Chapter 10: First Blood

He went to the bathroom, using it. “Next?”

She sat down to pee, another frown on her face.

“Now what’s bothering you? The correction for Tenorio and Gallo?” Anderson asked.

She shook her head. “No, they were stupid. That’s obvious. The movie tonight. You’d have to have been living under a rock to not know who John Wayne was, which doesn’t mean some of us don’t. I’m talking about the subject of the movie, the actual war against the Indians.”

“Well, the people and locations were sort of fictional, but a lot of what happened really isn’t. You’ll see another, tomorrow.”

Intrigued, el-Azizi asked, “Another western?”

“With some of the same actors, even. The old John Ford westerns were staples. You about done? I want to get tonight’s inspection over with.”

She quickly wiped, washed and then dried her hand on the towel. “May we talk while we’re walking, Sir?”

“If I don’t find much to complain about, certainly.”

“Thank you. You never actually answered my question before. Why me?”

He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “Oh, you’re right, I didn’t.” He opened it and walked out with her behind him. As he led her through the compound, he explained.

“You were the random factor that wasn’t chosen up front. I knew who was coming here three days before you arrived. With that list, it was simple to import everyone into a database, do a simple filter and sort based upon easily available information, and already have things determined as to where nearly everyone would be placed, long before the trucks approached. As someone who has committed political crimes, you were to be placed in Barracks Four, which I believe I told you previously. However, and not to pick on her, but someone like Blankenship was easy to quickly verify housing and probable positions here, others were not. Dean, for example, would’ve been in three, but she tried to hide jewelry inside herself, so that downgraded her, because her actions showed she had an issue with authority, rules, and most importantly, orders.”

He stopped talking to her to greet the guards at the gate and tower, making sure they were on duty and to make sure nothing odd was coming up from outside the wire.

Once away from there, he continued, saying, “Everyone in One and Two were quite easy to sort before interviewing. So was Five. The problem I actually had is that, for the most part, there’s not a lot of difference between Four and Five. You’re partially to blame as to why Four has who it does in it. With no actual criminal convictions, I didn’t know in advance that if I had put you into Four, the first night not only would you be dead, but I’m sure you’ve noticed we do monitor inside the barracks. So we would’ve known who killed you, and then we’d have executed them as well. That might’ve made life a little easier for us, but then you and I wouldn’t be able to have these long, moonlit ... well, floodlight lit, anyway ... walks.”

She laughed at that. “To a certain extent, I do know what you’re doing, you know.”

He held up a finger for her to be quiet. He’d checked the guards at four of the barracks, and they were now at Five. “Ortiz, I see we have some worms on the surface.”

“Yes, Sir. Since they spent the day on their knees and knuckles, me and Cassius talked it over and thought they should rest the fronts of their bodies. So we’re making them do the back float, as it were. Using their feet to push their butts along, with their arms to help push them.”

“Very good. They can also do side rolls, too, just for variation if you get bored.”

“Of course, Sir.”

Heading back to his quarters now, he glanced over. “So, you do, eh?”

Motioning with one arm, el-Azizi said, “With all of them? Yes. The same thing you had at least originally planned for me, as well. I suspect you’re rather surprised at the results of your little social and psychological experiment here so far. Oh, it’s not yours specifically, unless you really are the mastermind behind everything. While you’re a brilliant man, and an excellent administrator, I suspect you were placed in charge here because you were the most likely to prove whether the process works.”

He opened the door to his quarters, got in, and began undressing like before. “Please, keep going. I find this fascinating.”

“Thank you. You didn’t lie on our first day. This isn’t a political gulag for people to simply disappear. This is an experiment to find out, in a controlled environment, what steps will be needed to bring the people in the cities to your way of thinking. Presuming the rebellion succeeds, which I wouldn’t have thought possible two weeks ago, but I now consider inevitable.”

He was now naked, and walked into the shower. She followed him in.

“I don’t think you want to sound like Thanos there, his whole ‘I am inevitable’ quote or anything. The Avengers showed him that didn’t work out so well in the end,” he said.

“Granted, but he wanted to kill half of everyone in existence. You’re wanting to save half, or as many of that half as you can.” She stopped talking for a moment. He had the bar of soap in his hands, and she took them in hers, turning her head up to look in his eyes.

“I need to ask you something, and I truly need a completely honest answer.”

