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State Of Emergency Book Two - The Camp

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It was over. She couldn’t quite believe it was over, but they were unfastening her wrists and her ankles. She felt nauseous and weak, her muscles still twitched and her heart was thumping but it was over. After they’d soaked her again and the electrodes had been reapplied they’d given her five more level one shots before the terror of the bit and a shot on level two. Level one hurt, but level two felt like it was tearing her apart.


Everything felt hazy. Their hands were at her belly, removing the strap around her waist, then they were shouting at her to get up. She tried, but fell, weak and dizzy, landing hard on her side and collapsing to lie face down on the concrete. Her wrists were yanked back and cuffed behind her and a blindfold fastened over her. They were shouting at her but she could barely understand them as they pulled her to her feet. “We’ll carry on tomorrow,” said the younger one.


She knew she had to think, but she couldn’t. She was too tired, too weak. They dragged her out of the room, her feet trailing on the floor and the next she knew she was being dropped into the box. She could have wept. She needed sleep. They held a bottle to her lips and let her drink and then the lid came down and the noise of the engines began.


She must have dozed off or lost consciousness because the next she knew it was bitterly cold and the noise was of a drill. Her teeth chattered. Think. She had to think. What could she say to them? She couldn’t take another night of shocks. But when she tried to think all that came into her head was the thought that Rebecca had betrayed her. She knew it was ridiculous to hate her - you couldn’t blame anybody for what they said under torture – but it was Rebecca’s fault she was here.


Should she lie about Bobby? But all that would do would be to ensure Bobby was tortured and when their stories didn’t match she’d be punished. Her head throbbed, her mouth was dry. She felt hungry. She was cold. She pulled her thighs as tight to her chest as she could. Her cunt was in agony. Her ear hurt. She felt desperately fragile. Could she seduce them?


The drill stopped and more terrible local pop began. Were they watching her? The tinny thumping cut through her. She thought of her gold dress. The temperature began to rise. She touched her head back against the Perspex behind her. She had to end this. She couldn’t take another shock. And if level two was that bad, what was three, four or five going to be like? She’d heard stories that shocks could harm your reproductive system. Could it be that she was sterile already? But it was the pain, more than anything else, the pain that she dreaded. It was so hot she could barely breathe. She had begun to sweat. She pushed her feet against the other end of the box. Her buttocks felt clammy against the base. The bass of the music hammered her aching head.
 
Uppal saw the girl tense as he entered. She was naked, still, of course, still chained, still blindfold. She was wet, dripping around the stool she sat on. He’d had her hosed down. It was about 3 in the afternoon. She’d been in the box a little under 12 hours. He approached her, admiring the golden skin, the trim waist. He removed the blindfold. She tossed her hair. He took up his position behind his desk. She looked exhausted, face drawn, eyes bloodshot.


“Miss McCormack,” he said. He could see the struggle in her to pay attention, her weariness and her humiliation. “I assume you’d rather not spend another night on the bench?”


She gave the slightest nod. He gestured at two guards who stepped up to her and removed her chains.


She brought her hands in front of her, not to cover herself but to rub her wrists.


“Co-operate,” he said, “and you need never go in that box again.”


He took up copies of the two coded sheets of paper that had been found in Harris’s room. He’d ask Harris about it, of course, but he believed her story, believed what she’d told Patel, that she’d never opened the file. He felt a slight shimmer of excitement. This could be key to everything.


He approached her. He handed her the sheets. She took them, hand trembling. Did she show any sign of recognition? None that he could see.


“What does this say?” he asked. He wouldn’t tell her what it was. See if she knew.


She looked at it, blinking as though she was struggling to focus. She shook her head and gave a slight shrug.


“Well?”


“I don’t know. It’s random numbers and letters. What is it?”


“What do you think it is?”


“I don’t know. A code?”


“You tell me.”


“Sir, I don’t know.”


“It was written by Steve McCoy. Now, here’s what happens next. You are taken to a cell with a desk and a chair. I give you food and water, a pen and some paper. I’ll even give you some coffee. You break the code and you can sleep tonight. Fail, and you’ll find out what level three feels like.”
 
