in a white coat, perhaps already wearing sterilized gloves, walking towards him with needle in hand. There didn't seem to be anyone there but the guards, who were as nameless and faceless as their positions required.
The room was devoid of any color except the grey of concrete, and he wondered at such a room existing in the same building as his own plush-in-comparison cell. There was nothing there except a…doll? A well-done mannequin? Something that was the size of a human, but far too limp to be alive was tied to a chair on the other side of the room, with a bag that matched his over its head.
At a signal from one particularly hard-faced guard, whom Alex recognized as the one who had been suspicious at dinner the previous day, two others stepped forward and removed the hood. The thing that Alex had thought to be a large doll shifted and moved his head; it was a prisoner, gagged and bound like a holiday turkey.
The man was tall and had pale skin scarred with years of acne past and recent; he didn't wear glasses, but the rest of him epitomized 'nerd', from his Mortal Kombat hoodie to his baggy jeans and off-brand shoes. He looked up, surprised, and Alex saw that he had been crying. He seemed to have been entrenched in a state of apathy before the arrival of Alex and the others and was blinking as if the light didn't agree with him.
The guards drew close to him and he immediately began shaking his head rapidly, his eyes wide; Alex was reminded of a rabbit, suddenly discovered by a fox at the worst possible moment. The man turned his head again and Alex saw that he had good reason to be afraid; he had the worst shiner he'd ever seen, coupled with a bruise that covered his entire left cheek. The leader of the guards was left-handed.
Thankfully, they didn't hurt the man in front of him; they merely removed his gag, which had been so effective that when the prisoner was freed from it, he pulled in a giant gasp of air as if it had obstructed his breathing. Alex narrowed his eyes. This man had clearly been tortured; to what extent, he didn't know, but he hoped that he had seen the worst of it. He just didn't know what was going to happen next.
He didn't have long to wait.
As the other two took the man's shoulders, dragging him to his feet, Alex felt a hand on the back of his collar. It yanked him up so hard that he choked. Later he'd remember yelping, being given a shake for making noise, and scrabbling helplessly at his neck. He felt like an animal.
Later, he would realize, that was the point.
After that nothing was very clear. Even if you were afraid and trying to stay alive, having your air supply cut off by your collar tended to keep you from responding to stimuli – even if the aforementioned stimuli was a question being barked at you by your interrogators. His hearing was immediately so shot that it echoed around him, and since he couldn't see anything through the black spots in front of his eyes, he couldn't well answer.
He struggled for a moment, choking on his own esophagus, and then he was on the floor, with no memory of how he'd got there, and the cement was cool on his face. He thought he'd vomited and realized that the wetness on his chin was only saliva. A noise of disgust sounded above him and he was hauled up; apparently that short respite had been enough to the guard's taste.
His face was held in front of the other prisoner's; directly in front. They stared at each other for a moment.
"Do you know this man? Do you know this man?"
Alex said that he didn't. They didn't believe him.
Several minutes (hours? Who's counting?) later, Alex's face was reintroduced to the floor; he failed to restrain a whimper. A vague sense of disappointment filled him. In the rare instances when he'd imagined himself under torture, his dream self had been braver than this.
The head guard lifted him, asked the magic question, Alex said no, and Alex was dropped again.
This time he went limp as his head hit the floor. He'd really thought that he'd be braver than this. Apathetically, he addressed the floor, with which he was on a first-name basis by now. In German they could have dutzt.
Floor, he thought, my ass is a wad of cookie dough. He was quoting a film he'd once watched, although he was sure that when Edward Norton's character said it, it was in third-person singular. But it didn't matter, did it; cookie dough, his ass really was. This wasn't even Fight Club. It didn't qualify as torture, even; it was merely unpleasant for the sheer painful repetitiveness and idiocy of it. After a few hours of this, would my ass continue to be cookie dough or would it by that time have become wood?
(That quote was most definitely not in the film.) He was considering confessing just to put an end to the monotony, and if that didn't make him the single worst spy in the history of the universe, then he didn't know what would.
