The Keeping of Secrets

Max Zorin is interrogated as a KGB Agent in his youth.

A light, terror-filled whimper escaped his lips as Max was thrust painfully into the hard, wooden chair. He threw up his hands, brought up his knees to his chest to try and shield himself desperately from the sticks and whips pounding into him. Every section upon his body was filled with savage burning pain; The cuts stinging from where the men had mercilessly flogged him. 
Blood was warm and sticky as it ran from his nose, over his lips and into his mouth. He could taste it's bronze flavor mixed with the saltiness of the sweat that had drenched him and made him even more miserable. 

He wrenched his head to the side violently as the burlap bag over his head was removed, letting the light from the room around him beam savagely into his swollen-shut eyes. It was blindingly bright through the filthy little room. How hot it's florescence was on his already boiling skin, making his skin burn where it was cut and oozing dark crimson fluids. Angrily, he was gripped by the hair and his head was forced back, pulling him out of his defensive fetal position in the little chair.

"We are only going to ask you again, Agent Zorin." A man above him said, his voice accented heavily with African origin. "Why are you in Zangaro?"

Max's throat burned. Every painful swallow felt like he was swallowing sandpaper. "Water..." He found himself mumbling incoherently, over and over. "Water... Water.. Please."

One of the men mumbled something in African, and suddenly a bucket of filthy water was thrown carelessly onto him, drenching him entirely. He cried out unintentionally out of shock, and just as quickly a hand was again gripping a fistful of his hair and wrenching his head back so that he could face his main oppressor. 

"Agent Zorin. ... Agent Zorin, can you hear me?"

"Yes.. Yes," Max said urgently, his breath heaving his chest; burning his lungs. He stared up at him in pathetic helplessness, as if the man before him were a saint aglow in the light.

"Just tell me what you are doing here."

Max left out a breath, mumbling once more. "More.. Water.."

A board as smacked brutally into his stomach, and he cringed, yelping and trying desperately to open his eyes -- to face his attackers! But he could not see. His eyelids were swollen shut. 

"What are you doing in Clarence?" The African man asked again.

In the distance, a man let out a loud, pained scream -- pleading desperately for mercy. The sudden noise made the blonde boy flinch.

At the time, he was no more than twenty years of age, in the KGB since he was six. 

He sucked in a breath through his agape mouth, feeling his chest heave with each painful inhalation taken in of the polluted oxygen around him. The air was thick, and the air smelled of blood, death and sweat. Many a man had died in this little room. In this very chair. 

"You are going to answer me, Agent Zorin." The man replied lightly. Max listened to his footsteps as the shuffled closer to him. "Or I am going to make you answer me." 

Suddenly, there was something small and cold being run across his exposed inner forearm, and Max tensed, trembling lightly and breathing in a fearful, staggering manner. As the needle was slowly pushed into his flesh, Zorin jerked aside sloppily and cried out, staring down at it -- attempting desperately to see it. See the color of the liquid in the syringe. 

"You are a naturalist, are you not?" He was asked. 

The needle was pulled slowly out of his tender forearm without injection. Nonetheless, the boy felt his heart racing in his chest until he felt on the verge of faint. His training was naturally whirling in his head, coursing panic through him though he remained still -- forcing his expression to be calm. 
"Right," he agreed idly. His voice held weakened confidence. Stay calm. 

Suddenly, his head was being jerked to one side and he was staring through the slits of his eyes at a photograph he had taken of his woman tour-guide standing directly before the Zangaro Garrison. The supposedly secret headquarters of West Africa's sadistic communist leader. 

Agent M. Zorin of the KGB had been sent to Zangaro to do nothing but scrounge information on this leader; wanted dead by secret West African rebels whom got Russia involved through financial bribe. Get a picture of the Garrison, they had told him. What's it's security like? How big of an army would be needed to penetrate it's walls?

"You took this picture of the Garrison, did you not?" The voice broke his thoughts.

Max remained silent, staring at the picture blankly. 

"Why did you take this picture of the Garrison?"

Max merely smiled slightly through the pain in every single muscle in his body. "Pretty, isn't she?" He said softly, staring only at the woman. Turning his head slowly so that he was facing up at the dark-skinned antagonist, Max felt an almost unnoticeable snicker appear on his expression. Softly, he mumbled 'You'll never get anything out of me, b*****d.' in perfect German -- a language the man standing so confidently over him understood in tid-bits. 

For this statement, Zorin was backhandedly struck. His face was wrenched to the side, and he almost tipped the chair with how his weight so involuntarily shifted to his right. He let out a shaky breath, feeling his fists clench lightly with the useless anger boiling up within him. 

A strange feeling, frightened anger. His heart was racing again, his breath in heaving pants. With an enraged growl emitted from the other, the young agent was grabbed forth violently by the cotton of his tank-top, yanked from the chair and thrown onto the floor where he sprawled helplessly, coughing and trembling. 

"Throw him in the brigades! He'll talk." The man shouted at his lackies. At the request, Max was heaved into their arms; grabbed roughly and without mercy. Upon standing, the boy felt his long legs give out under him; and he was instead dragged to where he was thrown into a cell -- upon which he would curl up within himself, holding his knees.

He would remain in the filthy, soiled little caged space for three whole weeks before finally rescued by the KGB.