Movement

Illustrated by Samantha Fulton. 

Carlos had lost track of how long he’d been staring up at the ceiling fan.

The blades rotated rapidly underneath the shimmering LED strips with an almost hypnotising quality, dancing in front of his eyes and captivating his focus as they hummed quietly through the stillness of the air.

It was a welcome distraction from the rest of his surroundings, at any rate. The warehouse seemed almost too vast a venue for the tiny metal table that they’d chained his hands to in front of him. A single ashtray had been placed on its surface, full of butts that had presumably been smoked by whomever usually took up the chair opposite. No doubt they were the only remaining evidence that anyone had been in the same situation that he found himself now.

He’d already surveyed the inside of the building obsessively, exhausting every possible avenue of escape in his mind. They had left him alone in there for the moment, sure, but there was no way in hell they’d let him slip out from under their radar, not now. Even if he were to somehow break free and make a dash for the door, someone would inevitably be outside waiting for him. He was definitely no stranger to running away from a difficult situation — but this time, running unfortunately wasn’t an option.

He sighed and sat back in the chair, staring up towards the ceiling again. All he could do at this point was try to relax, to prepare himself for what lay ahead. Closing his eyes, he began to focus on his breathing, allowing the stagnant air that surrounded him to flow through and revive his supple frame. As he inhaled even more deeply, he could feel the movement of his chest rising and falling, the blood rushing through to his fingertips. In his mind's eye, he began to imagine himself unchained, up on his feet and running again, running swifter than the fan blades above him, faster than he’d ever known and too fast for anyone he’d ever known to catch up to him. He took solace in the thought and played it back over in his mind incessantly, entertaining the fantasy in the absence of anything else to focus on.

… Well, it was either that, or the equipment behind him. Anything was better than thinking about the equipment behind him.

A creaking sound from the other end of the warehouse cut sharply through his meditations, and he immediately cast his eyes down to the door that had just opened in front of him. A man in a long coat and suit was smiling back at him, regarding him with an uncomfortable, almost child-like curiosity. He closed the door behind him carefully and began to approach.

As the man walked towards him, the prisoner quickly recognised all the hallmarks of a bureau agent. He had a shock of dark hair to rival Carlos’ own scraggly locks, yet one that was slicked back in an attempt to appear well kept. The bags around his eyes suggested he barely managed more than a few hours’ sleep each night, although he seemed relentlessly alert and awake in spite of this, no doubt propped up by some vice or other. His skin was rather pale, yet his face still bore the full complexion of someone who ate well – better than most of the populace, at any rate. And even though he looked a tad younger than they regularly came, the telltale signs of his calling had already begun to set in: that stiff, laboured gait that they all seemed to pick up over time, and the slightly hunched shoulders of a man who’d spent far too long slumped over his desk peering at a surveillance monitor.

The agent draped his coat around the back of the chair, then pulled it out and sat himself down, all the while keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the ragged man opposite him. For a brief moment, silence prevailed. The two men stared at each other, neither saying a word. The ceiling fan whirred softly above them, casting swiftly alternating patches of light and shadow that, at intervals, made them appear virtually indistinguishable from one another. 

“So,” the agent spoke at last. “We’ve finally caught you.”

“You’ll never catch the others, though,” Carlos replied scathingly. “We’ve always been a step ahead of you, and you’re getting slower.”

“And you, the infamous Carlos Travere? Should I take this as an admission you’ve become slower than us, now?”

“Somebody has to stay behind and give everyone else a head start. This time, I just happened to be the one left holding the door.”

“Ah, so you drew the short straw. A pity.” The agent shrugged nonchalantly. “Though not for me. I have to say, I’m almost honoured — I’ve seen your face in so many files and plastered across countless billboard screens, but I never actually thought I’d be sitting here opposite you, face to face. Of course, someone eventually would. It was only a matter of time…”

He paused, awaiting a reaction from Carlos, but received nothing in the way of a reply. Undeterred, he decided to change tack. If the prisoner wasn’t willing to be the subject of discussion, he might as well introduce himself instead.

“Forgive me, I don’t believe you’ll have heard of me. Konstantin Bergman, recently promoted to the primary investigative division. But I usually go by Kostya.”

He extended his hand across the table. Carlos glanced at it blankly before looking back up at him, a withering expression across his face.

“Not one for reviving old traditions, I see.” Retracting his arm, Kostya reached into his coat pocket instead. “No matter. I’m a man of innovation myself, although I do tend to fall back on old habits every now and again…” He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and picked out one to chew on as he fumbled around for his lighter. “I would offer you one,” he remarked, as he took out the lighter and raised it up towards his mouth, “but I know better by now than to ask your kind.”

