Acolyte (24 page)

‘Fuck you,' said Jonah, the sound of his voice appallingly small.

The man frowned. His hand shot out, slapping Jonah across the cheek hard enough to daze him for a moment. ‘No,' said the man. ‘Respect me.' He watched Jonah, their eyes locking, Jonah confused and scared. ‘Your other friend is here,' said the man. ‘In the room next door, with my colleague. Listen.'

He reached somewhere out of Jonah's sight. There was a click, an intercom. ‘Can you hear me?' said the man.

‘I can,' said another man's voice.

‘Jonah wants to hear his friend. If you would oblige.'

‘Of course.'

A few seconds passed. Then there was the sound of a dull impact and a muffled yell, followed by a string of angry cursing. Unmistakeably, it was Never.

The intercom was flicked off.

‘There. You see? He's perfectly well.'

‘Why am I—' started Jonah. He was cut short by another expertly delivered slap.

‘Speak only if I tell you to,' said the man in a calm voice, raising again the mask he had removed from Jonah, fitting it back with practised ease. ‘There. Better.' He smiled in his genuine way.

A man who enjoys his work
, thought Jonah, rage building within him alongside the fear.

‘Now,' said the man. ‘You want to know what this is. I understand. And luckily, I plan to tell you. You're here to answer one question. Your friend is here to
help
you answer. Are you ready?'

Jonah stared. The man raised an eyebrow, prompting a response. With his head restrained, Jonah was only barely able to nod.

‘Good,' said the man. ‘My question is this: do you know the whereabouts of Tess Neil?'

Jonah shook his restrained head as best he could.

‘Have you had any encounter or communication with Tess Neil since the Reese-Farthing incident?'

Again, Jonah shook his head.

‘Good, good,' said the man. ‘I believe you, Jonah. I believe you.' Then the man's smile faded, his face growing theatrically sad. ‘Unfortunately, that's not how this works. You see, I'm a compassionate man. I'm far too trusting. As such, procedure demands that my own feelings are left out of this. Instead, I have to make sure. Make sure that anyone interested in the answer will also believe you, when they watch the footage.' He nodded to the camera in the corner of the ceiling. ‘It's really very similar to your own line of work, in that respect. You understand. As one professional to another.'

Again, the man looked at Jonah and waited for a response. Jonah nodded. Tears were starting to creep out of his eyes now, as if they were deserting him. Trying to escape.

‘You can call me Hopkins,' said the man. ‘Not my real name, of course, but our subjects perform better if they have a name for their … advisor.' Hopkins allowed himself a chuckle. ‘It's good that I can be open with you, Jonah – a fellow inquisitor. Of course, with you, your subjects are dead
before
they enter your care. But you see how our terminology is similar, yes? Subjects? And “advisor” is
so
like “reviver”, isn't it? They take equal liberties with meaning, I think. We “advise” our subjects just as meaningfully as you “revive” yours. I doubt that our subjects feel that much useful advice has been imparted by the process, and your subjects, I think I can safely say, don't exactly feel
recovered
, mmm?' The hostility in the man's eyes contrasted horribly with the smile on his lips. ‘So, yes, Hopkins is how you should think of me. I almost always use that name in a session. It's a joke, of sorts. My colleagues believe it's a movie reference, which is true in a way, but not the one they think. Do you have any inklings, Jonah?'

Jonah shook his head, but part of him thought he knew.

The man's face fell. ‘Shame, shame. No matter. But we have
business to attend to, yes? So we'll begin, in earnest. Let me explain. My employers wish to know the whereabouts of Tess Neil. You have already claimed not to know. So, too, has your friend, Mr Geary. I believe you, but you are faced with a problem, because my beliefs are irrelevant. You must convince everyone who would ever conceivably wish to know.' He paused and gave another pointed look to the camera. ‘That task can be difficult. Achieving it requires some considerable skill, if I say so myself. In recent times, another route to certainty has opened up, given – ironically – the services of a reviver. When it has been deemed important that the subject remains alive, of course, that option is unavailable. And if the questioning – shall we call it
pre-mortem
questioning – fails to be conclusive, a revival is a useful thing to fall back on.'

