"I won't repeat myself, Mr Fenig." Mediator Silas leaned down to whisper in Marcus' ear. "Why did you try to get to Caxis?"

"I was getting to my wife," Marcus panted. He knelt on the ground. Silas had been torturing him for over two hours and his endurance was close to breaking.

"What else?" Silas said.

Marcus couldn't concentrate. The lights in the room blinded, and the plain grey room had robbed all sense of time and place. If he strained he could just about see Silas sat on a chair in front of him with a weapon in hand. There were also people holding his arms to keep him from collapsing, but he struggled to recall their names. He felt like he should know them.

That's right--Ramsey and Okoro.

"Don't make me give you another injection Marcus," Silas said, his voice pulling Marcus back from the trance he was in. "Or use this again." Silas hefted the gun in his hand.

I can't hold out much longer.

Silas must have interpreted Marcus' silence as him being unwilling to provide an answer because he came over and gave Marcus another shock with the gun.

Marcus screamed in pain, unable to curl up like he wanted to, the grip on him too firm. Just as he was about to break, they took away the rifle.

"Mr Fenig, do you think I enjoy this?"

"Yes," he panted. "You do."

"Now Mr Fenig, you are not in a position to make jokes. The sooner you tell us, the sooner you can go back to your cell."

Hamasa had warned Marcus about this. He was sick to his stomach when she explained what Silas would do.

'You won't hold out,' she had said. 'Don't worry about what you say, just make them work for it.' Which is what he had been trying to do.

Silas sighed and raised the rifle once more before pressing it into Marcus' stomach. The pain made him vomit. "Why did you go to Caxis?"

They wouldn't even let Marcus wipe the sick off his mouth. "There was... a package," he squeezed out in between gasping breaths. "Hamasa... gave me a package."

"A package," Silas repeated, frowning. "Containing what?"

"I don't know"--Silas raised the weapon again--"for god's sake, I don't know."

"Who did you give it to?"

"No one, I got picked up by the Mandrake before I could land."

Silas crouched down and leaned in to grab Marcus' jaw. "I'll ask you one more time. What was in that package?"

"It was encrypted." Please let this end.

"Hmmm." Silas let go of his face and stood up. Marcus' chin dropped to his chest from the weight of his head. "When will you learn, Mr Fenig?" Silas raised the rifle. The pain was excruciating. Marcus blacked out for a moment. When he came to, Silas stood over him with the rifle. "Tell me why I shouldn't."

"No, please, I'm begging you!" Marcus scrambled around trying to find something to make the pain stop. "Allison... he's a traitor." He hated himself, but he just couldn't take it anymore. Silence fell once again in the room. Marcus didn't have the strength to look around. He just wanted for the pain to go.

"Now that is very interesting. Why do you say that?" Silas said. "Has he said anything to you?"

"If you go back through the recordings in our cabin, there is a blank spot of about 20 minutes where he came to visit me a couple of weeks ago."

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"What did he say to you?" Silas was almost salivating.

"That he had sympathy for Caxis, and so wouldn't be harsh on me. And that he would release me he said.

Silas started pacing again. "It is hardly a surprise," Silas mumbled. "His history has always suggested there might come a time... Very well Mr Fenig, you've earned a reprieve." Marcus' heart sang for joy as he heard the rifle drop to the ground. Then the guilt started bubbling up inside from the burden of how he had implicated Allison. "Get him cleaned up and take him back to his cell."

Okoro and Shaw grabbed him under the arms and dragged him forward. Marcus realised he had soiled himself.

#

He must have blacked out again because Marcus found himself sitting in a shower as Okoro and Shaw undressed him before dousing him in scalding water. He didn't meet their eyes. Instead, he felt the weight of guilt and pain bearing down on him. The water stung the marks where Silas had used the rifle on him, but he didn't react. He just stood there until Shaw pulled him out and dried him. The two of them propped him against a wall while they found clothes to put him in.

Marcus finally looked up at them and saw a clear look of distress on Shaw's face, but when Shaw saw him looking, he turned away.

