Did I really just spend over a year writing one short-ass chapter? I really did. Sorry about that.

Chapter Eight: Speak, and Answer

If Gilbert were a bit more courageous, perhaps he would have let doors slam after him in unholy anger and stalk his way through the corridors with the brisk and clipping gait of men who knew they had power.

But the truth was that Gilbert was slightly intimidated by the men and women strutting around the camp in their white coats and clipboards and mysterious projects, and so he slunk through the doors, and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible as he made his way down the halls, peering into the occasional room.

He passed the room where he had last seen Prisoner #61012701, but it was empty now. Most of the rooms were filled with screens or machines or glass and liquids. If there were people, they wore white lab coats or suits, and they seemed to all be working frantically on something. As a door swung open, then close, he caught the word "—operations—" but without context, it wasn't very helpful.

"Captain Beilschmidt?"

Gilbert jumped and spun.

It was a white-coat, peering up at him with cat-green eyes.

"Hello, Captain," he—she?—the scientist said in a lilting voice, "what are you doing here?"

Gilbert stared down at this person, a little baffled, a little panicked. "I—patrolling?"

"You don't sound very sure." The scientist had the sort of voice that sounded like he was constantly flirting, and it was making Gilbert very uncomfortable.

And then he remembered also that patrolling does not include the insides of 'medical' buildings. Or really any building, as a matter of fact. He was a terrible liar.

"I'm a little lost," he admitted.

"Even though you've worked here for, like, the past seven months?"

Seven months? Had it already been seven months? What had even happened in those months? At that moment, Gilbert felt more than just 'a little lost'.

"I'm looking for something. Someone."

"Who?"

"A prisoner," Gilbert answered, forcing the hesitation from his voice. "Number 61012701."

The scientist frowned. "We don't hold prisoners here."

"But she wasn't in the barracks," said Gilbert. He had checked there earlier, and it wasn't just Prisoner #61012701, none of the female prisoners from the latest prisoner's march had been there. "This was the last place she was seen."

That frown deepened. It looked like the type of frown Gilbert had seen on his mother when she puzzled over the shade of lipstick to wear.

"Fine," the white-coat said, heaving a dramatic sigh. "Follow me."

Perplexed, Gilbert watched the scientist strut away from him. It took him a moment to remember to march after him, wondering if he was actually lucky enough to find a person who would help him, and hoping that he wasn't taking him to the one of the mass graves.

"So," the scientist spoke when Gilbert caught up to him, "what do you want Prisoner #6101-whatever for?"

"Questioning," answered Gilbert. "The reasons of her arrest are... particular."

"How so?"

"It's classified."

The scientist shot him a pointed look. "So is her current location, yet here we are."

'Here' was before a mechanical door. The scientist pressed a finger to the pad next to it, there was a beep as his fingerprint was registered, and then mechanics whirred as the door slid open.

They stepped into a hall that looked almost like a dentist's office, just without the comfy sofas and children's toys and rack of magazines. There was a front desk and a television, and then another side hall filled with doors.

"Third door," said the scientist. "Oh wait, let me, like, get the key."

Once that had been retrieved from a drawer behind the front desk, the scientist brought Gilbert to the side hall, and knocked twice on the third door.

"Hello! Good morning!" he chirped. "Please turn to face the wall, like, the one opposite to the door, with your hands on your head. You have a visitor!"

And then the scientist handed the keys to Gilbert and said, "Like, apparently she's dangerous, so I'm gonna go check on the security cameras, and once it's safe, you can unlock the door and enter. Oh yeah, but like, leave the keys on the ground outside. I will lock it behind you."

Gilbert nodded, accepting the keys. The scientist returned to the front desk, and after a moment, flashed him a thumbs up.

Gilbert unlocked the door, dropped the keys outside, and stepped into the room.

She stood facing the opposite wall, hands on her head, as the scientist had commanded. Once the door closed behind him and the lock clicked shut, however, she turned slowly, and regarded him with blank eyes.

