V

Guilty night habits can range from sucking one's thumb, holding a stuffed bear or lamb, having the night light on at all times, or a security blanket kept since the swaddling newborn years. These items, worthless to others and which, by the time the owners are adults, crumbled and holey, are sacred to their owners. The night, the act of sleeping, is when the mind flees from the terrors it suppresses during the day, and finding comfort in these trivial things eases the pain. Sleep comes easy that way.

In Paz's case, she did not have a teddy bear or a blanket. She had her knife. An Aztec ceremonial knife with a history in human sacrifice, the usual obsidian or stone blade was replaced by Toledo steel. The handle featured the traditional malachite, turquoise, and mother-of-pearl, with more inlaid Spanish steel. There were orchids engraved, the petals white pearl and the stems green malachite. It had a curved blade meant for quick slicing and removal, and was about half the length of her arm. It was the single most expensive thing she had ever owned in her life and her only childhood memoir. Years spent walking through sewage-lined streets, birds defecating on her head, and drunkards tossing their empty bottles at her did not make her want to sell her knife. She would rather sleep under a bridge with trains running day and night, the sound driving her eternally mad, than give it away. As her anchor, it gave her comfort and determination for the new day and made her feel safe. Toledo steel made some of the world's deadliest swords, and it was this steel the Conquistadores used to shatter her ancestor's old way of life. The duality of it made her feel both proud and hesitant to use it.

After returning from Monterrey in an impromptu theatre and binge film watching session, the girls were sent to bed. Evita and Ernesto stayed up late, and through the open windows Paz could hear their rushed whispers as they conversed in the dining hall below. It wasn't like them to do something so brash. Often, they spoke in thickly walled rooms where no one could hear them and where they emerged separately to go their own ways. Evita and Ernesto may have been comrades, but they did not show any indication they liked each other. Evita was impatient and rowdy around him, while Ernesto was too mischievous. Arguments they had in front of the girls evaporated whenever Ernesto made a crude joke. Evita would excuse herself – none too kindly – while Ernesto had to entertain his small party. He didn't have a problem with them; like with Paz, the girls took a quick liking to him. It was hard not to since he was the double of El Che.

Paz's fingers cradled her knife. She didn't like the whispers tossed between the two. She hoped that, like other conversations, it would evaporate – nothing more than steam on glass.

The stones rang with the sound of boots. They were not deliberate or slow like the time Evita had marched up the steps with the Mosin-Nagants. They were hurried, determined, purposeful. There was more than one set.

Paz felt a lump grow in her throat that would not go down. Her eyes flicked to the slit under her door, waiting for it to be kicked down. It would not be the first time it had happened to her.

Paz's fingers loosened. If what she thought was going to happen happened, she did not want Evita to see her knife. She would take it away from her, destroy it as she watched in horror, or sell it. Any scenario was terrible to her.

She tucked it under a sheet. If the bed was turned over and the pillows cut open, it would be lost in the whirlpool of cotton. As long as Evita was not too thorough.

Paz waited. The boots picked up in speed, sounding like the hooves of rushing boars across the house. Crashes followed. An ear-splitting scream ricocheted off the walls and into Paz's room as if she were standing next to the unfortunate girl. Ghastly wails trailed behind thrashing feet, slapping against the floors uselessly. The boots plodded to her door. A drop of sweat fell off her nose.

The door sailed off its hinges like a paper airplane, landing at the foot of her bed. Paz sat up in a flurry of sweat and sheets, a cry halfway out of her throat when a clump of her hair was tugged, taking her along with the offending fist. Paz nearly screamed herself, but it died in her throat when Matron Evita's jade eyes seared into her. It had a dictator's grasp on her, heaving her through this night raid. Paz's hands clutched feebly at her hair. Tears spilled down her face.

She was dragged until a chair caught her thrown body. Paz grabbed at it, trying to turn around, but Matron Evita's hands grabbed her midsection and shoved her into the chair proper. A thin cord – cheese wire or piano wire, she couldn't see – was wrapped around her ankles and wrists. It bit into her skin with the force of a bear trap. Paz's teeth sank onto her lips to prevent further screams.

A bucket sat nearby. Matron Evita walked over and wrung a cloth she pulled from it. The water fell into the bucket in steady drips. It seemed more like a crashing waterfall to her.

Matron Evita pointed the cloth at her. Her hips swayed as she stalked around her. The pantera was sharpening her claws.

"Mi hija. When did you start being a bad girl?" Poison dripped from her voice like the water from the cloth. The humid air seemed to evaporate. Gooseflesh rose from the score of shivers that traveled through Paz's body.

"I – I don't understand," Paz stammered. "What have I done wrong?"