"I'm sorry." Shaw sounded on the verge of tears.

This surprised Marcus. He thought them all mindless devotees to the Alliance cause. "What do you mean?"

"I didn't join the Alliance to torture people." Shaw lifted Marcus' left arm to slip it through the loose-fitting shirt he was being put in. "Silas doesn't represent all of us."

"Careful, Ramsey Okoro hissed.

"Oh be quiet." Shaw turned to face her. "You feel the same."

"Do--not--discuss--this--here."

"There are no speakers in here. I've checked."

Two dissenting Alliance officers--what were the chances of that? Marcus tried to act dumb, though it wasn't difficult given the pain he was in.

"Do you know why I joined the Alliance?" Shaw said to Marcus while pulling the shirt down over his other arm.

He shook his head weakly.

"Debt amnesty," Shaw spat out. Marcus stared at him. He had heard of the Alliance program that forgave the debts of citizens in exchange for their service in the military, but had never met anyone that had made use of the scheme. "I was running from the mediators," Shaw continued.

Marcus didn't know what to say. If his own experience with Silas was anything to go by, it wouldn't end well for anyone caught by a mediator for being in that much debt.

"Exactly." Shaw must have read his expression. "I didn't have any choice. It was joining the military or being disintegrated in some forgotten warehouse. And now this is what I'm forced into doing--torturing people," Shaw scoffed. "Do you know it cost me my relationship with my family? They hated the Alliance, so when I enlisted they disowned me. I haven't spoken to any of them in three years."

"Be quiet," Okoro hissed at him again.

"You're one to talk, I know you hate the Alliance as much as I do."

"I do not hate the Alliance." She grabbed his arm. "You can't talk like that. Silas will find out somehow."

"Only if you tell him." he pulled his arm away.

Marcus tried to work out just how his life had led him to this moment.

"Yes I have my issues with how they run things--" Okoro began.

"And you can't stand Garrick," Shaw said.

That was interesting.

"What's gotten into you?"

"We've gone too far, Okoro. Torturing a man." His throat caught. "This is too much."

"You picked a terrible time to grow a conscious, Ramsey."

"Piss off." Shaw scowled at her. "Can you lift your legs up?" It took Marcus a moment before he realised Ramsey was talking to him. He obliged, and Shaw put one leg after the other through a loose fitting pair of tracksuits.

Still groggy, Marcus could just about grasp the significance of what he was hearing. These were Garrick's lieutenants, they carry out his orders, but here they were, talking about their struggles for the Alliance. It was the last thing he expected. But more importantly, this was the first time that he realised that Allison's cause stood a chance of succeeding.

Oh god. He remembered that he had betrayed the Admiral to Silas. It might all be over because of him.

"That's you done." Shaw stood and tried to help Marcus to his feet, but his legs buckled from under him.

Okoro came over and helped Shaw support Marcus back to the detention block. Neither of them said another word, and Marcus wasn't brave enough to say anything. The pair of them left without so much as a glance in his direction. Maybe it was the beating he had taken, but Marcus felt ill at the thought of having to explain what he'd done to Hamasa.

I might have ruined everything.

There was a brief pause of silence before Hamasa spoke. "You survived. Well done."

"Hamasa, I--"

"I know you're about to tell me all about how you told the mediator your deepest secrets, but Marcus, I don't want to hear it." She wasn't wrong, but her reaction surprised him.

"But it's not just me." He was shaking. "I told them Allison was planning on releasing me, they'll know he's a traitor."

"Ah, don't worry about it. It was bound to come out, eventually."

"How can you stay calm at a time like this?"

"We'll manage well enough, I'm sure."

"But--"

"Everything is progressing well, don't you worry. It's fine."

But Marcus did worry, and he didn't sleep. He ached and throbbed all over from the torture, the pain in his head so bad he had to shield his eyes from the lights above him. It was impossible to get comfortable even before he remembered that what he had said would somehow bring everything down. Hamasa's optimism hadn't rubbed off on him, but he had no choice but to hope that somehow this proved all part of some master plan of Allison's.