The fuzz on her shaved head had become more obviously brown. Her older bruises were fading, and her complexion was obviously improved, but there was still a starved look about her, the hospital-gown-like garment she wore draping over her like it was hollow inside.

Gilbert cleared his throat. "Um, hi."

She did not reply.

He gestured at the bed. "Sit. Please," he added awkwardly, and only then did she comply. And then he realized just how stupid he was sounding, and hoped that the security cameras in the corners of the room did not have sound recording features.

Once she seemed settled, he began, "I have some questions."

"Obviously," she said. Her Russian was slightly accented, in a way that suggested proficiency for the language but also disdain. Each syllable broke against her lips like it tasted sour. "Fire away."

Gilbert blinked. He had thought that he would have to warn her against noncooperation, but she had scooted back on the bed so that her back leaned against the wall and her long legs were stretched out in front of her, appearing relaxed and compliant.

Even so, he had seen her kill with such efficiency and ease that her posture hardly comforted him. Coming was a risk that could easily become a terrible mistake, he realised. He was armed, but she was not even chained this time; how did he know that she would not be able to kill him with her bare hands before he even drew his gun, and then use the weapon to break out of this place? Why she wasn't restrained at all was a mystery to him. Did the scientists not know why she was sent here? She murdered—

"You murdered General Wilhelm Beilschmidt," he said.

The prisoner raised a single thin eyebrow. "That's not a question."

"But you did, didn't you?"

"Sure." She shrugged.

Gilbert's mouth pinched. "Why?"

She shrugged again. "Why not?"

Gilbert snarled, but before he could speak, she continued, "It's not like he was a wonderfully kind person that everybody loved. I did you guys a favour, if you ask me."

"He was my grandfather." Too much information. He was giving away too much and he hadn't gotten anything in return. God, he was bad at this. This was a stupid idea; he had never interrogated anyone before.

"Oh, no." She did not sound affected at all. "Were you close?"

Gilbert paused. "Well, no. But even so." He had to collect his thoughts, calm down a little. "Why did you do it?"

Another shrug. "Why not?"

"Seriously. Please."

It was her turn to hesitate. She ran a hand over the fuzz on her shaved head, and sighed. "I don't know."

She doesn't know why she did it. And she appears to be relatively sane. Which meant...

"Someone sent you to do it?"

She nodded.

"Who?"

But she shook her head.

"You don't know anything, do you?" he asked sourly.

At that, she bared her teeth at him. "Ha! As if you do?"

It was that tone: that thorn of amusement and incredulity, that made him pause. "What do you mean?"

Her hand brushed against her neck, in a motion that stemmed from being used to flicking back a strand of long hair. "All I'm saying is that if you actually knew anything, you would not be here, asking me why I killed your grandfather. You'd be asking how."

"What do you mean?" Gilbert pushed, ice pooling into his stomach.

The prisoner, however, looked extremely entertained. "You really don't know anything? Here's an easier question for you then, grandson Beilschmidt: Why am I here?"

Gilbert was no less confused. "For the murder of—"

"No." She rolled her eyes. "Why am I here, in this nice, comfy room, fed three meals a day, given medications and vitamins and entertainment—why?"

Why? She was a dangerous person. She should either be executed, or being worked to death outside. Why was she here?

"They want something from you," Gilbert realized, with a most awful feeling of dread. "But what? What do you have? What do you know?"

But she shrugged. "I don't know anything; you said so yourself. If I don't know anything, I can't give you any answers. So—" she cut off his snarl, "—think, what do I have? Or, in the same vein, but in a different perspective, what do I have, that General Beilschmidt did not? What can I do, that General Beilschmidt cannot?"

What did his grandfather not have? Nothing, Gilbert thought instinctively. He had status, power, wealth, influence—everything.

"Oh no," the prisoner whispered, and Gilbert thought that she sounded just a tad bit disappointed but also very tired. "Too late."

And then Gilbert jumped at a sudden flurry of pounding knocks on the door.

"Captain Beilschmidt!" A female voice forced its way through the thick door, low and trembling with fury. "You do not have the clearance to be in this area, let alone be communicating with the prisoner without permission! Get. Out!"

