The Outer Quiet

Fear is often Man's greatest enemy. But when there is nothing left to lose, there is everything to gain.... And with everything to gain, where is the enemy?
He lay on the cot, listening to the breathing of the six men who shared apartment 2-B with him, and the panic fluttered deep in his stomach, threatening to break upward and out in a wild scream. He fought it by telling himself it was foolish for a man who had lived through the destruction of New York and eight months imprisonment to feel this way.
He peered toward the window and tried to see the morning sun; not as a pale, shimmery fog but as the bright Spring yellow he knew it was. But the fog remained, no matter how many times he rubbed his eyes with saliva-wet fingers. It was as if he were seeing everything under water—a world of shimmery, hazy objects.
The panic rose again. The Conquerors' beam had done its work well, and his chances of finding Adele before death found him, were now terribly small. The first punishment had brought only a slight blur, this one had almost blinded him, and it was only a matter of time before he committed the third offense. It made no difference that Conqueror Punitive assured all trainees that the degree of blindness decreased as the years went by. He knew that his third offense would come sooner than any improvement in his ability to see. And the third offense was punishable by death.
Before another rush of fear could churn his brain, the morning whistle sounded. Shrill, commanding, it began each day of aimless wandering—the silent stroll over pavement connecting the five buildings of what had once been Brooklyn's prize housing development; a constant walk which destroyed those Americans unable to show complete obedience and turned the others into slaves.
Again the whistle shrieked, and the room filled with coughs, groans and sighs, for it was forbidden to talk. Only when one of the many rules had been broken and a card bearing the trainee's number was found in the box outside the door did some American get a chance to speak. He would rush instantly to the small administration building near the wall's only exit and report to the squat, gray-uniformed Conqueror known as Punitive—the only Conqueror the trainees had ever seen. After an explanation of the offense in too-precise English, the trainee was told to sit on the stool facing the light tube. I obey, he would croak. In silence broken only by the hum of electric generators in the basement, the beam of piercing white light would sear his eyes. Afterwards, the assurance about the disappearing effects of the beam; then back to the streets.