Ficlets

The One Word That Won't Make You Dead

Interrogation was a lost art. Ever since Gorbachev, glasnost, and the general demise of all things Eastern, there had been a fall off in good, thoroughly menacing interrogations. The best ones could last for days – you recall one Soviet minister who sat in the room with you for twenty hours doing paperwork, before even asking you a question.

Today is all about impatience. Maim the subject until they can’t physically speak, and do it very quickly. Pointless. Physical abuse only shuts down subjects, driving them so far inward that they wouldn’t tell their own mother what’s being done to them.

These guys, however – the ones that have had you on the rack for nine hours – appear to be classically trained. There will be a permanent scar on your temple from the barrel of the Walther that’s been grinding there for the last twenty minutes. And there’s a word from you that they want, and you see on their faces that without that word, you’re of absolutely no value to them. You really have no choice.

“Ascot.”

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