“Luisa, are you there?” she asks, a bit louder. Searching for another door.
She finds the door leading upstairs.
Opens it.
Bright light enters the corridor, and the camera clicks as it switches from night vision to normal mode. The girl hides her eyes in her arms and slams the door shut.
She really does not try to escape. Instead, she crawls back to the room we kept her in, leans against a wall, legs drawn up and cries.
“I don’t think she knows,” says Kat, and it pinches my chest. All the anticipation, the hope of finally getting my revenge, flushes from my body, and is replaced by frustration.
“Or it is a very good show,” I say.
“I have an idea,” says Kat. “She was utterly scared of pigeons. Let us try the fear approach.”
“Pigeons,” I say with a drawn-up eyebrow. “Who is scared of pigeons?”
“More people than you might believe,” Kat says. “Can you get some?”
“Sure,” I say and make a call to an associate.
They are delivered half an hour later, four pigeons in a cage. It is probably the most peculiar order I have ever made, and my associate looks questioningly at me, but she knows not to ask any questions.
Kat takes the cage and gets back to the catacombs. I watch the surveillance footage.
The cell door creaks open, and the girl flinches.
“So,” says Kat. “This is your last chance to tell me the truth. I have four pigeons here with me. I will leave them here with you without the cage if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”
Kat rattles at the cage, and pigeons flatter wildly in it.
The girl reacts with total panic. She screams. Her breathing is erratic as she crawls backwards as far away as she can get. I laugh. What a pathetic thing she is.
“Nothing?” asks Kat in her playful arrogance. But that girl can’t speak, because she has a full-on panic attack.
“Well, I’m releasing them,” says Kat and opens the cage.
The pigeons flap their wings in just as much panic as the girl, and she throws herself to the ground, hands above her head and screams. She screams and screams and screams.
And I add pigeons to my list of future torture techniques.
Kat leaves and comes back up.
“I’m letting her sit with it,” she says.
“I do believe it is working quite well,” I say, showing her the footage.
The screaming has stopped, and she lies paralysed on the floor. Moments like these are what break a person. Fear and sleep deprivation are the most powerful tools for getting information because they open people up to further questioning.
“Good,” says Kat, takes an apple from the fruit bowl on the kitchen counter and sits on it.
I press the microphone button on the tablet when Kat bites into her apple.
“Are you ready to talk now?” I ask.
“I don’t know anything,” whimpers the girl before she adds in a darker tone. “I hope you die a slow and painful death where the universe will make you pay for being such a horrible human being.”
My mouth curves.
