GWOT III - Anus
Jul. 28th, 2021 06:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT III - Anus
[I am reliably informed that trigger warnings reinforce undesirable self identifications. But since everyone's got one, everyone should take a deep breath and decide whether or not they want to read this.]
People think of interrogation as an event. "I'm going to interrogate Al today." "I have an interrogation scheduled for 2 PM." "These are the topics I'm going to bring up in today's interrogation."
The difference between an interview and interrogation is coercion. In an interview, the subject is free to walk away. Or run. Oh, there may be consequences - loss of job, criminal charges, etc. But still an interview, either pre- or post- something or other.
An interrogation is coercive. Not free to get up and walk away. Exhibit A. Muah. Thoughtfully fitted with leg irons, handcuffs cuffed in front, a belly chain connecting the two, and a separate set of handcuffs connecting the belly chain to the eye bolt in the middle of the concrete table.
In the law enforcement world, that's about as much coercion as it takes. The rest is promises and threats. We'll let you go. We'll provide you sympathy while ticking all the boxes on the 'maximum charges' cheat sheet. We'll be understanding and supportive as long as you are confessional and providing us the intel.
If you wanted a plea deal, you'd shut the fuck up and there'd be a lawyer working that angle. You poor dumb bastard.
The difference between a cop and a prisoner is that the latter is fuel for the prison industrial complex and the former is just a cog in the gears.
But I'm not a prisoner. I'm in the hands of Homeland. I've had about a day in holding - a day of no sleep, of several hours with no food followed by two meals served an hour part, continuously lit cells and piped in screams and cries. At least I hope they're piped, because those fuckers are having a rough time.
I'm also injured. The traditional companion to arrest, like a garnish on a dish, is to have something broken for you. And the arrest and control team, mildly irritated, had stamped on my left hand repeatedly until it broke. (To be fair, I might have had a firearm in it at the time.)
Then they'd ground the bones of my fingers into the concrete floor and laughed as I screamed. I was afraid to touch the wounds, the ugly clots with fingernail pieces sticking out, but now and again I'd run it under the flow of water from the weak prison toilet-sink to change the intensity of the pain.
I also had some things to think about. Shane Shreve had worked for me like a dog, for years. He'd let a woman die through incompetence, not malice, and I'd ridden him hard for it ever since. He'd attached himself to me as his own hope of salvation.
And despite his flaws, and his issues, and quite frankly that he'd been an un-co for DIA, he'd atoned for that first sin.
Now he was dead. Sidewalked. Blown away. About three feet from me. I could almost hear his plainitive voice. "Boss? Boss?"
He wasn't the only one who'd caught a bullet. The Vice President of Human Resources had taken a bullet to the brain pan. I'd had just a glimpse of her body, just enough to be certain. No idea if it had been murder or suicide. I wouldn't put it past her either way. We had ... reasons. Hundreds of reasons. Most of them in Colorado now.
I could have taken that route. Maybe I should have. That was the reason I hadn't gotten rid of the gun. Still making up my mind. Too long.
They'd only asked me one question.
"Where are the H-1Bs?"
I had images on the first, ostensibly unlocked level of my phone. An artful display, a slide show of casual murder. A lie.
But it wouldn't be in character for me to confess to murder quite so soon.
This was not going to be a good day out. There was going to be some suffering here.
Right now, my own imagination was doing all the work. Quite correct, minimum energy approach. Let the subject torture himself.
With that, my interrogator entered the cell, was locked in, and before I had a chance to look at him, smacked me in the face.
Oh shit that hurt. Worse than a kubotan strike. Brass knuckles? A sap?
"Eyes down!" he roared. "Don't fucking look at me!"
Ok, that was not a problem. Oh, he just wanted me to not have any warning when he smacked me on the other side of the head with the barrel of the handgun.
Blood dripped onto the table from my cheek where the sight had split it open.
"Now. Where the fuck did you put the H-1Bs?"
I looked up at him, deliberately met his eyes.
"Go fuck yourself," I explained.
Oh, this was going to hurt.
It did.
But he had to get help. I kept trying to dodge, so he got up and buzzed for a couple faceless goons to brace my left hand against the table while he ground the butt of the handgun against the injuries.
Oh wow. That's Daddy level there. My vision went red, then gray. I held my breath to encourage this.
When I was propped up by the goons a minute later, he was ranting. I was dizzy and couldn't hear him. Too much inputs.
So he ground a thumb into the nail beds, one at a time.
I looked up at him, blinked.