“No, I did not have you picked out before you showed up here, Zuhra. You were the first Muslim that actually brought up your religious faith as a reason to not strip, and one of two who actually was still wearing the hijab. I could show you the original file, with all ten scheduled for Four. The other woman with a hijab is a mouse, doing what the man in her life told her to do. She wasn’t a revert, any more than the eight still in Four are. What happened when you challenged me was I actually upgraded your threat level. You recall I told Sergeant Hawk to send you to Five, without actually telling him to give you any clothes? I truly had lost count of who went where, because I had made some changes to the original plan. You can probably thank him you weren’t sent there.”

Continuing to look into his eyes while holding his hands, she asked, “What about the whole expecting this situation and two questions?”

He chuckled. “Sometime around the third week or so, once we’d weeded out the people from Four and Five that weren’t salvageable, someone would end up approaching me with a dilemma about her feelings regarding what was going on. It was probably going to be someone from Three, although Four or Five were a possibility. That woman would find herself following me around, seeing what was going on behind the curtain, as it were. Then she would do one of two things. She’d either go along with it, or she wouldn’t. I did mean what I said when I called you a pain in my ass. This wasn’t supposed to happen, not this early. If it’d been someone like Dean, well, she’s smart. But I don’t think she’s as smart as you.”

Her eyes now crinkled with laughter, el-Azizi replied, “I doubt it. Just because I wasn’t acting in the best interests of the voters who elected me doesn’t mean I’m not a smart woman. I know what Stockholm syndrome is, even if none of them do. I don’t have it. I have something much, much worse, that I truly didn’t know existed.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

Her hands slipped from his, going down so they could encircle his erection. “I have a conscience,” she said, as she began jacking him off.

He didn’t try to stop her, simply put the soap back in its niche. He kept eye contact with her, her eyes laughing at him, as he felt his balls contract and then he squirted over her belly.

“That was ... unexpected.”

“You were in pain. As you told me, you’re not a rapist or a murdering thug. You’ve also not had relief, either. I would truly like to say that I was simply repaying you the favor. You were purposely trying to make me physically excited while shaving me, though. Of course, I already was excited before then, which you know. I’m truly not sure what to do now, to be very honest with you.”

“Why is that?” he asked.

“I had an epiphany while sitting in your office this afternoon, watching you work. I fear I may have complicated things between us as jailer and captor even further. It’s entirely possible that I may either have fallen in love with you, or at least be falling in love.”

He rinsed his seed off of her belly, using his hand and gently rubbing over her skin. “I would think you would be a little more definitive than that,” he said, turning the water off.

She lowered her eyes, then her head. “I’ve had lovers before, both male and female. They provided sexual relief. I’ve never been in love, though. Never had someone I could love, if that makes sense.”

He stepped out and got a towel, then stepped behind her so he could wrap it around her to start drying her off. “It does. I’m going to tell you something about yourself that you may not know. Please don’t get mad at me when I do.” She nodded. “You could’ve been a great lawyer, but you’re a lousy psychoanalyst. You never looked at yourself, to realize why you suppressed your conscience and changed from the girl you were, to the woman you became.”

He felt her tense in his arms, so he hugged her tightly then, saying, “Until you could shed your cocoon, and become the woman you should be.”

The sound of Reveille the next morning woke Anderson. His eyes flew open. “What the hell?” he said, moving to throw his covers off. There was a shriek as el-Azizi was unceremoniously dumped from his bed, to land on her butt on the floor.

“Oops! Are you okay?”

She sat up. “If you’re going to wake up like that every morning, we’re going to need a bigger bed.”

“Reveille is at oh six thirty. I’ve woken up at oh six hundred ever single morning for the last ten years. I don’t even use an alarm clock. We didn’t even stay up after Taps!”

“Yes, well, perhaps there was something a bit different, wouldn’t you imagine?”

“Well, Top did say the first morning he wasn’t expecting me out there for PT. Shit.” He saw her look at his comment. “Oh, no, I’m not upset with you. It’s simply as the old man, I’m supposed to set certain standards for the troops to follow, not just give orders to them. Being out there with them for PT is part of it.”

With a smile on her face, she walked over to him, pressing her body against his. “Well, we’re certainly not going to make it unless you run out there as naked as I am. Shall we?”

He wrapped his arms around her in a hug, which she reciprocated. “No, we shan’t. Nor shall we try to do much of anything else this morning intensely physical. However, we can do this,” he said, bending his head down so that his lips met hers for the first time.