[Lauchenoiria]

(Jointly written with Xiomera.)

The Cauhloc
Almost 1am

Mariya Adema wore a mask, goggles, gloves and had her hair piled up in a net. She was in a small laboratory, and was jabbing at a concoction in front of her with a very long utensil. Her face was a picture of concentration, complete with a frown as she worked. There was none of her characteristic extreme enthusiasm present, merely focus. She placed the utensil on the surface and picked up the small vial she’d been working on.

She poured a little of the purplish liquid she’d created into a test tube filled with human blood. It bubbled a little and began to take on a greenish tint. Mariya growled and took a pencil, ticking a box in a column marked “unsuccessful - blood damage” next to a random alphanumeric string in a row on the page. The same string was on a label on the vial she’d just finished. She placed a stopper in the vial and put it back in a box.

Mariya wandered over to a drawer which was labelled - in both English and Xiomeran - “Mariya’s Drawer DO NOT TOUCH”. She opened it and started to read the handwritten labels off of various bottles in a section labelled, in English, “oral administration”. She picked up three and put them in the pockets of the long lab coat she wore as a habit. Torture was, after all, a science.

She made her way out of the room into a small changing area where she removed the gloves, sticking them in a waste bin covered in biohazard stickers. She hung her mask, goggles and hair net on a peg labelled, in Xiomeran, “priority cleaning”. Leaving the small area through another door, she walked down a corridor towards a locker room, absentmindedly typing in her code and taking out a smartphone. She frowned at the screen, then made a call.

“You killed another one?” she said in accented Xiomeran the moment she heard the click of an answer. She waited a little longer as the person on the line explained something, then she sighed and shook her head. “It is of vital importance that we find a way to sour the dreams and aspirations of prisoners,” she explained to the phone patiently. “As quickly as possible. Without this control, the ideologues maintain a weapon against us. The Empress is counting on you.”

Her grammar was incorrect, but her Xiomeran had still improved enough that the person on the other end of the phone could at least understand her meaning. They responded, and Mariya shook her head, responding more sharply. “I did not convince ASI to fund Project Nightmare out of some kind of desire to cause pain. Believe it or not, I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t necessary. Get my notes from the lab and prepare a report, I’m going home for the night.”

She hung up the phone and turned to leave. Mariya paused on her way to the exit and decided to make one last visit to her prisoner. She sauntered to his cell, motioning for the guards to permit her entry. He was asleep on the floor when she went in. She kicked him in the stomach.

"Wake up! No sleep for traitors!"

Cozamalotl winced in pain, before slowly rolling to an upright position. He was far from the dapper, elegant image he normally presented to the world. His hair and mustache had grown badly unkempt, and his face bore the unmistakable signs of sleep deprivation and poor rations. The other evidence of his stay in the Cauhloc was hidden underneath the orange prison jumpsuit he wore.

The opposition leader had already figured out that speaking to Mariya only seemed to anger her more. He groaned slightly as he shifted his position on the ground, but otherwise made no sound and waited for her to speak.

"I'm afraid my special surprise will have to wait a little longer," Mariya informed him with mock sadness. "The incompetents in requisitions keep sending me ingredients of suboptimal quality. I'm on my way out, so wanted to give you yet another chance to recant your political beliefs before I dream up more fun activities for us in my sleep."

”Your desire to have me renounce my beliefs will have as much success as my attempts to convince you to abandon being a torturer, I fear,” Cozamalotl replied. “We both have our beliefs, which we refuse to abandon no matter what. I regret that is so, in your case. You could still redeem yourself. But even if I die, I cannot give up my fight for freedom for Xiomerans.”

"Blah blah blah idealistic nonsense," Mariya replied, bored. "And you could convince me to give it up, if you offered me a better job in which I could use my talents. But alas, all other careers I'm good at pay a pittance."

She sauntered over to him, leaning down and taking his arm that she'd broken the other day. She turned it over in her hands, examining it, and then fumbled in her pocket for something.

”One person’s idealistic nonsense is another’s devoted belief.” Cozamalotl winced again as she gripped his arm. “It is a shame that you do not believe in anything. I wonder what motivates you to do what you do,” Cozamalotl mused. “I can only imagine it is a hollow existence, living only to cause others pain.”

"This is work," she shrugged as she found what she was looking for. "I have a social life, too."

She unscrewed the tiny bottle she had pulled from her pocket as she dropped his arm. "Open wide."

”I don’t suppose you could provide something of actual benefit to consume, such as food,” Cozamalotl said with a slight trace of his rhetorical skill clinging by a thread as he complied. He had already figured out that refusing, or resisting, the commands of Mariya and the other ASI people was futile and painful.

Mariya tipped the entire bottle into his mouth and then tucked the empty container back into her pocket. "You offended me by being asleep when I came to see you. In a few minutes when this starts working, you should feel rather sick. That ought to keep you up all night. You can have food tomorrow, I'm afraid it would be a waste to give you any now."

”Everything about this whole situation is a waste,” Cozamalotl replied, a bit more of his professorial tone returning as he became more awake. “It is a waste of my potential, and of yours, that we both find ourselves in this situation for the benefit of a cruel regime and an unjust leader. I can only hope that someday you see that,” he replied, closing his eyes.

Mariya yawned loudly, deliberately, and leaned against the cell door as she waited for the substance to begin working. "You have the power to end this, you choose not to every time you refuse to recant."

”Just as you have your mission, I have mine. The freedom of Xiomera and its people are my mission. They are my purpose for being here. I surely can’t give up my purpose for even existing.” Cozamalotl leaned heavily back against the wall of the cell, as the substance began making him feel unwell. “And even in this cell, even in death if it comes to that, I fulfill that purpose,” he murmured. “My actions will help advance the day in which Xiomera finally finds itself free.”

"Goddess, you're persistent!" Mariya growled. "You're worse than the Aurora. Why anyone allowed you to become like this is a mystery. You sound like a twelve year old Lauchenoirian at a protest."

She checked her watch. It was 1:30am. If he didn't puke soon, she'd have to get someone else to watch him. She wanted to get home.

Normally, Cozamalotl would have been intrigued by the mention of an Aurora, but was frankly feeling too ill to pay it much mind. With a sudden lurch, he leaned over a nearby bucket. When the retching sounds finally subsided, he fell back against the wall. “Persistence is progress,” he said with a slight and raspy chuckle, recalling one of the slogans of the Unification Party.

Mariya clapped her hands gleefully. "You remembered to put it in the bucket, well done! Make sure you continue that throughout the night. If you avoid getting any on the floor, we can see about food. I'm very disappointed you choose to continue this, but we all have a role in life and it seems yours is to suffer. See you tomorrow!"

She banged on the cell door in her regular pattern to be released, waving cheerily at Cozamalotl.

After she left, Cozamalotl sighed and lay back down. He genuinely felt bad that someone could take as much pleasure in hurting others as Mariya did. He also wished, just for a moment, that there was such a thing as a time machine and that either he could go back to before the coup, or forward to the future he believed he saw of a free Xiomera. Anything, other than being in this particular moment.

On her way out of the building, Mariya grabbed someone she vaguely recognised.

"Tell the people from the dream project that they better have a report for me tomorrow. We're running out of time."

Then she let go and stormed to the exit, irritated at Cozamalotl's stubbornness, and her own failure to find something that works.