The path was coming to its end. A flash of lightning illuminated the windows in the building and the black barred gate cast its long shadow right in front of my steps. The gate was almost as tall as the building behind it, and the pillars were two stone spires from the mountain. There was no fence. To the sides it went abruptly downwards.

The barred gate was the landmark of this place ... and it was broken. The right side was snapped off its hinges. It was barely hanging on and had been pushed inward, leaning at an angle against the stone. Meanwhile, the weight had also caused it to sink some distance into the ground. Because that side did not close, the other side was also at all times open. The fact that the icon of this facility was a gate that was constantly open to the inside was almost symbolic. In a sense that no one had ever been released here.

The building was broad with many windows towards the front. In the middle was the main entrance with a very high ornate double door made of dark wood. The windows had no curtains. There was no light burning in the whole building. Whenever there was a flash, I could see above the door through the building, already one of those behind it. This place was an interlocking complex with many buildings.

That everything was dark was actually not true. There was a light. Above the door, a fire flickered behind a grate in the wall. It didn't bring much light, but it was enough to see from a distance where the main entrance was. Through the rain, in the dim light, I could start to make out the guards at the main entrance in a hazy blur -- Three men with cigarettes glowing red from the wind in their hands and with pistols on their belts. They were deep in conversation and did not notice me at first.

The pistols were RW-14 or 'incinerator'. It was a discontinued standard model from the military. That is, you could guess it was pretty much junk. And it was. The pistol got its nickname because it liked to throw off a lot of sparks and not at the target. If you liked to wear woolen clothes, you hopefully also liked to wear bandages. The guards themselves wore gloves, so they were safe from that. They had that model because they always got the old stuff. This was a government facility. It wasn't just the inmates who didn't have good insurance.

When the guards spotted me, they were surprised. At that moment, I'm sure they could figure out that I wasn't a normal visitor if I came here today.

When I reached them, I didn't have to say my fake name. They knew me. One of them already knew where I was going and took me directly to the side. I apologized to him because I was late. The others heard it too and thought it was meant jokingly, but actually it wasn't. I was serious. I didn't like being late.

After a quick search, the man led me along the side of the building and we entered through a steel door. We didn't make any detours. We didn't use any lights. In the dark, I followed him up a narrow staircase, then down a hallway. On the left were windows to the front. To the right were many doors. All were closed. There was no one around. That part of the building had been cleared out. The rooms were empty and had been for years.

While we followed the corridor like this, I lit a cigarette to distract me. Maybe I was angry and that at myself, but maybe also at the weather.

I hated not being on time; although I could certainly be forgiven in that case. To get here I had to climb a mountain in the storm and cross a river and then I was in the village and today, in the same weather, I was privileged to climb the mountain on which this facility was located. It was not at the top. It was only halfway up. So it was a relaxing hike and if I wanted to go back down afterwards, all I had to do was step in the mud for a bit... Normally there was a cable car to the facility, but of course it didn't work. It was the rainy season and it wasn't designed for storms. Normally there was also a cable car to the facility, but as it turned out, it apparently wasn't designed for storms either. When I arrived at the hut to go up, the gondola was there but the hut was not. It was just a pile of planks on stone.

The steel cable had snapped. I was told it snapped when they lowered the gondola for me. The gondola was heavy metal. The ground was just mud on hard earth. The rest of the way it had simply rolled or slid until it then disassembled the hut. So I almost died. But I didn't, because I was too late there, too. The path was blocked. There was a landslide. I had to walk over a wooden path through the forest to the hut and almost died while doing that as well.

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You could suspect that someone wanted to kill me; or maybe just that someone didn't want me to come here. Both would be rather unlikely though. Why would anyone? There were a lot of visitors here. Few people knew I came here. Even fewer people knew when I came here. It wasn't my first time here either, and only two people even knew why I came here this time. It was stormy and the gondola was moving, so the rope had snapped. That was plausible.

