The interrogations continued day and night. The interrogations, which started out with simple questions, were soon accompanied by violence. It was to be expected.
“Your colleagues had already opened their mouths. After confiding everything that was not there, they told me that you would know more about it.”
The interrogator said, instilling in Heiner a distrust of his colleagues, and sometimes even appeasing him. Each time, Heiner responded cynically.
“You’re lying.”
“Lying?”
The interrogator chuckled.
“What makes you think I’m lying?”
“You said they’ve already talked……but here you’re asking me for information.”
“Is there any more information I need to know from Marquis Dietrich’s minions?”
Heiner’s expression cracked slightly. They knew who was behind them. It couldn’t be ruled out that someone already opened their mouth….or the person who tipped them off in the first place already knew everything.
If that was the case, who on earth was the snitch?
Heiner tried to use his head, but it didn’t work the way he wanted it to. He was having a hard time just to be conscious.
The interrogator questioned him various questions, and when he didn’t get the answer he wanted, Heiner was punched in the head or slapped in the face. Although it was far less violent than the beatings he received from the guards, they added to his sanity. The interrogator played with his psychology and made him unable to think properly.
The interrogator bombarded him with questions without a break, and tortured. Still, Heiner confessed nothing because he remained loyal to Padania and had not yet given up hope.
Jackson had not been captured. He was a capable man; surely he would take some action. Or he could ask the Marquis for help.
From the Marquis’s point of view, he would be worried if his secret agents were captured. Perhaps he would rather they died than divulging secrets while alive.
Still, Heiner thought that there would be a prisoner exchange in the near future, or that a rescue troop would come. He would just have to hold out until then.
“Okay, then let’s try this.”
The interrogator gently raised the frames of his glasses and said, deliberately and mercifully.
“I promise to stop the interrogation and spare your life. Instead, you’ll give me some plausible information……. it doesn’t necessarily have to be confidential……….. something that only you and your colleagues would know. Then go to your colleagues and say this.”
“….”
“I’m sorry, it’s already blown up. If we endure like this, we will continue to be tortured or die, so let’s just confess all together.”
The interrogator tilted his head with a twinkle in his eye as if it were a good suggestion. There was silence for a moment.
A laugh escaped Heiner’s torn lips.
“Ha.”
“…”
“Ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha!”
“…you’re laughing?”
“Haa ……with all the classifieds coming out of my mouth. What the hell do you think is the difference……?”
Apparently the interrogator thought Heiner had lost his reason after severe interrogation and torture.
“You lot are a bunch of lowlifes, uneducated….You’ve never lived in poverty and never had anything like friendships, have you?” (H)
In fact, the words were eating his own flesh, but to the ears of the interrogator, who did not know Heiner’s status, they sounded like an insult.
Heiner spat on his desk and said.
“Go to the factory and crank up the spinning machine. Judging by the way you dress, it seems that your technical skills are far inferior to those of Padania.”
A terrifying silence followed those words. Heiner looked at the interrogator with a sneer.
In fact, he could not deny that he was momentarily shaken by the interrogator’s suggestion.
Your life will be spared. Those words were very tempting. More tempting, at least to him, than the words they would stop the interrogation.
Heiner did not want to die. He had not lived his whole life just to die here like this. He had to live. He had to return alive.
He couldn’t die so vainly without saying a word to her.
His reasons for not accepting the interrogator’s proposal because he knew. They were not going to let him live anyway.
And even if he were to return alive, the Marquis would get rid of him for disclosing the secret. The only way to survive was to keep his mouth shut until the end and wait for rescue.
“—— okay.”
After a long silence, the inquisitor opened his mouth.
“Is that so?”
Heiner turned to face the serpentine eyes without reply. The interrogator called loudly for the guard. Soon after, the guard entered the interrogation room and received an order.
“Get him up.”
The guard raised his hands in salute and then roughly helped Heiner to his feet. Heiner staggered, his legs had no strength. The two men stumbled together.