Wait, he thought, what do they want me to confess to? Oh, right.
The other man's name was Matthew Romero.
Alex assumed that this meant he was the man who had keylogged his uncle's computer. He'd learned through endless minutes of pointless interrogation that he really was under suspicion of stealing national secrets. From the questions they'd asked, he'd gotten an idea of what they wanted him to confess. They wanted him to say yes, I bought a keylogger from this man for the purpose of hacking into my uncle's computer, yes, I broke through his giant bank-vault door to plant it in his study, and yes, I pose a threat to my nation so please lock me up forever.
It would be no exaggeration to state that Alex thought confessing would be the most idiotic thing he ever could have done in all possible worlds. Thankfully, these guards seemed to have failed their Torture and Interrogation class; "torture" and "interrogation" from them consisted of shouting questions, shaking him around by his collar, and dropping him on the floor over and over.
The most frightening thing about it, actually, was the amount of their spittle that he ended up wiping from his face. He supposed he couldn't hold it against them; they hadn't had an Uncle Ian to cuff him over the head for saying "I is" instead of "I am" and so forth. Actually, he probably couldn't blame them for failing as intimidators, really; he probably had a lot to be thankful for. Perhaps they really were pants-pissingly frightening on most days, but this time they'd been given special orders by Blunt to be gentle with him-?
Alan Blunt, gentle? Not hardly, he thought. But what could have provoked this change in his policy? He'd seemed ready to get out the hot coals and thumbscrews on – what day had it been? Oh, right – Tuesday, May First. What could have happened to change the man's mind?
He retreated further and further into his mind, and this question, as they repeated their own. Eventually they seemed to get bored, made sounds of disgust that he couldn't hear, and gave him up as a bad job. He didn't even rouse himself enough to see the look of pleading on Romero's face as they pulled the hood back over his head. Instead, he pondered, even as he himself was given the bag, turned around and around, and led back down the hall.
Behind him Romero's shouts echoed into an uncaring hallway, and his only audience was himself – and the two guards who remained. If Alex had been able, he would have seen them smile.
As it were, the newly reduced group led him silently back, and their footsteps echoed on the linoleum.
Alex was taken back to his room, where he waited within a silence pervaded by impatience. The whole prison seemed to be holding its breath. He did not go to sleep, and his restlessness seemed to affect, like telepathy, the behavior of the other prisoners as well. Soon, all around him, he heard the sounds of men waking up. Near him, he recognized movement and heard Yasir's distinctive sigh.
As one, they waited.
In the deepest, most secretive chamber of the prison, Head of Security Nathan D. Green was making a telephone call.
They came only a few minutes later with handcuffs for his wrists and a blindfold for his face. They weren't the same guards from before, he could tell, although in essence everyone here was the same. The same grimness permeated all of them; the prisoners, the cooks, the nurses, the guards.
Alex looked up and he waited. A soft note sounded and a part of the grille on one end of the cell slid up, leaving a gap of about a square foot; he hadn't known it could do that and he looked up, surprised. The man who seemed to be their leader mistook his surprise as exultant joy and tearful thanksgiving; patriotically, he smiled at Alex.
Oh, he thought dully, am I supposed to be glad that you're here? He didn't react other than to raise an eyebrow at the man, whose smile faded. "Er, you're supposed to put your hands through the gap, son," he said apologetically. The man had an exaggerated Irish accent, except it had faltered on the word 'son', so that it sounded put on. "We're, uh, setting you free," he tacked on at the end of the sentence, looking almost like he would start wringing his hands.
Alex liked that the man felt uncomfortable. He wanted him to feel more uncomfortable. He could accomplish this goal by making use of one of the nasty rejoinders that were at this moment flying about inside his head.
He had loads.
He didn't do this, however, because he was more concentrated on the effort of raising his head to measure the Irishman's intentions. "Please cooperate; it's only procedure," he said in a more authentic tone. He gave Alex a pleading look, and for a moment it was as if he was the prisoner (don't give in, don't give in) and Alex sighed, turned his back to them, and put his hands through the hole to accept the handcuffs.
