Prey

The cat is a wild animal that inhabits the homes of humans.

- Konrad Lorenz

We approached the cell where Petersen was being held. I asked Private Mendoza to activate the interior view screen so that we could see what he was up to.

The floor was strewn with crumpled paper and discarded food bar wrappers. Petersen himself was lying on the bed with his arm over his eyes to block out the unchanging light. He hadn't shaved since yesterday, and his clothes were wrinkled. In short, he was a mess. Looking at the papers, something finally clicked. It was Petersen who had said it.

Another keyed entry, and the door slid open silently.

Private Mendoza stepped aside, and I walked through the hatch, Darwin at my heels.

"Hello, Petersen," I said.

He hesitated a moment, then slowly withdrew his arm from his eyes. He blinked a few times to adjust to the light then looked over.

He burst from the bed with a roar, arms extended and fingers arched into claws. There was murder in his eyes as he quickly crossed the space between us.

Darwin, however, was quicker. Before Petersen had made it two steps, Darwin was standing in front of me, hissing and back arched, all teeth and claws.

Petersen pulled himself up short, his look transmuted from rage to terror.

"Sit down, Petersen." I said quietly, letting the cell door close and lock behind me. "We need to talk about one of your prisoners. Leena. Or as you knew her. Test Subject #3."

"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!" he yelled as he scrambled backwards and climbed onto the bed.

"He is Darwin," I said, emphasizing the pronoun. "Darwin, this is your next victim." Darwin, playing his part beautifully, slowly stalked towards Petersen.

"WHAT!?" Petersen tried to sink into the wall behind him through sheer will. Darwin half circled the bed, approaching from the side, forcing Petersen to turn his back away from the wall so he could watch the approaching harbinger of pain.

There are some well-known facts about forced persuasion. First of all, the use of pain to extract information is a poor technique. It yields unreliable information, and to a Finder clear information is the most important result of any exchange. Torture will often induce the victim to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear. There are some individuals with an extreme tolerance to pain, and there are those who even take pleasure in it. All in all, an inefficient technique. Those in favor of it usually possess the information they are looking for already and proceed nonetheless out of a sense of vengeance, to cause the victim pain, or a sense of gratification, to give themselves pleasure.

Based on what I had heard so far, Petersen was in the latter camp. Threatening him with traditional torture would have no effect. He would resist just to avoid giving me the pleasure of witnessing his suffering. Random violence however, such as that delivered by a wild animal, was truly terrifying, because the questions of power and pleasure are irrelevant. It is just pain and death, remorseless and inevitable.

"Sit," I said, quietly.

Petersen continued to ignore me. He was frozen in place, trembling violently as Darwin continued his approach.

A blur swept passed me. It was Mehta. He stepped onto the bed behind Petersen and delivered a vicious kidney punch that doubled Petersen over.

"The man said sit." he said through clenched teeth. Mehta reached back for another blow, and this time I think he was going for Petersen's head. I needed Petersen conscious and rational.

"Stop." I said, raising my voice only a little.

Mehta hesitated, the streaks of tears staining his face. He cocked his arm up again.

"He cannot tell us anything if he is unconscious. Let me do this."

Mehta still hesitated.

"Rohit, trust me. I am very good at this, and time is important here."

Mehta slowly lowered his arm. For good measure though, he grabbed Petersen's shoulder and spun him around, forcing his back into the wall.

He brought his face close to Petersen's and said, "Sit. Talk." The rage boiling in him permitted him only single syllable words, but they would do.

Mehta stepped off the bed, and looking at me said "Do it," then walked out of the room. I nodded to Mendoza, she closed the door. Petersen, Darwin and I were alone in the cell once again.

"Well, that was exciting," I said blandly. Darwin had climbed up onto the bed and was positioned within clawing distance of Petersen's outstretched leg. Petersen was aware of this proximity, but was too afraid to move and set off this wild creature.

"Do you think that we can –" I didn't get to finish the sentence. Darwin had decided, through whatever instinct cats had, to forgo the usual dance of pointed question and vague answer, and make good the implied threat of his presence.