Screamed. Why not? It's interrogation, scream as much as I fucking want. It's not like he's not going to hit me if I stay quiet, or make it hurt less if I don't yell. He's an interrogator, not my father.
He flinched and hit himself with the barrel of the handgun.
One of the goons stifled a chuckle.
I laughed.
"Did that hurt?" I asked, mockingly.
"You think you're a tough guy?" he roared. Started to level the barrel at me. The goons flinched but did not pull away. Weird. They shoud have racked me between them, spreading out so that they didn't catch a piece of skull.
They left the room.
Still chained to the table, dribbling blood.
Next was a cell extraction team.
The team leader gently grabbed me by the head, waited untli I could blink back at him.
"Ok, Echo, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Walk like a gentleman or we tune you up and drag you."
Fair cop. He just didn't want his people hurt.
Fair is fair.
"I appreciate that. I may change my mind next time. But I don't think I can keep my feet."
We compromised. I did my best to walk, they carried me for the rest of it, I didn't delay them or fight.
Until I saw what was in the room they were about to drag me into.
A large, heavy wooden chair with buckles for wrists and ankles and various fittings. Including a cable that led to a separate enclosure, with plexiglass to protect the operator at the controls.
And right in the middle of the seat, a butt plug with a conductive copper tip and ring.
On like Donkey Kong.
But the control team was good at their jobs. They'd let me see the chair, let me tighten up all my muscles preparatory to fighting, and then used that to hunch me and propel me forward.
Hands behind my shoulders shoved up, hard, propelling me forward by my inward-pushed arms in such a way that I didn't have an opposing muscle group to resist with.
I thought they'd put the paper gown on me as an anti-suicide precaution. Or useless modesty. Maybe, but also convenience for ripping it off.
The damned butt plug was even lubricated. Obviously with a conductive lubricant. They didn't want to kill me, quite yet, and anal tissue bleeds profusely when abused.
My point of view suddenly changed to what some people call God mode and others call a security camera mode.
I watched, out of body, as Echo 18 was handled into the chair. Impersonal hands spread the legs apart, someone with long gloves reached in from behind, through the hole in the chair back, to get the alignment right. And it was "Gentleman, be seated" in Homeland Interrogation Cell Whatever The Fuck The Number Is.
I looked. I could see it from my new vantage.
Six one nine.
Really. I mean, really? Either colossal coincidence or a really, really sick joke.
Any fan of rock and roll knows that Biko died in Police Room 619.
Oh, the butt plug hurt a little. But only because I hadn't been on the receiving end of consensual anal sex for a decade, or nonconsensual anal sex since I'd gotten away from that damned therapist.
The problem was that they had completely removed the gown and a little clamp was being attached to the foreskin of my penis.
While I was distracted, they'd gotten the ankles down. I told you they were good.
Then the arms. I could tell from the cold circles that the ankles also had electrical conductors.
The arms did not. Running electricity through my chest had a one in six chance of ending the fun early, more if the operator was stupid or a trained medic with a crash cart was not nearby.
I didn't get a good look at the operator, as whoever they were had already been seated and neither my eyes nor my out of body eyes had a good vantage point on them.
I tried going back into my body to check. Oh that hurt. Let's not do that again.
A voice spoke from the ceiling. My interrogator, on speaker.
"So, this is the point where I ask you the fucking question, or I hurt you. Let's just hurt you."
The operator sighed slightly and touched a button protected by a flip-up cover. I realized that the chair had been designed so that I could see the operator's hands. So I would know what was coming.
PAIN.
I couldn't breathe I couldn't think I couldn't because there was PAIN and the PAIN linked my anus - which clenched - to my penis - which twitched helplessly and I rode the lightning. More rock music.
Some indefinite time later, the pain stopped but my anal muscles had clenched on the butt plug so hard that it wasn't going anywhere. Possibly ever.
This would be a good time to die now, I wished from my ceiling viewpoint.
I knew from our own fragmentary intel that if I were female, the clamp would have been to one or both labia. I also knew they'd made a mistake. Whoever set this up was circumcised. The foreskin doesn't have all that many nerves compared to the glans penis. They'd - pardon the expression - fucked up. It could hurt a whole lot worse than this.
As for example, when I pissed myself and the liquid conducted electricity up and into my bladder.
As long as I wasn't in my body, I wasn't listening. And if I wasn't listening, I couldn't answer. And if the pain was too much, too fast, I couldn't breathe. And that meant I passed out.
