Chapter 19
That was the last time anyone ever tried to question Shelley. With Zwicky taken out of the picture in such a dramatic fashion, I guess no one else was eager to step up to see what other things she could be provoked into saying. To be honest, I think some of the higher-ups were a little afraid of her.
With Zwicky gone, Doctor Evan Schmidt was able to get Shelley on a more normal, more balanced diet, so we didn't have to bring her those protein shakes every day, and they rolled a cot into her cell about two days later. But that was it. She still was allowed no visitors, and was still left in her cell by herself for upwards of twenty hours a day. It would have been intolerable for her, I'm sure, if we hadn't come out to keep her company -- sometimes in twos and threes -- every chance we got. Further, there was no talk of sending her to any sort of less-secure facility, much less of setting her free. I think they just didn't know what to do with her.
She might have been left to rot in that cell forever if it hadn't been for two things. First, Wizzit began kicking our public-relations campaign into high gear. Remember when I said he was collecting all the reports and vids and stuff about Shelley "for later"? Well, suddenly it was later. Wizzit began selecting, editing, and sending out piles of the data he had accumulated -- reports and vids, yeah, but also policy statements, complaints, orders, directives, analyses, transcripts -- the whole nine yards. I don't know where on the Internet he put it, but he found someplace, and then he clued in a whole bunch of news organizations as to where it was.
He didn't send it all out at once, either. It might have made a bigger splash that way, but it might also have been quickly forgotten. Instead, he released it piecemeal -- a couple of reports one day, an "enhanced interrogation" vid a few days later -- so that Shelley was constantly in the public consciousness, and each release was just a bit more outrageous than the last. To the folks stationed at the Denver base and their superiors, the steady drip, drip, drip of information leaking out must have felt like the Chinese water torture.
I guess his releasing all those files made a lot of people pretty angry. I mean, there was some pretty damning stuff in there, even if Wizzit did redact any personally identifiable information. The video of Zwicky beating up Shelley, just by itself, provoked indignant headlines and editorials all across the country.
Various human rights organizations began screaming about all the abuses Shelley was being subjected to; elected officials inside and outside the United States made speeches both for and against her continued detainment; the CIA were furious that the "teleportation technology framework" had been leaked to the public; and the military were breathing fire and brimstone and vowing to catch the malefactor responsible for the leak. They never did, of course.
The other event which helped secure Shelley's release took place a little over a month later, in late March. I remember the day because I had gone out for a few hours the night before to see Angie in “South Pacific”; today was their Sunday matinee and final performance. At HQ, we had just finished dinner and were playing horse (the card game, not the game involving basketballs) when the monster alarm sounded. It shut off again almost right away, which was a little odd, and then Wizzit said, "Bad news, kids. Enclave sent out three monsters this time, and they all look pretty tough. One is in Chicago, a second one is in Las Vegas, and the third is in Washington, DC."
A collective groan came up from the group. I gathered up the cards and put them away, since this sounded like it was going to be a long and probably fruitless outing. We glumly got ourselves ready and teleported out in groups of two and three to bear witness to the disaster that this was probably going to turn into. I was kind of hoping to go either to DC or Las Vegas. Lucky me, I went with Bill to Chicago. Not that I have anything against Chicago, but DC is my nation's capital and Las Vegas is, well, Las Vegas. Chicago, while I'm sure it's a fine city, is neither of those.
Unbeknownst to us at the time, although I suppose it was probably beknownst to Wizzit, Shelley was hauled out of her cell while I was hanging out with Bill on the mean streets of Chicago. They took her, not to the interrogation room, but to a small, private office for a one-on-one interview. I didn't see the vid of it until much later, but I'll include it here just so my narrative follows some sort of chronological order.
A man in his early forties, wearing a dark blue business suit, was sitting behind the desk when Shelley's guards brought her in. They sat her down in a chair facing the desk and were starting to shackle her wrists behind the chair's back when the man told them to put their handcuffs away and to wait for her outside the room.
Once the two of them were alone, the man half-rose from his seat and extended a hand. "Good afternoon, Ms. Windham. I am Harold Wadsworth, State Department. It's a pleasure to finally meet you."