Why do they do that? he thought. What was the purpose of them having to stick their arms through a stupid hole so that were handcuffed before the door even opened? Where would they even go, surrounded by dozens of guards and hundreds of cameras?
Even if an escapee managed to wrest himself a gun, chances were that they had fingerprint identification technology installed, and even if they didn't, what chance did one prisoner have against fifty men wearing bulletproof vests?
Alex pulled his newly cuffed-together wrists out of the gap so the door could slide up.
Considering the fact that they were all supposed terrorists, maybe the purpose was that there was no purpose. Maybe the technology of the mini-door was there just to deaden and disillusion them – just like the isolating alignment of the prison cells, and the way there were cameras in all of the washrooms and showers.
This thought didn't seem to be that overly paranoid, considering that he was thinking it from the seclusion of a secret prison somewhere in Britain.
The men came in then; there was one on either side of him and one behind, holding his wrists. The Irishman signaled and one of them came forward, holding out the blindfold. Alex stared at it, standing halfway out of his cell, and wondered what he would do. This was his moment of redemption as a character. If he had been an action-movie hero, he would have bit the hand that held the cloth. He would have struggled with the guards and shouted at his fellow inmates (all of whom he would have made close friends with) that he'd return and free them from their imprisonment. He could feel all of their eyes on him, waiting for him to do something; he could see Yasir mouthing words at him from the corner of his eye.
Alex looked at the blindfold and did nothing as it came towards him. He wasn't that stupid.
The man let his hand drift down towards the wall for a second, and that was enough. Alex wasn't stupid, but, apparently, Yasir was. He watched with a vague, almost dreamy sort of amusement as Yasir pulled the cloth through the grille; watched it disappear and heard the guard shriek in outrage. It reappeared again, farther away, as Yasir reached the opposite end of his cell and passed it off to his neighbor, whispering an instruction to 'hold onto it'. Surprisingly, the man obeyed.
It came about that two of the guards had to go and get another key, as it must have been policy to never bring more than one with you when you were fetching a prisoner, and Alex was left there with the false Irishman and two other guards. "Bring another blindfold!" the Irishman called after them. He looked at Alex then, a bit apologetically, and drew his hand across his face.
"Sorry," he murmured. At this Alex raised his eyebrows. "Good help is hard to find?" The man nodded, giving him a grateful smile, and Alex felt a spark of hope light in the pit of his stomach. Acting on instinct, he changed his expression, widening his eyes slightly, dropping his jaw, and raising his eyebrows. His shoulders were moved forward to approximate the posture of someone frightened.
Having no real idea of what he was doing, he listened to his intuition, and followed it; he knew it was in his best interests to look childish at that moment, so he looked childish. The man's expression suddenly softened and Alex raised a mental eyebrow. So it actually had worked, he thought with some surprise. His brain found it even more surprising when the Irishman offered his hand for Alex to shake (which he did so awkwardly, as his own hands were trapped behind his back) and introduced himself.
"Hello, son," he said. "I'm Nathan Green." The introduction was accompanied by a surprisingly fatherly smile, which Alex never saw because he was trying to catch the words that Yasir was mouthing at him. Talking to Yasir, after all, had been the purpose of his entire childish act.
Alex sent Nathan Green one pleading glance. "Please," he begged, "he's the only friend I had here, I just want to say goodbye – you can watch me, I won't do anything wrong!"
Judging by the speed that Green reacted, Alex needn't have said anything at all. "Here, kid. I'll stand in front of you, pretend that I'm holding onto your handcuffs and such. Say goodbye. It's bullshit that you're in here anyway, who cares if I break a couple rules," he growled, more to himself than to anyone else. Alex gave him a grateful smile that might or might not have reminded the Irishman of his young son, Thomas, who was far away in Edinburgh and whom he missed very much.