He lit the cigarette and took his first few puffs, blowing out clouds of smoke that lingered in the bright beams of light shining down from above. The prisoner remained silent, staring listlessly down at his manacled hands. Kostya couldn’t help but notice the direction of his gaze, and gestured towards his restraints.

“It must be an unusual sensation for you, being chained up like this.”

Carlos allowed a wry smile to creep across his face.

“Oh, quite the contrary.” He rotated his wrists slowly, testing the weight of the shackles as they tightened and slackened in between his hands and clinked against the surface of the table. “I guess you could say I’ve made a habit of it. Sometimes you need to fantasise about what it feels like to be restrained and restricted, in order to remind yourself not to take your freedom for granted.”

“Of course. You were an actor.”

“Once, among other things. But you already knew that.” Raising his head, he confronted his interrogator with a smug grin of defiance. “I used to pride myself on being a man of many trades. Until half of those trades were left to die by the wayside, that is.”

Kostya nodded sympathetically as he took another drag of his cigarette, regarding the prisoner with a faint hint of amusement.

“I see. So, when you could no longer play the revolutionary, you decided to go out and try it for real. But you must know, this life isn’t a pantomime. Reality has its consequences.”

“I’m fully aware of that. What I’m wondering is, why am I still waiting for them?” Carlos was evidently perplexed. “You said it yourself – you’ve got me. And taken down a large chunk of our organisation. You raided our headquarters and chased down every last lead you uncovered. You know where our people are going, even though they’ve already left you far behind. I can’t possibly see what other information I could offer you that you haven’t already extracted from my companions. So, tell me… why the hell am I not dead yet?” Adopting a grimace, he nodded in the direction of the apparatus that adorned the back wall of the warehouse. “I take it I shouldn’t be expecting a swift execution, at any rate.”

Kostya’s face lit up with a wide smile, and Carlos could see that his discoloured teeth were tinted with blackish taints of ash.

“Well, for one thing, the men who know best to dispose of the body have yet to arrive,” he announced with morbid pleasure. “But let’s just say I was… curious. I came here looking for answers of a different kind.” 

He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray and leant in closer, placing his elbows on the table and resting his chin against his firmly clasped hands. 

“Tell me,” he began, “I’ve always wondered – does it weigh heavy on your conscience, being a figurehead for this uprising? You go around, recruiting all these young men and women to go out and roam the streets after dark, putting their lives on their line to spread these dangerous messages of insurrection. All for a cause that you know, deep down, is utterly pointless.”

“Trying to tell me what’s in my own head won’t work, Kostya. We know how to think for ourselves, and your words don’t intimidate me either.”

Kostya was unmoved by Carlos’ response; instead, he pressed on with his interrogation, addressing his captive with steely conviction. 

“Oh, believe me, I’m not saying this to try and intimidate you. I just truly fail to understand why it is you keep fighting, that’s all. Our state has done more to rebuild society in these past years than anyone could truly muster in the wake of all that befell us. We have given humanity a chance for survival, providing accommodation, food, entertainment, maybe even a glimmer of hope for the future. And all we ask of our people is that they don’t overstep their bounds, that they remain where we can keep an eye on them and only move when we tell them to. It’s a necessary sacrifice to prevent things from spiralling out of control again.” He scanned the man’s expression for any glimpse of understanding. “Carlos, hear me out. You were there at the beginning, you saw the way things were going to go… can you look me in the eyes, here and now, and honestly say that if we hadn’t taken the strict actions we did, people would still be able to carry on with their lives as normal? Without another impending crisis on the horizon to worry about?”

Carlos was already shaking his head in disbelief.

“If you believe that those were the right actions to take, then you’re sorely mistaken. Don’t get me wrong, we needed changes. But this life you’ve forced upon us… this isn’t living.” He moved closer to Kostya, almost uttering his words under his breath in a clandestine manner. “I’ll be frank, the men and women I recruit, most of them aren’t doing it solely for the sake of resistance, although there’s plenty who’d sacrifice themselves in a heartbeat to uphold our cause. It’s just that this existence you’ve offered isn’t enough for them, that’s all. More often than not, they’re simply looking for a way out, some form of release from this docile, segregated life you’ve made them lead. They spend so long trapped in their own heads, they almost forget they have bodies attached to them. Me, I just give them a chance to realise they’re capable of much more than they thought.”

“So this is why you train them, then. To run and fight.”

“Not just to run and fight, Kostya — I teach them how to move. How to run along rooftops, vault over railings, climb up drainpipes, roll out of drops from height onto concrete, slip through the city at night without making a sound. And as for the fighting … well, we do our best to make sure it doesn’t come to that. But I like my people to know how to defend themselves when there’s no other option.”

Kostya was now the one shaking his head, tutting with a faint hint of disapproval.

