Chapter 67
Detainment
“Start with this one,” Leo said, holding up the middle finger of his left hand.
Detective Lopez grabbed Leo's middle finger and pulled him across the table, pinning Leo's hand to the table's edge so he couldn't move without breaking or dislocating his finger or wrist.
With her other hand, she slipped the cigar cutter over Leo's middle finger. “One joint, two joints, the whole finger? I'll let you choose.”
Leo pretended to yawn. “Surprise me.”
Future Man 10/16: I'm sure I'll be fine. They think I'm a twelve-year-old boy, after all. But in the unlikely event I'm not fine, make sure my sister gets taken care of. Trent might help with that. He's got three stepdaughters around her age.
Teach: I'll do what I can, Leo.
Detective Jones's phone buzzed. “We're needed at base camp.” He stood up. “It doesn't have to be like this, Leo. We were prepared to be nice and give you a break because you're a kid, but you're not making it easy.”
“I guess we'll have to cut off your finger some other time,” Detective Lopez said with a smile, removing the cigar cutter. “In the meantime...” With no warning, she bent Leo's finger backward against his hand until it broke with an audible snap. “Surprise!”
Leo grunted in pain.
The two detectives pulled Leo from his chair and slammed him face-first into a wall, wrenching his hands behind his back. There was a clicking noise as they fastened handcuffs around his wrists.
The school bell rang.
They dragged Leo, now handcuffed, through halls filled with students moving between classes. Of course, Brick had to be one of them.
“You're not supposed to get caught, stupid!” Brick shouted at Leo. Then, to someone else, he yelled, “I get Leo's dealing drugs or whatever, but now he's busted and I'm never going to get my thousand dollars. What a loser.”
The detectives dragged Leo to a car. After putting a bag over Leo's head and banging him against the car door a few times, they pushed him into the back seat and slammed the door behind him. Leo could feel the car move, but had no idea where they were going.
The backseat was plastic and smelled of vomit, urine, and disinfectant. He leaned his head forward and felt a wire mesh between him and the front of the car. He felt around behind him with his handcuffed fingers. Of course, there were no door latches. No way for him to open the door and jump out.
In addition to his finger, his face and head hurt. He used his other hand to straighten his broken middle finger, but it still throbbed in agony.
“I suppose you're wondering why we don't read you your Miranda rights, Leo?” Detective Jones asked. “It's because you're not under arrest. You've been detained to assist us in an investigation of implant-related and/or terrorist-related activities. We can detain you as long as we want.”
“And if we kill you during the course of this investigation,” Detective Lopez added, “we'll have to fill out a little paperwork, but then we'll get a week off for mental health. Torturing and killing children is so stressful. I'm sure you understand.”
A few Demon Tears would help the healing, but if he used them that way, the detectives would figure out what he was doing and do something worse. He did his best to ignore the pain. At least getting tortured would raise his Vitality.
The car stopped. They dragged Leo out and made him walk. He could feel them entering a building and heard a door slide shut behind him. They stopped. His arms were wrenched upward behind him, threatening to dislocate his shoulders and forcing him to lean forward. His arms were fastened to something to hold him there.
“Suspected implant-wearer. Killed an old lady. Uncooperative,” Detective Lopez said to an unknown person.
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“Left middle finger's swollen,” another voice said.
“He broke it, resisting detainment,” she responded.
He quickly figured out that whatever was holding his arms back behind him wasn't something he could move or get out of. Then they left him alone for an hour.
The cold was tolerable at first, but being unable to move ensured he was soon shivering uncontrollably. That was in addition to being hungry, thirsty, and having an acute need to go to the bathroom. He thought he heard screams in the distance.
Imp assured him he'd leveled up in tolerating cold and stress positions.
“How did it feel to kill an old lady, Leo?” said a voice nearby.
Someone poured ice water over Leo's head.
“Are you thirsty, Leo? Do you need to use the bathroom?” the second voice said. “Because we don't give a shit. We're not your parents and we're not your teachers. We can keep you here as long as we want. Some of our prisoners have been here for years. They thought they were pretty tough, too, when they arrived. Now they're begging to get out of here.”
“What's the matter? You too stupid to talk?” another voice asked.
“Do you know The Professor?”
They questioned him for what felt like an eternity. When they weren't questioning him, they alternated insulting and threatening him with flat-out shouting in his face. Anything to get a response, from insulting his mother and threatening him with adult prison, including a detailed description of everything that would happen to him there. They even threatened to hurt his sister. He remained silent and impassive through all of it. This was how the game was played. They were trying to get into his head and find his weaknesses.
Hours into the interrogation, unable to hold it in, he wet himself. They were telling the truth. They didn't give a shit.
He was sure (mostly) that even these guys wouldn't do anything too horrible to a twelve-year-old boy. If word got out they hurt, or killed, a kid over something lame like insider trading, it would make them look bad—he hoped.
He did worry about drugs. He wasn't sure he could hold out if they injected him with truth serum or something, but for some reason, that had yet to come up.
“You thirsty, Leo? You look thirsty,” someone said as they took him out of his current restraints and dragged him into another room. They laid him on his back on a cold metal table and handcuffed him to it. The table was slanted so his feet were above his head.
Someone grabbed hold of his head and raised the sack to expose his mouth and nose while continuing to cover his eyes. They placed a towel over his mouth and nose and poured water onto it, until water ran up his nose and he couldn't breathe.
The fear of drowning has to be one of man's oldest and most primal fears and it was all Leo could do not to give in to irrational panic. He bruised his wrists, fighting his restraints, but accomplished nothing.
After an eternity, they stopped.
“I'd like to complain to your supervisor,” Leo said after he'd finished coughing up water.
“Oh. So you do speak. I am the supervisor,” came an unknown voice.
“You guys run a Mickey-Mouse operation here. You're supposed to be cutting off my fingers. Instead, you're watering me like a bunch of losers.”
“I see what you mean about this guy,” the unknown voice said. “I'm sorry your accommodations aren't to your liking, Leo. Please be patient with us. We're doing the best we can. To show you there are no hard feelings, I'm going to pour even more water over your head until one of two things happens: you make your implant turn violet. Or you die.”
“Fuck you. I don't have an implant,” Leo lied. Wondering for the thousandth time if he was doing the right thing. The sad truth was there were no good options at this point. What he was doing now was simply the least terrible of them.
The towel went back on his face and they started pouring—and pouring.
The last thing he remembered before losing consciousness was a hallucination. Two giant High-Level Bosses, sitting next to each other near some blasted ruins. One grabbed a kid with its tentacles and pulled the kid into its mouth. “We don't have to worry about a thing,” it said, speaking clearly with a second mouth while chewing the screaming kid with the first. “Humanity's last best hope is a loser.”
Leo awoke with something in his nose. It was a nasal tube. They were giving him oxygen.
“Stick him in solitary,” someone said. “See if that loosens him up.”
They took him to a holding cell. The cell was even colder than where he'd been interrogated. Bright lights shined down on him. Bright enough that he could see light through his hood, though he still couldn't see anything else. Loud music played in the background.
His hands were released from his cuffs and after an instant of welcome relief, his wrists were re-cuffed to the wall above his head, so high he had to stand on tiptoe. They left him there, shivering.
Detective Lopez's voice came over the intercom. “Sorry, the music's so loud, Leo. Let me turn it down for you.” She turned the volume up.
Leo felt the chill air from an air conditioner coming on.