Her breathing was more rapid now. It was all she had. She could feel the air come in and out, could feel the movement of her chest, but nothing else. Closing her eyes gave her the choice of a black nothing over a gray one, but that was all. Where am I?
Movement, she told herself, more movement. She rolled around, searching for resistance, searching for any tactile feeling outside her own body. She was rewarded with nothing at all, just the same slow, fluid resistance-and whichever way she turned, the sensation of floating was the same. It mattered not-she could tell not-whether gravity had her up or down, left side or right. It was all the same. She screamed as loudly as she could, just to hear something real and close, just to be sure that she at least had herself for company. All she heard was the distant, fading echo of a stranger.
The panic started in earnest.
"Time twelve minutes fifteen seconds," the doctor said into the tape recorder. The control booth was five meters above the tank. "Heart rate rising, now one forty, respiration forty-two, acute anxiety reaction onset." He looked over to Vatutin. "Sooner than usual. The more intelligent the subject "
"The greater the need for sensory input, yes," Vatutin said gruffly. He'd read the briefing material on this procedure, but was skeptical. This was brand-new, and required a kind of expert assistance that he'd never needed in his career. -
"Heart rate appears to have peaked at one seventy-seven, no gross irregularities."
"How do you mute her own speech?" Vatutin asked the doctor.
"It's new. We use an electronic device to duplicate her voice and repeat it back exactly out of phase. That neutralizes her sound almost completely, and it's as though she were screaming in a vacuum. It took two years to perfect." He smiled. Like Vatutin he enjoyed his work, and he had here a chance to validate years of effort, to overturn institutional policy with something new and better, that had his name on it.
Svetlana hovered on the edge of hyperventilation, but the doctor altered the gas mixture going into her. He had to keep a very close watch on her vital signs. This interrogation technique left no marks on the body, no scars, no evidence of torture-it was, in fact, not a form of torture at all. At least, not physically. The one drawback to sensory deprivation, however, was that the terror it induced could drive people into tachycardia-and that could kill the subject.
"That's better," he said, looking at the EEG readout. "Heart rate stabilized at one thirty-eight, a normal but accelerated sinus rhythm. Subject is agitated but stable."
Panic didn't help. Though her mind was still frantic, Svetlana's body drew back from damaging itself. She fought to assert control and again felt herself become strangely calm.
Am I alive or dead? She searched all her memories, all her experiences, and found nothing but
There was a sound.
What is it?
Lub-dub, lub-dub what was it ?
It was a heart! Yes!
Her eyes were still open, searching the blankness for the source of the sound. There was something out there, if only she could find it. Her mind searched for a way. I have to get to it. I must grab hold of it.
But she was trapped inside something that she couldn't even describe. She started moving again. Again she found nothing to grab, nothing to touch.
She was only beginning to understand how alone she was. Her senses cried out for data, for input, for something! The sensory centers of her brain were seeking sustenance and finding only a vacuum.
What if I am dead? she asked herself.
Is this what happens when you're dead Nothingness ? Then a more troubling thought:
Is this hell?
But there was something. There was that sound. She concentrated on it, only to find that the harder she tried to listen, the harder it was to hear. It was like trying to grab for a cloud of smoke, it was only there when she didn't try to-but she had to grab it!
And so she tried. Svetlana screwed her eyes shut and concentrated all of her will on the repeating sound of a human heart. All she accomplished was to blank the sound out of her own senses. It faded away, until it was only her imagination that heard it and then that, too, became bored.
She moaned, or thought she did. She heard almost nothing. How could she speak and not hear it?
Am I dead? The question had an urgency that demanded an answer, but the answer might be too dreadful to contemplate. There had to be something but did she dare? Yes!
Svetlana Vaneyeva bit her tongue as hard as she could. She was rewarded with the salty taste of blood.
I am alive! she told herself. She reveled in this knowledge for what seemed a very long time. But even long times had to end:
But where am I? Am I buried alive? BURIED ALIVE!
"Heart rate increasing again. Looks like the onset of the secondary anxiety period," the doctor observed for the recording. It really was too bad, he thought. He'd assisted in preparing the body. A very attractive woman, her smooth ( ) one made of the best-quality Nomex rubber, so smooth that you could barely feel it when dry-and when filled with water, it hardly seemed there at all. Even the water in the tank was specially formulated, heavy in salt content so that she was neutrally buoyant. Her gyrations around the tank had twisted her upside down and she hadn't known. The only real problem was that she might tangle the air lines, but a pair of divers in the tank prevented this, always careful not to touch her or to allow the hose to do so. Actually, the divers had the hardest job in the unit.
The doctor gave Colonel Vatutin a smug look. Years of work had gone into this most secret part of Lefortovo's interrogation wing. The pool, ten meters wide and five deep, the specially salted water, the custom-designed suits, the several man-years of experimentation to back up the theoretical work-all these went to devise a means of interrogation that was in all ways better than the antiquated methods KGB had used since the revolution. Except for the one subject that had died of an anxiety-induced heart attack The vital signs changed again.
"There we go. Looks like we're into the second stage. Time one hour, six minutes." He turned to Vatutin. "This is usually the long phase. It will be interesting to see how long it lasts with this subject."
It seemed to Vatutin that the doctor was a child playing an elaborate, cruel game; as much as he wanted what this subject knew, part of him was horrified by what he watched. He wondered if it came from fear that one day it might be tried on him
Svetlana was limp. Tremors from the extended hours of terrors had exhausted her limbs. Her breaths now came in shallow pants, like a woman holding off the urge to deliver her child. Even her body had deserted her now, and her mind sought to escape its confines and explore on its own. It seemed to her consciousness that she separated from the useless sack of flesh, that her spirit, soul, whatever it was, was alone now, alone and free. But the freedom was no less a curse than what had gone before.
She could move freely now, she could see the space around ( ) She moved as though swimming or ( ) in the specially made wetsuit. ( ) a three-dimensional space whose limits she could not ( ) oiled her skin and dressed her in the specially made wetsuit, discern. She felt her arms and legs moving effortlessly, but when she looked to see her limbs, she found that they were out of her field of view. She could feel them move, but they weren't there. The part of her mind that was still rational told her that this was all an illusion, that she was swimming toward her own destruction-but even that was preferable to being alone, wasn't it?
This effort lasted for an eternity. The most gratifying part was the lack of fatigue in her invisible limbs. Svetlana shut out her misgivings and reveled in the freedom, in being able to see the space around her. Her pace speeded up. She imagined that the space ahead of her was brighter than that behind her. If there were a light she would find it, and a light would make all the difference. Part of her remembered the joy of swimming as a child, something she hadn't done in fifteen years, wasn't it? She was the school champion at swimming underwater, could hold her breath far longer than all the others. The memories made her young again, young and spry and prettier and better-dressed than all the others. Her face took on an angelic smile and ignored the warnings from the remaining shreds of her intellect.