by V. St. Clair
“Is Andreas working now?” Topher asked the Minor who addressed him, not knowing his name. This wasn’t terribly unusual, as there were thousands of Provo-Minor coming in and out of the Augenspire at any given time, transferring to or from one of the other major cities on Elaria to help carry out the Viceroy’s orders.
“Not right now, sir. He is on the night shift at present, so he would be sleeping just now.”
Topher frowned at this delay and said, “Send him a message. I wish to speak to him at his earliest convenience,” which really meant, ‘the second he becomes conscious and coherent.’
“Yes, sir,” the man turned back to his screens, waving aside the images of the Academy and opening up the internal messaging system, pushing back the sleeves on his overlong black robes to begin typing. Topher understood why the Provo-Minor wore the robes, but he still thought they were more trouble than they were worth; he had seen countless new Minors trip and fall over them, or get their sleeves stuck in doors. It was usually a subject of great amusement for the Provo-Major when they were bored and looking for entertainment.
Unsure of how else to kill time until Andreas woke up, Topher made his way back through the east wing and to the elevators that would take him to the upper levels of the Augenspire. It wasn’t until he had gotten off the first elevator at the two-hundredth floor and scanned his biochip for the next one that he decided to visit Fox and his prisoner.
He exited the elevator at the two-hundred-and-eightieth floor, stepping onto the plain, unadorned landing and turning down the hallway. The upper floors of the Augenspire tended towards the drab and utilitarian, due to the relatively low number of people who would ever see them. The exceptions were the floors frequented by members of the Viceroy’s family, which looked palatial by comparison.
Topher’s footsteps echoed loudly on the white tile as he moved down the hall, glancing into windows for any sign of Major Fox and quickly scanning the placards in front of each door that had the name and Gift of the occupant within. A few of the Gifted glared at him as he walked passed their doors, but most of them just sat there looking defeated. Topher felt a fleeting stab of sympathy for them—but suppressed the thought. They were only here because they had broken the law in a significant way and posed a threat of some kind to the Viceroy’s rule, after all.
He frowned when he reached the end of the hall, because he hadn’t found Fox or his prisoner anywhere on this floor…what was the guy’s name? Matt? Mark?
Surely he hasn’t been released, Topher thought uneasily, glancing around the empty hallway and wondering if some Provo-Minor was downstairs right now, watching him and wondering why he was standing around looking confused on one of the top prison levels.
As far as Topher knew, Fox hadn’t gotten any useful information out of his prisoner yet, though not from lack of trying; he’d been interrogating the guy for weeks. Then again, information wasn’t the only thing Fox was after. Not with this special prisoner.
Frowning, Topher opened the door to the stairwell at the end of the hall by scanning his biochip and walked up the next flight of stairs on foot.
The two-hundred-and-eighty-first floor was the most secure floor for housing prisoners in the entire Augenspire, though it was typically only used for interrogations requiring more advanced and painful techniques. Two-eighty-one generally held confirmed terrorists and the leaders of organized revolts against the establishment, so Topher couldn’t see why Fox’s Gifted would be here, but nowhere else made any sense either.
Maybe he’s in one of the labs having the scientists work on him? Surely he’s not down on level-ten…
No infraction minor enough to land him on the tenth floor would have rated the attention of Major Fox.
Topher activated the lock on the hall door with his ID-chip and heard the lock release with a series of loud clicks. The lighting on this floor was more muted than the one below it, and the walls were very gently sloped inward to provide the psychological effect of feeling cave-like, as though they were closing in on him. There were fewer rooms on this floor, though each one was about the same size as the ones on the level below. The extra space was taken up by reinforcements on the walls: a solid foot of steel in all directions, layered with elarium, the core of which was electrified, with a heavy magnetic field blanketing the entire place from a large generator at the other end of the floor. They hadn’t yet encountered a Gifted person who could break through all of those barriers without getting killed, which made it the most secure holding space they had to contain them. Rumor had it, some of the Gifted complained of hearing horrible screaming noises in their head in here, and some had killed themselves rather than choosing to endure it.
Perhaps something with the electrified elarium shielding in the walls? Maybe it messes with their emblems in some way…
Any rumors involving people who heard voices in their heads were of great interest to Topher, who was still trying to find an explanation for his own problem.
He hated being on this floor, mostly because the magnetic field limited the use of his Talents and other weapons, which meant he was considerably more vulnerable on this level than he cared for. He could never quite forget that this floor would also be used to hold a Provo-Major captive if the need arose, as it had once or twice in the distant past. Topher was uneasily aware of how quickly the jailer could become the prisoner in here.
This floor wasn’t monitored by the Provo-Minor, or anyone else, for that matter. There were no cameras. No audio files. What happened here truly stayed here, for better or for worse. Topher had heard of some of the more vicious members of the Provo-Major taking advantage of this power in the old days, though he liked to believe they were past such abuses of power by now. One thing was for certain though: a prisoner who ended up on this level never saw the light of day again.
There were no windows into the rooms here, so it was impossible for Topher to see if any of the cells were occupied just by passing them. Fortunately, there were bright red stickers with hazard markings placed across the doors of the occupied rooms, with the names and Gifts listed below. The hazard markings were similar to those used for dangerous chemicals, which made it look like they were storing deadly weapons here instead of human beings.
