F or S Entry: What's your name?

Dark, empty, cold, the room stood silently at the end of the corridor. The torch lights flickered as the walls screamed out in pain, the lifeless shadowed figures curled up in the corners of their cells, whispering their demented secrets. I carelessly dragged my feet across the floor, the baggy t-shirt pierced with holes, stained with blood hung from my sleaves. The guard removed my gag and threw me into the room, slamming the gated door.

I stand up and saw a table filled with documents and two chairs, settled in one of those resided an old fat bald man with a face of no friends at all. I could see the top of a lotus flower emerging from shoulder to neck, an Internal Affairs watchdog trademark. With his eyes locked into the files he started rumbling in the instant I sat.

"Freya D'Oro, special agent 69... served in Arcadia, Valentia, Nevada, Minerva University and Yamada, very impressive..."

"I know what you are trying to do sir. That ain't gonna work," I retorted.

"No, agent Freya, you don't know what I'm trying to do! I'm here to clean up this mess if you cooperate."

I looked with a mix of piety and hate for not knowing if this pretentious way of speech was a born ability or designed just to piss me off. My lips didn't depart from each other at all.

"If I walk out that door, everything you did will be declassified. You will be convicted, you will be discharged, you will spend the rest of your life living a fate worse than death," he barked.

Today I finally understood the meaning behind the saying "the sound of silence speaks louder than a thousand voices", unfortunately, in an ugly way.

"Very well agent, have it in your way."

He catches up his files, stood up and turned back to me. I heard his hand brushing the door to open it and remembered that some things are priceless. Make a promise and fulfil it, it's one of those.

"Wait! What do you want me to do?"

He walks away from the door, goes back to the table and sits on the edge of it. He lights a cigarette and leaves it lying on his lips, without swallowing, as he stares fixedly at my face. He takes a portrait out of his briefcase and throws it at me. I did not have to look at the painting to know who it was.

"Let's begin. What's your name?"

"Freya"

"Where lays your loyalty?"

"Duty"

"When you are not performing your duties do you feel lost?"

"Duty"

"What's your name?"

"Freya"

"Do you dream about not being Scorpio?"

"Duty"

"Do you feel like there is a part of you that is missing?"

I gasp for a second, but before I have to face his challenging look, I answer again.

"Duty"

"What's your name?"

"Freya"

"You look fine. Now, tell me everything you know about Yamada."

I begin to repay my memories and with them, I sharpen my willpower.

In the middle of my confession, I could feel that there is something disturbing about this stone box I'm in. It has been engineered with absolute precision. The corners are sharp and straight. Someone designed this interrogation room, they sat in a clean office under the glow of the natural sunrays and used their God-given talents to create something so soulless as to constitute an additional punishment. Apparently taking my liberty is not enough, keeping me from those I miss is not enough, seizing my property to pay for my upkeep here in the "maze" is not enough. This place is designed to take so much more than that. By the time a person has spoken even half their history here, they rarely recall their name and have lost most of their vocabulary. For the most part, their sanity is shot, they swing between crying for the mothers and battling invisible demons.

Hours pass as I tell what I know, as well as answering questions regarding his files that now fill the table.

"Number of Strings detected?"

"Minimum twenty-nine, maximum thirty-five."

"Who's the fourth guy?" he asks while blowing the cigarette air on my face and pointing his finger at the image.

I cough to ward off the toxic air that now permeates me. I do not look at the picture. Taking advantage of the movement of a cough to move my hand down my inner thigh to the pelvis and bring my hand back with a long needle.

"A spy, didn't think much of it at the time."

"What went wrong?"

"Unknown. Communication has been lost."

"I don't believe in coincidences agent"

He grabs the rest of my threadbare shirt and shocks me against the wall. My feet sway in a futile attempt to reach the ground.

"What the fuck is going on here?" I grasp with difficulty.

"Are you siding with the enemy? Why not kill the spy? Your mission is to get rid of it. Is this what you call loyalty? What are you loyal to? Country? Ideology? Feelings?"

In that frozen second between standoff and fighting, I see his eyes firm lock on me. Our faces are unreadable, no fear, no invitational smirk. I didn't know who threw the first punch, but suddenly my fist was slamming into his face while he sunk into my stomach. Blood pooled in his mouth as I gagged. We stumbled apart for a brief second to catch our breaths before diving back at each other, eyes narrowed in determination.

Enter my shop and I can tell you some secrets. Show me disrespect and someone is gonna need a grave. Show me you are better and I bow to you and learn. I am not arrogant, I'm just good, very good. So if he wants a fistfight, fine by me, come empty handed and we'll see who leaves with their pride in a jab. But when it comes to my type of fight's there's no honour, no code. All that matters is the win and I take nothing for granted.

I dodged his fist and came up with my own; for a brief instant, his stone grey eyes widened before he managed to tilt his head back and slam it into mine. Stars burst in my vision but I shook it off, throwing a reverse kick.

The back of his head bounced to the table, his arms lost tension and his legs began to weaken. I grabbed and pulled him against the table. His head was pounding. I brought a fist to his face, snapping his nose into a grotesquerie and in agile movements, I managed to pierce his throat with the needle as many times as I thought necessary. As I watched him agonize over the table, I complemented amidst the puffs.

"When we met for the first time, you told me a saying 'What goes around, comes around', but after all these years I've learned a better saying 'As long as the earth turns, the infidel will pay'. You know shit about loyalty."

I search through the files and find the one I was looking for. When I opened to make sure I picked the right one, I couldn't help but let a self-effacingly smile play around the corners of my mouth, incredibly without malice or indecent intentions. Turning my gaze from the file I could see the blood-soaked portrait below the still warm, epileptic body of a half-dying man.

I turned toward the door and put my hand on it, I stop and I remember a remark I could not forget to make.

"By the way, you always got my name wrong."