Shelley didn't say anything, nor did she move to shake his hand. She merely sat looking at him expectantly, her hands folded in her lap. After an awkward moment, he withdrew his hand and sat back down again. "Ms. Windham," he said, "I represent the government of the United States of America. I have had you brought here to talk about the terms of your incarceration. I think that after some discussion, there is every possibility that you and I might come to an agreement which could prove mutually beneficial."
There was a silence which lasted for several seconds, and then Shelley asked quietly, "Are you going to release me unconditionally, with no restrictions on my behavior or movements whatsoever?"
If he were surprised by the question, he didn't show it. "No, of course not. I am not authorized to offer you anything like that."
"Then we have nothing to talk about."
"What I am authorized to offer you," he went on as if she had not spoken, "is a kind of parole. In return for certain concessions on your part, we would be willing to allow you to return to your home in Montana. Once there, you would be free to live as you saw fit, with certain restrictions."
"This offer is non-negotiable," he added when she did not reply right away. "I will tell you what our terms are, and you will accept them. If you do not, you will be returned to your cell, and I can assure you that it will be a long time before you see the outside of it again."
Shelley nodded to herself and leaned back casually in her chair. "Sorry, not interested."
There was another long silence, broken this time when Wadsworth said, "Aren't you even curious to know the details of what I am proposing?"
"Not particularly," she replied coolly. "I assume, based on the hard-sell you're giving me, that you urgently want my cooperation for some reason. So far, you people have been in no particular hurry to get whatever information you want from me, which leads me to suspect that a crisis of some sort must have arisen which requires my help to resolve. The only such crisis I can think of is an Enclave attack somewhere within the borders of the United States which the Primes are refusing to deal with." She raised an eyebrow at him. "Am I correct so far?"
Wadsworth remained impassive. "Go on," he said.
Shelley watched him for a moment more. "Mr. Wadsworth," she said, "if you think that you can persuade me to intercede for you with my former teammates and get them to solve your monster problem for you, then you are mistaken. Not that I am unwilling to help, but I don't think they would listen to me."
Wadsworth smiled confidently. "I think you underestimate yourself, Ms. Windham. You were a member of the Primes for --" He glanced down at a sheet of paper on his desk. "-- fifteen years, and you were their leader for, well, for a number of years, at least. I think you might still have some influence."
"Of course I have influence," Shelley said impatiently, "but that by itself won't be enough to bring them back." She looked closely at him. "Do you understand just why it is that the Primes will not enter the United States just now?"
The man shrugged. "Certainly. It is a bargaining position. They have certain technologies, and we want them. We have you, and th
ey want you back. The only leverage they have over us is their skill at neatly dispatching these monsters, so they withhold that to force us to come to the bargaining table. Once there, we will make a proposal, they will make a counter-proposal, we will negotiate, and eventually each of us will walk away with more-or-less what we want."
Shelley was shaking her head. "You don't understand it at all," she murmured as if to herself.
"Then perhaps you can enlighten me," he said, smiling indulgently at her.
"Very well, I'll try." She looked at the ceiling for a moment or two to gather her thoughts, then said, "Let me explain two things to you. First, the technology the Primes use to fight Enclave doesn't belong to us."
"It was stolen?" Wadsworth asked, showing surprise for the first time.
"No," Shelley said firmly. "It was given us by . . . let's just say, by someone who doesn't want to see the Earth overrun by an alien invader. It's not a bargaining chip, nor is it a tool to be used by one group to gain or maintain ascendancy over another. It's a gift to be used responsibly to defend our planet from Enclave, and we Primes take that responsibility very seriously. Prime tech is not ours to give away."
"Please give your mysterious benefactor my personal assurances that the United States would use this technology only in its own defense, never as an aggressor," Wadsworth interjected smoothly.
Shelley must have thought that remark to be unworthy of reply, for she went on, "Even we Primes are constrained in our use of the technology. We have some degree of latitude, but we also have certain strict rules we must abide by or risk loss of our powers. One of those rules, by the way, is anonymity; we must keep our identities secret. For instance, because my identity is now publicly known, I can no longer be a Prime."
Wadsworth frowned. "Your father is a cold-blooded man indeed," he said, "to dismiss his own daughter from an organization she helped found and was a member of for fifteen years."