He lifted his right forepaw slowly, ensuring that Petersen was watching. Petersen's eyes were wide and spittle was forming on the corners of his mouth.

Darwin then, just as slowly, extended his formidable claws, each a nearly three inch blade. Without warning, he swiped down on Petersen's leg, slicing open his pants, skin and muscle in a single fluid arc.

Then just as slowly, he retracted his paw and rested it, bloody claws still extended, between them.

Petersen screamed, of course. But Darwin was still watching him, never breaking eye contact in the way expert predators have done since the dawn of the food chain. Petersen could simply not look away. His hands flew to his thigh and blood seeped from between his fingers.

"Pull over your blanket and put some pressure on it. You don't want to bleed out." I said. Darwin had made sure not to slice open any significant arteries or veins, so the loss of blood was, technically speaking, not life threatening. But Petersen didn't know that.

"We will deal with any infection later." I added. This drew both of their attention to me. Darwin was insulted that I would even suggest that he was somehow less than perfectly clean. I would make it up to him later.

Petersen, pulling some sheets up to his thigh, looked at me despairingly, then around at the cell. That was unusual, I thought. What did this cell have to do with infection?

Petersen is the one who finally broke the silence.

"What do you want to know about it?" he asked, voice shaking.

It took me a moment to figure out what he meant by 'it.' I shouldn't have been surprised though. It is a common distancing technique.

"Why 'it'?" was my first question.

He managed a sneer through his pain.

"Well isn't that interesting," he said. "It seems that the vaunted powers of the Finder do not extend to omniscience. Let me just savor this moment. I don't think I am going to get many of these moving forward. You know something? Even a little power still tastes good."

I rose to leave. He smiled in triumph. Darwin also rose, but instead of leaving with me, he took a step towards Petersen. I stopped at the door and looked back. Darwin paused and looked at me to see if I would turn back to stop him. Instead, I knocked on the door once, and it opened.

"Wait!" Petersen said, fear creeping back into his voice. "You need to take your beast!"

I let the door close behind me. The scream that followed would have been earsplitting had I still been in the room. Turning on the vid screen again, I could see new wounds seeping blood through Petersen's shirt. He was scrambling onto the rickety desk, scattering papers across the floor. Darwin was stalking him again, circling the front of the desk, pacing back and forth while watching Petersen. He could have easily leapt up and pulled Petersen down, but I suspect that he was concerned that Petersen might fall on him. So like the expert hunter that he was, he waited for Petersen to tire and fall out of his 'tree' on his own.

Petersen wasn't afraid of pain. He understood it. He used it. He enjoyed applying it and probably could tolerate its application. What he really feared was power. He craved it and wrapped himself in its illusion. He feared true power, such as what Mr. Jones had over him, and even more the uncontrolled, unpredictable power of nature, as currently residing in the pacing form of Darwin.

It wasn't unusual, this fear of Nature. Humanity had come to fear space, and the natural chaos beyond the Giants. Even the Giants frightened us, for they had become the new dark forests into which humans had ventured never to return.

I looked to Mehta, who was himself a little wild eyed at the casual disregard I had for Petersen's health.

I reentered the cell, and Darwin ceased his pacing. I grabbed the chair and set it up facing the desk on which Petersen was still standing. Darwin came and sat next to me, and I reached out and pet him. He permitted my touch, but never took his eyes from Petersen.

Petersen looked between us, finally realizing who actually had the power in this room, and settled himself into a half sitting position on the table.

"So," I said quietly, "shall we resume our conversation?"

"Yes," he said nervously, "I am sorry. I shouldn't have..."

I held up my hand. "I do not care for your apologies, only your compliance."

"Yes, of course. I only meant that..."

"And direct answers to my questions," I interrupted. "Nothing more."

He fell silent, watching me intently to try to guess how he could best please me. He didn't understand, of course, that nothing pleased me, and nothing displeased me. That would require an attachment to things and people. I had none.

"Very good. Why did you refer to your Test Subject as an 'it'?"

