He was surprised at how young she looked. She was mid thirties at most. She wore her black hair in a short bob cut. An odd detail for military personnel. She was short for a citizen, petite too. She masked it by walking with the determination of someone twice her size.

Voss could tell she wasn’t someone to trifle with. Easy to underestimate due to her small appearance too. A deadly mistake that, he was sure, had been made before. Attractive and risky. Just his type. If only the situation had been different.

She did not wait to be invited in. Instead, she walked into the interrogation room like she owned it, and sat herself down at the head of the table. She put down a file and opened it. She spent a few moments studying the file and only then acknowledged the presence of the two men in the room with her. She pointed her slim, well manicured, yet surprisingly roughened hand at Cedric and said: ‘You, out.’.

Cedric looked shocked and unsure of what to do. Despite this, he did his best to stand up to her. ‘I am this man’s lawyer. You don’t have the right to interrogate him without my..’

‘I said OUT’. There was a dangerous, but subtle undertone in her voice. Like a poisonous snake hidden in tall grass. Easily missed, but ignored at your own peril. This woman had fangs hidden behind her youthful face. Her black uniform gave her an aura that reminded Voss of a black widow spider.

Cedric seemed to have missed the warning in her voice. Voss could tell he was mustering the courage to speak up again. He knew he had to intervene. He grabbed Cedric’s shoulder before he could open his mouth. ‘It’s okay Cedric. Please leave. There’s no reason for you to get caught up in this. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.’

Cedric got up reluctantly. There was a sorrow in his step as he exited the room. Voss felt bad for him. Kid got his first big case and it crushed his entire world view. Salpetersburg’s rotten side on full display. Still, he wasn’t too worried about him. The kid might have been naïve, but he did show courage. Cedric was a man with character, and men with character tended to recover from adversity just fine.

He turned to the woman. ‘There’s no need to work me mam, I’ll play along, I’ll plead guilty and..’

‘Shut up.’. Her gaze was ice cold. A little too cold. It gave him the sense that she was putting on an act. To what end though? And why was she interrogating him? He couldn’t help himself. He had to find out. He knew he’d have to be careful though. There were fates worse than death and she held the keys to all of them.

‘I am going to ask you a series of questions and I want honest, direct and clear answers. Is that understood?’

‘Yes, mam.’

‘Are you worker OSPB 4921EL33.VOSS?’

‘Yes mam, but you may call me Voss. It’s what my friends call me.’ He said it with a cheeky smile, curious to how she’d respond to such a quip.

For a split second, her eyes spat fire. It was obvious he had caught her off guard. She didn’t seem to appreciate his apparent disregard for her authority. Had he pushed too fast, too far? Would it have been wiser to soften her up before he made his gambit? It didn’t matter. He couldn’t go back now. He had to ride out this storm.

To his surprise, she recomposed herself quickly. ‘You seem to underestimate the gravity of your situation, Voss.’ She had pronounced Voss as if it was something low and unwanted, like a cockroach. She stood up, walked across the table and sat on top of it, right in front of Voss as if to challenge him. She was within striking distance of Voss now. At least she would have been if his arms hadn’t been chained to the floor. She stuck out both hands towards him, so close to his face that he could practically smell them. ‘See, in this hand I hold your life; and in this hand I hold the lives of all those who are dear to you. What I do with both depends on how well you cooperate.’ She slapped his face just hard enough to get her message across.

Her threats were credible and well spoken, yet they were too on the nose. That split second in which she had shown her anger, combined with the overcompensating display of power, told Voss everything he needed to know. She wasn’t the cold hearted, ruthless, officer she was trying to portray herself as. Sure she wasn’t no kitty either, but there were people who were natural psychopaths, and there were people who had to teach themselves to act like one. She was the latter. She may have held the lives of him and his loved ones in her hands, but she wasn’t the type that could use that power without remorse. Besides, there weren’t many loved ones she could threaten with anyhow.

