Page 242 of Operation: Defiance

Chapter Seventy

Raine

Time moves too quickly. I forced myself to eat an entire serving of Asher’s Fettuccine Alfredo, carefully labeled Thursday: Lunch, then paced the small apartment for almost ten minutes, willing my thoughts to settle.

Now, with a cup of tea warming my hands, I sit back at the table, and connect my phone to Asher’s tablet. The next packet I send to the Public Integrity Project needs to include everything I can remember about my time inside Coherent Path. The logs won’t make any sense without the Procedure Index, but that can all be tied together later if I get access to it.

I don’t want to do this. But lives depend on me. Ellen. Tessa. Asher. Any agent who might break the rules in the future.

The pictures are nothing but evidence. I know how to treat evidence. How to be objective and methodical and detached.

The first image loads, and I tell myself it belongs to someone else. It almost works.

Until I look at the photo of my hands.

Dry, cracked skin. Too pale. Every vein obvious from dehydration. Thick, purple bands encircle both wrists where the metal sat against bone for eight solid days.

I can still feel the weight. The pins and needles that turned into numbness that turned into constant tremors I couldn’t control.

Every change in position was designed to wear me down. To strip away my defenses, my resolve. My will to live on anything but their terms.

Asher’s coin is heavy in my palm. I need the weight of it. The rough edges. And the reminder that my grip strength may never fully recover.

I shift my focus to the laptop, and start typing.

Day One - Intake and Initial Containment

Upon arrival, I was immediately hooded. They stripped me, then made me dress in a set of thin, gray scrubs. I was restrained with heavy shackles at my wrists and ankles. The initial interview was conducted an hour later.

I reach for the tea, needing something warm as the memory of the cold, concrete floor under my bare feet threatens to send my mind spiraling.

My log file sits on the right side of the screen, so many codes stacked one after another until they blur into an endless stretch of isolation and pain.

I work through what little I can remember.

After the initial compliance review, I was moved to a cell. The hood was never removed, so I don’t know the size of it. They put me in a hard, metal chair and locked my wrists and ankles to fixed points. I was instructed not to move or speak unless I needed to ask for water or to use the bathroom. When I did, I was often ignored for indeterminate lengths of time that left me questioning if I’d asked at all.

Pressure points were used as control. After several days, it began to feel as if I needed permission to even breathe.

I jerk to my feet and stagger over to the window. The sun has started to dip behind the tallest of the buildings, but it still bathes strips of the sidewalk in a warm orange hue.

Somewhere in Kent, Asher is in a concrete room. No sunlight. No warmth. No comfort at all. Because of me. Because he⁠—

I can’t finish the thought. If I do, I’ll shatter.

Everything between the first day and the last blurs together. So I skip ahead.

Day Eight - Final Correction and Disposal

As evidenced in the attached Contractor Incident Report, Coherent Path utilizes ElectroConvulsive Therapy as a terminal corrective measure when the detainee does not exhibit proper adherence to instruction or compliance. When I was still lucid at the end of the third pulse, I was moved to a cell, restrained in a chair, and left for approximately fifteen hours without food or water while they waited for final disposal authorization. If someone outside Coherent Path’s system had not intervened, I estimate I would have died by the end of that day.

My heart rate ticks up. My face flushes hot, then cold, as my blood pressure bottoms out. The spiral grabs hold, pulling me back into the darkness under the hood. I can’t smell the tea anymore. Only someone else’s sweat and fear and the stench of my own body after eight days of systematic erasure.

A low, insistent vibration rattles the table, and a tiny whimper dies in my throat.

My phone is ringing.

Unknown number.