by Dan Wingreen
Of course, he wasn't exactly looking forward to finding out what kind of nightmares he'd have if he fell asleep in an interrogation room.
He shook off thoughts of nightmares before they could fully take hold. The one he'd had the night before was still fresh in his head, and the last thing he wanted to do was think about dark alleys or awful, dead hands dragging him away—
Suddenly, the door behind him opened, and he jumped in his seat. He spun around half expecting to see his nightmare creature coming through, but it was just a man.
He was about average height, with short, light brown hair in a neat side part Aidan appreciated even though he didn't really like the style. He was wearing a dark blue suit, with a white shirt and a blue tie, and for some strange reason, thin white gloves on his hands. One of those hands was holding a small crystal ball and there was a folder with Aidan's name written on it in blocky, official looking lettering tucked under his arm. His face was kind of bland, but not unpleasant, and he gave Aidan a smile before turning around to close the door behind him.
But Aidan barely noticed any of that.
Instead, his eyes were rooted to a spot on the floor he'd accidentally looked at when he turned around. Right next to a small puddle of water—probably the result of trying to wash the floor seeing as whatever cleaning spells they used on the rest of the room obviously didn't affect it—was a large, reddish brown stain.
It was, unmistakably, blood.
Eallair hadn't been lying.
I am so fucked.
Aidan was jerked out of his thoughts by the loud slap of a folder being dropped onto the table. He blinked, startled he'd never noticed the man walking around the room. He was still so tired even though his heart was racing with fear. His limbs were heavy and his movement sluggish as he pulled his eyes away from the stain and slowly turned to face the agent. The man was still smiling a small, benign smile. How can he be smiling like that when there's a huge bloodstain right there? Although, Aidan had to admit, if he hadn't noticed the blood, the pleasant expression probably would have been soothing after spending what felt like hours scared and off balance.
The agent pulled out a chair from the other side of the table—this one was a normal metal folding chair instead of stone—and sat down, placing the ball in a small groove on the table that seemed designed to keep it from rolling. He opened the folder with his gloved hands, and Aidan noticed he seemed to be avoiding touching the table whenever he could, even with the gloves. Aidan frowned. The agent glanced through the folder for a few seconds, then looked back to Aidan.
"Hello, Mr Collins," he said. His voice was smooth and his tone was light. There was nothing about him that seemed at all threatening. In fact, he seemed even more out of place in the interrogation room than Aidan. Except, he didn't seem at all bothered by that bloodstain. Or the other ones Aidan was just now noticing all over the floor.
"My name's Agent Anwir. I'm very sorry we kept you in here for so long all by yourself. Normally, we would have gotten to you a lot quicker, but we're still dealing with an incident from yesterday. Not that that's any excuse for the discourtesy we've shown you. On behalf of the entire Department of Magic and Sorcery, you have my most sincere apologies."
Anwir paused for a few seconds to give Aidan a chance to say something, but he couldn't even begin to figure out what to say. Did the guy just not see the blood? The break in conversation lasted long enough to give Aidan enough time to speak if he wanted to, but not long enough for it to get awkward when he didn't.
"Now," he said, flashing Aidan another friendly smile. "I'm sure you're probably a bit curious about why you're here."
Anwir glanced down at the folder again for a second. "I just want to assure you you're not in any trouble. There are just a few things we wanted to ask you."
Aidan held back another frown. Any other time he would have been sagging in relief, but some part deep inside of him was screaming not to trust Anwir. This was the second time in his life he couldn't bring himself to trust someone from the government, someone who should have been one of the most trustworthy people in the world. But this time, it didn't feel wrong. What was wrong? This smiling man ignoring the fact he was trying to start up a conversation in a freaking torture room with blood stains all over the floor.
"First off, do you prefer Aidan or Mr Collins?" Anwir asked.