“Running along rooftops. It must be a difficult life, living on the edge all the time.”

“You learn to embrace it, eventually. The art of falling is such a vast topic that entire books have been written on the subject: it’s even got a name of its own, “ukemi”. The definition differs depending on who you ask, but, for my part, I consider it to include training yourself for the eventuality that one day — no matter how much preparation you’ve done — you’re inevitably going to fail.” In a demonstrative fashion, Carlos raised one hand above the side of the table and began to slowly walk his index and middle fingers along its edge, carefully positioning them one in front of the other. “Balancing is one of those things you can practice for hours on end — like everything we do, it’s as much a game of the mind as it is a test of the body. I’ll give you an example of a habit I was encouraged to learn early on: if you fall off a ledge or railing that you’re walking along, even at a low height, you always catch it with both hands on the way down. That way, when you do find yourself high up, you don’t even need to think about what to do the second you lose your balance. The muscle memory’s already there.”

“But that’s never enough of a guarantee, is it?” Kostya replied with agitated concern. “No matter how hard you try to put it out of your mind, the danger’s still there.”

“Of course, you have to accept there’s always going to be some level of risk,” Carlos conceded as he retracted his hand. “Sometimes you’ll be so far up and running so fast, the slightest misjudgement or a single missed foot placement can be enough to send you hurtling to the ground...” He shrugged his shoulders, holding out his hands as far the shackles would allow him. “And then it’s game over.”

Something in his explanation had quelled Kostya’s agitation. Rather, Carlos detected an unnerving sense of satisfaction in the agent as a small smile of victory crept across his face.

“So you admit it, then. You break. Just like everyone else.”

“Of course we’re just like everyone else!” Carlos almost burst out laughing. “People see us breaking jumps, scaling walls, dashing over obstacles and think we’re superheroes. But the truth is, there’s nothing all that special about us. We’re only human, after all. And we’re just doing what humans are meant to do. If anything, it’s what nature intended for us.”

“Nature!” Kostya scoffed with incredulity. “You talk as if nature’s on our side, when nature almost destroyed us?”

“Nature may have held the seeds to our destruction, but it was humanity’s actions that allowed those seeds to spread,” Carlos countered. “And, likewise, nature may have forced us into isolation. But when nature had run its course, you were the ones who kept us there.”

The agent found himself brimming with indignation, and decided a different approach was needed. He noticed Carlos was looking more animated than he had been previously, twitching incessantly in his seat. No doubt he’d rather be anywhere else than sat here across from him, fending off his constant questioning.

“The lockdown orders must have driven someone like you insane, no … ? All that sitting around, flicking through endless screens and channels, staring listlessly at the walls and ceilings. Trying to feel something, anything to fill that void of human activity. Restlessly waiting for updates that seemed to take an eternity to arrive …”

“It’s not my mental state you should have been worried about,” Carlos asserted, looking Kostya squarely in the eyes. “Some of us weren’t so lucky to be confined in chambers with windows, you know. And as for all the friends, the lovers, the families you separated, those you deemed too ‘high-risk’ to communicate with the outside world … whatever happened to them, I wonder? I don’t suppose they made the cut in your final statistics.”

“We did what we had to do,” the agent replied coldly, his face deathly pale under the bright white light of the LED strips. “There was no way we would have been free of it completely, otherwise. No way.”

“And? Can you look me in the eyes, Kostya, here and now, and honestly say it was worth it all? To be free of it completely?”

Kostya found himself at a loss for words. He’d been warned about Carlos, sure, but he hadn’t expected the man to be quite so difficult to deal with.

“I really don’t understand you, Carlos. Someone like you, you’re smart enough to know where the balance lies between toeing the line and maintaining some semblance of individuality. You could have led a comfortable life in isolation while making use of the multitude of other outlets on offer to express yourself. And yet still you chose to hide in the shadows, sleep on all manner of floors and constantly move around day and night in a misguided attempt to prove we can’t control you. Is it so important to you that you’re able to run and climb and jump around like some …” — he hesitated, searching for the words as he glanced up and down at the crude, dishevelled being before him — “… deranged monkey, that you would really throw away the sanctuary provided by our modern society?”

While Kostya launched his verbal assault on him, Carlos noticed two officers sliding into the room out of the corner of his eye. They took up positions either side of the door and looked on silently, brandishing a set of tools that he got the chilling sensation had been picked out specially for him. More equipment. Not good.

“Listen, I’m not denying everyone has a choice,” he said, quickly casting his eyes back to the agent. “And some are admittedly dealt a bad hand from the very beginning — although I know many who have been able to accomplish truly incredible things in spite of that. But let me tell you this …” He leant over the table as far as he could, addressing Kostya with renewed resolve. “If there was even a part of you that ever wished you could do the things we do, or just simply dreamed of becoming someone different to the person you are — then you need to take that chance while you can and understand that it matters to you, more than anything else in this life. Because believe me, you’ll regret it if you don’t.”

