Chapter Twelve: Perfect Control

*“That’s right sir. There was a woman brought in not a day ago, I saw her with my own eyes, I swear it.”

“She was injured?” Hiiro sharply snapped. The men, not knowing what to say, simply shrugged. “Damn.” He breathed.

“Well, well, well Kerry. It looks like your girlfriend was only using you until she could get you here.” Evans slapped Hiiro’s shoulder. “Don’t feel bad son. Better men have been tricked by women still.” Hiiro glared, but said nothing. If he had said more, it would mean giving away more than he wanted to. He could never possibly explain to these men who he and Serena were, who they had been in the future, or how they had come across their paths, so why bother trying?

The men had said Serena was carried in. It meant she was injured badly enough that she was knocked out—possibly dead. If she was dead, why had they left her? Her clothing! She had been wearing German clothes… they could have thought she was German again, and taken her to be properly cared for. These men were not heartless, after all. Women and children were to be left alone during wars; that was the way the rules read.

“You’re from the Ivy division soldier? I’ve never seen you before.” A man suddenly took Hiiro off guard.

“New transfer.” He grunted.

“Did you know Hornbeak? Great guy, HB, great guy…”

“No.”

“Well, sorry!” The GI looked highly offended, and he spat at Hiiro’s feet. “Just because you’re a fresh one doesn’t mean you got anything up on us. You think you’re better because we’ve been in here longer?”

“No.” Hiiro knew the man was trying to start a fight, and frankly he didn’t want to be responsible for what would happen if a punch did fly his way. It wouldn’t be a pretty sight… for the other soldier anyway.

“Son of a—”

“Cut that out soldier! You know better than to pick a fight!” Evans stepped in before any more words could be said.

“Sir, yes sir.” The soldier grumbled and backed away. But another stepped forward.

“Sir, we’ve been in this camp for two months now. What’s left for us to do?”

“You will remain as you were: keep your strength up, spirits up, and mind sharp. Don’t answer any of their questions, don’t rat on your comrades, and don’t pick fights. They’re trying to wear us down gentlemen; it’s what we like to call psychological warfare. Don’t let them get to you men.”

“Damn Nazis.” A few soldiers cursed in the background. Hiiro shook his head. This was not all that much different from the times he had been imprisoned during the Eve Wars. They were still being put into cells, still being given minimal food, and still being threatened in every possible way.

The one major difference was that during those wars he had been considered a dangerous threat, and not allowed to mingle with any other prisoners that may have been captured the same way. He had been shut up alone, without other contact, for days on end sometimes. But here? Here he was just another man thrown into the mix. It didn’t matter what he knew, what he had been, he was just another man. Just a man. Hiiro shuddered at the useless feeling that washed through his scalp.

“How long will they keep us here?” Hiiro finally asked gruffly.

“The same amount of time as the war lasts, I suppose.” The English doctor told him.

“Hnn.” Hiiro knew that if he didn’t get out, if he didn’t start feeling helpful, his mind was going to lose it and rage would be the ultimate price he would pay.

“Get used to it boy.” Captain Evans nodded curtly. “We’re all stuck here for God knows how long.”

“She lost a lot of blood, right now she’s in coma.” Hiiro’s ears picked up German whispers from behind him. Tuning everything else out, he listened in carefully, making sense of what they were saying.

“So she’s alive?”

“Doctors said they’d be surprised if she lasted another day. The men who found her shot both her and that American pretty up good, but she got the worst of it.”

“Don’t they know they’re supposed to hit the enemy, not our women?”

“Maybe she’s Jewish? Who knows?”

“She didn’t have any tattoos, or markings telling us she had been branded. She was just a woman, right?” The other German nodded.

“She was just a woman, running away with an American. Doesn’t matter, they think she’ll be dead soon anyway.” That was when Hiiro decided to tune the conversation out. He didn’t want to hear any more. It was fairly obvious to him that they had been talking about Serena. So she was barely alive, and they had taken her to be German. Shaking his head, he looked down. Chances were she’d be dead with their primitive medical technology.