At this, Hopkins began to put latex gloves on his hands. ‘Now, you're not to worry,' he said. ‘I pride myself, I really do. I promise you, today there will be no need to fall back on anything. It is down to me to help you be as …
convincing
as possible.'

Reaching out with a gloved hand, Hopkins wiped away the tears that were falling freely from Jonah's eyes. ‘There, now,' he said, that horribly genuine smile back on his face. ‘We have work to do.'

Hopkins turned to the table just out of Jonah's sight. Jonah closed his eyes, hearing the clink and rattle as Hopkins examined the tools of his trade.

The room was warm but Jonah started to shiver; whatever had torn in his back in the collision was becoming more and more painful as a result, but he couldn't stop shaking. The pain relief he'd woken to was entirely gone, now.

‘Jonah,' said Hopkins. ‘Open your eyes.'

He did as he was told.

‘When I started my career,' said Hopkins, ‘I had a fondness for brutality. Getting the truth was the goal and brutality certainly seemed to achieve it. People like to think that such terrible pain makes the subject lose consciousness. Sometimes, yes, but rarely in the face of an active threat. After all, pain focuses the mind. That's why it
exists.
' As he spoke he lifted a scalpel from the table and held it in front of Jonah, turning it over in his hand. ‘But listen to this: “It has always been recognized that this method of interrogation, by putting men to the torture, is useless. The wretches say whatever comes into their heads and whatever they think one wants to believe.” You know who said that? Napoleon. And the problems were known even before
his
time. But each generation thinks they know better. I was young. I thought a skilled practitioner had the experience to know what to trust, what to discard …' He returned the scalpel and picked up a small bone
saw. ‘My revelation was this: the greatest skill is to extract the truth
without any physical harm.
With no
outward
sign that anything has happened at all. I'm a hopeless idealist, I know, but there are practical benefits. It allows a subject to be questioned repeatedly, and lets you keep them as a healthy prisoner for as long as they're useful. The difficulty is
speed.
With things like sleep deprivation and waterboarding it can take so much
time
to break a subject down. The longer it takes, the greater the risk that the subject becomes so traumatized that they cease to know what is truth and what is desperate invention. And if
they
don't even know, how can we?' He returned the saw. This time, he chose a long thin metal spike. ‘So with time pressing, brutality is often the best option. I came to realize that it was my destiny to refine the art. I wasn't alone in the thought. We have a common acquaintance, you and I, beyond Michael Andreas. You knew Kendrick, yes? Kendrick thought torture outdated, that revival was cleaner and faster. I despised the idea. Perfection is to get the truth without any physical harm, yet Kendrick would have us
kill
a subject as the very first step? That is
defeat
; he thought it was progress. Nowadays, if a subject is considered expendable – and believe me, that is
most
of them – they kill them at once and hand them to the revivers for interrogation. Barbarians …' He caressed the metal spike, then shook his head and looked away from Jonah, his eyes unfocused. ‘People like me are looked down on now,' he said, sounding melancholic. ‘
Artists
, spoken of in the same breath as basement electrocutioners, as if we're scab-faced thugs caring little for the quality of information extracted.' He reached to his table of equipment once more, setting down the spike and returning with what looked like a small wire cutter. ‘I used to be the most important employee they had, before the revivers came. I could take all the time I wanted. An artist needs to practise their art, and we used to have so many to practise on. Just a trickle now, Jonah. It's enough to make a grown man cry.'

