A/N: Here's something I thought I'd never do. A sequel to Greyzone. Probably won't be updated regularly or anything, butI'll try to putsomething new up now and then.

Thoughts in the Darkness

Blood on snow, under pale lamplight, is black. It spreads out, makes beautiful patterns. In daylight, it would take on a pink hue. Like a strawberry-flavoured ice-cone.

Daylight never seemed further away than this.

o o o

There’s darkness, darkness and closed doors with little hatches in them. Sometimes, the hatches open and food comes through. Rico wishes that it was possible to use the arrival of the food as some kind of measurement of time, but he suspects that it is as irregular as everything else in this place.

He knows that it is just a trick; to keep him on edge, never let him settle into any kind of comforting routine. Rico learned all the tricks from the best.

There are times when the door opens and the thin man in the suit is there with the chair and the handcuffs. The Suit has a cool voice and hard hands and he asks too many questions.

Rico doesn’t know what’s worse, the darkness or the sessions with the Suit. But there are actually times when he looks forward to the interrogations, just because it lets him see another human being. Then he thinks that he has to be pretty far gone.

And in the back of his mind, the Dive is still burning.

o o o

Healing flesh and bones itches like you wouldn’t believe. There are times when it wakes me up from the dizzying ocean of drugs I seem to be floating in. Sometimes I wonder if this is what afterlife is like, but nothing hurts and I can’t see any angels. That rules out both Hell and Heaven, none of which I believe in anyway.

Then there are the times when I wake up, and for a few nightmarish moments, everything is clear. Chris is dead. I wish I were too.

o o o

Rico spits on the floor. “Ve a chuparle el peson ha un chango.”

The Suit doesn’t seem to speak Spanish, but he can clearly tell from the tone that Rico just insulted him. The next time Rico spits, it’s red. The Suit wears an expression of utmost patience. Rico knows that kind of patience. It will only last so long.

“I will ask this once more, Dr Alvarez”, says the Suit in a level voice, like he had not just scraped open his knuckles on Rico’s teeth. “Where is Ruth Zimmer?”

Rico doesn’t answer. Sometimes he wonders. Would he answer if he knew? He hopes not, but darkness can do strange things to a person.

o o o

I wake up again, but this time it’s voices that pull me out of the drug haze. I seem to remember having heard at least one of them before, but I don’t know when or where.

“She is not nearly recovered enough”, it says.

“It won’t matter in the place she’s going”, says another voice. Now, that one I don’t like.

I want to open my eyes, but they seem to be glued shut. Then I try to move my fingers, my hands. Through the drugs, pain flares up inside my shoulder. I welcome it. Pain is good. Pain is real.

I try to lift my hands. I can’t. Someone tied them to the bed.

o o o

This time, the Suit brought photographs. Rico doesn’t want to see, but the Suit holds his head in an iron grip and forces him. It’s like a car crash. The kind you really don’t want to watch, but still can’t seem to tear your eyes away from.

And now he has no doubts that Takedo is dead as well.

Rico is no stranger to blood. In his chosen profession, he has seen more than enough of it. But blood is different when it comes out of your friends. Someone found a way to use barbed wire that was never meant to exist.

Sometimes, Rico wonders if the so-called civilisation really is what it claims to be. During all his years in the Dive, he never saw anything like the things in these photographs.

o o o

The next thing that pulls me out of my dreams of blood-on-snow and raspy breaths from bullet-damaged lungs is the feeling of a razor against my scalp. It’s one of the things I thought I’d never experience more than once.

For some reason, it feels good.

The metal is cool against my skin, and the hands shaving my hair off are surprisingly gentle. Last time they did this, I walked away with my head full of stinging little cuts.

I’m still tied down, and I can’t be bothered to open my eyes, but my mind feels less fuzzy, and the pain in my shoulder and my leg is back with a vengeance. I revel in it. Someone once taught me not to fear pain. Pain lets you know you’re still alive. Still alive and still fighting.

o o o

Sometimes, when the darkness is too unbearable, Rico talks to himself. It makes him nervous, because only insane people talk to themselves, but it also helps a little. He recites poems, mostly, the few he can still remember.

Once in a while, he whispers the prayer his mother taught him.

Padre nuestro que estás en los cielos
Santificado sea tu Nombre…

It doesn’t seem to help much. No one comes to deliver him from evil. He is not even sure what evil is anymore. He is not sure about anything at all. His entire world is eight square metres big, with polished steel walls.

o o o

The first time I stand, my leg gives out from under me. I’m pretty sure something is wrong inside it. There’s no time to find out what, because there’s immediately a pair of hands around my shoulders, pulling me upright again. These hands aren’t gentle. They seem to find every single spot on my body that hurts and prod them.

I have faces to go with the voices and the hands now, but it doesn’t matter. These faces mean nothing to me. One of them, the man in the doctor’s coat has sad eyes. The rest are just faces, masks.

My hands are cuffed behind my back, and I am being hauled out of the sterile-smelling room where I have spent my time until now. The sad-looking doctor is left behind, and the not-gentle hands keep me on my feet.

