Impressions on Iron Gates Chapter Nineteen
Impressions on Iron Gates Chapter Nineteen
Nadezhda Seals Her Fate
Nadezhda is back at her post. After witnessing the great spectacle in which the commandant, the female goddess of the organization, presented herself in the flesh to the attendees of the special arms unveiling event.
She has now set up an altar inside the tiny room she shares with another intelligence analyst. It is an altar to the commandant, upon which is the image of the goddess and before which Nadezhda routinely performs rites, chants formulas, and generally follows the guidelines of the cult for devotees.
We must note here that there is a marked difference between those who are practicing nuns in the inner echelons of the commandant’s cult, and a devotee of the goddess. Bluebird, previously known as Lynx, complies with no such devotional practice. Bluebird is on the fast track to internalize the commandant through much harsher drilling measures that might ultimately ingrain the commandant as an alter in her personality. Nadezhda is bowing down as a servant entirely separate from the commandant.
Having thought about the coded message that the Lieutenant, the psychopathic bestial killer, had given her, and being unable to decode it for herself, decides to put her fate in his hands. She deposits the card with the code in a box and waits for events to unroll.
Soon, she is called by her superior, who congratulates her on the unexpected promotion and gives her severance papers with a recommendation letter for her outstanding work as a codebreaker. Nadezhda spends the rest of the chapter watching some female cult members (the only real cult members are al female, actually) chant while she eats the weird substances they are given.
Submerged in a haze induced by the cult chants, Nadezhda fantasizes about her future in applied intelligence in the bowels of the torture center. She sees herself rising to glory and full potential as she inflicts the worst sufferings on the flesh of those who come her way.
She is sure she will succeed. Her father is the infamous weapons designer and manufacturer. She has done outstanding professional work in her post so far. And after becoming a week-long sexual companion of the Lieutenant, she has obtained his congratulations and a coded message to those in the torture center, where she has dreamed of coming into her own.
As we saw from the leaked pictures and trials of American torturers in the prisons of occupied Afghanistan, where the United States government (also known as ‘the corporation’, another name for ‘the organization’), had female soldiers among them who rose to prominence for their enthusiastic sadistic tendencies.