Aidan swallowed and took a deep breath, giving himself a moment to think. He didn't know what was going on here, but…maybe if he played along, they'd let him go? Maybe whatever caused those bloodstains was only brought out when the person they were talking to didn't cooperate?
Of course, idiot. That's how torture works. So, I'll just answer his questions and hope he doesn't ask anything I don't actually know. Maybe they'll let me go then.
"Um"—Aidan licked his lips nervously—"Aidan's fine."
"All right, Aidan," Anwir said. "Would you like anything to drink? Coffee? Tea? Water maybe?"
Aidan blinked. "I…um, no?"
Anwir chuckled. "You don't have to get so flustered. It's not a test or anything; I'm just offering you a drink."
Aidan flushed slightly with embarrassment even though he wasn't sure he believed Anwir. "I'm fine," he said quietly.
Anwir shrugged. "All right then. Well, let's get started, shall we? I promise this will be as painless as possible."
Aidan flinched, but if Anwir noticed he gave no sign. He just smiled again before looking down at the folder.
"Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but it says here your Wizard's License expires in a little under a week. Is that right?"
The question threw Aidan. He expected questions about Eallair—except, that was stupid. They couldn't possibly know he even knew Eallair. There was no way anyone saw his face yesterday. This time, Aidan did relax slightly. If this was just about his license then he could sort it out easily.
"Yes," Aidan said, nodding once.
"May I see it?" he asked.
Aidan hesitated—it didn't go so well the last time a government official asked for his license—then slowly took it out of his wallet and tried to slide it across the table. It only got about a quarter of the way there, but Agent Anwir just opened his hand and the card flew off the table and into his palm. He looked at it, then tapped the corner with his other hand. The entire card glowed with a light blue aura that faded away after a few seconds. Anwir nodded.
"Good," he said. "I didn't think it was a fake, but we have to check anyway."
Instead of giving it back though, he placed it in the folder. Aidan bit his lip, but didn't say anything. He fiddled with his wallet for a second, then put it away. Maybe…Anwir needed to test it some more? It didn't seem likely, but he had no idea what testing a card entailed. He didn't even know there was a way to test to see if a card was fake. Of course, the idea of faking a license had never crossed his mind either, so why would he know?
"Can I ask why you waited so long to come and get it renewed?" Anwir asked.
"I…forgot." Aidan held back a wince. It was the truth, but it sounded so fake when he said it. He hoped Anwir didn't think he was lying. He wasn't eager to find out what could make someone bleed so much.
"You forgot?" Anwir asked. For a second, Aidan thought he sounded skeptical, but then the smile was back. "Well, that's understandable, I guess. Not like I can judge. I've forgotten my Department ID at home more times than I can count. I couldn't even get in the building until I went home and got it. Talk about embarrassing!"
He laughed. Aidan tried for a belated smile, not quite sure if he pulled it off or not.
"Although it's probably a bit worse to forget to renew your license." The sad attempt at a smile died. "Doesn't matter though, it says in your file that you've always renewed it at least a month in advance before, so I don't see any point in making a big deal out of it. After we let you out of here you can go down to the second floor and get it taken care of."
"Okay," Aidan said, then added hesitantly, "And…when will that be?"
Shit, did that make me seem guilty? Aidan wished he hadn't asked.
If Anwir thought the question was a sign of a guilty conscience, it didn’t show on his face. "Soon. I just need to clear up a few more things, then you can be on your way."
Aidan pushed his hair behind his ear. "Okay."
"Do you go to Wizard's Anonymous every week?"
"Um, yes." Except for yesterday, but Aidan thought it was probably a good idea not to mention that.
"And your director never asked if you got it renewed?" he asked with a frown. "Never tried to remind you?"
Aidan chewed on his lip. Was this about Carl? He couldn't possibly imagine why the DMS would be investigating him, he was kind of the perfect old wizard, but if they were, Aidan could clear that up too. As best as he could anyway.
"No, I mean, yes he did. He asked me last week and told me to get it renewed."