That was why there was an operator. Cooly efficient. The interrogator was in charge of trying to break me, of developing a psychological rapport. That wasn't going to happen, I hated psychologists.
The operator's job was to inflict pain and suffering on me, at the command, but not actually hurt me. That was why they'd attached the same sensors you put on an ER patient - EKG leads, finger sensor for O2 sat.
Oh wow. I remember this scene from Heinlein's _Revolt in 2100_.
"Hey," I mumbled during a break in the pain. "Hey. I want to say something."
"Yes?" came from the ceiling.
"I know where the H-1Bs are."
"Go on."
"They're around the corner and to the right up your a____ ...."
And there was PAIN.
Quite a lot of it.
I'd been mutilated. My left hand would probably never work again.
I'd lost people close to me. My own death was imminent.
And I was in an incredible amount of agonizing pain.
If I could disrespect him enough, he'd damage me too much and kill me.
I planned my strategy from the vantage point of the ceiling. Dipping down into my body as needed. Evaluating. Testing.
Sorry, Echo 18, this is not a minor matter. Hundreds of people depend on your screaming. Scream for them, Echo 18.
I'd been going to work, doing the job for months and months. I'd lied. I'd cheated. I'd killed and I'd murdered. And I had also tortured.
The guard who'd opened the gate for the truck bomb. I'd broken his hand with a sledge hammer. Iced it when he told me everything. Then I'd told him what I was going to do to him. Compressed his neck arteries until he was a vegetable. Did compressions only CPR on him until he died. Waited five minutes with no breathing to be sure of brain death. Then resumed CPR and called an utterly fake, utterly futile code.
I had already taken longer in my dying than he had. But I'd just learned an important lesson.
Dying is forever. Life is the part that's short.
An endless time later, someone had thrown a bucket of water on me.
That either meant no shock for a bit, or bored now and they would likely kill me by turning up the dial to 11 and taking a smoke break.
"Yes," I murmured warily.
The interrogator was in the room now. He had a leather gloved hand on my head, moving it around in lazy circles.
"You know you've shat yourself."
Really? Do you think?
"So, what did you do with the H-1Bs?"
I looked around. No goons. An operator. And of course, cameras.
"Followed Homeland operations policy," I said quietly. "Sidewalked the fuckers."
He let go of my head. Stepped back.
"Say what?"
[I am reliably informed that trigger warnings reinforce undesirable self identifications. But since everyone's got one, everyone should take a deep breath and decide whether or not they want to read this.]
People think of interrogation as an event. "I'm going to interrogate Al today." "I have an interrogation scheduled for 2 PM." "These are the topics I'm going to bring up in today's interrogation."
The difference between an interview and interrogation is coercion. In an interview, the subject is free to walk away. Or run. Oh, there may be consequences - loss of job, criminal charges, etc. But still an interview, either pre- or post- something or other.
An interrogation is coercive. Not free to get up and walk away. Exhibit A. Muah. Thoughtfully fitted with leg irons, handcuffs cuffed in front, a belly chain connecting the two, and a separate set of handcuffs connecting the belly chain to the eye bolt in the middle of the concrete table.
In the law enforcement world, that's about as much coercion as it takes. The rest is promises and threats. We'll let you go. We'll provide you sympathy while ticking all the boxes on the 'maximum charges' cheat sheet. We'll be understanding and supportive as long as you are confessional and providing us the intel.
If you wanted a plea deal, you'd shut the fuck up and there'd be a lawyer working that angle. You poor dumb bastard.
The difference between a cop and a prisoner is that the latter is fuel for the prison industrial complex and the former is just a cog in the gears.
But I'm not a prisoner. I'm in the hands of Homeland. I've had about a day in holding - a day of no sleep, of several hours with no food followed by two meals served an hour part, continuously lit cells and piped in screams and cries. At least I hope they're piped, because those fuckers are having a rough time.
I'm also injured. The traditional companion to arrest, like a garnish on a dish, is to have something broken for you. And the arrest and control team, mildly irritated, had stamped on my left hand repeatedly until it broke. (To be fair, I might have had a firearm in it at the time.)
Then they'd ground the bones of my fingers into the concrete floor and laughed as I screamed. I was afraid to touch the wounds, the ugly clots with fingernail pieces sticking out, but now and again I'd run it under the flow of water from the weak prison toilet-sink to change the intensity of the pain.
I also had some things to think about. Shane Shreve had worked for me like a dog, for years. He'd let a woman die through incompetence, not malice, and I'd ridden him hard for it ever since. He'd attached himself to me as his own hope of salvation.
