The thought tormented him when he slept. It wasn’t easy to sleep in the cell — the light burned brightly, day and night — but somehow, he managed it. He’d been betrayed, but why? He would have understood one of his ex-girlfriends, or maybe one of his enemies from the regular media outlets — or what was left of them — but Mr Adair? What had the aliens offered him to make him turn traitor and betray Joshua’s existence and activities to them? Joshua could have almost forgiven betraying him, but Loretta had been young and innocent; she didn’t deserve what the aliens would do to her. The only consolation he had was that the aliens probably wouldn’t try to rape her, even though they might just dump her in a camp and forget about her. He couldn’t forgive that, but why?
Maybe it had been the girls, Joshua wondered, and thought dark thoughts about strangling their father. Maybe he’d been threatened with losing them, or perhaps having them sent to a work gang, unless he turned informer. Or, perhaps, they needed something and only the aliens could provide it. He hadn’t known that either of them needed special medicine, but it wasn’t as if he’d known them that well before the invasion had begun. Perhaps Mr Adair had been threatened himself, or had been offered extra food, or…
There was little point in wondering about it. In a long career spent in the gutter, Joshua had seen how easy it was for someone to betray a sacred trust, or even someone they didn’t like or care about. It was easy to find a source on almost anything, if someone knew where to look; a dissatisfied employer, the victim of workplace bullying, the past wives or girlfriends of the rich and famous, the person who had committed a minor or major indiscretion in the past and didn’t dare allow the rest of the world to know about it. Anyone could be broken, or made to share secrets, given the right incentive… and no security precaution was ever one hundred percent effective. Mr Adair’s motive might even have been as simple as money; the alien money, handled through their ID cards, was starting to take hold.
Bastards, he thought, feeling in his pockets. The aliens had searched him carefully and removed anything that could be used as a weapon. Part of him was rather flattered by their assumption of his ingenuity, for he didn’t have the slightest idea how half of them could be used as weapons, the rest of him was furious. What was a reporter without even a pen and some paper? They’d given him a prisoner’s outfit, probably burned all of his remaining clothes, and made sure that if he escaped, he would be noticed. Without an ID card, they would probably pick him up a few minutes after he escaped… if it had been possible. He’d examined the cell in the first few moments after being dumped inside, after the panic had worn off slightly, and discovered that it was very simple and completely escape-proof. Picking the lock would have been impossible even without the bolts, while the cement walls and floor would have required high explosives or a drill to break through. In the absence of either — and, while he was wishing, he wanted a teleporter as well — he was stuck. He was caught like a rat in a trap.
He poured himself a glass of water, tasting the bitter tang as he drank a few sips, and scowled at the plastic jug. The aliens had given him a jug of water a day and expected him to use it sparingly. They hadn’t missed a trick, either; the plastic jug wasn’t even useable for slitting his wrists. Joshua had never seriously considered suicide, not since he’d been sacked from his last job, but now… now he would almost be tempted, if he had something to hurt himself with. He’d tried not breathing, as he’d read in one of the spy novels he’d read once as a younger man, and all he’d got was a headache. Real life didn’t seem to work as well as a novel.
The banging on the door brought him back to himself. He knew the routine by now; the aliens would bang to wake him up, then open the door and drag him out into the light. This time, there were three aliens standing there, their black helms regarding him, before one of them caught him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him out into the main room. It was as cold and barren as before — he’d wondered, despite himself, if they’d stuffed him in a warehouse, rather than the remains of a police station — but there were several more aliens there, watching him as he was carefully secured and marched off up the stairs. The lighting was better outside the cell and he found himself wincing as it struck his eyes. He hadn’t realised how gloomy the cell had become until he saw the outside world.
I probably look like a vampire, he thought, absently. The mixture of malnutrition and the limited supply of light had probably made him look very unhealthy. He couldn’t remember, off-hand, how much time it would take in the dark to leave someone with pale skin, but he was sure that he had passed that time, even if he hadn’t been in the dark. It was getting harder to think properly, although he wasn’t sure if that was because of the limited food or because of the way his horizons had shrunk to the four walls of the cell. How long had it been, after all?
He looked at one of the guards. “How long have I been in the cell?”
The guard didn’t answer. He just rammed the barrel of his weapon into Joshua’s chest. The pain was incredible and he almost collapsed on the ground, steadied only by an alien hand. In a movie, he would have captured the rifle and shot his way out, but in real life… the pain made it impossible to think. He dry-retched, wishing that he’d had enough in his stomach to throw up all over the aliens, but nothing came. Coughing and wheezing, feeling like a two packs a day man, he found himself being herded into a waiting room. A line of human prisoners, some of them looking much worse than him, waited there. No one spoke to one another, not to Joshua or to anyone else; they were all trapped in their own private hells.
Joshua felt reporting instincts coming to the fore and tried to study his fellow prisoners. Just seeing a human face after so long was a relief, but he didn’t see anyone he wanted to see, not even Loretta. There were girls, some barely entering their teens, handcuffed and waiting for the aliens. There were young men, some of them wounded badly, left to wait as well. Several of them looked as if they were going to die unless they got some medical treatment, but the aliens didn’t seem to care. The handful of older people in the room tried to ignore the aliens and Joshua himself, keeping themselves to themselves. The stink of hopelessness and sour death was everywhere.
He looked back towards the impassive aliens and shivered. What the hell was going on?
An alien caught onto his arm. “You will accompany us,” he said, in an accented voice. He almost sounded German. After everything else he’d seen, that made Joshua giggle, feeling right on the edge of sanity, but the alien ignored it. He pulled Joshua to his feet, escorted him through a pair of doors, and thrust him into another room. Three aliens faced him, all unmasked… and one of them, he saw, was a female. The breasts had to mean a female, right?
It almost sent him into another fit of giggles. If the aliens were going to enforce bare breasts on the human population, he wouldn’t mind in the slightest… and most young men would probably feel the same way, as long as it wasn’t their sisters, or girlfriends, or even mothers… but it would be. The people who believed in modesty and chastity would have several different kinds of shit-fit over the whole idea… and the aliens would probably be bemused. Did they really understand humanity, after all this time?
“You are the human… reporter Joshua Bourjaily,” the lead alien said. It was the male who spoke and the sound of his voice snapped Joshua back to full alertness. The situation was incredibly dangerous for him personally… and yet, he was fairly sure that he wasn’t going to get out of this one. Being interrogated by military police or spending the night in the cells after a demonstration suddenly seemed like a minor issue. “You have spread propaganda against us and spread perversion through the land.”