The Kovalenko Chronicles (pt. 6)
Hell Beside, Heaven Within
Xi glanced over at Driver and nodded her head toward the door.
“You can wait outside. I’d like to chat privately with our guest,” she said flatly.
Driver nodded and headed towards the door. “Chat privately” was Xi’s coy way of saying “No witnesses.” Truthfully, even Driver, as Herculean as he was, wanted no part of Xi’s interrogations. He didn’t even like waiting outside the door, and often wandered down the hall for a drink. The further he could be from her perverse little games, the better.
“Eva, can you hear me?” she asked quietly. Eva nodded slightly in reply. “Good. Now, tell me, what is your full name?”
“Eva Yuliya Kovalenko,” she replied in a monotone. Xi was asking her this to establish a baseline and to monitor for hesitation on Eva’s part. In Xi’s experience, the timeline for a subject to become pliable varied, dependent on multiple factors like height, weight, age and training.
Satisfied, Xi continued. “Very good. Now tell me, Eva, who sent you here? Was it the ISD? Or are you freelancing for some other organization these days?”
“ISD” stood for Interior of State Defense. Eva had been an agent for the ISD for five years, and was one of their top field operatives. Only a handful were considered better, and it was a widely held belief that one day, Eva would be seen in their echelon as well.
Eva didn’t answer. She stared straight into space and remained dead silent. Xi repeated the question, and again, Eva was silent. Xi tilted her head back and inhaled. She reached into her pocket and removed the little black case once more. “Apparently we need a stronger dose,” Xi said as she took a tiny tablet from the case.
“N,n, no. No,” Eva protested weakly. Xi ignored her protestations and slowly opened Eva’s mouth. There was no resistance as the tablet gently dropped on Eva’s tongue. A tiny voice in the back of her mind said spit it out, but her body could not comply. As Xi removed her finger from Eva’s mouth, she ran it over Eva’s full red lips and let out an audible sigh. She put the finger up to her own lips, slowly turned and walked away. She would let Eva be alone with her own mind while the LSD made it’s way through her bloodstream. Sometimes leaving the subject alone was far more effective than any coercing Xi herself could do. What the subjects conjured up was often far more fearsome. On her way through the door, she flipped the light switch off.
Eva sat alone in the dark, quaking slightly as a flurry of uncontrollable emotions overrode her. She started to whimper in an attempt to hold back tears. She had been interrogated before, but never had she felt so helpless, so dehumanized. As she wallowed in her anguish, she heard a noise ever so slight.
“Is someone there?”, she said with slurred voice. “Who’s there? Where are you?”
It was a skittering sound. Eva thought it sounded like rats skittering across the floor.
“Rats. Oh, God. What if they’re hungry? There’s no food!”
Suddenly, Eva felt something brush against her feet.
“No, no! Not my feet! No!
Eva kicked her feet so violently in fear that she fell from her chair. She rolled around on the floor in sheer desperation, consumed with fear that the rats would attempt to devour her face.
“Get the fuck away from me!!! No! NO!!”
“Light! I need the light. God, where’s the light? Where the fuck is it? Please, turn on the lights, please!!!”
Eva burst into tears and rolled around screaming on the floor in agony. She could feel the razor sharp teeth ripping at her flesh, so many starving rats pulling chunks away in a rabid orgy of hunger.
Her mind was consumed with sheer panic and her only thought was the light. She needed to find the light. She swatted drunkenly at her legs as she crawled to where she thought the light switch was. Her limbs felt like lead and the other side of the room felt like it was one hundred miles away.
A cry of sheer anguish rose from her throat as she crawled and crawled for what seemed an eternity. Finally, she reached the door. With every last ounce of strength she had, she pulled herself up just past the doorknob and fumbled maniacally for the switch. After what felt like hours, she heard a click and was bathed in what felt like the light of a thousand suns.
She collapsed to the floor and kicked violently again to get the rats off her, when she suddenly realized none were there. She stared blankly into space for a few moments, before she realized that the walls were vibrating and appeared to be melting.
She sat transfixed, as Xi opened the door and looked down at her handiwork.
“I believe now we can begin,” Xi said as a slight grin crept across her face.
The Beginning At Last 
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