"My father?" Shelley repeated, surprised. "What does he have to do with this?"
"Oh, don't be coy, Ms. Windham," Wadsworth replied testily. "Surely you don't expect us to believe that your father is really dead, do you? The mysterious horse-riding accident, the rather suspect death certificate, the hasty cremation and burial, and all conveniently coming at a time of heightened government interest in the Primes?" He smiled thinly at her. "Come, it will do you no harm to admit it. Your father is this mysterious benefactor, isn't he? Or at least he knows who it is, and he faked his own death -- rather crudely, I might add -- to avoid any possibility of capture and interrogation."
Shelley stared at him in shock for several seconds before she spoke. "Mr. Wadsworth," she said stiffly, "I realize that you are probably paid to be suspicious, and I admit that the circumstances surrounding my father's death were somewhat unusual, so I will not take offense at your remarks. You should know, though, that when I tell you that my father is really, truly dead, that is the truth. I discovered his body myself. There can be no doubt."
Wadsworth regarded her appraisingly. "You give me your word that he is dead?"
"I do."
"You didn't kill him yourself?"
"I did not."
"Do you know who did?"
Shelley's answering smile seemed painfully forced. "The other thing you have to understand about the Primes," she said, ignoring his last question, "is that the only way you're ever going to get them operating in the United States again is to let me go. No deals, no negotiation, no bargaining, no 'certain concessions', and no parole. Just let me go, with no conditions whatsoever, and I can guarantee you that they will be back fighting your monsters for you within the hour. There is no other way."
"I see." Wadsworth leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers across his middle. "It's curious. I suggested earlier you might be underestimating yourself. Now I wonder whether you are overestimating. Are you really that valuable to them?"
"Not at all," Shelley replied. "Personally, I am of very little importance to their ongoing mission. What's important is what I represent, or rather, what my arrest and continued incarceration represent. As long as I am in this prison, my former teammates understand that the United States government considers itself free to capture and imprison any Prime operating within its borders, and if that's the case, why should any Prime ever come here?"
"Sort of a 'fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me' situation, then?"
"Exactly."
"That's rather a simplistic position, wouldn't you say?" Wadsworth observed. "After all, governmental policies are complex things, and are not always in accord with one another. Why should an entire nation be held accountable for what might be the misguided actions of a select few?"
"Our position is a simple one, but what else can we do?" she said. "We are well aware that we have access to technology that could be used to great military advantage. If we let even one country think it can bully us into sharing that technology, then no Prime would be safe anywhere in the world."
"Then we're to be made an example of, is that it?"
"If you like," she said with a shrug. "You are the ones who picked this fight, after all."
"And you're the ones who are going to finish it?"
Shelley smiled more naturally this time. "Let's just say that we're not interested in fighting, but neither will we allow ourselves to be beaten up." Then she held up a warning finger. "Also let me say this: If you do release me, and then at some point in the future you make attempts to capture another one of our number, then the Primes will leave the United States for good, and nothing you say or do will ever bring them back. Do I make myself clear?"
"You're threatening us?"
"I am stating the Primes' policy, nothing more. As you said, it's a 'fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me' situation."
Wadsworth appeared lost in thought for quite some time. Eventually, he stirred and said, "Ms. Windham, in light of some of the, er, unusual occurrences that have happened here of late, can I assume that you have some means to communicate with your former teammates?"
"You can assume whatever you like," Shelley answered carelessly.
Wadsworth frowned. Obviously that wasn't the answer he was hoping for. "If we were to grant you an unconditional release," he said cautiously, "how would we let them know we were doing so?"
"I'd imagine that a press release given out to various national news outlets would suffice," Shelley told him with a grin. "There should be a statement to the effect that my arrest and imprisonment were a mistake and that Primes operating within the United States are not subject to detainment, providing they do not egregiously break any laws. If you then brought me out to some public place with the appropriate officials and told me I was officially free to go, then I expect that one of my former teammates would show up to escort me home."
"I see." Wadsworth stood, holding out his hand again. This time, she shook it. "Ms. Windham," he said, "you are a highly intelligent and exceptionally articulate young woman, and it has been a pleasure to meet you. I shall let my superiors know what you have told me."
Attack Doll 4: Primes Emeriti Page 20