This wasn’t some incompetent fool like the last two women who interrogated him though. This was someone worthy of being taken seriously. He’d have to use all his wits to come out on top of this interrogation. His opening gambit had partially worked though. If there was one thing that Voss had learned from all his interactions with citizens, it was that it’s much easier to hate someone from afar. Especially if it’s someone you don’t respect. It’s much harder to kill a man when he’s looked you in the eye and showed you his worth. When she walked into the room, she saw a slum dwelling low life. Now she saw a human being, capable of challenging her. Someone who could have been her peer if he had been born into a better family. Her hand may have been the one at the trigger, but his actions had linked it to her heart enough, so that she’d feel the emotional consequences of pulling it… If his assessment of her had been correct, of course.

She walked back across the table and sat back down on her chair. A moment of silence followed. Both stared into each other’s eyes with a tense gaze. Both were unwilling to be the first to break eye contact. She broke the silence first. ‘Now, let’s pretend I did not hear your insolent comment and continue as before. Are you a graduate of Herbert University, class of 752, with a degree in electrical engineering?’ Her voice and face had regained their initial coldness.

‘Yes, mam.’

‘Tell me, Voss: How did a resident such as yourself manage to get himself into the best university this side of the Opal mountains?’

Voss ignored the way she spoke out his name and the word “resident”. It was obvious she was trying to rile him up. See if she could get to him the same way he just got to her. She’d have to try harder than that though. Citizens had hurled every insult known to man at him for as long as he could remember. She was going to have to bring her A-game if she wanted to succeed. ‘Sandfort scholarship mam. Been tinkering with machines since I was a kid. My father enrolled me for the grand Sandfort exams and I made the cut.’

‘It says here you did quite well for yourself in Herbert.’

‘Yes, mam. 130th out of 321 electric engineering students in my year.’

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

‘The way I understand it, that score isn’t reflective of reality, is it?’

‘No it’s not. I was top of my class; would have made valedictorian. Then they warned me to do something about it. Bad optics to have a slum dweller outscore all the citizen students. So I flunked an exam and wrote my final paper in a single afternoon. Ended up close enough to average to avoid a ruckus.’

‘And after university you took an entry level position at City Utilities. A position you still hold today, almost twenty years later. Why did you never advance through the ranks? Why did you never look for a more prestigious employer? Did you not have ambitions? Surely there’s nobody pressuring you to stay at the lowest rung of the corporate ladder? Why are you still oiling the machines?’

Her voice grew softer as the questions became more personal. Voss couldn’t tell if this was genuine or if she was using subtle manipulation tactics on him. He assumed the latter just to be safe. She was good at this interrogation game, he had to give her that.

‘I think you know the answer to those questions as well as I do, mam. It’s because of what happened to my father.’

‘What happened to your father?’ She had a way of asking questions where you couldn’t tell if she was testing you or genuinely curious.

He gave her an indignant look ‘Are you serious? Isn’t that in your file?’

‘Just answer the question. I want to hear it from your perspective.’

She had him rattled now. Was she still playing mind games on him or did she genuinely not know? Didn’t Fifth have access to everything? He hesitated for a moment. Would it be better to speak the truth here? Or should he add in some white lies here to prevent unwanted follow up questions? He decided to go with the truth… well most of it.

‘My father was the most gifted surgeon there’s ever been in the greater Saltpetersburg continent. Class four citizens would demand their surgery be done by him. He mingled with high society and his well-spokenness and intellect made him a welcome guest there.’

‘You’re not really making your case here, are you?’ she interrupted him, trying to throw him off guard again. It had the opposite effect. He was now certain that she was playing mind games. He felt reassured in his strategy to speak the truth. She already knew all the answers and was just testing him. He needed to stay careful until he knew for sure why she was here though. This was a life or death situation with zero margin for error.

‘Let me finish the story please, mam. I’ll get to that part soon. You see, as the years progressed, he started to believe he was truly one of them. That he was equal to the citizenry due to his skills and intellect. Others tried to warn him, but he didn’t listen. He didn’t just hang out with class four citizens, he started to act like them too. He was blinded by his success and forgot what he was: A resident. He made many friends in high places, but he made even more enemies. Enemies that wanted to get rid of him. Patiently waiting for him to make a mistake. A medical slip up perhaps, or a social faux pas. They got it when he got caught committing the ultimate crime. He had seduced a high class citizen woman. A married one at that. Two weeks later he was on the electric chair. Subordination and political terrorism they accused him of. I was in my final semester at Herbert when it happened.’

