AN: I think this might warrant an R rating, but I'm not sure. This is definitely not a happy chapter. Child abuse, torture…not pretty. Tatiana is remembering all of this, but she's only actually saying what's in italics.
Chapter 15: Breaking
"Then I was chosen for Project Medea and started training to become a spy. I hated it. I refused to do anything they told me. That went on for six weeks."
"No." The child stood with her legs apart, arms crossed over her chest, glaring up at the man who towered over her.
"Come now, Tatiana. Run around the track for me, just once, and then I'll let you have a meal with the other children instead of alone in your room," Kresniev said.
"I don't want other children. I want my Mama."
A sad expression appeared on Kresniev's face, but the five-year-old knew that he was pretending. "Your Mama doesn't want to come see you, Tatiana, because you're being a bad girl. If you do as you're told maybe she'll want to come for a visit."
"You're lying!" the child screamed. "She wants to come see me, she doesn't want me to be good for you, you're a bad man!" She flew at Kresniev, ineffectually punching and kicking his legs. She was immediately pulled off him and carried, struggling, into a different room where she was efficiently strapped down to a table. Then Kresniev appeared above her, holding The Needle in his hand. "No," she whimpered. As always, when she saw The Needle, she regretted her actions, told herself that next time she would just do what he told her.
"I am sorry, Tatiana," Kresniev said smoothly. "I hate having to punish you, but you've been a very bad girl."
Liar, she thought as he tied a tourniquet around her upper arm and put The Needle into a vein. Then she stopped thinking and started screaming as he depressed the plunger and liquid fire raced through her body.
Later, she lay silent, her voice long gone. She wanted to sleep, but she still felt as if flames were licking at her skin. She heard footsteps, then felt her restraints being unlocked. She didn't even try to move, even though every touch was agony.
"Where did you get this one?" a voice asked. The voice was familiar, and Tatiana immediately associated it with a face: a man who often watched her from the shadows while Kresniev dealt with her. Cuvee. That was his name.
Kresniev laughed as Tatiana felt herself lifted up and carried. "She is remarkable, isn't she? Six weeks, and she's still fighting, when most of them have given up in less than a week. She's Derevko's spawn."
A chuckle. "That explains it, then. But if she's truly her mother's daughter it might be a lost cause to try and break her."
"She'll break eventually. I'm starting to see cracks. And once she's mine and I've got her trained, she will be incredible. Derevko is legendary, yes, but even she broke eventually."
"No, she didn't. They merely found other means of controlling her."
The movement stopped, and Tatiana heard the sound of the door to her "room" opening. "You're telling me that Irina Derevko spent twelve months in Kashmir and didn't break? That's impossible."
"I don't know how she did it; no one does. Of course, we were fairly limited in our methods for the first half of her stay due to her pregnancy."
The person carrying her started walking again, but moved only a few steps before Tatiana was placed on a hard surface. "So how are you controlling her if she never broke?" Kresniev asked. Tatiana didn't get to hear the answer, though; instead, the door closed again. Relieved, the child squirmed slightly. The cold stone that she was lying on cooled the last vestiges of the pain, and she soon fell into an exhausted sleep.
"Then, I met Sergei."
Tatiana woke at the sound of the door opening again. She scrambled to her feet and crossed her arms over her chest. But when the door opened, it wasn't Kresniev, just a boy. An older boy, but not by much. "Hello," she said.
"Hello," the boy answered. "So you're the new one. My name's Sergei."
"I'm Tatiana. Can you help me get out of here? I need to find my Mama."
He shook his head. "Sorry, Tanya, nobody gets out of this place. And nobody gets to see their Mama, either."
"Kresniev said she would come if I did what he told me."
"He's lying," Sergei said.
"I know."
"Want to go for a walk?"
She shrugged and followed him. The halls were dark. "Do you do what he tells you?" she asked Sergei.
"Yes," Sergei answered. "Because if I don't, I know I'll never have a chance to get away. If he thinks I like him, I might get a chance someday."
"Really? Could I pretend, too?" Tatiana asked.
"That's why I'm here, Tanya." He led her into a schoolroom. Through the bars on the windows, she could see the night sky for the first time in weeks. She didn't look for long, though; there were two other children in the room.
"These are Mikel and Nadia; they're both seven," Sergei said. "This is Tatiana," he said to the others. "She's strong, like us."
The four children sat down and talked for nearly an hour before Sergei said it was time for them to go. He walked Tatiana back to her small, empty room and locked her in.
The next day, as much as she hated to do it, she agreed to run around the track after only a short argument with Kresniev. She had been rewarded when she'd been allowed to have lunch with the other children, and Sergei had winked at her.
"There was a group that managed to make Kresniev think that they were loyal to him, and Sergei was the leader. He told me how to pretend that I was breaking, to make Kresniev think that I belonged to him. I stopped asking for my mother, and pretended that I'd forgotten. So I spent the next four years training to be a spy—languages, combat, weapons, technology…all that stuff. And then the Soviet Union collapsed."