He vaguely recognized the voice, but it was only when the lock clicked and the door swung open did he remember—this was the scientist he had talked to the last time he had came into the building as an attempt to ditch Ludwig. She had been with another scientist, pushing beds with women on them from one room to another.

This time, her expression was dark and she grabbed him by the arm, practically throwing him out of the room before slamming the door shut and locking it again.

Instead of turning to him and shouting, as Gilbert had expected her to do, she rounded up towards the other scientist, who flinched. She kept her voice low, but the hall echoed too well.

"What do you think you're doing, bringing him here?" she demanded. "Are you really as air-headed as you look, Feliks? A soldier. Here! This is against protocol, beyond your rank, and a possible compromise to the project!"

And because the scientist—Feliks—was looking rather pasty and Gilbert did not like seeing him suffer for helping him, he gingerly placed a hand on the furious woman's shoulder, interrupting, "Hey, it's not his fault. I forced him to—"

"Yes, you did." And then she turned to him, the room keys still in her hands nearly stabbing him in the chest, and Gilbert realized belatedly that this was a mistake. "How dare you, parading into the building as if you have the right to interfere with our work!"

This time she was cut off by Feliks' hand on her shoulder. "Look, Hedvika, like, I know this was a bad idea, so I'll just, like, escort him out now, alright? It's all in the past; there isn't anything we can do about it now, so let's just, like, move on, alright? You can go visit our lovely prisoner or something, make sure she didn't, like, say anything terrible to our dear Captain, and I'll just... take him now."

Hedvika opened her mouth to retort, but Feliks had grabbed Gilbert by the sleeve and was dragging him towards the mechanical door that apparently also needed a fingerprint register to open from the inside.

"Łukasiewicz!" she shouted after them. "Come back here!"

"You can't make me!" Feliks called back, and the metal door slid shut behind them.

Feliks set a hurried pace down the halls, Gilbert following. The scientist's posture was relatively relaxed, but his complexion still appeared somewhat pallid.

"Actually, she can make me," he said abruptly, glancing back at Gilbert. "I, like, forgot just now, but she got promoted two weeks ago. Oops."

And although it was not exactly related, Gilbert blurted out, "Why did you help me?"

But the scientist disappointed him. "I was bored. And I know that Lizzy's a convicted murderer, but," he shrugged, "she's a nice girl."

They parted outside the glass doors of Lab 5—as Gilbert finally learned that this building was called—Feliks with a strained smile, and Gilbert with an awkward wave.

He hadn't walked for more than ten meters, however, when—

"Captain!"

Gilbert groaned, but echoed the salute. "Lieutenant."

"What were you doing in the Lab?" Ludwig asked the moment his hand lowered, as if just because they were brothers he had the right to question a superior officer so casually.

"None of your business," Gilbert answered crisply.

Ludwig's expression turned a fraction colder, and his voice was stiff when he said, "I see."

When Gilbert turned and stalked away, brushing him off, he did not follow.

"But General," the whore clinging onto the General's arm simpered, "it just makes me so scared."

On any other occasion, General Wilhelm Beilschmidt might have recoiled in disgust. But he had been drinking steadily for the past few hours, and so he gave a rare smile, threading his fingers in her silky brown curls. "Don't worry, moy tsvetochek, it would take more than a few bullets to kill me."

He was wrong.

It had taken less.

When given the chance to really think and to piece things together, it was almost easy.

Of course, she did not have the whole picture yet, but Elizabeta thought that she could probably see at least a vague outline of what was consolidating into a rather terrifying theory.

The raids. The disappearing women and children.

"All of them are usable..."

"I want her in peak condition before we extract anything from her."

"It would take more than a few bullets to kill me."

He had sounded so confident, and it didn't seem to be the empty trust that alcohol disillusioned the mind with. He said it with knowing, that old general with the body of a much younger man.

"What do they have?"

"Youth."

What did she have, that his grandfather did not?