"Last week?" Anwir asked. "So…why did you wait until today?"
Aidan froze.
There was no way he could answer that. Not without telling him about…everything Aidan didn't want him to know. He scrambled to think up an excuse, desperately wishing he was better at lying on the spot.
While I'm wishing I might as well just wish I didn't walk home that way that night, wish I never ran into those cops, wish I never met Eallair.
Strangely, he felt a pang in his chest at that last thought.
"Do you not know why you waited?" Anwir asked slowly.
Aidan swallowed nervously even as he berated himself for doing something that just made him look even more like he had something to hide. Say something! "My…carriage broke down. I-I live too far away to walk so I couldn't…go."
That was the worst lie in the history of lies. I am so dead.
But Anwir didn't even raise an eyebrow; he just glanced down and looked through the files again. "It doesn't say anything about you getting a carriage serviced in here?" His voice trailed up at the end, turning it into a question.
"Um." Aidan blinked. They put that in his file?
Everybody, wizard and sorcerer alike, had a file with the government; one of the few ways they were all equal under the law. Aidan knew they kept track of what job someone had, where they lived, medical records if someone had a disease or ailment that couldn't be cured by healing magic, and, of course, any criminal activity, but he never knew they were that detailed. Why could they possibly need to know something like that?
All the better to control you with, my dear.
Aidan didn't know what bothered him more, that the treasonous thought came so easily, that it was in Eallair's voice, or that, for some reason, he’d added an endearment to it.
"I…have a friend!" Aidan said finally, going with the first thing that popped into his head. "He's a sorcerer and, um, he fixed it for me a few days ago. So, I didn't need to get it repaired."
Please don't ask anything else, please don't ask anything else, please don't ask anything else.
"Your sorcerer friend fixed it for you?" Anwir asked.
Aidan nodded.
He looked briefly at the papers again. They couldn't possibly keep a record of my friends too, could they?
"And your friend's name is…?"
Again, Aidan went with the first thing that popped into his head. "Lee. His name is Lee."
Aidan was suddenly insanely glad Eallair had a ridiculously hard to pronounce name or he might have blurted that out instead.
Anwir regarded Aidan thoughtfully for a few moments. "Fair enough," he said with an amiable smile. Aidan had to fight to keep the relief from showing. "Now, your friend…" He flipped through the file. "Does he look anything like this?"
He pulled out a page and flicked his fingers, magically sending it over to land gently in front of Aidan. It was a grainy picture, obviously transcribed from a crystal ball recording, but Aidan had no trouble at all recognizing the face of the man in the picture. Even if it hadn’t been cropped and enlarged to fill up the whole sheet of paper, Aidan would have recognized that horse-tail hair and mischievous smirk anywhere.
It was Eallair.
Aidan fought hard to keep his expression blank. They couldn't know. They couldn't.
"No," he said, proud of how steady his voice was even as he felt like he was about to pass out.
"That's not your friend?" Anwir asked.
Aidan shook his head.
"Is he someone you've maybe seen before?" he asked.
"No," Aidan said.
"If you had, you know you could tell me, right?" Anwir smiled kindly. "I know this whole thing is scary, but you won't get in trouble just because you saw this man at some point. Maybe you passed him in the street, and you saw him walk into a hotel? Maybe he talked to you while you were waiting at a crosswalk; mentioned where he was going or where he came from? He could have met you at a bar and invited you back to his house or hotel room. Gave you an address. It would be perfectly understandable if any of that happened and you just didn't remember because you're still a bit shaken from dragged in here out of nowhere like that. I'm not really interested in the circumstances. You could tell me anything you want, and as long as I get the information I'm after, I won't hold it against you. So, take a minute and think. Really think about whether or not you've seen this man. Because this is the important question."
Anwir's smile faded and he stared levelly at Aidan.
They know. Oh, dear sweet Merlin, they know.
