talonkarrde | Punchable Face

The memories come in flashes as I choke and gasp, inhaling water in a desperate attempt to get at some air. It has to end sooner or later, sooner or later, I just need to hold out—

I remember the monotone humming of the ventilation as I got off the elevator, turning to give a short salute to Tom for getting me in. A janitor spot had opened a week ago at the building and he was hired, just in time to get keys for tonight's snatch-and-grab.

The water finally stops and I try to stop the vomit reflex, try to breathe through the damp cloth in the few seconds before they turn the hose back on. Hyperventilation to maximize my oxygen supply like we're taught, before the water starts again—

I remember the slight scent of her perfume as I slipped into her office, looking for the papers. We knew that the contact's information was delivered that afternoon right before she left, late enough that she didn't have time to respond to it. The director approved the mission instantly; this guy must have been pretty high up on the HVT list, I think, as I start ruffling through her desk.

A few seconds into it, my body reaches the breaking point. I need to breathe, I need to breathe, and I lose control and inhale. Only water comes, though, flooding into my lungs, and I drown, fading—

I remember the sound of footsteps in the doorway, just as I find the piece of paper that I'm looking for. Anyone at three a.m. is a problem, but the footsteps, and then the pause outside the door — it means the mission's compromised. It means I'm fucked, I think, just as the doors burst open and the flashbang blinds me.

#

I wake up with my head pounding, and what feels like blood flowing down my right cheek. And then someone slams my left cheek with something metallic — brass knuckles, maybe — and I start dripping blood down both sides of my face. I groan, opening my eyes, squinting in the harsh light; no reason to play dead when they were this intent on waking me up.

It takes me a second to remember my training, but I try and take everything in. A cell - no, an interrogation room. Metal table, metal chair I'm cuffed to, a one-way window, nothing else. No sounds from the outside — someplace isolated, for sure. And finally, my interrogator and an 'enforcer', neither one someone I've ever seen before.

Without preamble, I start speaking, tell them everything I know.

First principle: if captured, tell everything you know and trust in the system not to have given you any critical information. I talk to them for ten minutes, looking between the two men, telling them of the mission, how I got in, what I was looking for, how we had been collecting the information before the assignment. It's detailed, it's specific on a few things I'm sure they haven't heard before... and it's nothing the others will use again, now that I've been taken. And in the meantime, I memorize the scar on his neck, the stubble on his chin, the tilt of his nose, and everything else that will be useful if I ever get out.

It's ten minutes that I don't get beaten, if nothing else, and in a situation like this, that's probably the last mercy I'll get.

At the end of it, though, he simply looks at me with those eyes, knits his eyebrows together, and asks me if that's all I know.

I say yes, of course, which he expects.

And he snaps his fingers, which I expect, and the enforcer shatters my nose.