“Back! Back into your cells!” A German began to corral them into the prison again. Hiiro lined up with Evans and Nicks, and the three of them filed back in. There was no struggle; there was no yelling or fighting. There was only submission. But men were not meant to be submissive for long.

>>>)(<<<

“Hey Kerry! You’ve been here for three months now!” Evans slapped Hiiro hard on the shoulder just as he was waking up. The American Captain couldn’t quite seem to grasp the private who had been thrown into the cell with him and his other cellmate, Nicks, three months ago. Kerry seemed detached, as if everything he did were only the result of sleepwalking. The boy never showed any pain, any frustration, or any boredom, and most annoyingly, the boy rarely blinked. Evans could not for the life of him understand it.

When Kerry had first been thrown into the cell with them, at least he had been injured. The few and far between grunts of pain let him and Nicks know that the boy was human. But once the wound had healed, and it had healed far too rapidly according to Nicks, Kerry had become as quiet and monotonous as anyone he had ever met. And it sickened him to know that the young boy had such a grip on his emotions.

Whenever a fight broke out amongst the men in the camp, Kerry was one of the few that never joined. Whenever food was offered, Kerry was the only one who first was wary of the food, and then ate without asking for more. Whenever the men began to recall home, Kerry was the only one never to dredge up any lost memories. Evans began to wonder if maybe the boy had snapped somewhere along the line and gone into a catatonic state, but every time he had convinced himself that had to be the reason Kerry was so odd, the private did something to prove him otherwise.

And now they had been together for three months. Three long, uneventful, boring months. Anymore of this, and Evans thought he might go insane. Well, at least Nicks was normal enough to be good company anyway.

“Evans, Kerry up yet? Guards are coming for us soon.” Nicks looked back at the limp body that was Hiiro’s.

“I’ll get him up.” Evans reassured him. Just as he went to shake Hiiro, the Perfect Soldier sat up and blinked sleep away from his eyes. Those damn dreams… haunted again by that little girl, by the puppy…

“Kerry, did you hear me? It’s your three-month anniversary being chained up with us!” Evans repeated. Hiiro nodded.

“It’s June?” His eyes narrowed slightly.

“It will be, in five days or so.” Nicks told them. “You know, most men don’t bother to keep track of the days and months they’ve been in prison. Why do we?” Evans laughed.

“We need something to do.”

“Hnn.” Hiiro stood smoothly and took a long, hard gaze out the tiny window in their cell wall.

“What are you looking for Kerry?” Nicks asked. But Hiiro ignored him and simply gazed on, unfazed. The two older men let their eyes meet, and a silent conversation about the sanity of their cellmate was held right under Hiiro’s nose.

“Almost…” Hiiro whispered to himself. Being Kerry was like being dead weight to him. It was not something he wanted to continue for much longer… pretending to be a dead man while killing himself in the process. Over the last three months he had been called ‘Kerry’ so much that he had almost forgotten just who he was.

But every time he came close, his nightmares reminded him. Dreams of doctors, of machines and mobile suits, of computers and technology, of needles and drugs that he had been injected with… it all hit him like a gravitational force tugging him back into reality. It was what kept him sane, and at the same time reminded him of whom he was. He was not this dead man Kerry. But if things went on like this… he didn’t know how much longer it would be until he believed he was Kerry.

“Out! Everybody out!” The guttural German accent had become a daily occurrence, and Hiiro knew what it meant. They were to be sent outside, for exercise. They wouldn’t want to get sick from lack of fresh air, now would they? Snorting to himself, Hiiro followed the line of prisoners out as he was supposed to. Three months of this… and today it was no different.

“Let’s have a boxing match?” One of the British soldiers suggested. “Keep us strong, eh?”

“Alright then, a boxing match.” A few others gathered around in a circle, forming the ring. The man who had originally spoken the idea stepped into the ring, and began punching the air, warming his muscles up.

“Who’s up for a fight?” As the men began to fight, and more cheered for each competitor, Hiiro glared off into the trees. Suddenly he felt a hard sting in his jaw, and seconds later the pain sunk in enough to let him know what had happened. Someone had hit him. Hard.