But that didn't make any sense. They couldn't know. There was no way. Unless there was some kind of secret government spell that could identify him based off a glimpse someone got of him through a door that was being hammered by magic. Because that was the only way anyone would have seen him yesterday.
Okay. So. Think. Maybe…maybe he doesn't know. Maybe he just suspects and he's trying to get me to confess? But…how would he even know to suspect me in the first place?
It didn't matter, Aidan decided. However it happened, they obviously didn't know for sure. If they did, then Agent Perfectly-Okay-With-The-Floor-Of-Death wouldn't be trying to be his best friend. He would have come at Aidan with…whatever people used to torture other people. But he didn't so…
So maybe he needs evidence before moving on to the torture?
Aidan almost wept with relief. For the first time since he'd been brought to the interrogation room, he felt like he had a handle on what was going on. They must suspect, somehow, that Aidan was involved with Eallair, but they couldn't do anything about it. Secret torture rooms were one thing. A horrible thing, yeah, but there had to be rules about who they were allowed to use them on and under what circumstances. Otherwise, they could just bring anyone in and torture them for as long as they wanted. And that would just be insane. So, all Aidan had to do was keep his cool and not give away that he knew anything; then they'd have to let him go.
"No," he said as calmly as he could. "I've never seen him before."
Time seemed to slow down as he waited for Anwir’s response. Aidan fought the urge to squirm under the agent’s suddenly opaque regard. Finally, Anwir sighed. "Aidan," he said, shaking his head. "I really thought you'd be smarter than that."
Before Aidan could say anything, Anwir took another sheet of paper out of the folder and sent it over. As it came to rest in front of him, Aidan's blood turned to ice.
It was another picture, also taken from a crystal ball recording. In fact, it looked like the exact same picture of Eallair Aidan had already seen, except this one wasn't cropped or blown up. This picture was pulled back to show Eallair standing on what was obviously the concrete landing in front of the DMS building. He was wearing his newly singed leather jacket with the stolen scroll case slung across his back.
He also had his hand on the shoulder of a scowling Aidan, and while the angle of the shot had Aidan’s face partially in profile, he was still perfectly identifiable.
"See, this is what's known in official terms as a 'last chance'." All the cheerfulness was gone from Anwir's voice. It was rep
laced by the cool precision of a man who knew he was in total control of a situation and had no need to try and prove it. "It would have been better for you, obviously, if you took your second to last chance and said that you recognized him from who the fuck cares where, then told me where he is. I would have let you go and watched you for a few months, letting you live out your days in peace until we found out who else you're working with, then we would have killed you and all your seditious friends and that would have been it. But now? You don't get that extra time."
He picked up Aidan's license and tapped the edge again. This time, it bloomed a dark red aura that didn't fade. Anwir opened his palm and sent the card over to Aidan. He stared in horror at the large, bright red, glowing letters burning over the front of his license that spelled out REVOKED.
It felt like the words were being burned into Aidan's very essence. The one thing every wizard was terrified of had just happened to him, and yet he knew, somehow, things were only going to get worse.
"You're going to die today, Aidan. The only thing that's up in the air is whether or not you experience a lot of pain before you do."
Aidan shivered uncontrollably even as he fought back the sudden, incongruous urge to yawn. Despite the terror running through him, his body kept getting heavier and his head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. He wanted to protest, to shout that he didn't deserve this, that this couldn't be happening. Not to him. But he couldn't. The look in Anwir's eyes froze his voice in his throat.
"The good news," Anwir said, "is that it's all up to you." He smiled, but this time there was no trace of friendliness or cheer.
"Tell me everything you know about the man in the picture. Who he is. What he stole. And most importantly, where he is and what he's planning, and I promise you'll die without feeling a thing. But if you decide to hold out from some misguided loyalty to your terrorist—"
"I'm not a terrorist!" Aidan finally pushed out. His voice was ragged and shrill, and it cost him some of his flagging energy, but at least he was saying something.