Matron Evita clucked her tongue. She twisted the rag around her hands. "I don't like mentirosas, girl. I pop them like how I chew my gum. I tease them, blow them out, and snap! There they go. I get all the flavour and I spit them out afterwards. Do you want to be the bubble gum, blondie?"

"I don't know what you want!" Paz cried. "The least you can do is offer proof of what I've done to offend you!"

"There is that word – again!" Matron Evita yelled. "Is that all you live for? Not offending people? You're just an ignorant muchacha, aren't you?"

"Stop calling me that! How can I possibly confess to you of things I have no idea of?"

"You don't give me orders, girl, I give them to you! And if I decide what is true, then it is true. Do you know why? I command. You –"

"You don't get to decide what truth is!" Paz yelled back. "If what I say is true, and you have no evidence to prove I am a liar, what does that make you? It means you're a liar and that you should be in this chair, not me!"

Paz watched something incredible. Matron Evita's mouth went agape like the beak of a seagull. The shock did not last long. When her mouth closed and an awful grimace made a leper's mask on her face, the hand went flying.

Paz's face cracked to the side, blood spilling on the floor from her freshly split lip. Her face went to the other side from Matron Evita's other hand, and back again, and again, and again, until Matron Evita hissed through bared teeth. Paz coughed and spat up a glob of scarlet phlegm. Blood bubbled from her nose and mouth.

"The salt needs to be washed away," Matron Evita growled. "All it does is sting."

Matron Evita put the rag in the bucket and wrung it out again. She walked to Paz, grabbed a hold of her chin, and pried her fingers into her mouth. Paz's teeth grazed them.

"Don't you even think of biting me," Matron Evita warned. "Or those pretty white teeth will be gone. Open your mouth," she ordered.

Paz did so reluctantly. The rag was shoved deep into her throat. She gagged and thrashed in her bindings. She felt bile rise.

"If you try to spit it out, you'll only choke," Matron Evita said. "If you vomit, you'll choke on that too. You choke - I don't get what I want."

The bucket was dragged near her ankles. Through her swollen eyelids, she could see the water splash inside. The ripples settled.

Matron Evita leaned her head back. "Open your mouth."

She opened her mouth. The water came jagged and quick, like overflowing rains crashing down levees. Paz wondered if this is what it felt like to turn into a gorge.

Paz was not afraid of water. She'd learned to swim at an early age, and back then she swam better than she walked. An early case of rickets had prevented her from having a proper gait, so a combination of a healthy diet and swimming eased her bones back into shape. Water going up her nose didn't bother her; her nose might burn and she might have a sneezing fit, but it cleared on its own. She knew tricks from poor village kids on how to get water out of her ears and things to eat and drink to prevent water-borne illnesses. And when there was no safe place on land, when her compañeros turned on her, the water became her security. Breaths were held and under she went, her form melding into the ripples on the surface. She emerged in another place, with those looking for her giving up after a time. Water was a getaway.

But now her perception was changing. The rag was getting heavy in her throat and she heaved with the water's force. Her stomach had had enough of it. It came back up the way it came down. The sight of the rag flying to the wet floor reminded her of the geysers of Yellowstone Park. She was the living incarnation of Old Faithful.

She continued until her stomach squeezed. She sucked in air, desperate and hungry, and it made her vomit again. She gagged and spat out the last of it. She tried to calm herself enough to breathe.

Matron Evita shook her head in disgust at the spectacle. She threw the rag down angrily, then marched over and dumped the bucket over her head. Paz let the water ease the stings on her body. She would have sighed in relief, but Matron Evita's condescension was vocalized instead.

"Look at you. You didn't even last half an hour!" she yelled. The bucket clanged against the ground, the tin shrill in Paz's ears. Droplets swirled around her toes.

Paz wheezed and coughed. She managed to raise her head, and since the icy water had eased the swelling in her face, she could now see Matron Evita in profile: a woman like a continuous pit of magma that bubbled and frothed over when it was ready to burst. To think that she had been so kind after Chihuahua was a bizarre fiction now.

"What else are you going to do to an innocent person? Are you going to put the bucket over my head and whack it with a stick?"

"It's a nice idea, but I think we are done for the moment," Matron Evita said. "I should've expected the water cure wouldn't work on a girl that breathes it."

Paz blinked. She would have raised an eyebrow, but she felt like a plum that had been hit by a hammer. She probably looked like one, too. "Really?" Her words sounded like a desperate gasp, like scrambling for air after being pulled under by a riptide.

"Yes. Really." Evita's sarcasm could've been the sandpaper to dry her out. "Now I have to see what Ernesto managed to get out of that rata."

Matron Evita didn't need to move from her position, as Ernesto came in then, dragging a bleeding and moaning girl by his feet. Her left kneecap was in the wrong position and her shin bone was too close to the skin. She tried to crawl to a kneeling position, but Ernesto shoved her back down. The girl sniveled and started to cry.

