“G09,” came a voice from outside. It echoed in the small space, and Montgomery jumped and turned to the door. A frowning face was there in the window. The piercing brown eyes bore a look of disease when viewed through the dark yellowish tint of the glass.
The guard opened up the slot in the door, and through it he pushed a yellowish-white block, like butter, except that it clanged relatively hard against the metal as it landed. Another block, clear like ice, followed it.
He spoke again. “You’re back in the Soulcage today, then,” he said, his accent a thick one. Montgomery thought it once would have been called British.
He didn’t remember this guard. They switched every week or so.
Montgomery stepped forward and stooped down by the door to pick up the two blocks. He quickly bit into them. The buttery-looking one didn’t taste like butter at all, but instead was a soft and chewable substance like frozen dairy that had the dull taste of moist bread and the aftertaste of canned vegetables. These, and other printed foods like them, were the only things prisoners ate here. He’d grown familiar with these substances as a soldier, so he’d long overcome his dislike for the stuff. The thought of real food was a distant dream.
He took a bite of the ice-looking block. This one chewed like gelatin and had no taste at all to it. Gelatinized mineral water: another soldier’s and prisoner’s favorite.
“Your second chance starts today, Westie. And tomorrow. And every day after. Best not be squandering it. …Be ready to enter in five minutes.”
The guard left without waiting for a response from Montgomery. He assumed the guard was off to tend to other prisoners, although Montgomery had never seen another. He’d been in this place, the cell with its Soulcage, ever since he’d been taken from his troop.
The men in charge had tested him immediately upon his capture and discovered he was proficient. That was a rare thing, to find someone who was able to use Soulcages. Montgomery hadn’t expected them to ever discover it about him. He had almost forgotten about it himself when he joined the military. He didn’t like using them.
But whether he liked it or not, in about four minutes he would.
The last bites of the food blocks slithered down his throat as he loitered beside the Soulcage console. He would wait for the intercom command to climb in. It sometimes gave him terrible cramps to remain inside for very long, so he was in no rush to enter.
Familiar, day-to-day dread touched him. What would it be today? He hadn’t used the Soulcage for something close to a week now. He thought he was done with them. He had wanted more than anythingto be done with them. In spite of unspeakable torture and debilitating starvation that they had imposed upon him as punishment for refusal, he’d had no intention to continue with it.
He had been tortured to the point of delirium, to the point of death. But he still would not have relented. Never.
Until things changed.
Early yesterday he had relented at last, said he didn’t want to be hurt anymore. Begged for mercy. Why he’d said those things, he didn’t know. But thankfully, saying it, promising to comply, had saved him from the pain almost immediately.
Being tortured was the only time he had been out of the cell.
There were putrid memories. Recollections of waking up strapped to a table in a room with low bluish lights, staring at a man with goggles and a plastic face mask. The man had stuck him with needles and chemicals. Fastened sharp things to his flesh. Turned the table vertical so the blood flowed into Montgomery’s head. Made him use another Soulcage. All sorts of awful things that made his skin crawl and stomach turn…
His heart thudded just at the thought of it, as the lingering smell of the sustenance blocks faded to the standard haze of metal-encased air.
And yet those torture memories also seemed distant now, in a strange way. Today was a new beginning.
For better or worse.
He heard the distinct clank of the intercom turning on, and a loud voice echoed even more than the exterior guard’s had before, making his eardrums ache.
It announced, “Prisoners in Block G: enter your Soulcage console at once. Block G, enter your Soulcage consoles without delay.”
Montgomery took a deep, deep breath, and then latched his hands onto the console, on bars meant to aid in climbing up and into the thing. He set his feet in the floor of the cockpit-like area and then laid himself back on the seat with a careful, heavy sigh.
The feel of the machine on his back—the barely-cushioned metal, the curvature of the seat—was so intimate, so glove-like and mundane, that he was surprised he had actually stopped using it. It was ingrained like any military training drill had been. Like eating, drinking, sleeping, expelling waste.
They were watching him, as always, so they shut the console automatically once he was settled inside. The tubular metal door of the length of the console extended forward, forward, stretching a shadow down across his chest and to his chin, finally enclosing him in the Soulcage. The walls whirred and whined as the door sealed tightly, leaving him in complete darkness. The smell of oil and electric heat barraged his senses.
He shut his eyes.
What would it be today? What did the Soulcage have in store for him? Something awful, he had little doubt.
Would today be the last? Would his talent for Soulcage use fizzle out and leave him braindead? Unusable by his captors, fit only to be cast into the darkest prisons to rot and starve?
He should be so lucky! Mercy had forsaken him. And he could only suppose that no one was coming to save him.
Another noise started up, as intimately familiar to him as any other: a low rumbling accompanied by a reverberating squeal like a faint ringing in his ears.
His body began to tremble. His heart raced. His bodily systems pulsed, and he almost thought he’d vomit.
He gasped, and then felt a mental sensation as if he were imploding, retreating deep, deep, into his center. It was agony never-ending, until the Soulcage seemed to contract.
And after one other empty moment, it took his mind away.
⬤
Squeak.
That sound came from Montgomery’s limbs.
They were metal.
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