The Gen

Angreius, 31st Day of the Summer Companions, 3367

"How are we feeling today, Dalek?" Lariv Jinla asked her prisoner, Dalek Madrew.

"Very fine, Doc, thank you," Dalek said, showing Lariv the finger in his mind.

He didn't know how old Lariv Jinla was, over sixty for sure, close to seventy perhaps. Her hair was snow-white and always perfectly styled. Her gray eyes spoke of great intelligence and cunning. Dalek had long learned not to mess with her.

When they met the first time, she introduced herself as Doctor Lariv Jinla, claiming to be a psychologist. He called her "doc" accordingly but forever wondered why she claimed to be a medical doctor rather than the ward of the political prison he sat in.

"There are some strange things going on at the Gen at the moment, Dalek, it's being evacuated and nobody knows why."

"Seriously?"

"Yes."

"They've never evacuated it before."

"Correct. What do you think is happening on the Gen at the moment?"

"Major technical glitch and they're too embarrassed to say."

"No possibility that your FTS buddies are behind that?"

"I'm in here for a year already, Doc. I'm out of the loop. No idea what's going on with my FTS buddies."

"Is that so..."

"Look lady, you've tortured the shit outa me for a whole fucking year. How am I supposed to have a single scrap of information left about the operations of the FTS that you didn't pull out of my brain already?"

Lariv smiled thinly. Dalek frowned. He knew that I-don't-believe-you smile only too well. Worse would follow. The standard form of torture he had encountered here was called the "immobilizer". They constantly gave him injections that lamed all his muscles. The immobilizer came in two forms, hard and soft. The soft version only lamed his body from neck downwards and still allowed for speech and minimal head-movements. The hard version lamed even his facial muscles and he couldn't speak anymore, had trouble breathing and swallowing. They only fed him via intravenous injection.

Worse torture was "the grave". Without immobilizer in his bloodstream, they put him into a metal box, a coffin, that had a few holes in its lid for air and left him in there for days, starving him. One of the holes had a small hose coming through. Water came out when he sucked at it, but no food. In the coffin, he was unable to sit up, only able to raise his head a bit, just enough to get to the water hose.

Because of the starvation aspect, Dalek preferred the immobilizer to the grave. When he was under the immbobilizer, he also could at least look at the ceiling of his gray cell, like now, although Lariv Jinla disturbed the view.

His cell consisted of gray walls, ceiling, floor, even the iron bars behind the tiny window were painted gray. Lariv was wearing her gray doctor's coat. He usually didn't see much of the gray hospital gown they clad him in. If he were ever to get out of here, however unlikely, he'd never wear a single gray piece of clothing again until the day he died.

The FTS was smart. So good that they never told him the names of the key people sitting in Hagesh. So good that he wasn't an engineer who knew anything about the Gen. So good that he had been nothing but a little courier, and too bad for the Aran police that they caught only a tiny fish. The sharks of the FTS were still alive and working out there beyond the walls of this prison to rid the world of its most idiotic project. Dalek still cheered them on and hoped they'd win.

"Well, maybe you need a few days in the grave, Dalek," Lariv said.

"Fuck you."

The Inquisition of old had been more merciful than the modern-day police. At least the Inquisition used methods of torture that killed you more quickly.

Dalek was sure they'd kill him once the FTS failed or succeeded, but he didn't plan on being around for that. He had found a method to kill himself if necessary. Every morning, they gave him a drug that neutralized the immobilizer and allowed him to move to take a shower.

Inside the shower room was a loose lamp. He could jump up and grab it, rip out its cable and electrocute himself with it in the shower.

"All right," Lariv Jinla said, "a bit of the grave."

"Fuck you, Doc, fuck you."

She turned around to the door to his cell that had a gray-painted, iron-barred opening in it.

"The grave for Dalek," she ordered.

Moments later, two gray-robed guards entered, who wore gray belts with gray clubs dangling from them. Lariv left and the two guards grabbed Dalek's lamed body. They carried him out of his cell and to another in which stood his grave.

"Fuck you guys, fuck you all."