Beth sat at the desk on a hard wooden chair. She was still naked. The cell was tiny, so small she could almost feel the breath of the two guards who stood by the door. She’d been blindfolded and manacled even to get here. She looked at the page. The symbols jumped and span. She was too tired. Her head ached. She drank the coffee greedily but the food, some sort of oily bread, she could hardly force down. She had to think. But even as she was trying to think another voice was telling her not to solve the code. If Steve had written it in code then it must be important. But then she thought of what they were going to do to her that night.


But Steve wasn’t that bright. What was he doing with a code? It couldn’t be difficult. She guessed it was straight substitution. Except there were numbers as well as letters. And every letter was represented. So that meant 36 characters. That made no sense. Except 26 letters plus 10 digits made 36. So maybe it was straight substitution. The letters and numbers on the page swirled. She was too tired for this. Concentrating made her nauseous. She took another gulp of coffee.


How should she do this? What would be the logical way? Look for the most common symbol and assume that was E? She began to do that, going through, seeing if she could make any words. But nothing worked. She was too tired.


Was there another way? Maybe double letters together. They had to be Es or Os or Ts or Ms or Ls or Ss. But there were none. It couldn’t be straight substitution then. And if it wasn’t, what hope did she have? Shit, didn’t they have cryptographers?


What could the document be? Was there any pattern? Some of the letters had dots about them. It began with a paragraph of four lines, another of five, then one of two. Then seven lines, then two. Then three then two. There were a lot of two line paragraphs, she noticed. Was that significant? She looked at the second page. The pattern continued.


Her head throbbed. None of this was helping. She was sitting naked at a desk doing a fucking puzzle that if she couldn’t work out meant torture. She couldn’t take more shocks. Lying there, naked, helpless, waiting for them to hurt her in a terrible way. Was it worse than at the airport? Level two definitely was. The loss of control. The pain. The sense of her body being about to snap. Then their faces looking down at her, most of them clearly enjoying what was going on.


With an effort she refocused on the code.
 
An excellent idea, break the code or be tortured. And it must be done when she knows what torture really means. But she must be fit enough to do it.

Give the girl a chance guys, please.
 
What the fuck was Uppal doing? Narayan had assumed she’d be in the box, being driven slowly mad but when the order had come to take her to the electric room, she had to be taken from another cell where she was sitting at a desk like she was doing her fucking homework. Although naked. The boys pulled her from the chair, sending it clattering to the ground and, as she shrieked in fear, they blindfolded her and fastened her wrists behind her. She pulled against them as they hustled her down the corridor, so scared she was fighting them despite the obvious hopelessness of her situation. A couple of punches to her belly and a tap with a truncheon soon calmed her.


Even as they strapped her down to the bench she struggled, but she was easily restrained. Still, there was never any sense in wasting an opportunity. He straddled her, sitting on her belly, pushing down on her tits. He felt himself stiffening at the sensation of the firm muscles beneath him. What he needed was Uppal to have her put in the box with regular beatings; then it would be easier to arrange to fuck her. Or he could wait until she was sent to the infirmary. Kirshnamurthy, he knew, took advantage of any half-attractive prisoner he got in there.


He slapped her a couple of times around the ribs then stood up, fastened the belt across her waist and gave the order to soak her. As soon as she was wet, he removed the blindfold and took up the ointment. Where today? He always quite liked poking one electrode into the rectum but Uppal had some hang up about the clips actually being attached to the skin. He sometimes put them on the tongue or the mouth but Uppal always wanted them to be able to speak. He settled on the breasts. It wasn’t exactly imaginative, but sometimes the old ways were the best. And it meant he got to play with them again. Leaning over her he cupped her right breast in his left hand and teased the nipple with his right, seeing the loathing in her eyes as he gently coated it in the gel. He repeated the process on the left breast. The coldness of the water had left her nipples semi-erect. “Excited to see me again,” he said with a smirk. And then, snapping them with relish, he applied the first clip, on her left nipple. She gasped in pain, eyes closing, and was still grimacing as he applied the second. She was ready.
 
Uppal walked straight over to her. He’d looked at the notes and scribbles she’d made but had seen nothing of any interest. He glanced down at the naked body, the electrodes fixed to the breasts, beads of water dotting her smooth skin, face tight with fear.


