Five months ago.
At a military training base.
"So cadets, you only have nine seconds to decide whether to believe or not anyone who is beside you. It doesn't matter whether it's true or not, you only have nine seconds to know."
"What happens if we don't reach a concrete result?" A woman raised her hand among the crowd and asked.
"Cadet Emma, you have the best deduction among the cadets of this battalion… I'll be brief with my answer. If you have a man who is an enemy of our organization and you have to interrogate him, you will have to ask him questions and you only have nine seconds to believe him or not…"
"Listen, if you don't believe him, you have to ask the same question again… You must be sure that the person is answering you with the truth and only the truth. If you are not sure, that man or woman has deceived you."
Emma remained silent. Talking about torture and interrogation was something very extreme that she had never thought about before. Would it be necessary to reach such situations when she was active as a soldier?
"And for this there is an effective method. If there are two people it will work, otherwise you won't be able to use this method. This method is called the two questions. Tie the two people facing each other and ask them the same questions, but the answer has to be written. Once one gives you the answer, you have to ask the other, and if the answers match, they are telling the truth."
"And if they don't match, they're lying…" Emma murmured softly, and shortly after those same words were spoken by the chief instructor.
…
"What is this, Frank?" Aitor asked as blood filled his throat and it was hard for him to breathe.
Frank, who had remained silent, watched as the enormous rat moved over Aitor's stomach, observing the surroundings, looking for where it was.
Emma, who was next to Jack, was motionless. She never thought that this kind of torture could be done to these people. But looking at the indifferent expressions of Jason and Daryl, Emma stayed on the sidelines.
"I want you to write the answers to the following questions! Where is your base and how many people are inside?" Jason signaled the soldiers, and they untied one of Frank's hands.
Jason looked at Frank and warned him, "Listen, I want you to know that whether your answer is true or not depends on whether your companion's life stays with us!"
When Frank heard these words, he frowned and tried to make eye contact with Aitor to know whether this man had answered with the truth or not. They had never been in this situation before, but since they were from the Fireflies, they always had a way out of this, and he immediately thought about what Aitor might have written.
"While you think, I want to tell you a story…"
After saying those words, Jason turned on the blowtorch, and the strong flame slightly illuminated his face. "The world, both in the past and now, is incredibly crazy, full of deaths, incidents that will be remembered by history, and unnecessary wars. But if there is something we learned, it was to be cruel and experienced."
"Learn from your mistakes and never be so stupid as to commit them again in the future! Great, I'll put it into practice. You know, if we believe that nowadays, with the walking dead roaming the streets, things are worse than in times of war, we are very wrong."
Jason placed the pliers on the table where Aitor was lying and said, "Today I will tell you about the torture of rat torment, originally used by the Chinese, put into practice by the Holy Inquisition and the Dutch Revolution… This torment consisted of placing the condemned man lying face up and completely immobilized…"
As Jason said these words, he firmly held the ropes that kept Aitor immobilized on the table. "On top of that man, a cage with a rat inside was placed. For this to work, it had to be open at the bottom and secured with chains to the victim's abdomen—oh look, just like your friend is…"
"You're a damn son of a bitch!"
Jason paid no attention to Frank's insulting words and said, "Those people would light the top of the cage. This would cause the rodent to go mad in search of an exit, and how do you escape from a cage where the only exit is a man's body…"
When these last words reached everyone's ears, Jason snapped his fingers and said, "Exactly, through the same abdomen! The rat, driven mad by the flames, through bites could force its way through a man's abdomen, passing through the intestines and sometimes even coming out through one side of the body."
"Similar to a hungry walker, the rodent cannot stop devouring the soft tissues in order to find a way out. I think everyone in this room can imagine such pain. The rat bit and bit, damaging important organs in its path and bleeding the victim out, who would inevitably end up dying."
As Jason continued telling the story, he walked to Aitor's side and said, "Write the answer, you only have three seconds."
As Jason said this, the flame of the blowtorch lowered, and little by little the cage began to heat up. Frank was motionless, his body full of cold sweat preventing him from reacting in time, and upon hearing Aitor's screams of fear, that was when he reacted.
"All right, I'll do it!" Anxiously, Frank wrote the answers with difficulty. As each word was written on the paper that had been handed to him, Jason began to see how the rat scratched at Aitor's stomach.
By the time Frank finished writing the answer, Daryl handed the paper to Jason, and there was only tension on his face. When Jason read the contents of the sheet, the location matched, but the number of people was different.
"It's a shame…"
"What?" Frank asked immediately.
"The location was correct, congratulations, but the number of people was written very badly… Between 300 and 500 people, how is it that you don't know how many people are in your base, Aitor? The other answered between 600 and 900 people. Who should I believe?"
Jason dropped the paper to the floor, and at that very moment a voice came from the radio, "Zz… The drones identified the location. What are your orders?"
"Everyone get ready. Once we visit this place, we'll have to reach the beavers' community…" Jason gave the order to retreat, then looked at Jack and Emma. "You two go with the people you saved. They trust you…"
"Yes…"
"Understood, sir…"
"Ahhhhh!" But at that moment, a roar of pain echoed, and Aitor, who had severe injuries to his stomach, was shaking aggressively. However, Jason remained indifferent and instead made the flame more intense.
"Tell me, Frank! How many people are in your base?"
Frank was left speechless, watching as a simple rat was perforating his subordinate's stomach. Each bite was fierce and aggressive; the rat was desperately searching for a place to escape, feeling the fire burning its body.
But Jason did not plan to stop. He had to leave a traumatic mark on Frank's aggressive mentality. He wanted to make the punishment for his actions clear to him; everyone had to know the consequences of killing his soldiers.
"You fucking idiot, you killed my soldiers! Did you really think you would leave this place alive? This is only a small part of my fury for trying to do something against my people…"
Jason looked at Daryl and said, "Daryl, you decide—his hand or his head!"
"Yes!" Daryl took a machete and walked toward Frank step by step.
"No, please!"
Jason was not looking for how many people were in the enemy base; he only needed to know the location, and he had gotten it. If the situation truly became unsustainable, he would kill them all, but he knew that there was always a way out.
"No, have mercy!"
"Ahhhhhh!"
"Rrrrr!"
"Kill me, please take my life!"
"Ahhh!"
The heart-wrenching screams were heard one after another, and then there was nothing but silence. Daryl left the room, cleaning his machete, while Jason wiped the blood from his face.
Bang, bang!
A few seconds later, two gunshots were heard, and the two soldiers left the room dragging two corpses. One had a large hole in his stomach, and the other had no head.
All the enemies had been eliminated.