The man did as he'd said and blocked the others' view of Alex while he leaned against the bars. "Sorry," he muttered, "for everything – I don't have much time to say this and I wish I could say it better, but I'm sorry that you're here and that you're probably innocent, and I wish" – oh God, what did he wish, there was nothing to say – "that I'd gotten to know you better." There was a pause while he gulped, searching again for words and aching suddenly with regret for not making more of an effort –
Yasir leaned close to him and gripped the bars, and luckily he had something to say. His words were hushed and quick, appropriate for where they were and the time they had. "Alex," he whispered,
"I appreciate the sentiment, but now is really not the time. I have a task for you – no, listen! I believe you're a smart boy, and a good one, but more importantly, you're a minor, and white."
Alex his mouth to protest, but Yasir held up a hand. "Yes, Alex, race still matters to the public, no matter how much the media has convinced you that you're in a free state." He looked annoyed and teacherly, as if it was still Free Hour and he was lecturing Alex on how to properly snooker someone; Alex felt a twinge of sadness, watching him.
"Don't just look at me with that slack jaw! Listen to what I'm saying," he hissed, practically pressing his face against the bars, his face showing more emotion than had ever been seen of him. "This is important. Listen to me, Alex. When you leave, you have to tell people about us. This type of prison shouldn't be legal – it should have been abolished in the Middle Ages. But here we are, still imprisoned because no one cares. We're not British, we're not citizens of countries in the Middle East – or if we were, they disowned us – we're just Muslim terrorists. And don't you dare," he glared at Alex, "don't you dare say that those aren't the same thing!"
"I wasn't going to," he muttered.
"Good. Because that would be lying to yourself about the very nature of your country, of the West. Muslims! We are indelibly connected to terrorism in the minds of Western civilization – we are irrevocably written off as bombers, hijackers, 'jihadists' because of the work of a few became more and more animated as he spoke; the power his voice carried seemed to echo off the walls and Alex was afraid that Green would hear. They'd been talking for at least a minute, and Alex thanked the powers that were for the incompetence of his security.
"We need you to be our voice. Our white, male, Christian, pitiful child voice." Yasir seemed to have no thought for what he was saying as long as the message was heard, very uncharacteristically of him, Alex thought. "The beard – or the turban or the shalwar kameez – gags us. No one believes a Muslim who pleads innocent, and so, although we could probably say it more eloquently, your words are the only ones that the public would listen to. You could talk to the media, reporters – gloss over our religion, please – and people would know about this injustice. Use the race card, too – all much-contributing members of society we are, black men, yes, and victims of racism; they chose us" – he choked and grabbed Alex's shoulder through the bars, gripping it tightly- "randomly because of the countries we visited. Will you do it? Will you speak for us?" His pupils were blown, eyes wild; his knuckles were practically white. His English seemed to have lapsed catastrophically, as if something had broken in him, and it was as if he was a different man. Alex paused a little too long and it was something he would regret forever.
"Please," he begged, and Alex knew he had to say yes, because a man like this, so dignified and so much like his uncle, shouldn't have to beg.
He made no grand promises; his 'yes' was quiet and punctuated with nervous breathing.
"I," he faltered, "I'll try." If this had been a film, he would have put his face directly against the bars and trumpeted a promise that thundered to the heavens, echoed by a rolling wave of music. Emotionally, he would have promised to return and free all of the helpless innocents from the hand of tyranny.
Yasir heard the yes and his face broke out into a smile. "Thank you," he said, and Alex told him to shut up, because the thanks made him feel sickened, like he'd felt when he watched Romero cry, the intermingled tears and snot running down his face and soaking the collar of his hoodie. He clenched his teeth for a moment, then gave Yasir the most reassuring look that he could, and then he made a speech that was worthy of a film.
"Don't worry," he said fiercely. "I'll get you out, one way or another, even if I have to expose Alan Blunt to do it. I'll find you, if you're moved; I promise I'll find you. And Bharti too," he went on, "and Josef. They're not getting away with this one," he growled, "and I will personally track down everyone who staffed this facility and have them put away." He would have said more, but then the guards drew close, having returned with the key, and Nathan pulled him away. "Wait!" he called, "I'm not done- wait, Yasir, what was your crime?" The man only smiled enigmatically; suddenly serene, he released his hold on Alex's shoulder.