“So you got nowhere with the code?” he said.


“Sir, I’m sorr..”


He nodded and Narayan flicked the switch. She was half-shouting at his gesture when the electricity hit her, silencing her as her body tensed.<p>


“I’m beginning to grow impatient,” he said, shaking his head as she gasped for air. He nodded again.


There was a clear slap as her body landed back on the bench. He lay a hand on her cheek. Her skin was extraordinary, so smooth and firm and yet to soft. “I thought you were clever,” he said. “You’re a doctor and yet you have no thoughts at all? What were you doing in that room?”


He patted her cheek and let his thumb brush her lower lip. She was shaking. “Did you just sit there?”


“No, sir.”


“So tell me your thoughts.”


“Sir,” she said, her mouth dry. “There are 36 symbols so it’s not straight substitution unless digits are included. But I couldn’t see any double letters so I don’t think it is.”


Interesting. She clearly had thought about it. He could see Narayan itching to shock her again. But her intelligence intrigued him. “Go on,” he said.


“Some of the characters have dots above them.”


“And?”


“I don’t know, but it must be significant.”


“In what way?”


“I don’t know.”


He said nothing, waiting.


“Do you have any idea what it is?” she asked. ‘That might help.”


He laughed. “That’s not information for you,” he said. “What do you think it is?”


“I’ve no idea. Has a proper cryptographer looked at it? There must be better people than me.”


He stepped back, shaking his head. She was right, of course, and he hated the inefficiency that meant that, as for as he was aware, nobody had looked at it. But she couldn’t speak to him like that. “Level three,” he said, turning away.


“No!” she shouted, struggling desperately, but the bit was forced into her mouth and her protests were reduced to muffled grunts. He heard the two clicks as Narayan moved the dial, then turned back to face her. He nodded. “Hold it for a couple of seconds,” he said.


The switch was flicked. Her body lifted from the bench, back arching, waist pushing up against the strap, her cunt seemingly thrust at him. He could see clearly the strain on her muscles before she slumped back down, shaking, wet with sweat, whimpering. She began to retch and the guards, knowing the routine, swiftly unfastened her, throwing her to the floor where she cowered, half-kneeling, forearms on the floor, vomiting up the coffee and food he’d given her, muscles spasming, sweat dripping from her. Almost as soon her retching and died away into coughing, they turned the hosepipe on her, washing away her vomit into a small drain beneath the bench and soaking her with icy water.
 
Beth lay on the bench, almost too weak to feel the electrodes being fastened onto her nipples again. She was going to die here, she was sure. They’d given her a water bottle to glug from before strapping her down again but her mouth felt parched. Her head throbbed. Think of the gold dress. Pulses kept twitching through her muscles. Her nipples felt sore. And she was wired up again.


The questioner sat down beside her.


“What would McCoy hide away like that?” he asked.


“I don’t know, sir. Contact details?”


“Of who? Or what?”


“I’ve no idea. I’m sorry. Please sir…”


“Think.”


She couldn’t. She was too tired, too weak, too scared. She stared at the cracks in the ceiling.


“Printers? Vehicle hire? I don’t know. T-shirt manufacturers?”


“Why keep them secret? Why write them down at all? Their details would be freely available.”


It sounded like he was thinking this through himself. “Other leaders of the protests?”


“The Rainbow Group?”


“If it existed, maybe, yes.”


“Ok, I’ll give you another go later and you can look for that. Now, Roberta Stafford?”


She groaned. “I didn’t know her.”


He nodded and she began to scream before electricity hit.


She sobbed. “I don’t know anything,” she said, imploring him. “I’ve told you everything. I’m trying to help.”


“Why?” he asked.


“What?”


“Why are you trying to help?”


“Because you’re torturing me. Please. Because I want you to stop hurting me.” Her words came in a dry gulp.


“You’ve given up all your ideals and now you want to help me because of a little bit of pain?”


What was he doing? Did he want her to resist? “I’ve given up,” she said. “You win. I just want to be left alone.”


“You can see why I find that hard to believe, Agent Violet?”


“Oh God,” she moaned. “I don’t know anything about that.”


