“Yes.” Onslaught is only patient enough to let him finish his offer. Then she speaks immediately and without the tiniest bit of doubt. In fact, he could see her barely keeping those words in for most of his explanations.
He doesn’t like her answer. He hoped she would say no. Judging from the worried look Mia is giving him over her head (she was, once again, allowed to push her wheelchair around), he wasn’t the only person with those thoughts.
“Oni, I’m not sure if…” He decided to make his position clear, but she doesn’t let him.
“I want to be there, Revy.” Onslaught announces. “I know that you’ve all done bad things. I accepted that fact, and I know that you all want to put that behind you. But it’s one thing to know what you’ve done and another to understand it.”
Revenant has to admit one thing. Sometimes, just sometimes, even he could do something incredibly stupid. Or, fall to a classic blunder of being completely delusional. Thinking that there was an option that she would say no was a case of both.
C’mon. You knew her better than that.
“Alright then.” He decides to surrender. Conditionally. “But you stay in the observation room. Got it?”
“Yep.” Oni nods. “I know better than to interrupt you at work, I thought you figured it out by now.”
He knows that, yes. He trusts her. She spent most of her teenage years living within a building that was secretly acting as the headquarters of one of the biggest contemporary villain organizations. She knows the drill.
This doesn’t make him any calmer, though.
***
“Everything ready?” Revenant asks his praetorian tasked with guarding their captive’s cell.
Harvey Murray might have as well been the crown jewel of his collection - although one that he inherited from Destro. After all, how many American insurgency groups can boast having a former member of the Secret Service in their ranks?
And one that used to protect the president of the United States.
Revenant was never the sort to boast or feel the need to flatter his ego (he did gloat a few times but only in front of his enemies whom he was absolutely certain were going to die, and even that was in moderate doses), but having Murray be his bodyguard did provide something akin to a faint feeling of accomplishment.
Even while he was still obsessively looking for death.
Now that he thinks about it, he does owe a bit to those people. He hired them to protect a person that was actively looking for death. It had to be tough. Though he also thinks that getting them to live again works as a repayment.
“Yes.” Murray replies. “All according to the usual protocol for your enhanced interrogations.”
He reminded Revenant of General Ripper, but mostly due to their shared shtick of being tall and muscular African Americans with extensive conventional combat skills. They couldn’t be more different in behavior though - where Old Man Rippy was loud, confrontational and with a tendency for Large Hams, Murray was usually quiet, serious and down-to-earth.
Right now, the biggest source of regret for Murray was that while undoubtedly cool, modern equipment wasn’t exactly compatible with wearing the black glasses (with some extensive electronics inside) that he got so used to while being a part of the Secret Service.
He responded to that by making a suit with said glasses to be his ‘civilian’ outfit. Revenant had a warm place in his heart for anyone who considered black suits to be the height of male fashion.
For now, he was wearing a combination of proper combat equipment (contemporary bulletproof vest, the standard soldier equipment) and those damn black glasses in place of a helmet.
Weirdo.
He fit right in.
“His implants?” Revenant asks.
“Clockmaker inspected them and shut them down.” Murray replies. “Then Overhaul severed their connection to his neural system entirely. He spent a while screaming some variants of ‘what have you done to me’ and demanding his implants to be reactivated. But he might be pretending.”
It was an option, yes. Revenant had a very low estimation of their captive’s intelligence, but mostly due to their fanatical faith in their organization. They still managed to reach a low-level command position in it, and that implied that assuming that they were complete morons was a perfect way of getting killed.
You can be a moron in one field and a genius (or at least average) in another.
“You could have as well asked me for that report, you know?” Overhaul asks from his side. To Revenant’s deep surprise, they are still looking the same way as they did right after being resurrected.
“Yes, because you’re famous for your trustworthiness in narrating your past.” Revenant replies dryly. Overhaul lets out a pained sigh. “Murray, any recommendations?”
“Don’t let him know you’re our leader.” Murray replies. “If he has some sort of self-destruction mechanism that we’ve somehow missed, he might use it if it means decapitating our command structure. But he likely wouldn’t try that on a random interrogator.”
Ah. Fair point. It has been years since Revenant hid who he really was. Before the Second Villain War, in fact. While he was hiding in the shadows, slowly constructing the Villain Alliance.
