The Thin Line

The Thin Line

If I should die before I wake -

I wouldn't be at all surprised. But first of course I'd have to go to sleep.

I remember tired. Tired used to mean I'd run too far, drank too much coffee, brooded over too big a stack of files, chased one too many ghosts. Tired's different now. Tired's when, after days of standing up with you hands suspended above your head, someone lets you lie down, and then kicks you back to life at the first sign of slumber.

Quiet torture, so disciplined and precise that if it leaves bruises then they're not the kind that'd make the cover of the Sunday papers.

Lying here, pain merges with exhaustion, finds spice in ineffectual anger, swirls in fear in uncomfortable spirals, the whole mass spinning together until the sensation's more like drunken dissociation than hurt. Which is fortunate I guess, because if I thought about what's really happening to me, I'd lose what's left of my self-control. Not an attractive prospect and that's got nothing to do with self-respect, everything to do with survival.

It took them a couple of hours to clean up the vomit, hosing me down with icy water until I started to choke. Drowning on dry land's such a graceless way to die. I wonder how long I'd have to wait for them to clean me up if next time some sphincter fails?

You'd think, with all I've seen and heard, that I'd be unshockable. I've seen death too often to recall. Met men who killed for fun. Seen lives destroyed for a handful of dollars. I've looked into the face of evil and it is me, us, anyone in the wrong place at the wrong time who saw temptation and couldn't back away.

Don't watch the men; watch the uniforms. Study the line of trouser and boot, the angle of the hat, the alignment of buttons, the fold of the sleeve. See how easily they identify their own kind and guard against the rest.

The thing about being a profiler is - it sucks. It's so easy for me to follow the rationale and explain away their conduct. So simple to understood the rules governing their behavior. So hard for me to imagine anyone having the courage to break ranks.

When they captured me, I was simply the enemy. When they took away my clothes, I became something less than human. Now, you might think that nakedness would be a reminder that the enemy is human after all, but you'd be wrong. Vulnerability provokes not empathy but contempt. Happy cat who sees the bird with the broken wing and invites his friends around to gloat.

Anyway, despite knowing better, I still sometimes amaze myself - stupid optimist that I am. The beatings I took at Mount Weather were inevitable. I got caught and that was enough. My very presence there was an insult: I'd sullied the temple. In fact, so far as they could tell, I'd done far worse than that. I'd killed one of their own. Something that looked like it might be one of their own.

You might hope for a Miranda warning and a phone call, but really it's hard to look surprised when what you get are fists hammering into your kidneys and a split lip instead.

I deserved everything I got back there, and accepted it as the price for getting caught. Heat of the moment. Adrenaline rush of a chase that closes in the gasp of a capture not in the shock of a kill. I understand the temptation; I've succumbed to it a time or two. Mount Weather neither broke my body nor breached my defenses. It was fine.

The kick in the teeth came later.

End of the world's coming and the world's going to need all the help it can get. I need all the help I can get, that's why I went to Mount Weather. That's why Trust No One is hard to bear, but it's harder still when you forget.

A victim of my own expectations. I thought when they moved me to a brig at Quantico I was going home, kind of, close to home at least, even though I was going to be a prisoner. But a prisoner gets to wear clothes. There's food and water, a blanket on the bed, paper to wipe his ass. I get what I deserve. A hose down once a day.

Look at the uniform. The safety in numbers of being part of a team. The unity that comes from having a common enemy and seeing him crawl. Happy cats who see the broken wing and taunt and tease, anticipating the cloud of feathers, even as they struggle to resist the killer strike. Losing themselves in a pleasing game of catch and release.

But this is Quantico, not some Black Ops dungeon. And these men aren't aliens or assassins trained to ride above the law. This is a place of rules and regulations, of policy and procedures, of obedience and discipline.

That's why it hurt more after they cut the ropes coupling my wrists to the ceiling and let me lie down.

Not physically of course, it didn't actually hurt more physically. At least not after the first few minutes when circulation returned, explosive and unforgiving. What hurt was my lack of understanding. What stings is that I was so stupidly grateful. Did I mention that being a profiler sucks? Well it does, particularly when you get the profile wrong. Insult to injury.

When they cut me down, I actually thought someone had intervened. That the good guys had come back and were going to teach the bad guys a thing or two about the rules. After all, I'd once been on the same government's payroll as them. They were my thin line as much as anyone else's. They wouldn't do this to one of their own. Not deliberately. Just a few bad apples going a little too far, a couple of misunderstood orders pushed to an unfortunate extreme.

Then I looked into the eyes of a Marine Corps General and understood.

Beware lest the abyss looks back.