“And Roberta Stafford? You betrayed her once. Why not now?”


“They tortured me,” she wept. “They tortured me.”


“Am I not torturing you? What’s different?”


What could she say?


“Did they torture you harder? Do you want me to make this worse for you?”


“No! Please! I’ve met Bobby now. Before it was a name. Please…”


He nodded.
 
Anyway I'll have to go back to the beginning of this one to understand it...
King Diocletian said:
But I couldn’t see any double letters
Click to expand...
Beth might make more of that, if characters never repeat in a reasonably long cyphertext that's a significant pattern in itself...
 
Narayan wished Uppal would change tack. There were times when he’d just hand a prisoner over with the instruction to make their night uncomfortable. Then he could have fun: hours to do what he wanted with a naked girl, just so long as she was fit enough to answer his questions the next day – and terrified enough to never want to suffer another night with him. He would enjoy fucking this one but what he really wanted to do was to take a whip to her. That long smooth body, the taut muscles of her shoulders and upper back, was perfect for a beating, bent over, huddled in terror.


Not that he could really complain now. She was bearing up well under the shocks, physically tough enough to take far more than most women. She seemed broken now, though, sobbing almost constantly, clearly terrified. And yet she was sticking to her story. Maybe it was the truth. Who knew?


“I want to be absolutely clear with you,” Uppal said to her. “If you signed a statement that you knew was untrue, you will be flogged. I don’t know if they’d do it here or back in the capital, whether they’d do it now or at the end of your sentence, but at some point they would flog you. You’ve seen Harris. You know what a caning would do to you. So, I ask you again, did you know Roberta Stafford before you got on the train to this camp?”


“No, sir, I did not.”


Narayan’s hand tightened on the switch, but Uppal shook his head.


“OK,” Uppal said. “Unfasten her, clean her up, give her her clothes back and put her in a cell.”


What the fuck was he doing?
 
King Diocletian said:
What the fuck was he doing?
Click to expand...

Put Beth and Roberta together in a cell and listen carefully. Then a little more interrogation on one while the other watches. Then together again.

The truth will out, but does Uppal want the truth?

What brave/stupid official will allow the girls home to talk about their experiences?
 
Rebecca stood to attention, feet burning with the cold. The sergeant with the heavy pony-tail walked along the line. She tried to stand as still and as straight as she could. She was tired and cold and she was worried about Megan. Something terrible had clearly happened the night before last. She and Bobby had been brought back from their session on the frame to find Megan lying naked under her blanket, clearly distressed. She’d refused to say what had happened but other prisoners spoke of it: the beating, being raped with the bottle, being made to eat out Amitab. She remembered with a shudder having to discuss lesbian technique in her interrogation. She shivered, her wet hair icy on her scalp. The sun was just coming up.


They were dismissed and she walked with Megan and Bobby over to the breakfast hall. Megan walked with obvious discomfort. A bottle. What must that be like? Rebecca held out her mug to be filled from the vast urn. It was warmer in here at least. Then there was a clatter. She looked up sharply and saw Megan sprawled on the ground, tray and mug and plate scattered, her bread skittering away and her tea spilled. There was laughter from a nearby prisoner: one of Chaudry’s gang. It was clear what had happened – a foot out, a shove and Megan had gone flying.


Megan scrambled to her feet and grabbed her mug and plate but it was too late. There were two soldiers there immediately. “Lick it up,” one of them ordered and poor Megan fell to her knees. She lapped at the rough concrete floor. Rebecca wished there was something she could do but she just walked on to sit next to Bobby, watching as Megan was made to clean up the spillage. “She munches concrete like she munches carpet,” somebody said and there was laughter. One of them prodded her backside with his foot and she fell awkwardly forward. Rebecca could see the shame and the anger on her face and prayed she wouldn’t react. One of them stood on the bread, grinding it with his boot, then kicked that to her and made her eat that off the floor was well.<p>


The sergeant waited, arms folded, and when they were finally satisfied all the tea and the bread had been cleaned up as far as it would be, ordered Megan to her feet. “Two nights in the punishment cell,” she said. “I’m not having you being disruptive.” As Megan walked over to their table, Rebecca heard the taunts follow her. “Strongest tongue in the camp.” “Can’t stop licking.” “Whore.” “Dyke.”
 
