Black Glass

Prologue

"We are going to play a game."

I stood perfectly still with a practiced patience in front of the American. We were alone in a room with nothing but two chairs and a small table to separate them. The room was dimly lit, morbid and cold; an appropriate dark pit where men were sent to rot and to suffer. I called it home.

"Perhaps I take liberty with the word. It implies that you and I are equals."

Silence. I expected it. Welcomed it. They often did not speak at first. I had to coax them, probe them and strike at their barriers. Uttering even a single word to me was the beginning of submission.

"You remind me of myself from years ago. I too was held by soldiers. Foreign soldiers. I thought that my life was over...what little of it that I had. But I learned through my captivity that pain unlocks our capacity to be more than what we are. Our true selves. You see in life there are those who cling to it, and there are those who deserve it. Let's find out which one you are."

He remained steeled.

"Shall we begin?"

It always started the same. My playthings would be brought in and forcefully made to sit on the chair in my room. Then I would begin my work. There were no complications. There were no politics. There was no moral quandary. It was simply about the work. That was how I preferred it. The world out there ceased to matter. Time was of no importance. My room stood isolated, free of all the noise out there that would dare contaminate it. And my blood would flow like liquid fire.

The moment they had brought in the man before me I knew that I would be facing something riveting. My employer had captured a veteran soldier. His name had been mentioned: Sergeant Chris Walker. His crime was knowing the locations of two of my employers' missing lieutenants. I had no interest in their war. I did not care for who my clients or employers were or which side they chose to call their own. What I did in my room was all that mattered. It was my art, and Walker would give me a wonderful canvas. He was a true patriot, which I saw as a euphemism for many things and none of them were flattering. But it meant that he would not talk. It meant that he would resist. It meant that I would be entertained and breaking him would be a true reward.

I studied the soldier as he sat bounded in the chair. His breathing was slow and measured, and he sat up straight with an expected discipline for someone of his background. He had been trained not to show fear. He had been trained to endure both mental and physical pain. Most days I interrogated spies or weaklings. Snakes of deception with minds only for self-preservation. Not men of virtue and raw power like Walker. That was why I would enjoy it all the more. To ensure that I did I had refused my employers' offer of his personal file. It would spew out details about his life and family and perhaps even offer a titbit about his sexual orientation. But that file was a blunt instrument that took the spirit out of it. Walker was to be my puzzle. It was my game and my design. I required no assistance or forced perceptions. I invoked Locke's philosophy of Tabula Rasa; I entered the room like a newly born child, with a blank slate, and everything would be formed as I lived it. I simply had to play and I would find his pressure points with my mind alone.

The true game was about understanding pain in order to identify which weapon would best inflict it. Some men feared pain itself. Some men responded only to very specific kinds of injury. Some men feared the clock more than the agony itself. Some men feared the weight of threatening words alone. But all men broke in the end. In spite of myself I struggled to hide my smile. I took my seat in front of the soldier, savouring the minutes I delayed the game; the sweet taste of pain already in my mind's eye. My weapon of choice, and my indulgence, would be patience.

"I have a question for you. Is the information you have truly worth suffering for? I ask simply to offer you one last chance to reconsider the mistake you made facing me."