These people are weapons in and of themselves, Topher reminded himself.
There were only three people being kept on the entire floor right now, so Topher was stunned when he saw the label identifying Maxton Mercuria on one of the doors, with Fox’s signature below it as the primary interrogator.
Topher had never actually brought a prisoner to two-eighty-one before, and wasn’t exactly sure what the protocol for visiting one was, now that he thought of it. Feeling like an idiot, he knocked loudly on the heavy steel door to announce his presence before placing his entire hand on the palm-lock.
The scanner checked his ID-chip, along with a few dozen other things to confirm his authorization, including his fingerprints, body temperature, finger-to-hand-length ratio, and a few key DNA markers.
The locks sounded much heavier this time as they clicked, and the door opened a crack. It occurred to Topher the Gifted prisoner could be desperate by now, waiting to pounce on him on the other side of the door. He drew two hand-sized metal brackets from his belt and watched them polarize away from each other and lock into place, as they established a magnetic field between them in midair. The bracket closest to him was shaped like a letter ‘C’ and had a hilt attached to the base of it. The other bracket was smaller and shaped more like an inverted ‘V’. Topher gripped the hilt of the first tightly and watched the empty space between the two brackets flare to life with bright orange light, forming the ion-sword.
Prepared for a fight, he pushed the door open with effort and stepped into the room with his ion-sword held in front of him and—
The orange light blinked out all at once and the metal bracket at the tip fell to the floor with a loud clang.
The magnetic field in here! Topher knew about some of t
he defenses on this floor, but hadn’t realized they would mess with all of his weapons. Damn it to hell!
“Was that supposed to happen?” an uncertain voice rasped from across the room, catching Topher’s attention.
The voice belonged to a dark-skinned man about the same age as Topher, his thick black hair pulled into braids that were bound in a ponytail holder behind his head. He was wearing a prisoner’s navy-blue jumpsuit, which was rumpled and stained with something that might be blood. A long necklace hung down his front, with the emblem of a key on it. He looked exhausted and possibly ill, his lips cracked from dehydration and voice strained from overuse.
Screaming, perhaps?
It was immediately apparent why he wasn’t waiting to jump Topher at the door, as the prisoner appeared to be magnetically stuck to the wall he was slumped against, held by the thick metal bracelets on his hands and stuck to the floor by the matching anklets he wore.
“What?” Topher asked dumbly, forgetting the question during his assessment of the room and the person in it. This guy didn’t look like a terrorist.
But then, who does?
“That thing that looked like a sword of light,” Maxton croaked, coughing. “Was it supposed to just fall apart like that as soon as you came into the room?”
Feeling like an idiot, Topher picked up the fallen bracket and put both it and the hilt back into their slot on his belt.
“It’s an ion-sword, and no—that wasn’t supposed to happen,” he admitted, feeling the fool. “I forgot that the magnetic field in the room would interrupt the one the sword generates.”
“Why were you coming in here with your sword drawn, anyway?” the prisoner asked bluntly. “Are you here to kill me at last?”
Thrown off-guard by the question, Topher said, “Of course not. I thought you might jump me at the door.”
“Are you new or something?” Maxton asked skeptically. “Don’t you know how this place works?”
In truth, there was some information on the general workings of this floor in the two-thousand-page handbook that all Provo-Major received upon being sworn in, but since this was the only prison block able to contain a Major, the full details were kept secret, even from them. Since Topher hadn’t ever had use of this floor before—he was more familiar with the one below it—this lack of detail had never bothered him until now.
“I’ve never had a prisoner on this level before,” he countered drily, not liking to be the one interrogated. “I didn’t realize you would be stuck to the walls and floor all the time.”
“Only until you close the damn door,” Maxton rasped out in annoyance.
Surprised, Topher shut the heavy door behind him, hearing the loud metallic clunks that signaled the locks resetting themselves and trying not to feel entombed. The prisoner’s anklets and bracelets demagnetized and he was able to move freely again, though for the moment he remained seated on the floor, slumped uncomfortably against the wall.
There was no bed in here, nothing to make the prisoner even remotely comfortable. In fact, Topher could see a grouping of portable floodlights on a rack in one corner—currently turned off—which could only be used to keep him in blinding, painful amounts of light for hours on end. There was a hard wooden bench in the center of the room, but it was covered in dried blood and had leather straps tied to the base of it to secure the person on it. Topher could imagine some of the things that probably happened in that chair, and suppressed a shudder. The thought of torture had never appealed to him, and it was hard to imagine someone so young being such a threat to an establishment as powerful as the government.
Perhaps Maxton is much more uncooperative and formidable than he seems?
“Why are you here? Did the other guy get tired of beating the crap out of me and send you in to take a turn at it?”
Topher frowned and said, “You are still under Major Fox’s charge. I just thought I’d offer him my assistance in questioning you since he isn’t making much progress.”
Maxton groaned and said, “No matter how many times you people kick me, stick needles full of burning chemicals into me, or hold me underwater until I’m about to drown, I can’t tell you what I don’t know—and I don’t know where Hera is.”