Uppal looked at McCormack, who sat demurely on the chair in his room, looking rather better than she had for some time. He’d let her sleep, let her have a warm shower, given her food.


“Elizabeth,” he said. “We’re working together now. That’s what you said you would do and I’ve taken you at your word. I think you’re a clever girl. I’m going to let you work on the code. Mess me around and the last two nights will seem like a holiday. Mess me around and I give you level five till you pass out, then we’ll wake you up and I’ll give it to you again. And when I’m done, I’ll let the boys have you. Is that clear?”


“Yes, sir.”


“Good.” He gestured to the guards who blindfolded her and took her to the cell with the desk so she could work. Now the next step. He sat back and skimmed his notes on Rebecca Harris. Ten minutes later, she was brought in. He had been in two minds as to whether to start gently or to hammer her and then ask the questions. Patel, he knew, had done a thorough job but Narayan had argued that she was used to interrogation and so a shock was probably necessary. As she stood, blindfolded and in chains before him, he could sense her fear.


He had decided on a halfway house. He wouldn’t let Narayan brutalise her but he would let her know there was to be no messing about. He had the chains and the blindfold removed. She blinked uncertainly. “Strip,” he said.


She glanced around her, her terror obvious, but her hands went to the front of her shirt and she began to undress. She was small and very pretty, he thought, her delicacy giving her a sense of vulnerability. She slipped out of her shirt, revealing a slender torso and a pair of perky round tits. She hesitated, holding her shirt, wondering where to put it before a guard grabbed it. He could almost see the effort she was making as she forced herself to pull down her trousers and she was naked. She hooked her arms over herself to hide her shame but only for a couple of seconds before the guards had seized her wrists and were fastening them in leather cuffs. They lifted her until she stood on the balls of her feet, arms stretched up above her, the neat small body exposed. He walked around her admiringly, noting the bruising on her buttocks from her flogging, purple stripes laid over older green and yellow marks. He stepped up and touched her, laying his hand over the firm rounded flesh. “Does that hurt?” he asked.


He could feel the tension in her. “A little, sir,” she whispered.


He moved in front of her, looked her up and down. He tended to agree with Patel’s assessment. Scared, not especially tough, but with a sense of right and wrong that had led her into trouble. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, returning to sit behind his desk. He was sure this wouldn’t take long.
 
Rebecca felt the familiar strain in her wrists and shoulders. How had it got to the point where she recognised torture techniques? She wondered if there would ever be a time when being naked didn’t bother her. Already she knew the shame wasn’t quite so intense as when she’d first been stripped in that cell in the capital. But it was bad enough, exposed like this in front of perhaps a dozen Secpol guards.


“You directed us to a file hidden in your room,” he said. “Tell me about it.”


“Steve McCoy gave it to me, sir.” She remembered she’d been chained like this when they’d asked her about the file before.


“And he asked you to hide it?”


“Yes.” She could feel his eyes devouring her breasts. She looked at the floor, shifting her weight to try to relieve the tension.


“Did you know what it contained?”


“He said it was love letters between him and Beth.”


“Why would he give them to you?”


“He was going home. I think he had a girlfriend back in Canada. But to be honest, I didn’t believe him.”


“Really? What did you think was in there?”


“I guessed it was to do with his work with the human rights groups.”


“You know that it’s an offence to conceal evidence of sedition?”


She said nothing, kept looking down. She heard the chains clink and she was lifted. Instantly, the pain in her wrists increased. Her shoulders ached. She could feel the constriction of her chest, the difficulty breathing.


“You knew it was an offence?” he said again.


“Everything’s an offence,” she said. “The meetings, the demonstrations, everything.”


“I can have you flogged again for obstruction, if you like, Rebecca,” he said, ingratiatingly. She bit the inside of her lower lip. She would do almost anything to avoid that.


“Did you know it was an offence?” he asked again.


“I don’t know,” she said. ‘I didn’t think. I didn’t know what was in the file.”