He put both his hands on the steel table, the chains around his wrists rattling as they hit the steel of the table. He looked at her intently.

‘You ask me why I never progressed the ranks? Why I never showed any ambition after college? It’s because I’ve seen where my father’s ambition took him. I’ve seen how they turned against him. The price he paid for daring to be like them when he wasn’t a citizen. I’ve learned my lesson. I was forced to watch as they strapped him into that chair and I vowed to myself that this would never happen to me. I learned the hard way that it was better to accept my lot in life. To keep my mouth shut as I watched those of inferior intellect rise the ranks whilst I kept “oiling the machines”.’

He noticed that anger had snuck into his voice. He took a deep breath and calmed himself before he continued. He couldn’t let her get to him. ‘Now see where showing no ambition got me. Ironic, isn’t it? You just can’t win this game as a resident.’ He tried to be nonchalant in how he said that final sentence, but he wasn’t sure if he had pulled it off properly.

She closed the file and looked at him. Her face had become relaxed again. ‘I see. Are you dating? Have a wife and kids?’

‘No mam, I’m only forty two, and I spend most of my time working, so no marriage or children yet.’

‘How did you get that scar on your face?’

‘Some big accident. I can’t remember any of it and my parents never told me much about it. All I know is that half my skull was bashed open and my body was in tatters. My dad saved my life. Put me inside some robotic surgery machine prototype he had built and spent 29 hours working on me. Gave me this nice scar, and a metal plate that covers most of my skull, to remember it by.’

‘Got any leftover effects from that accident?’

‘Miraculously enough, not. At least not any that I’ve noticed, mam’

‘So your skull was smashed open by some “big accident”, it required 29 hours of surgery and a large metal plate to keep you alive… but there was no residual brain damage whatsoever? I find that hard to believe.’

‘Must have been a miracle then.’

‘You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? Stop playing dumb. Tell me the truth.’

‘The truth is that you probably know more about my father than I do. You also know who my mother was. I assume you also know who their associates were. My father has always been adamant that it was a miracle. Was it though? Probably not. My best guess is that my father and mother collaborated in using some forbidden technique to save my life. Probably some stem cell regenerative technique. Like I said though, all my memories of that incident are gone. My first memories are of being in hospital, recovering. That’s all I know. Everything else is just a guess.’

‘Your parents never told you more than that? They never spoke to you about their work?’

‘They never told me more than the basics. I know my dad was a surgeon and a pioneering spirit. I know my mother worked as a lead molecular biochemist for the biggest pharmaceutical company this side of the equator. What either of them really worked on, I have no idea. They never told me and I knew better than to ask.’

‘How did you take your mothers death?’

‘How do you think I took it? My father wasn’t even properly buried yet when she and her entire division burned to death in that damned laboratory of hers.’

‘Were you close to your parents?’

‘No. My parents were not the type of people you could get close to. Not unless you were their work.’

‘And yet you were distraught by their deaths?’

‘They were my parents, of course I was. They may not have been the best of parents, but they were my parents. Besides, they did their best in their own ways.’

‘I know enough then. Now tell me, Voss, have you ever heard of Fifth Branch?’

‘Yes, mam, you’re a secret police force.’

‘Not quite, but I can’t blame you for not knowing what we really are. We wouldn’t have been doing our jobs right if you did. We put a lot of effort into ensuring the public doesn’t know what we do. I will tell you though. There’s no harm in that seeing as I’m the last person you’ll ever speak to before you get executed.’

Execution it was then. Funny how she could know such things before an “independent” judge had given his verdict.

She began to sum up: ‘The first three branches are: the central government, the police and the court system. Fourth Branch deals with non-citizens like yourself; but you already knew that of course. Then, there is Fifth Branch. We deal with outer-world and exo-world threats. Or fields include: interplanetary trade, interplanetary spies, intergalactic piracy, and other interplanetary threats. Basically anything that threatens Fosfat from outside our planet’s atmosphere.

‘Threats from spies? I thought we were part of the empire? Why would we need a government branch dedicated to protecting us from the empire that we are part of?’

‘Don’t act naïve Voss, it doesn’t suit you. Anyhow, before I give the clearance and send you off to die, I have a proposition I want you to listen to.’