“Time to go back where you belong, missy”, says one of the mask-like faces.

I try to bite him. He shoves me away and laughs.

o o o

Rico’s mother always smelled of onion and pepper and garlic. She loved to cook. Today, Rico remembers how she used to make her own wheat tortillas. She could stand for hours in front of the stove, just because she thought homemade tortillas were better than the store-bought.

Rico got the recipe before she died, but his tortillas never taste the same.

He also remembers the Wednesday-evening dinners with K.C and Chris. It was Rico’s idea, those dinners. A way to make sure that the two of them got something else to eat than take-out noodles from God-knows-where.

He liked to look out for those two. He liked nagging them about their unhealthy habits. Sometimes he thinks that they liked it too, though they never showed it. Everyone needs to feel cared for sometimes.

But he never managed to get either of them to quit smoking. Funny that. Right now, Rico would give anything to have the smell of cigarette-smoke in the cell.

o o o

When we get into the back of the van, there are long seats along both sides. They put me on one of them; cuff my hands and feet so I can’t move. Then they sit down on the opposite side. There are three of them, all in suits and ties. They stare at me like they think I’m going to break out of the cuffs like some kind of she-hulk. Guess they read my records.

“You’re scared of me”, I tell the one who sits in front of me. He’s the one I tried to bite earlier. His mouth quirks into a smile.

“I don’t thinks so, missy” he says, in that condescending tone of voice that I hate.

“Then you should be”, I say, and grin through the pain.

He smiles again, but this time the smile is just a little bit uncertain.

o o o

Rico is almost glad that he doesn’t know what happened to K.C. and Chris, to Aleesha and Alex McKenzie. That way, he can still hope.

The Suit keeps asking questions about Ruth Zimmer, so ‘Leesh has to be alive. Or maybe he’s just doing it for the hell of it. Maybe the next photograph will be of Aleesha with barbed wire around her neck. Maybe it will be a picture of Chris with a bullet through his brain. Maybe it will be K.C. with her eyes torn out and her mouth sewn shut.

Rico sees all those things in his nightmares. When he wakes up, there is still darkness.

Hope can be a dangerous thing.

o o o

The van stops and the man with the smile bends forward to unlock the cuffs while the other two holds their guns to my head. I look at them and keep grinning.

Then they open the door. Getting out is difficult, with my messed-up leg and the shoulder that won’t move right. Finally, one of the men grabs me around the waist and lifts me down. He shudders when he has to touch my skin.

“Well, missy, here we are”, says the man with the smile. He looks even more uncertain now, probably figures that someone in my situation ought to be a whole lot more subdued. He knows nothing.

“You got a smoke to spare?” I ask. I know he smokes, can smell it on his breath and his clothes. I don’t know when I last had a cigarette.

He looks at me for a moment, then shrugs his shoulders. “What the hell”, he says and reaches into his jacket to pull out a pack of Lucky Strikes. He takes one, hesitates, then reaches out to put it between my lips. Like he’s afraid I’ll try to bite him again. I could, but I won’t. I really want this smoke.

He holds out a lighter, lights the cigarette, and I inhale deeply. Bliss. I can already feel the pain in my shoulder and my leg recede a little on the wave of the nicotine rush.

“Thanks”, I say, around the smoke. I’m still grinning. It’s beginning to make them uncomfortable.

“You’re welcome, missy”, says the man with the smile. He starts to put the packet back in his pocket, but then he stops, shakes it a little. “I think you’re going to need these more than I do”, he says, and slips the packet into my shirt-pocket. I grin even wider. Bingo.

The place I’m going, cigarettes are better than cash.

o o o

These are the things Rico misses:

Music. Chris played the guitar well. Sometimes he brought it to the Wednesday-evening dinners. Caressed the thing like he would a lover. Rico never managed to learn how to play anything, but he liked to listen, and he enjoyed watching Chris tease tunes from the strings.

Growing things. He kept houseplants all over his clinic/flat, tended them like they were his children. Maybe they were a substitute of sorts. Rico will never have children of his own, the radiation after USA blew up saw to that. The plants did not make up for that loss, but Rico liked to care for things.

Beer. An ice-cold Corona with a wedge of lime. Not that there ever was any fresh lime in the Dive, save for that one time when Takedo managed to get hold of a box. That first mouthful from a fresh bottle. Sitting at the Corner, talking, laughing, maybe play cards.

He doesn’t think about the people he misses. If he does that, he’ll never be able to stop, and that’s a sure way of going crazy.

o o o

They lead me through a long corridor with puke-green walls and blinking fluorescent lights. Into a room, where they make me undress and a fat woman with rubber gloves makes sure I don’t have anything hidden anywhere on my body.

“Good job you got yourself here”, I tell her. “Must be nice spending you days sticking you fingers into people’s arses.”

She gives me a tired look, must’ve heard it hundreds of times before.

Then they let me dress again. I’m allowed to keep the cigarettes. ‘Thank God for small mercies’, that’s what Rico would’ve said. But I can’t think of him now.

Can’t think of anyone but myself. That’s what’s life like in prison.

To be continued...