And despite his flaws, and his issues, and quite frankly that he'd been an un-co for DIA, he'd atoned for that first sin.
Now he was dead. Sidewalked. Blown away. About three feet from me. I could almost hear his plainitive voice. "Boss? Boss?"
He wasn't the only one who'd caught a bullet. The Vice President of Human Resources had taken a bullet to the brain pan. I'd had just a glimpse of her body, just enough to be certain. No idea if it had been murder or suicide. I wouldn't put it past her either way. We had ... reasons. Hundreds of reasons. Most of them in Colorado now.
I could have taken that route. Maybe I should have. That was the reason I hadn't gotten rid of the gun. Still making up my mind. Too long.
They'd only asked me one question.
"Where are the H-1Bs?"
I had images on the first, ostensibly unlocked level of my phone. An artful display, a slide show of casual murder. A lie.
But it wouldn't be in character for me to confess to murder quite so soon.
This was not going to be a good day out. There was going to be some suffering here.
Right now, my own imagination was doing all the work. Quite correct, minimum energy approach. Let the subject torture himself.
With that, my interrogator entered the cell, was locked in, and before I had a chance to look at him, smacked me in the face.
Oh shit that hurt. Worse than a kubotan strike. Brass knuckles? A sap?
"Eyes down!" he roared. "Don't fucking look at me!"
Ok, that was not a problem. Oh, he just wanted me to not have any warning when he smacked me on the other side of the head with the barrel of the handgun.
Blood dripped onto the table from my cheek where the sight had split it open.
"Now. Where the fuck did you put the H-1Bs?"
I looked up at him, deliberately met his eyes.
"Go fuck yourself," I explained.
Oh, this was going to hurt.
It did.
But he had to get help. I kept trying to dodge, so he got up and buzzed for a couple faceless goons to brace my left hand against the table while he ground the butt of the handgun against the injuries.
Oh wow. That's Daddy level there. My vision went red, then gray. I held my breath to encourage this.
When I was propped up by the goons a minute later, he was ranting. I was dizzy and couldn't hear him. Too much inputs.
So he ground a thumb into the nail beds, one at a time.
I looked up at him, blinked.
Screamed. Why not? It's interrogation, scream as much as I fucking want. It's not like he's not going to hit me if I stay quiet, or make it hurt less if I don't yell. He's an interrogator, not my father.
He flinched and hit himself with the barrel of the handgun.
One of the goons stifled a chuckle.
I laughed.
"Did that hurt?" I asked, mockingly.
"You think you're a tough guy?" he roared. Started to level the barrel at me. The goons flinched but did not pull away. Weird. They shoud have racked me between them, spreading out so that they didn't catch a piece of skull.
They left the room.
Still chained to the table, dribbling blood.
Next was a cell extraction team.
The team leader gently grabbed me by the head, waited untli I could blink back at him.
"Ok, Echo, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Walk like a gentleman or we tune you up and drag you."
Fair cop. He just didn't want his people hurt.
Fair is fair.
"I appreciate that. I may change my mind next time. But I don't think I can keep my feet."
We compromised. I did my best to walk, they carried me for the rest of it, I didn't delay them or fight.
Until I saw what was in the room they were about to drag me into.
A large, heavy wooden chair with buckles for wrists and ankles and various fittings. Including a cable that led to a separate enclosure, with plexiglass to protect the operator at the controls.
And right in the middle of the seat, a butt plug with a conductive copper tip and ring.
On like Donkey Kong.
But the control team was good at their jobs. They'd let me see the chair, let me tighten up all my muscles preparatory to fighting, and then used that to hunch me and propel me forward.
Hands behind my shoulders shoved up, hard, propelling me forward by my inward-pushed arms in such a way that I didn't have an opposing muscle group to resist with.
I thought they'd put the paper gown on me as an anti-suicide precaution. Or useless modesty. Maybe, but also convenience for ripping it off.
The damned butt plug was even lubricated. Obviously with a conductive lubricant. They didn't want to kill me, quite yet, and anal tissue bleeds profusely when abused.
My point of view suddenly changed to what some people call God mode and others call a security camera mode.
I watched, out of body, as Echo 18 was handled into the chair. Impersonal hands spread the legs apart, someone with long gloves reached in from behind, through the hole in the chair back, to get the alignment right. And it was "Gentleman, be seated" in Homeland Interrogation Cell Whatever The Fuck The Number Is.
I looked. I could see it from my new vantage.