Hopkins fell silent for a moment, then seemed to shake off his
distraction. ‘These are mostly for show,' he said, using the wire cutter to gesture to his table. ‘For a particularly
special
subject we might occasionally peel the flesh, either from them or from a loved one – the sight of your child's blood is
such
an incentive, as you can imagine. Such brutality is typically used to make a
point
, though. To set an example, say. Nothing to do with information retrieval.' He set the wire cutter down, and returned with a glass vial in one hand and a hypodermic syringe in the other. ‘So you see, I'm not going to mutilate you. Isn't that good news?' He up-ended the vial and half filled the syringe, bringing it close to Jonah's face for a moment, smiling at the terror visible there. ‘Don't worry, I'm not injecting this into you. This is much more interesting.' Hopkins waggled the syringe and nodded. ‘I've used it all, you know. Jellyfish, bee, scorpion. All the tricks the animal kingdom has for us. My favourite used to be a little known tropical jellyfish, a tiny thing. A human would hardly notice being stung by it and it escaped our attention for many years. Yet for its size, the sting is particularly effective because it also injects something that amplifies the neural response to pain. Wonderful efficiency. Ten times more painful without having to generate all that extra venom. Then our good folk in the lab came up with something better. You ever hear of the bullet ant, Jonah? They say its sting feels like being shot, hence the name. Trying to figure out its secret, they wondered if the jellyfish's trick couldn't be made to work alongside it. They came up with this. You know what you get? A thousand-fold increase. Don't even have to inject the stuff.' Hopkins reached back to the table. A moment later, he returned holding a long cotton swab stick in one hand and a small glass beaker in the other. In the base of the beaker was some liquid. ‘When it soaks into the skin, any sensation at all makes your nerve endings
scream.
I've diluted this, don't worry. It's not full strength.'

Hopkins dipped the cotton into the liquid and dabbed it on Jonah's cheek. For a moment it simply felt cold; then it was like
fingernails digging into his skin, pushing harder, the pressure increasing until it felt like the flesh would burst. His hands struggled against the straps holding him down, urgently wanting to get at his offending skin and tear it away. Jonah heard himself start to wail but all his attention was on the small piece of his cheek that was burning now, an intense, white-hot pain that—

It was gone.

Jonah breathed in short, stunned bursts.

Hopkins smiled. ‘You see how quickly it stops? The pain is extreme, but precise. The real beauty of it is that there's no damage, not even inflammation. It allows repeated use, even when targeting more sensitive tissue. This is best demonstrated by a single drop of a stronger solution, applied to one eye. Short-lived, but unbearable. Don't take my word for it, though.' Smiling, Hopkins set the cotton swab and glass beaker on the table beside him, and flicked the intercom. ‘Take the word of your friend.'

Jonah shook his head, the despair in his soul deepening with his fear for Never.
No
, he tried to say, but it just came out as a moan, again and again, growing in volume while Hopkins turned to the intercom.

‘Begin.'

Knowing what was coming, Jonah thrashed against his restraints. Hopkins watched with amusement. Suddenly there was a muffled roar over the speaker, a horrifying cry of agony. Jonah struggled harder, his tears uncontrolled as the stifled screaming continued. Five, ten, twenty seconds.

Then it stopped. Drained, Jonah lay still.

Hopkins flicked the intercom off. ‘The nearest correlative experience is having your eye burnt out with an oxyacetylene torch. The comparison, I assure you, is not simply guesswork.' He smiled. ‘But when the pain stops, it stops entirely. No damage done. Think of a bad tooth, the worst pain you've ever known, pain you believed would scar you for life. Then you visit the dentist, and it's like it didn't happen at all. The mind forgets, soon enough, even with this. But after the fourth or fifth time, there's a moment, a sweet spot, where I can ask any question and get an honest answer. The mind is clear enough to understand, yet desperate enough to tell. No blood. No marking. Better than your
revivals
, Jonah.' He reached out to Jonah's face and undid the straps on the mask again. ‘Now tell me one more time. Have you had any communication with Tess Neil since the fire at Reese-Farthing?'

Jonah shook his head. When he spoke, he wasn't even sure if what he said was audible. ‘No. Please. No.'

‘Good,' said Hopkins. ‘I'd say you would convince maybe three people out of four. Seventy-five per cent. We're making progress.'

Jonah looked up to the corner of the room, seeing the camera. He felt like he was already dead, the subject of some hellish revival. ‘Tell Kendrick,' he said, stuttering. ‘Tell him to go fuck himself.'

Hopkins grinned. ‘I already did. Kendrick is no longer with us. He had a disagreement with the management. Thankfully, everything is now in the hands of those with the will to do what's necessary. Now, Jonah. Two drops, this time. One in each eye. But I'll give you the choice. Whose turn is it? Your friend again? Or you?'