Now I've finished breaking Faith,
I'll start sharing with you my 'near future' fantasy.
If you like it, I can promise you there's lots of it!
The background will become clear as it goes along,
sufficient to say:
Place: somewhere in the "civilised" world
Time: any day now.
THE INTERROGATION & PUNISHMENT CENTRE FOR GIRLS
Chapter I
'Abandon hope, all girls who enter here ...'
1
The bus drew up, tyres crunching on gravel. From our crouching-cell in the darkness, we could hear people disembarking, luggage being unloaded. The lock in the hatch-door opened, light flooded in. "Out!" The Guard grabbed Eva and Caterina by their arms and hauled them out to stand blinking in early daylight, I clambered out with them. We stood, legs apart, hands on buttocks, like we'd been trained. We were in a wire-fenced yard overshadowed by a huge, unlovely building, stark, rust-coloured walls pierced by blank, black-barred windows. A few passengers paused to look us up and down as we waited, bewildered. They were mostly young men, some in the uniforms of élite Officer Cadets, others wearing the dreaded lightning-flash insignia of the Military Security Police. The bus-guard handed each of us a folder, with our number, name and ID photo on the front. "In there! They'll tell you what to do."
He pointed up steps leading to a pretentious entrance in a curved tower that formed the centre of the building. As we walked briskly up, above the sound of crows cawing and the bus driving off, a shrill, piercing shriek made us start. It came from a narrow, horizontal barred slit-window to the left side of the steps. Other high-pitched cries mingled with men's shouts and sharp cracks came from a similar window on the other side. By the time we reached the doorway, such sounds were ringing in our ears, shaking us with dread.
And the inscription on the porch above the doors did nothing to reassure us, those few fearful words, INTERROGATION AND PUNISHMENT CENTRE FOR GIRLS, told us we had arrived at the place where our worst nightmares would seem trivial.
We entered a grandiose marbled foyer, where screams from below still echoed. In the centre stood a desk behind which sat a pretty yet hard-faced young woman, wearing a female version of MSP uniform. Beside the desk, bantering with her, stood a Cadet. I noticed a short, gleaming black, leather whip clipped to his belt. The woman held out her hand without a word. I gave her my folder, she glanced at it and at me, tapped briefly on a keyboard, returned the folder, did the same for the other two, then pointed to a door behind her, to the left. "Through there, along the walkway, into the Stripping Room."
My heart was pounding with fear, I could hear Caterina was sniffing, struggling to fight back tears. Our animal urge to flee was almost overwhelming our reason, yet so disoriented were we by our night-long journey in the bus-hatch, indeed by the whole long nightmare of our rendition, we had no idea which way to run. And the glimpse of that shiny whip was enough to tell me what kind of power now controlled our fate.
The door led to a covered way alongside a courtyard, visible through a metal-barred screen. In the centre of the sandy quadrangle stood a platform on which was a great wooden scaffold, two uprights, a crossbar, chains hanging from angle-bars at the top corners. And to our right were cages, metal-barred like lion cages in the zoo. In the shadows I could make out human figures, naked girls, lying, sitting, kneeling, crouching, deathly-pale faces, wide hopeless eyes gazing at us through the gloom. I hurried the two younger girls along, Caterina was close to hysterical, and Eva's expression was wild, demented.
Through a door at the end of the walkway, we came into an area where several men were standing, chatting. Their eyes all turned on us girls as we entered. A burly MSP Sergeant with a battle-hardened face was evidently in control of the space. His whip was in his hand, with it he pointed to a window in a wall to his right. There we handed our folders to another young woman, who did much the same as the first but didn't return them. Behind her I could see an office in which several like her were busy, all dressed in a smart MSP rig that included, below the regulation police shirt, a little black skirt and nice shiny knee-high boots.
"In here!" The Sergeant summoned us now through a cage door into an area partitioned off by another barred screen. The male audience could and did observe us through it. "Strip!" We all froze, the moment we knew was coming yet could not guard against! "STRIP!" he yelled, hitting the wooden table beside him with a sharp whiplash. "You can keep your knickers and bras on for now. Everything else OFF!"
