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“What would you be willing to do to protect this country and its people?” the latest recruiter asks him. “Or to further their protection.”
John blinks. Usually these questions are more specific - Could you kill a terrorist standing 2 feet from his young son? Maybe she wants, they want him to be creative? Composition has never been his strong suit.
“Anything.” The recruiter pauses for a moment.
“You really mean that.” It’s not a question, more of an observation.
“Yes.” He answers anyway.
”Would you give your life for it?” Now that’s going somewhat too far.
“I was recruited from the army,” he points out. She’d told him to desist with forms of address, to speak freely. Not everyone who says that means it, but apparently they’re playing honesty today.
“Which you did not join willingly. Answer the question.”
“Yes,” he says. Without hesitation. She pauses again.
“That’s not something you can take back, you know. When it happens.”
“I know.” He doesn’t add ‘obviously’. He’d thought he’d run into most forms of psych probing, by now. If this is a new one, he should probably be more careful. She starts stacking her papers into a pile.
“Your next interview will be tomorrow at noon. If you haven’t changed your mind by then.” It’s not a question again. He thinks it’s something about her that makes him keep answering. Part of psych probing, maybe.
“I won’t.”
She’s there when he comes for the interview, in the anteroom. Raises her eyebrows at him.
“Anything?” He feels the need to answer again, like a pull, like an opened vacuum. (Later it occurs to him he should have found that more strange than he did).
“Anything.”
By the time he realizes he maybe shouldn’t have said that, it is, of course, entirely too late.