Six one nine.
Really. I mean, really? Either colossal coincidence or a really, really sick joke.
Any fan of rock and roll knows that Biko died in Police Room 619.
Oh, the butt plug hurt a little. But only because I hadn't been on the receiving end of consensual anal sex for a decade, or nonconsensual anal sex since I'd gotten away from that damned therapist.
The problem was that they had completely removed the gown and a little clamp was being attached to the foreskin of my penis.
While I was distracted, they'd gotten the ankles down. I told you they were good.
Then the arms. I could tell from the cold circles that the ankles also had electrical conductors.
The arms did not. Running electricity through my chest had a one in six chance of ending the fun early, more if the operator was stupid or a trained medic with a crash cart was not nearby.
I didn't get a good look at the operator, as whoever they were had already been seated and neither my eyes nor my out of body eyes had a good vantage point on them.
I tried going back into my body to check. Oh that hurt. Let's not do that again.
A voice spoke from the ceiling. My interrogator, on speaker.
"So, this is the point where I ask you the fucking question, or I hurt you. Let's just hurt you."
The operator sighed slightly and touched a button protected by a flip-up cover. I realized that the chair had been designed so that I could see the operator's hands. So I would know what was coming.
PAIN.
I couldn't breathe I couldn't think I couldn't because there was PAIN and the PAIN linked my anus - which clenched - to my penis - which twitched helplessly and I rode the lightning. More rock music.
Some indefinite time later, the pain stopped but my anal muscles had clenched on the butt plug so hard that it wasn't going anywhere. Possibly ever.
This would be a good time to die now, I wished from my ceiling viewpoint.
I knew from our own fragmentary intel that if I were female, the clamp would have been to one or both labia. I also knew they'd made a mistake. Whoever set this up was circumcised. The foreskin doesn't have all that many nerves compared to the glans penis. They'd - pardon the expression - fucked up. It could hurt a whole lot worse than this.
As for example, when I pissed myself and the liquid conducted electricity up and into my bladder.
As long as I wasn't in my body, I wasn't listening. And if I wasn't listening, I couldn't answer. And if the pain was too much, too fast, I couldn't breathe. And that meant I passed out.
That was why there was an operator. Cooly efficient. The interrogator was in charge of trying to break me, of developing a psychological rapport. That wasn't going to happen, I hated psychologists.
The operator's job was to inflict pain and suffering on me, at the command, but not actually hurt me. That was why they'd attached the same sensors you put on an ER patient - EKG leads, finger sensor for O2 sat.
Oh wow. I remember this scene from Heinlein's _Revolt in 2100_.
"Hey," I mumbled during a break in the pain. "Hey. I want to say something."
"Yes?" came from the ceiling.
"I know where the H-1Bs are."
"Go on."
"They're around the corner and to the right up your a____ ...."
And there was PAIN.
Quite a lot of it.
I'd been mutilated. My left hand would probably never work again.
I'd lost people close to me. My own death was imminent.
And I was in an incredible amount of agonizing pain.
If I could disrespect him enough, he'd damage me too much and kill me.
I planned my strategy from the vantage point of the ceiling. Dipping down into my body as needed. Evaluating. Testing.
Sorry, Echo 18, this is not a minor matter. Hundreds of people depend on your screaming. Scream for them, Echo 18.
I'd been going to work, doing the job for months and months. I'd lied. I'd cheated. I'd killed and I'd murdered. And I had also tortured.
The guard who'd opened the gate for the truck bomb. I'd broken his hand with a sledge hammer. Iced it when he told me everything. Then I'd told him what I was going to do to him. Compressed his neck arteries until he was a vegetable. Did compressions only CPR on him until he died. Waited five minutes with no breathing to be sure of brain death. Then resumed CPR and called an utterly fake, utterly futile code.
I had already taken longer in my dying than he had. But I'd just learned an important lesson.
Dying is forever. Life is the part that's short.
An endless time later, someone had thrown a bucket of water on me.
That either meant no shock for a bit, or bored now and they would likely kill me by turning up the dial to 11 and taking a smoke break.
"Yes," I murmured warily.
The interrogator was in the room now. He had a leather gloved hand on my head, moving it around in lazy circles.
"You know you've shat yourself."
Really? Do you think?
"So, what did you do with the H-1Bs?"
I looked around. No goons. An operator. And of course, cameras.
"Followed Homeland operations policy," I said quietly. "Sidewalked the fuckers."
He let go of my head. Stepped back.
"Say what?"