No more delay, we ripped off our kit, tossed it on a bench running along the side wall. There was a chorus of whistles and glee when I pulled down my shorts to reveal my thong. I'd worn my lightest briefs for Corrective Labour, more comfortable than anything else for toiling at trash-picking in the slimy ooze of the Tip, and since the night of the riot when we were rounded up and I was picked out for Rendition, that's what I'd been wearing. There was excitement too when it became apparent that poor Caterina was wearing no bra, only a camisole – she looked pleadingly at the Sergeant, he just growled "Get that off!" and flicked his whip again.
"Untie your hair!" I unclipped my pony-tail, Caterina was fumbling to untie her plaits, I helped her, wondering if we'd be in trouble, but the Sergeant permitted this. "Now, all jewellery, watches, anything else. Give me that!" He'd spotted my watch, a good one, my eighteenth birthday present from Mum and Dad,. That went into his pocket, the other things - Caterina's necklace with its silver cross, Eva's ear-studs and bangles, all our hair-grips - into a cardboard box on the table.
Nearly naked, we stood "at the ready" once more, the Sergeant eyeing us up and down with obvious satisfaction. After he'd drunk in his fill, he gestured us out through the cage-door and across to one that opened onto the yard. He pointed across to the far side, "Down the steps there, into the Waiting Area. You'll be called to the Courtroom." We hurried across, passing close to the platform with the threatening scaffold, down a flight of steps and into the basement of the building. A tall young black Cadet lounging at a desk paused from reading a comic and waved us to a bench where we sat, silent, anxious.
We were near the source of the screams again, very near now. To our right, a passageway led to a brightly-lit place, and the cries of agony were coming from there. It was not just one voice, there were at least three, all young females, sometimes yelling, sometimes yelping, sometimes pleading, sometimes sobbing, often – and this was most terrifying of all – letting out long, high-pitched wails of unearthly desperation that cut through us as if we were being drawn into whatever unimaginable horrors they were experiencing.
We waited a long time. At one point, a girl came along the passageway from the place of horror. She was dressed in her undies like us, her face was ghostly white, she was visibly trembling. The Guard waved her to sit on another bench, opposite us. I gazed at her, trying to exchange at least a glance, but she just stared down at her quivering bare thighs, her hands clutching at the edge of the bench as if something was about to hurl itself at her slim, frail body.
At last the Guard's pager bleeped, he glanced at it and snapped "381152!" My number, I jumped to my feet, "Eulalia Merida, Sir!" He pointed to stairs at the end of the Waiting Area, I scuttled up them and found myself in the centre of a large, high room lit by large windows through which the morning sun was now shining. In front of me sat a man behind a desk, wearing a civilian suit and tie. To his left behind another desk a man in MSP uniform, and opposite him another man in civvies. Behind me I was aware of some more men. I stood at the ready.
The man in front of me was reading some papers, doubtless about me. At length he looked up. "381152 Eulalia Merida?" "Yes, Sir!" "You have been brought to the Interrogation and Punishment Centre for Girls. Do you understand what that means?" "Yes, Sir," I answered a little feebly, I didn't understand, but I knew it meant something very bad for me. "For the time being, you will be held in the Interrogation Unit, while your case is being investigated. As long as you behave correctly, obey all orders given you by any IPCG personnel instantly, and co-operate when you are questioned, you will retain your rights as a citizen and the protection of the Ministry of Justice. When the case against you has been prepared, you will be tried in this Court and sentenced to Punishment under the Civil Code. However, if you are disobedient or uncooperative, you will be stripped of your citizenship, deprived of the protection of the Ministry of Justice, and handed over to the Military Security Police for interrogation by a Special Interrogation Squad," (I quivered sharply at the mention of the notorious SIS) "tried by Tribune-Martial, and sentenced under Military Law. The choice is yours, I advise you to reflect on it very carefully. Do you understand?" "Yes, Sir, I understand." My voice was tense, hoarse. "Very well Eulalia, you will return now to the Stripping Room, where you will be registered as a prisoner and then you'll be directed down to the Interrogation Unit cells, where you will stay while you await interrogation."
A Cadet got up from behind me and opened a glass door in the side of the courtroom to let me out to the yard again. I crossed back past the scaffold, reflecting on how nonchalantly the authorities here assumed that I – and no doubt all their girl-prisoners – would obey their orders, without needing any Guards to trouble with escorting us. It's proof, humiliating proof, from the very moment we arrive at the IPCG, of their absolute control over us. I opened the door on the far side of the yard, and reported again to the Sergeant.