Feliks had called her 'Lizzy', and the knowledge made him feel conflicted, mainly because it just didn't fit her. He imagined facing those dark, menacing eyes and sharp smile and calling her Lizzy, and he shuddered.

Probably just a nickname, he decided. Feliks seemed like the type to call assassins cute nicknames.

For some reason, it made him feel better.

He was trying to distract himself.

What did she have, that his grandfather did not?

How were the two different?

He thought of those abyss eyes, and thought of that cold visage.

They're both killers, was his first thought.

But one killed faceless masses, and the other killed specific persons.

And now, one was dead, and the other was alive, albeit in a death camp.

What did she have...?

Well, the part of his brain that was lame and vulgar conjured, one thing that she doesn't have is a penis.

Gilbert groaned and slumped over his desk, messing up some of the paperwork he was supposed to be working on, instead of thinking about how a male human differed from a female.

This was stupid. His grandfather and, ahem, Lizzy were too different. Similar in ways that he could not put into words, true, but still fundamentally completely different.

A young woman and an old man. What kind of comparison was this?

Except—old? Had he really described General Beilschmidt as old? True, he was Gilbert's grandfather, so he had to be at least kind of old, considering how Gilbert's father was in his fifties. But he had never actually thought of him as old before now; it simply did not occur to him. After all, when you looked at an unlined face and strong body and golden blond hair with no sign of greying, you didn't think old.

General Beilschmidt was young, when he should not be young.

A familiar prickle crawled up his spine. This was the feeling he had when he had been surrounded by other young soldiers, in a place far away from here, when boys still knew how to laugh and think about living instead of not-dying.

Immortality, they had whispered, entertained despite their nervousness.

Lizzy was a killer. So was his grandfather.

Lizzy was young. And his grandfather... wasn't, yet was.

Lizzy was a woman. And somehow, this was key.

Why were the women separated from the other prisoners? Where did all the women go? Where did the women come from in the first place—not all of them were captured assassins. Why women?

What could she do, that General Beilschmidt could not?

It was suddenly so simple.

Women could give birth. Women could create life.

And was life not the key to immortality?

Irunya knew that this was a bad idea; she knew that this was dangerous. Ivan had warned her, again and again and again.

Don't go out late at night.

It was midnight.

But Irunya could not bring herself to care.

I'm so sorry, Eva, she thought. It's all my fault.

If she had not gotten so drunk that night, Ivan would not have needed to escort her home, leaving Eva alone. She could have walked Eva home, made sure she was alright. She just never thought—even with all those warnings of raids and kidnappings, she just never thought that—Eva, of all people. She had just seemed so... strong. Like nothing could ever stop her.

But then she turned out to be no more than another passerby, another fleeting presence, another fading memory. Irunya hated it. She hated herself for it. She was afraid of herself for it.

What did I do? What have I done?

All of them kept leaving. They kept leaving her.

Irunya huddled deeper into herself, nestling her face more snugly into her scarf and pulling her coat closer around her. The night made the winter feel colder.

The street was strangely dark tonight. Glancing around, she realized that a few of the streetlamps seemed to be in need of replacement.

She should go home, but the thought of that single-bedroom flat, void of visitors or pictures or anything warm, made her feel sick. It was better out here, despite the biting wind and flickering shadows.

So she kept walking. She was walking in circles. She walked past The Far West. She walked past the kindergarten, then the primary school, and then her apartment complex. She took a right, then another right, and walked for another ten minutes, and she was back on the dimly-lit street once more.

It was starting to feel a bit warm in her thick coat and hat, but when she loosened her scarf a little, the wind dug into the crack so viciously that she flinched and tightened it around her again.

And she kept walking. Head ducked, shoulders hunched, hands in pockets, breath misting. She was in her own world now, a world that was no more than a dark vortex of confusion that dragged her deeper and deeper down into despair.

Perhaps that was why she didn't hear the careful footsteps behind her. And why, when hands grabbed her from behind and a cloth was pressed against her nose and mouth, Irunya barely had the chance to react, to struggle, before everything went black.