"Because, that is what it was. At first we thought they were aliens, since we had picked them up among the Giants, but it turned out they were just abominations."

They? So the three test subjects were of the same kind. I had assumed so in my reading, but it was good to have confirmation.

"Why do you think they were abominations?"

"I am guessing that they had been mutated by the cosmic radiation beyond the belt. Who knows what deep space does to the body. That's why they sent those imbeciles out instead of real people. Their skin was burned black and their eyes had been completely stained."

"How many of them did you have here?"

"Three at first, then only T.S. #3 at the end."

"Why did you think they were alien?"

"Not me! I never believed it. I tried to tell those idiots that there were no such things as aliens. There is nothing out there but death."

"Why did your co-workers," and I put as much disdain into the last word as I could, "believe that they were aliens then?"

"The other scientists insisted that they were alien based on their skin, eyes and such. I think it was their self-healing that convinced them - gullible idiots. I told them all along that they were miscreations and mutants. They were probably diseased with who knows what and that we were all in danger. They should have been destroyed and their rooms sanitized instead of being brought here."

"Why weren't they?"

"Information. They were testing a new shuttle design. SHE, wanted them to give us the information."

"What happened then?"

"Well, they wouldn't talk to us at first, so I applied a little persuasion. The big fella did an awful lot of screaming, but no talking other than stupid clicks and pops and some gibberish. That's when I figured out that they were imbeciles, probably disposables sent into space to test out the dangers of the Giant zone to see what would happen to real humans if they went there."

"What made you believe that they were human after all?"

"Well, after I removed the big fella's left hand..."

"You did what?" I was stunned at the casual violence that Petersen was able to commit. This man could never be allowed to leave this cell. The fact that he was this broken meant that he had deep seated sociopathic issues that would likely never be healed.

"I don't understand. It is standard procedure in an interrogation. Anyway, his mutation allowed him to heal almost immediately. I REALLY wanted to figure out which combination of radiation and chemicals made that happen. Would you believe that as I worked my way through his fingers they actually started to grow back! It became a game almost, to see if I could outrace the regrowth. Eventually, I won of course, but only when I took out his heart."

The triumphant smile on his face as he looked at me made me half believe in the old myth of the human soul, mostly due to fact that he lacked one.

"So then we started on the smaller girl, but I left her hands alone. We needed her to write, since none of them could talk. Like I said, disposables." He tapped his head with his finger.

"What did you need them to write about?"

"We couldn't figure out some of the ship's designs. They were really very innovative. We weren't sure what half the equipment on their shuttle did. So since they were too stupid to talk, we had them draw whatever they could. They might have been idiots, but they were great mimics. They must have been shown the plans and formulas at some point, because they could copy them out well. I doubt they understood most of what they wrote, but we had some of our scientists upstairs fixing their miscopying."

That was the tie to Imanda. She was one of the scientists who was helping

"The real key was the vivisections. They are what tipped the hat. I was finally able to convince the others that these were nothing but ruined humans. Some of them were horrified, but that is the way it has always been, the strong have their way with the weak. Law of the jungle, really..."

He completely missed the irony of his own words. The jungle was sitting next to him, and had beaten him into submission.

"Anyhow, the girl must have had a bomb embedded in her somewhere. It must have been really small because it was missed by our scans. When the night team started the vivisections she blew up the whole lab. Good thing nobody important was killed."

I was still listening, as distasteful as it was. This little monster had explained why there was only one of them left. Now my job was to find the last surviving victim of this house of horrors.

He was still talking about the results of the vivisections. I held up a hand and he stopped mid-sentence.

"When did you notice that Leena was gone?"

"Who's Lee... Oh, I see, the Long-range Exploration Expedition... clever. Let's see, that would be four days ago, when that scientist Selim came down. The boss was NOT happy about that."

The last piece fell into place. Mr. Jones had been aware of the connection between Imanda and Leena all along. There was little chance that Imanda was still alive but even a little chance was worth taking. I rushed out of the cell, quickly followed by Darwin.