Beyond the Rim

“What have you done to him?” I said. The guard who had brought Rock in was a hulking giant with a black beard. He looked down at me with supercilious gray eyes.

“Seethe here told me over the com that your friend gave a lot more resistance than you did, and it even took him a few minutes to bring him down.” Ed looked down at Rock, clearly impressed. Rock stirred, but he looked barely conscious.

“Take off both their shirts,” said Ed. Seethe ripped Rock’s tattered shirt from him, revealing bruises scattered across his torso. Then Seethe took a knife from his belt and its tip touched my collarbone.

“H-hey, that’s a nice shirt. Cost fifty creds at Staine’s—”

The guard tore through the fabric, the knife grazing my stomach, leaving a stinging cut. He then pulled the shirt out from under me and tossed it along with Rock’s onto the floor.

Meanwhile, Ed stuck one of those truthteller devices onto Rock’s head.

Rock stirred, as if he’d been given a stimulant, and his blue eyes caught mine. “Are you okay?” he said, voice hoarse.

“Yeah, they just gave me some drugs. You—don’t look so great.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean—”

Rock smiled crookedly.

I smiled back. I was glad he had a sense of humor about it.

Seethe and Ed switched places. Ed leaned over me. “Are you a spy?”

“No—unless you count in college when I spied on Katie Li—”

Ed gave a swift nod and before I knew it Seethe brought the knife down to Rock’s face, and sliced into his cheek.

“No!” I pulled against my bonds. “You’ve done enough to him!”

“Will you begin cooperating?”

“I am cooperating! I don’t know what you want!”

Blood dripped down Rock’s cheek. His face was stoic, but he had to be in quite a bit of pain.

Ed and Seethe switched places again. This time, Ed asked Rock whether he was a spy.

“If I said I was, I’d be lying.”

I flinched as the knife touched my chin. Then, it dug in, right beneath my lip, carving a slow curving line. Pain sliced into me. I tried to jerk out of the bonds, but I knew that was futile.

Blood trickled down my chin. The worst thing was not the pain, but the shock that I’d actually been cut with a knife.

“Leave him alone!” said Rock, anger burning in his voice. “If you’re so intent on hurting someone, hurt me. He can’t take it as well as I can.”

Oh, can’t I? I thought, though the absurdity of being jealous of such a thing hit me. “I can take it as well as you can.”

“You never had the training I did.”

“Yeah, like two days of marksmanship.”

“Two years of martial arts.”

“You never trained for anything like this, did you?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m tougher than you, any way you look at it.” Rock turned his head, laying it back on the slab, as if that finished the argument.

“The question here is,” said Ed, “not who is physically stronger, but who is psychologically stronger. Physically, it’s no contest. But the mind is a very…mysterious thing. You never know who will break first.”

Ed stepped over to me. “For instance, beneath that callow exterior might lie a brain as strong as steel. Perhaps a hardened spy.

“What is your espionage background?”

My heart flipped. Were they going to keep doing this, asking questions and cutting into us, one after another? My stomach clenched at the thought. There was nothing we could tell them…unless they wanted a lie.

I didn’t have anything to give. And so the big guard cut into Rock’s neck, right at the base of his throat.

“Stop it!” I yelled.

“It is up to you to stop it,” said Ed, walking back to Rock, who was breathing heavily. “Just tell us what we want to know.”

“We can’t,” said Rock. “Not if you want us to tell you we are spies. We were just exploring. In fact, it was Dev who coerced me to go on this adventure. I didn’t really want to come.”

“You did too,” I said, welcoming a distraction. “You just didn’t have a good idea of where to go.”

“And this was a good idea?”

Touché.

“In fact, this was probably the worst idea in the history of ideas.” He laughed, but it came out more as a cough.

“Where was your training?” said Ed, standing over Rock.

“What training?”

“The training you mentioned before.”

Rock hesitated. Had he painted himself into a trap, I wondered? Not that there was really anything to trap us into. Nothing real, anyway.

“It wasn’t government training if that’s what you mean. It wasn’t strictly legal, either. More like paramilitary.” Here he’d told this man what he’d never tell the government, but there was no way Ed could get him into trouble with Center.

“That’s interesting. Are you a shadow?”

“What do you mean?”

“There are those who don’t officially work for any government agency, but that doesn’t mean they are any less legit. To most, they are off-the-books, but that gives them the leeway to act with impunity. To shadow the ‘official’ government groups.”

“I just wanted combat training, since the military wouldn’t let me in.”

“Ah, so you are a Rimmer?”

“I don’t get why we Rimmers have to be second-class citizens.”

“It’s simply because you’re not in the System, so you could be a freethinker, like a lot of Rimmers.” Ed considered Rock. “You have a grievance against the government. This might make you refuse anything they had to offer—or it might mean that instead of a military commission, they offered you something else. The reason you say you took this training might only be a cover.”

“I would never work for them.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” He gave a nod.

Seethe lowered the knife to my chest. This time it lingered, touching my skin but not cutting—I hoped he would not—that Rock’s answers would be enough—

Blinding pain cut through me. I cried out, then tried to hold it back—don’t give them the satisfaction of seeing it hurts you—it’s really nothing, just a knife cutting into your chest—

It stopped. I was breathing hard, and the blood was trickling down my skin, and my lip stung at least as much as the wound in my chest—I tasted blood, and realized I’d bitten my lip to keep from screaming.

Rock was begging. “Please, don’t hurt him. I’ll take anything, just don’t hurt him. Please. I’ll do anything.”

“Anything?” said Ed. “Even tell me the truth?”

Rock swore, a long string of profanity that shocked even me, who was lying there like a half-flayed animal. “I’ve been telling the truth, damn you!” He yanked at his bonds, and I feared he might hurt himself.

My chest throbbed as if he’d cut out my heart instead of just into my muscle. I felt delirious. Please, make it stop, please let it be just a nightmare….

“You know what?” said Ed. “I believe you.”

“You do?”

“You can take it better than he can. You are stoic in the face of pain; it gives you satisfaction to bear up under it. What you can’t bear is seeing someone suffering who you are supposed to protect.”

It was a pretty accurate portrait of Rock, I had to say. Still in shock, I didn’t quite see the implications for me.

They didn’t switch places this time. Instead, Seethe’s hulking form towered over me, his face shadowed from the white lights as he looked down at me. His eyes were shaded, his expression hidden. He brought the knife down again; I jerked away from it, struggling, not even thinking I might get free, just blindly struggling.

The knife cut into my stomach. Because I was moving, it shoved into me, and, fearing it might stab an organ, I lay still.

In a paring motion, Seethe curved the knife around my belly button, cutting off the skin. Pain slashed into my brain. I tried to hold back the scream, but I’d never had a very high tolerance for pain—every little scratch was a trauma, and now here I was, being carved up like a main course.

I let out a scream from the pit of my being.