"Nothing doing, son, sorry," said the Irishman, and this was accompanied with another tug, so that Alex was pulled further away from the grille. The other guards were finally there, then, having wrestled the blindfold away from Yasir's neighbor, and they tied it around his eyes and spun him around in full view of the cell block.
There wasn't any reason to this process at all, seeing as the only viable direction was towards the cafeteria, but, then again, wasn't that the point? Seeing nothing but hearing everything, he walked the gauntlet, and the cheers of the others echoed around him. For once, and this would only happen once, they were all supporting the same team.
Yasir sat in his cell and watched him go, his teeth the only visible part of him in the darkness, and smiled. Alex smiled too, unknowingly; for once he had come in front of a crowd and felt nothing but goodwill. There was one thing, though, that niggled in his mind: he had no idea where he was actually going. He would most certainly not put it past these people to lie to him, even at this late stage.
Perhaps it was not so strange, then, that even as he prepared to leave, he felt that execution, and not freedom, was awaiting him outside the doors.
A/N: Ja, habt ihr gesehen, alle die Geschehnisse dass passiert hatte? Alex ist echt homophobisch, trotz sein Homosexuelle-tendencies. Aber dieses wird nicht ein Slash-fic werden. Wartet ihr: Ich denke, dass die Slash-Fans und die Hetero-Fans beide froh wird.
Anyway, I know that Alex has said and thought some pretty annoying and horrible things in this chapter, the Holocaust/ gas chamber reference being a major one of these. Just remember that, if our thoughts were made public, we'd probably all seem like psychopaths.
Just look at what happens on the internet: normal person + anonymity + audience (in the case of thinking, yourself) = Total Fuckwad.
It's science.
Also, the "bronzed and glistening muscle" thing is very awkward, yes, but I used it to convey something important about the prison. Let's see if you got it before Yasir's explanation in the latter part of the chapter. Also, in case you didn't notice, it's homoerotic that Alex was paying so much attention to these fellow inmates with their bronzed and glistening muscles.
Shout-outs:
1. Ratatouille, apparently. I shrug; I made a list, but now don't remember where this reference even was in the chapter. It has been several weeks, hasn't it?
2. The Count of Monte Cristo. Just a really insy reference here, in the half-sentence describing Alex's lack of something to break in his cell – because the Count broke a pot and used it as a scraper. That gave me the idea.
3. Fight Club. Alex's delirious musings are on something that Jack said in the movie.
4. Guantanamo Boy, a book by Anna Perera. It is a fictional (but based on true stories much more horrible) about a young British Muslim who is imprisoned unjustly in, yes, Guantanamo Bay. Er, without a trial.
5. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, which inspired part of this story.
6. Like Ivy Round the Oak and Tourniquet by Aibhionne. There is no way to state how much I am indebted to her for letting me use her character. Go and read her stories Right Now.
A last note: The Terrorist Act of 2000 was replaced later by the Terrorist Act of 2006; the new law increases the period of allowed remand from 48 hours, which is the number that applied to Alex, to 14 days. Bit of a jump, don't you think? Also note that these Acts are only the laws that we know about. In the hidden world of politics, who knows what's going on…underground. Ha, because crypts and vaults and secret bunkers for prisoners are underground. Just like the prison. Oh, and if you're curious about the chapter title, go through the last chapter and see where the word 'ziggurat' is mentioned. (You can use CTRL + F as a shortcut – see, I don't expect too much of you.) It gives insight into where this chapter takes place. Ah, the incredible suspense of it!
Whoever can guess the location of the prison before I post the next chapter gets plot points. Send your thoughts to me in a Private Message.
Thanks, from To Die Upon A Kiss
Chapter Four was completed on June 26, 2012.