Paz knew who she was: the plush, polished brown hair that fell straight across her shoulders, the tawny skin, and the marigolds tucked behind her ears. Elena Zapopan. The girl who wanted to see a Cathedral and got a clunky television set instead. Her sulking form was replaced by quiet sobs. The marigold's petals fell around her.

The Sandinista stepped towards her. She kneeled and raised the girl's chin. Paz could sense tension crackle in the air.

"My beautiful girl...why did you have to behave like this? You've been so pleasant to us. Have we not been pleasant to you?" Her coos were deceptive. They might have been sing-song, but they had the dangers of a claymore.

Elena did not move her gaze from the Sandinista. Her throat quivered under the force of a swallowed sob. "I don't care how pleasant this life is. It's a lie – all of it. I just wanted to see how far I could push the limits and see what broke first."

"And why would you want to do that? What black little thought swam into your head to plop this insubordinate manner to the table where everyone could see? Where Cipher could see?"

"Because you don't let us out of here!" Elena screamed. She tore her chin away from Matron Evita's hand, the parched tears now giving way to a wildfire. "Why do you keep us here? You always lecture us on this man who does all these things and what he will do if we don't listen! How can he be dangerous when we don't even know who he is! He could be dead, for all we know! He might not even exist! Why do you force us to listen to him? Is it because we were weak girls you could take advantage of? Is that what we are to you? Nothing?!" Elena's defiance ended in a choke that brought a fresh stream of tears. The marigolds' petals continued to fall from her hair.

Paz waited for the signature crack of a hand meeting flesh. To Paz's surprise, it didn't come.

Something else is going to happen, something far worse, Paz thought.

Silence fell on them, and the only sounds that broke the lethal calm were Elena's sniffles and the sound of Paz shifting in her chair. Looks were exchanged between Ernesto and Matron Evita. It was their language, that hidden language of guerrilla bandits, torturers, and executioners who pondered what kinds of things they would do to their unfortunate charge. Paz did not know either of their pasts, but she could sense it in their gaits, their personalities: they knew. They lived it.

Elena and the others did not. Her spectacle had shown snippets of her personality that were not shown to the others, such as her tenacity and boldness to the point of being stupidly defiant. Paz considered herself mildly stubborn, but not defiant; she may have been sixteen, but she knew the risks of a working tongue when it wasn't meant to move and behaviours that could ruin a disguise. And, unlike Elena, Paz knew what Cipher could do. Evidence of his handiwork was etched on all who worked for him.

Elena was going to be that piece of handiwork that was going to find its way into a smelter. "You're all cowards," Elena spat. "You tell us what to do, what to eat, where to sleep, and when we think we're going to live better lives you throw us into Hell! What kind of people are you? Don't you have any thoughts of your own?!"

There was a crunch – but not from Matron Evita's hands. Ernesto had swung the butt of a previously-unseen rifle into Elena's other knee, which she had moved in order to take the weight off the other leg. A horrible moan came. She fell on her hands.

Matron Evita stood and reached over to grab a clump of Elena's hair. She yanked her back and dragged her out of the room. Her ruined knees were the last thing Paz saw.

Ernesto cut the piano wire from her wrists and ankles. Before Paz could soothe them, Ernesto picked her up, bridal style, and turned left in the hallway, the opposite direction from where Matron Evita was heading. Paz didn't look at him.

"Where am I going?" Paz asked softly. "Am I going to be tortured more?"

"No," Ernesto said. "I'm taking you back to bed. You are going to go to sleep and forget what you saw. It never happened. Do you understand?"

Paz nodded with caution. His authoritarian air didn't warrant any second questions.

She was returned to her room. He placed her on the comforter. "You will receive treatment for those injuries in the morning," he said. "But if infection sets in before that, call one of the nurses and she will attend to you."

He left. Paz fumbled for her pillow. She slept on her back that night with her knife on her chest, a princess lying in state.

It would be a few days until she discovered the full extent of Elena's actions.

Notes:

- Toledo steel is one of Spain's finest steels. It has a long history dating back to the town's first inception. It is renowned for its durability and strength.

- Aztec knives were decorated with all sorts of precious gems and pearls. Carvings ranged from depictions of people to gods.

- Water cure torture involves shoving a rag or a cloth down the victim's mouth. They are forced to swallow the water rapidly, and as a result, the stomach eventually bursts.

- Officially, Cipher started in 1970 with the Patriots, but TBH I believe Zero was working his way around earlier than hence. So they're going to use the 'Cipher' name when referring to him.

Translations:

Pantera - panther

Mentriosas - liar (feminine version)

Rata - weasel (behaviour)

Mi hija - my daughter