As sincere as Carlos’ words were intended, they only served to irritate Kostya further. The agent had more or less tolerated his conversation partner up until now, but this prisoner and his endless stream of ideology were starting to try his patience. He wrestled to maintain his composure, but instead found himself lashing out at the insurgent with an acid tongue.

“Can it really matter that much, Carlos? Is it really worth it to squander your life chasing these empty, fleeting sensations, contributing absolutely nothing of value to this world, while the rest of society tidies up after you and your shit? The difference between you and I …” — he stuttered, struggling to restrain himself as the anger welled up inside him — “no, the irony in the difference between you and I, Carlos, is that while you’ve devoted your life to running free like some untamed beast, I’m the only one who actually gets to walk out of here and do whatever the hell I want. Because I, unlike you, know what really matters in this life, the effort that needs to be put in. Our predecessors paid a heavy price so we could live in a future of security and comfort, and it honestly infuriates me to see people like you with such reckless disregard for your existence encouraging others to piss it all away.”

He was expecting a reaction, sure. But the one that hit him, he couldn’t possibly have been prepared for. Carlos leapt up from his chair and slammed his manacled hands down on the table with such a forceful clang that the sound echoed all the way through the warehouse, leaving Kostya and the officers stunned.

“Our predecessors didn’t endure the things they did so that we could spend our waking hours lying around like corpses!” He was towering over the agent now, snarling at him through gritted teeth as his voice thundered with rage. “Look, Kostya, you can chase your promotions, your wealth, your positions of power. You can spend hours staring at your screens trying to break the rest of us humans down into a set of statistics and data points that can be quantified, manipulated, lied to and sold to, and beat us into submission when we don’t conform to your expectations. Hell, do whatever it is you need to do that makes you feel superior to everyone around you. But the truth is, you know none of it will fill that gaping void inside of you. None of it! Because you, me, those two behind you and everyone, absolutely everyone else out there, is trapped in a finite prison that blossoms and withers according to the decisions we make, and wastes away if we leave it untested and unchallenged. And if you don’t learn how to master it and make it your own, then you will never, ever know what it truly means to be free.”

A heavy silence descended upon the room. The two guards at the door exchanged an anxious glance, though neither of them dared to move a muscle. Kostya himself was frozen to his chair, staring up at the wild, primal beast of a man who had dared to so savagely rip into every fibre of his being. Carlos was breathing heavily now, his powerful frame casting monstrous shadows against the wall as he seethed with energy.

The agent took a moment to collect himself, then shot up and grabbed his coat off the chair. As he hastily pulled it on, he regarded the spectacle before him, and suddenly realised how utterly pathetic the man looked to him. He stood there for a moment, quietly watching him, before uttering a few parting words of judgement:

“By the time you draw your last breath in here, I guarantee you’ll have revised your definition of freedom.”

He turned away from Carlos and marched towards the exit. As he approached the door, he stopped and turned to one of the agents, and leant in towards his ear.

“Seeing as he seems to enjoy it so damn much,” he said, muttering under his breath, “make sure this one really suffers.”

He cast one last glare back in the direction of the prisoner, then spun around abruptly and headed out of the door. Carlos stared resolutely back, not once taking his eyes off the agent, even as the two officers advanced towards him and the door that separated him from the outside world slowly began to creak shut.

***

As Kostya stepped outside, the chill of the night air slammed into his senses. He fumbled around in his coat pocket, anxiously searching for his lighter. 

Much of the time when he was conducting these final interrogations, he liked to linger behind and watch the officers as they got down to their work. Other times, like now, he preferred to step outside and leave things to the imagination instead, simply listening to the victim’s cries and trying to pinpoint the exact moment in which their will to carry on gave out. But somehow — even though he’d long relished the thought of hearing Carlos Travere begging for his life in a derelict warehouse, alone and far from anyone who could help him — all he felt at the present moment was a crippling sensation of numbness. It wasn’t just the cold: something in the man’s voice had left him utterly paralysed.

He stared down at the cigarette in his hand, listening to the strenuous sound of his lungs expanding and contracting, every exhalation yielding a breath that quickly condensed and dissipated in the freezing air. His body felt heavy and cumbersome, his joints aching slightly as he shifted his weight slowly from side to side, his noticeably expanding waistline pressing tightly against the material of his suit jacket. The mounting sensation of strain began to overwhelm him, and he rapidly grew tense, gritting his teeth and clenching his remaining hand into a fist as the cold bit into his skin.

“Fuck nature,” he suddenly hissed.

He threw down his cigarette, stomped it out with his heel and headed towards his car.