Therefore, perhaps it was considered paranoid that I had investigated anyway. When I arrived at the village in the evening, I talked to the mechanic, I checked the cabin, I checked the mechanics. And what did I find? The door lock from the back room was broken. Someone had broken in. The lock was an old one with a big key. By pressing on the latches, the lock frame was broken out of the door frame. Someone had rammed the door or pried it open with a tool. It was impossible to say for sure. There were no other traces and the mechanic did not find the frame anymore. He said that the break-in had happened a long time ago and because the mechanism was secured separately and there was nothing else of value in the room, he had left the door as it was. There was nothing wrong with the mechanism itself. But sabotage was still possible. I couldn't look at the tear from the rope. It had come off and was lying somewhere on the mountain. For the time being I would not be able to reach it, not in this weather. I wasn't tired of life. I had learned my lesson already.

In the evening at the inn I had to take care of my wounds. On the detour in the forest I had slipped on the muddy wood. I had fallen a bit, then crashed into the forest and slid through the mud until a rock caught me, which had already claimed space on the fall protection before me.

The fall protection was such a grate made of metal. That was not explicitly intended for the wooden path. Bars for snuggling, like these, were found in very many places on the mountain. But I could do without putting the others to the test.

From sliding I had abrasions on my arms and my jacket was ruined. But I still had a replacement with me. So that was not so bad. I also had a headache because I had hit my head on the wood when I fell off the planks. But that wasn't so bad either. I was able to cope with that. The fact that I had hit the rock with my foot first, that was what brought consequences.

I was wearing hiking boots, but that had been a pretty hard rock. My toes were swollen and bloody and at least the big one was ruined. I could have landed worse, but better would have been better. I still felt it, but I was still able to walk normally because I had taken a painkiller that was surprisingly potent.

Yesterday evening I patched myself up, then I went to bed. After breakfast I started walking and now I was here. Looking outside at the sky, one might have thought it was the middle of the night. But it was actually still early afternoon. The weather made it look like it was always night.

At the end of the hallway, we had come through a barred door into a middle section and through another barred door into the other half of the building. The layout was the same. Without the centerpiece, it would be a long hallway. We walked toward a steel door at the very end. To the left of it, the window was wide open. On the right, a door was open.

The man stopped and so did I. While he knocked on the door, I stood at the window to end my cigarette.

The lock rattled. It was locked several times. The man took off. He said no more and left.

I stood with my back to the window and looked into the room in front of me. The desk was pushed against the wall. In the middle was a bed with a metal frame and leather straps hanging loosely. The window behind the bed had curtains and they were drawn. The wind made them sway and blew in my face. The window behind the curtains was tilted.

The door opened. Light fell into the hallway. I threw my cigarette outside and went through the door. A man greeted me. I had known him for a long time. We exchanged a few words. We hadn't seen each other in a while. As we did so, we stood in an entry room with two doors. One was straight ahead and one was on the right. The one in front led into an interrogation room. The one on the right was open. There was the observation room from the interrogation room. A table lamp was burning with yellow light. A few things were lying on the table.

Behind the next door, through an inset pane, I saw a woman sitting at an angular white table. The room had bright walls, no windows, and was lit white by a powerful ceiling lamp with a round shade. The woman at the table was 26 years old and her hair was shaved short. Shewas the reason I was here. With a prominent smile, she looked around impatiently, as if she had just been seated in the room. At that moment, I knew her presence in this facility was no mistake. She had been sitting in that room for at least half an hour. I knew that because, after all, I was here later than I wanted to be. She kept turning her head in a different direction, but she wouldn't see anything. Her eyes were blindfolded with a heavy strap. Her arms lay long on the table and her wrists were connected to the plate by leather cuffs. It was also obvious why. There were many scars on her lower arms; and not the horizontal ones, but the long ones, if you really wanted it.

After a brief pat down, I was allowed into the interrogation room. When she heard the door, she immediately turned her face to me as if she had been eagerly awaiting my arrival.

"You want to talk to me about Ram," she said, as if she already knew, and perhaps she did.

.../ End Part