Work Text:
“Torture is neither an art nor a game: it’s a science. With its laws and equations and mechanism that rarely change. Few people learn it and even fewer can practice it adequately, so probably you won’t have to deal with it unless you fuck up especially bad. Beating is the most basic form of torture: it’s painful, sometimes even effective and easy to apply. But it’s a pain you can endure and that you will endure: we’ll teach you how.”
El Director didn’t usually show up at training sessions but the Special Unit was an exception: it was his creation and he often attended the lessons, that alternated theory and practice. Sergio didn’t know it yet, but getting the shit beaten out of you is an entire field of study: the point of it is learning how to endure the pain by conditioning your body to receive the blows in the most efficient way. Damage control.
A useful lesson that came in handy when that scrawny gringo started punching him in the face: the guy was angry and strong but his technique was sloppy. Counterproductive even, as proven by his bloody knuckles, labored breath and Sergio’s silence. American cops are just like that though, a lot of fire but not enough discipline and determination to back it up: his amateurish kidnapping had probably been a spur of the moment kind of thing that was going nowhere, and that would end in blood as soon as his men would come for him.
That’s why he felt bold enough to give the yankee a little lesson about pain and motherland. And boldness became anger when he noticed a couple of mexican guys standing there, just waiting for the gringo cop to give them orders. Sergio knew the type fairly well: bunch of traitors, lusting after dollars or pathetically convinced that Uncle Sam was going to save the country. Even with his nose broken and some fingers missing, despite the pain and dizziness from blood loss, he was sure he was going to make it out of it alive.
“Torture may be a science but it has a blind spot: the human heart. If you get caught and want to keep on living as long as possible, you must, MUST, take this one variant into account: individual susceptibility. The guy who’s interrogating you has a breaking point and if you reach it, if you provoke him to the point of getting there, he will kill you. No matter how useful or powerful you are: you will die. We’ll teach you how to do it. Only a few will learn”.
El Director delivered his speech calmly, scanning the room with his weirdly clear eyes. The usually mute Tomas Morlet let out a brief, humorless laugh that startled the silent room. A memorable lesson… but Sergio remembered it too late, while he lied dying on the hospital’s stairs, a bullet in his guts.