He approached her holding a piece of paper. He held it in front of her face. It was a list of names and numbers, email addresses. “Do you recognise this, Rebecca?”


She hated the way he used her first name. She looked at the paper. She was sure she’d never seen it before.


“No, sir.”


Do you recognise any of the names?”


She peered at the list. “Yes,” she said. “Of course. These are students.”


He nodded and returned to his desk. He came back with another sheet of paper. “Recognise this?”


She didn’t.


“Read it out.”


“Red: Stafford,” her voice was uncertain. “Orange: Raja. Yellow: Khan. Green: Stephenson. Blue: Singh. Indigo: McCoy. Violet: McCormack.”


“Does that mean anything to you, Rebecca?”


“No... well… I was asked before about the rainbow. In the capital. But… I don’t know. I don’t understand.”
 
Narayan liked big tits. He wanted to get stuck into McCormack. But this one would do. Pretty little thing, a bit girlish for his tastes, her tits almost entirely flattened by hanging by the wrists. He wanted to set to work with a cane or a whip, to lay welt after welt on that delicate frame. The marks already evident on her buttocks and thighs suggested just how soft and receptive her skin was. But Uppal, again, was wittering on, pursuing his method – a method that had McCormack sitting in another room doing her fucking homework and had him showing Harris fake documents he’d knocked up to test what she knew. He made it far too complicated. Beat the shit out of her, fuck her senseless and see what she’d say to avoid a repeat.


“What’s this, Rebecca?” Uppal asked.


“I don’t know,” she said. “Is it in code?”


“You haven’t seen this before?”


“No.”


“Do you know what it might mean?”


“No.”


Uppal held up the previous sheet. “What about this? Do you recognise names?”


“Yes, of course. McCoy, McCormack, Stafford.”


“Does it surprise you Beth knew Bobby before they got here?”


“I don’t know. Should it?”


Uppal nodded and looked over at Narayan. “Blindfold her, lower her and give her a footrest.”


Good. He was going to hurt her a bit, then.


Uppal left, Harris’s eyes following him out of the room. Narayan stepped up to her, running his hand over her ass and then moving round in front of her, letting his fingers explore her tits and her satiny stomach. He went to a cupboard and took out the footrest, a simple plank through which had been hammered a series of three-inch nails.


He approached her slowly, relishing the terror in her eyes as he brandished it. He held it in front of her face so she could see the nails, sixty of them, positioned in six rows of ten about an inch apart. He touched it against her breasts, laughing as she squirmed away from the points. “I could thrash you with this,” he said and jabbed it towards her. She shrieked.


“Maybe later,” he went on, and positioned it beneath her feet. He nodded at one of the boys and he lowered her gently. The key was to hang her just high enough that she could rest her feet on the nails for relief – they weren’t sharp; they wouldn’t really do any damage – but not so low that she could reach the floor. It was about forcing her to choose between taking the strain on her shoulders or suffering the spikes on her soles. She was already whimpering as he blindfolded her. He gave her breasts one final grope and then left the room.
 
Uppal perched on the desk and looked at McCormack, her dark hair tucked behind her ear, the smoothness of her cheek illuminated by the desk lamp. She was clever. And she was making progress. He liked that. He looked at the swell of her chest in her prison shirt.


She’d pointed out that there were seven paragraphs of roughly equal length, each of which ended with a series of letters with dots over them. Could it be, she suggested that they were the seven members of the rainbow group and that letters with dots represented numbers, that these were their telephone numbers?


That was smart, very smart. She’d also noted that none of the letters with dots on came after T in the alphabet. There were 20 dotted symbols, in other words, so perhaps two letters each represented a digit. Not only that, but she noticed that immediately before the numbers there was a pattern of words that always contained a two-letter word at its heart. An email address, she wondered? Were the two letters ‘AT’? The problem was that if that was true, A seemed to be represented by either C or 1 and T by Q or 0.


He smiled gently at her. “Have you tried looking at the first word in each of those lines? Is it Red, Orange, Yellow?”


She nodded. “I was just trying that, sir.”


“Good. And you know you’re Violet. Try your own details on the last one.”


She nodded sadly.


“You’re doing well. Keep going and I’ll see if I can get you off that flogging.”
 
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