Topher frowned and said, “Advanced interrogation techniques like the ones you’re describing are only used on confirmed terrorists, so if Fox deems them necessary then you can hardly be as innocent as you claim.” As far as Topher knew, Maxton was only suspected of being linked to Hera, nothing more, but Fox must know otherwise if he was busting out all of the old tactics on him.
“Ha!” the prisoner huffed weakly, looking darkly amused. “Keep telling yourself that, kid.”
Topher didn’t like being called “kid” by someone his own age, but he was beginning to wonder if Fox might be breaking some old rules by being a bit too aggressive in his interrogation of this guy.
Or the prisoner could be lying and just referencing old torture techniques he’s seen in movies, in an attempt to garner sympathy.
Topher reached into a pouch on his belt and pulled out two small capsules: one blue and one green.
“Here,” he offered them to the prisoner, who took them from him and put them in his mouth without even asking what they were, biting down to release the contents before swallowing. Topher always kept a pouch of emergency medical supplies on hand in case he found himself in a prolonged battle, though he rarely had use of them. The green relieved pain—he had a much more effective Talent for this, but couldn’t always spare the slot on his enhancer during combat—and the blue would provide rapid hydration to keep him from overexerting himself. He wasn’t sure what to make of the prisoner’s story, or whether he believed his accusations against Fox, but he thought the man might be more cooperative if he felt Topher wasn’t his enemy.
Maxton blinked a few times and said, “Wow, good stuff.”
“It could have been poison,” Topher pointed out pragmatically. He never would have ingested something offered to him by a captor unless he had no other choice.
“I’m going to die in this hellhole anyway,” the prisoner shrugged. “If you’re willing to make it quick, so much the better for me.”
“This isn’t how things normally run with prisoner interrogations in the Augenspire, even with terrorists,” he explained. “We’re all under pressure to track down Hera before she can make any more headway against the government. If Major Fox used some unconventional techniques on you, it is because we are trying to stop a small problem from becoming a much larger one. It is for the good of mankind, and he wouldn’t have brought you to this level of the Augenspire if he didn’t have strong cause to believe it was necessary.”
Maxton rolled his eyes and said, “Yeah, sure, tell yourself that if you like.” Then he added, “I really don’t know where Hera is. I’ve never met the woman—I assume she’s a woman with a codename like ‘Hera’—in my life.”
“I find that hard to believe, since you were found carrying one of her symbols in a secret meeting aimed to attract more non-Gifted people to her cause.”
Maxton made a skeptical face and said, “Wow, you’re really drinking the brew around here, aren’t you? I was never in a secret meeting, and I didn’t have that symbol of Hera’s until your loving friends downstairs planted it on me so they could arrest me from my not-so-cozy bedroom in the Academy. I never thought I’d miss the hospitality of the Academy, but you guys really leave something to be desired around here.”
Shocked, Topher said, “You want me to believe the Provo-Minor planted evidence on you so they could arrest you for crimes you didn’t commit? Why would they do that if you weren’t actually involved in anything suspect?”
The prisoner rolled his eyes and said, “Because of my Gift, you dolt. Your beloved Viceroy is trying to appear even-handed, like he wants peace between our people so we don’t rise up against him, but he still wants to use us to accomplish his objectives—willing or not. I have a Gift you people think will bring you t
o Hera, but they can’t justify arresting me and torturing me to use it for them if I haven’t done anything wrong, hence the fake evidence and the meeting that never happened.”
Topher didn’t believe a word of it, though the prisoner seemed quite sincere. He couldn’t be telling the truth—surely if there was some kind of corruption going on, Topher would know about it. Someone in the Provo-Major would have to be in on it if the Minors were breaking the rules to such an extent.
But what if it was true? Rulers had been sanctioning unsavory practices since the dawn of humanity in order to maintain their locus of power. Was it possible that the Minors were breaking their own laws?
Does the Viceroy know about it?
“You seem surprised by this new revelation,” Maxton said coolly. “That’s…revealing.”
Topher wiped the expression from his face, cursing himself mentally for losing the upper hand in an interrogation. This whole experience was rattling him horribly, and he was actually thankful they weren’t being recorded right now or he’d probably be sent back to remedial training for investigators after this poor performance.
“I don’t believe you were framed for a crime you didn’t commit just so we could use your Gift; my thoughts were elsewhere.” He changed the subject abruptly. “Why do you believe your Gift is so valuable to us, anyway? I thought it had something to do with unlocking doors,” Topher strained his memory for the details, wishing he had paid better attention when Fox first told him about it.
“Opening doors,” Maxton corrected him.
“That’s what I said,” Topher answered flatly.
“You said unlocking, not opening.”
A moment of silence passed before Topher said, “I fail to see the relevant difference between the two in this case.”
Before the prisoner could explain, the door locks began thudding heavily out of place behind him and Topher startled at the noise. Maxton was immediately pulled against the walls and floor again, and Topher felt a momentary stab of pity for him. Wondering at the interruption, he had been so caught up in his conversation with the prisoner that he was almost surprised to see Major Fox enter the room.