Eventually, another guard joined them. They put Heiner’s hands together and handcuffed him. It was a typical torture position.
The interrogator walked in front of Heiner. He tapped his thigh with the club, then placed it on Heiner’s shoulder.
Bang!
Heiner grunted painfully and twisted his upper body. But he could not move his body properly because his arms were bound. A heavy, dull pain surged into his shoulder.
“Arrogant son of a b*tch.”
Bang!
“Without knowing your subject.”
Bang!
“Who’s who?”
Bang!
“Tell me, dog!”
The club hit him everywhere.
Swollen and bruised, his ruptured body was severely vulnerable to violence. Heiner was beaten mercilessly, unable to even scream properly.
After beating him for a while, the interrogator threw the club, breathing heavily. Heiner’s almost-closed eyelids trembled. Blood dribbled from his mouth.
His eyes flashed constantly. The interrogator ordered the guards to do something. But his muffled ears couldn’t hear him well. The guard who had left the interrogation room reentered not long after.
A subtle heat was felt. A flame was burning in a large can that the guard had brought with him.
“Dirty … All of your parents.… Like that with the Marquis…”
The interrogator kept talking. Heiner couldn’t hear exactly what he was saying because of the ringing in his ears, but it was clear that it was a sexual insult.
Heiner was used to that kind of insult. They had harassed him terribly when he was in training camp, and they had also made similar snide remarks.
“Your friend wasn’t even f*cking good at fighting. How have you survived so far? Did you give up your body to survive?”
“…Didn’t you give it to that bastard?”
“I’m sure he gives it to the instructors. One sausage after another, haha.”
A life accustomed to such insults. It was truly miserable. Heiner let out a sound that could be either a laugh or a groan.
He knew he would never be able to have “something precious” in his life. If he put something into this life, it would quickly be taken away….
Pain shot up his spine. It was as if his whole body was crushed. It was the kind of pain that made him wish he were dead.
He laughed at himself for not wanting to die in such a situation.
Why in the world did he want to live so much in spite of such a life?
What on earth was he doing…?
Heiner blinked his eyes wet with the blood that flowed from his head. He suddenly remembered what his instructor had said in torture training. Don’t focus on the current situation. Think about something else. The distant past or the distant future.
Beep. His ears kept ringing. Heiner imagined and recalled the distant past and distant future in his fuzzy mind.
Memories passed like fragments in the darkness. The area gradually became brighter. The surroundings gradually brightened. Everything disappeared, and where it remained, a dazzling white building loomed.
Heiner looked out to the far edge of his field of vision. Before he knew it, the ringing in his ears had vanished and only the sound of the beautiful piano filled his ears.
It was that girl.
In his past, the little girl had grown up. The same dazzlingly beautiful figure just as he remembered in his memory.
Heiner moistened his dry lips.
Come to think of it, he had never pronounced her name out loud. He mustered the courage to say her name.
Annette Rosenberg.
“Dirty man-wh*re.”
The interrogator set an iron bar on the fire and cursed. The guards ripped off Heiner’s torn shirt. His chest was covered with angry bruises.
The fire-burned iron bar was placed close to his bare skin. He could feel the burning heat. Heiner mumbled the girl’s name in his gaping mouth like a prayer.
Annette Rosenberg.
If I come back alive and see you, I will definitely try to talk to you. I’ll stop hiding by the window and spy on you…..
I want to look into your eyes and talk to you.
A searing heat fell on his bare skin. It was a horrible, horrible pain that he had never experienced before, even though he had lived a life spelled with pain.
Screams filled the interrogation room. The interrogators and guards chuckled as he struggled.
His tightly torn lips parted through clenched teeth, and fingernails dug into his palms. The smell of burnt flesh wafted past his nose. Still, Annette was still in his head.
Ah.
How could my past and future be all you when you didn’t even know me?
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