25. Kalev
KALEV
The first thing I notice is the cold. Not the normal cold of an air-conditioned facility—this is a cold that bites straight to the bone, a creeping chill that slides under armor and skin like a thief in the night.
My wrists are cuffed behind me, wrists slick with old blood that’s crusted dry and beginning to itch.
My breathing is shallow, my mouth dry, and every muscle in my body is telling me to run—but none of them are cooperating.
I open my eyes.
White light. Harsh and relentless. It doesn’t reflect off surfaces so much as it pierces them, bleaching color out of the room until everything is sharp lines and sharp edges. Concrete walls. Metal chair. No windows. No softness. No mercy.
The air hums with a low, mechanical vibration—like the building itself is breathing. That hum presses against my ribs as though it expects a response.
My head thumps, memory slow like molasses in gravity. I remember the evacuation pod. Her face behind the viewport. Her voice breaking the silence with one word I never intended to speak aloud: love. I remember the floor falling away beneath us—her sobs trailing me like echoes in a tomb.
Then nothing. Darkness. And now this.
I test my wrists. The cuffs don’t budge. Not a click. Not even a shiver. Just cold metal biting into my skin and a reminder that I’m not in charge here.
I lift my head. A figure steps forward—tall, calibrated, face obscured by the reflective sheen of an armored visor. I can’t see his eyes, but I feel them—like knives gliding over exposed bone.
“Good morning,” he says, voice smooth and unsettlingly calm. “Or is it still night for you?”
His tone is casual, but there’s steel underneath it. Like he’s testing water with a blade.
I don’t answer.
He strides toward me, each step barely making a sound, and circles behind the chair. I sense him more than see him, like tension in the air coiling, tightening.
“Coalition Command thanks you for your cooperation,” he says, almost conversational. “You’ve given them quite the spectacle.”
I lift a brow. “You look like you’re still adjusting to the idea.”
“Oh, I’m quite comfortable,” he replies. “You see, you’ve given them exactly what they wanted.”
That should mean something. But I’ve learned long ago not to react before the full sentence lands.
“What was that?” I ask, voice dry.
“They’ve disavowed you.”
I let the words settle for a heartbeat before I respond. “Bad theater.”
The interrogator doesn’t smile. Doesn’t flinch.
“You’re labeled a traitor. A renegade operative. A fugitive. Your actions on Yareth Prime have been called ‘unauthorized,’ ‘politically destabilizing,’ and ‘in violation of allied protocols.’”
“Deny it,” I say.
“That’s the thing about public rebukes,” he says, leaning in just slightly. “They’re sanctioned. They’re broadcast. They’re irreversible.”
Great. I’ve been erased. A ghost to my own side, captured by the enemy like some footnote in a war diary.
He steps back.
I taste dust and iron in my mouth—either from the air or from having ground my teeth too hard. I let out a slow breath.
“So,” I say, “I’m a relic.”
“No,” he answers. “You’re a bargaining chip.”
That’s when they bring in the first set of restraints—padding over my head, soft blindfold wrapping around my eyes until all I can see is pitch. Instinct screams, but I don’t fight.
Not yet.
I feel them tighten straps around my ankles and then around my torso like some sadistic straightjacket. The bindings are precise, calculated—not meant to kill me, just to make sure I can’t charm my way out of a wet paper sack.
Then the chair rumbles beneath me.
They’re moving me.
I don’t know where. I don’t care. My breath becomes the only marker of time: inhale… exhale… inhale… It’s the only thing I can control.
The ride stops. The restraints loosen just enough for them to hook sensors to my temples. Pins. Tiny and cold like frostbite.
The interrogator speaks again—his voice from somewhere in front of me.
“Let’s begin,” he says. No flourish. No preamble.
The first wave is all lecture—facts, half-truths, strategic mythology meant to disorient. They want to drown me in context so that when the pain comes I won’t know what’s real.
They turn the lights down.
Not off. Down.
A hazy gray replaces the harsh white. Enough to see shadows, not enough to see faces.
The first question lands like a drop of ice water.
“Who sent you?”
My jaw is clamped. My spine is steel. They expect this. They designed this. They want resistance, not cooperation—for they feed off struggle like a starving beast.
I smile inwardly, bitter.
“No one,” I say.
“That can’t be true,” they say.
“Try me.”
For days—hours or weeks; time loses structure here—they cycle through psychological pressure. Lights that flicker. Silence that booms. Humming that pulses against the skull like a heartbeat that isn’t mine.
They try empathy first—stories of shared losses, of greater good, of peace and suffering and hope.
I listen without blinking.
Then they try guilt—personalized messages about lives I’ve ended, people I’ve hurt, wars I’ve waged in silence.
My hands don’t flinch.
They try isolation—to make me think I’m alone.
They fail.
Because in the blackness behind my eyes, there’s a voice.
Soft.
Insistent.
“I’m alive because she got out.”
I clutch to that like a lifeline.
They escalate.
Now it’s physical.
Twitching electrodes against the nerve centers. A heat lamp that burns without damage. Cold that stings every pore.
They watch for a crack.
They expect a compromise.
They think pain equals truth.
They’re wrong.
I don’t give them that.
Time bleeds together—each session ends in gray emptiness, each beginning in sterile lights and the hum beneath the floor. My body is exhausted, but my mind isn’t done yet.
I think of Leah.
How she fought to keep moving even when blood and grit and instinct screamed for rest.
How she looked at me before the hatch closed—like I was both everything and nothing.
I use her face in the dark. Like prayer. Like fuel.
I whisper into the blackness when there’s nothing else to say:
Something mattered.
And that’s where I cling: to the matter of her escape.
To the belief that she lived.
To the hope that her future—whatever it holds—is worth enduring every second of this.
They come back again. Another interrogator. New faces. Fresh scripts. Sharper tools.
“Tell us the location of agent Trin,” he says.
“Ask her,” I murmur through blood-dry lips.
The man blinks.
I smile, toothless and feral.
“Not gonna happen,” I say.
He tries again—slow and methodical, like he thinks I’m an equation that just needs the right variables.
I give him silence.
Then laugh—soft, low, humorless.
Because there’s a truth even they can’t take from me:
They may control my body.
They may twist my name into propaganda.
But they will never get her from me.
Not while I still breathe.
I have nothing left to lose?—
Except hope.
And I’m not giving that up.