“Sorry, sorry Kerry, didn’t mean it…” A younger American soldier began to back up slowly. From his balled fist and worried expression, Hiiro knew it had been him who had made the punch. “I meant to hit Jenkins, he ducked, and…”

“You couldn’t stop your punch?” Hiiro glared. He felt as though he were going to explode. These men were insufferable! They were animals, unable to control themselves! Soldiers should be able to control their actions; they should be lethal weapons, but only when they had the need to be. And these men claimed to be soldiers!

“Come on Kerry, it was an accident, lay off him. He didn’t know I was going to duck.” Jenkins patted the small American on the shoulder.

“He should have been able to control the punch if he was a proper soldier.” Hiiro sneered. The molten lava in his dull ocean blue eyes caused the men in the boxing circle to back up all at once. None of them wanted to deal with a soldier who had gone off his rocker.

“He’s fine Kerry, now drop it!” Evans barked. Now Hiiro had finally had it. Damn this. He slowly, as if his feet held lead within them, took a step forward. And another, and then another. Finally he was face to face with the men in the camp. His face remained stoic, completely void of any and all emotion. But his eyes flickered in anger and rage the likes the men had never seen before.

“Worthless animals.” Hiiro spat, gritting his teeth. And then he cranked his arm back, as if he were winding up to punch one of the men.

“Woke up three days ago.” The German sentence rang in his ears as it echoed through the courtyard over the tense situation that was unfolding between Hiiro and the other prisoners. Hiiro instantly dropped his arm, and turned his back to the men.

“Hit me.” He finally asked them.

“What?” Nicks sputtered. He and the rest of the men had been sure that Kerry was finally about to let loose the rage he had pent up within himself. But now… he was asking to be hit? It was backwards from any instinct a soldier might want to have. The want to be hit? Absurd!

“Hit me.” Hiiro growled again. “Hit me.”

“Why?” Evans finally regained his voice.

“Just hit me. Hard.” Hiiro muttered. Then he turned around to face the men again.

“Wait just a moment…” Nicks began. But another soldier stopped him.

“You heard Kerry, hit him!” He yelled. Within minutes all but Nicks and Evans were pummeling Hiiro to the ground. But they weren’t hitting hard enough. Hiiro wanted injuries. He wanted pain; he wanted the misery that came with bleeding and bruising. He wanted to be hurt badly enough to be thrown into the medical center, even if it was only for a moment or two for a decent doctor to patch him up.

“Break it up, break it up!” German soldiers began interfering with the fight, and Hiiro knew this was his chance. He lay limp, but kept his eyes slitted open so he could observe everything that went on around him. As the Americans and British backed away, two Germans moved in and looked at him.

“He’s almost out.” One of them said. “Should we leave him? We have enough trouble on our hands without treating an American pig with our supplies.”

“Just let the Doctor take a look at him, we don’t want him to be dead. I don’t want to have to bury another body.” The second German waved his gun around.

“Alright.” The first agreed. Together they picked up Hiiro’s limp body, and signaled to more guards to watch the prisoners while they dealt with the injured man.

Hiiro watched the ground go from dirt to concrete as they carried him inside for treatment. He felt them jog him around harshly as they carried him through the corridors and into a room set up with medical equipment, and he did not groan when they knocked against a particularly painful cut he had been given on his left forearm.

“What happened here?” A man in a dirty white coat asked in German.

“Fight between the prisoners. He going to be alright?” One of the guards asked.

“Probably. Let me get some our older supplies for him, we won’t waste anything too good on him.” The guards nodded, and Hiiro heard them mutter something about waiting outside the hall until the Doctor was finished with him. Then the door closed, and Hiiro knew he had been left alone in the room. Opening his eyes fully, he first surveyed the crumbling wall to his left. Trays of medical knives, tools, and needles lay in a messy order about the rest of the room, and there were no large computers with medical data running over the screens like he was used to. But when he turned to his right, things changed. *