He blames the passage of time for not having that idea himself.
“I’ll do so.” Revenant replies. “Kitsune, you’ll be waiting outside while Overhaul is inside. I want one of you outside of the potential blast zone just in case.”
“Sure thing!” Kitsune salutes him with a wide grin on her face.
If something happens and they die, she’ll transform into Overhaul in order to resurrect them. She understands that particular villain well enough to use their individuality, although how, he has absolutely no idea.
“Murray, take Onslaught to the observation room, and describe to her what’s happening..” Revenant then says, prompting Murray to give him a surprised look. “Don’t question it, it’s… a special situation.”
“Sure, whatever you say, boss.” Murray doesn’t waste any more time. “Good luck inside.”
***
Ball Python wasn’t originally equipped with its own - however small - prison section with a dedicated interrogation room. However, the pirates that at some point seized it and reconstructed it to fit their needs added it.
It was a truism to say that ‘enhanced interrogation’ didn’t work.
You could encounter similar lines in many, many works of fiction that involved spies or similar themes. They’d tell you how tortures never worked, because the interrogated would say whatever came to his mind just to make the pain stop. That it only produced untrustworthy information.
It was, Revenant knows it well from experience, a pretty lie. Something that was used to make your fiction feel more ‘believable’, while also justifying the exclusion of overly ‘mature’ elements that could ruin your PEGI rating.
Enhanced interrogation produced results if you knew how to apply it. There had to be a carrot next to the stick, preferably something better than just lack of pain. You had to make sure that the victim didn’t know what you wanted to hear, just to make sure that they couldn’t tell you that to stop the pain from continuing on.
You had to never trust information coming from torture without any sort of independent confirmation. To organize an operation based entirely on it was madness. To confirm the intel you already had, by torturing a captive was…
Well, it would make him sound unnecessarily cruel if he said ‘a good start’. It was something even his past self found distasteful. Necessary, sometimes, but applied in moderation. His new self… wasn’t much different, but the distaste was clearly more pronounced.
He even felt somewhat bad about Songbird torturing Thunderbolt (technically on his orders) until he lost his mind completely, despite the Top Hero of Michigan genuinely deserving most of what happened to him.
Here, the situation was a bit more complicated. Mostly because there was no information to confirm. Revenant instead was looking to obtain information that he could later confirm.
He entered the interrogation room first. The ‘Enlightened’ was sitting in the chair on the other side of a simple metal table, cuffed to the chair.
Murray was a professionalist. He quickly adapted to new technologies. The cuffs were solid, locked the man’s hands behind his back and included a simple electric installation that would electrocute the man if too much force was applied to the cuff, to the point of deforming it to any degree.
His legs were cuffed to the chair as well, of course. And the chair was welded to the ground.
A squad of Villain Alliance’s mooks, with full combat equipment, were in the next room. Damaging the cuffs would trigger the alert and call them in. Just in case, Black Knight was with them.
You don’t interrogate an effective superhuman (regardless of whether it’s due to cybernetic enhancements or possession of individuality) without appropriate security measures. There is also the part where Revenant feels somewhat exposed in such scenarios due to his individuality making him only about as dangerous in regular combat as the best of his elite mooks.
Revenant came in and sat down on the chair on the opposite side of the table, with Hypothermia standing by the left side of the door behind me, while Overhaul stood by their right side.
In the Enlightened’s defense, he knew that he was finally being interrogated. He decided (again, wisely) not to throw a tantrum, and instead was carefully observing the new arrivals in silence, most likely attempting to learn as much as he could from their looks and way of acting.
Or, at least, that’s what Revenant would do if he was in his place.
“Are the accommodations to your liking?” Revenant asks calmly. The look he gets in response is… hard to read. But he suspects that the man is surprised by how young his interrogator is.
Best case scenario, he also didn’t appear threatening to the man due to that. Looking non-threatening and then being very threatening really reinforced the latter feeling. Somehow.
Human psychology was a funny thing.
“You could say so.” Enlightened replies calmly. “The bed’s pretty comfy, but the food could be better.”
“I know the pain.” Revenant replies while leaning back in his seat. He wordlessly thanks whatever pirate thought that the interrogator’s seat should be comfortable. He probably killed that person, but… “The ship’s cook should have been executed. Your name and rank?”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“Aren’t you a bit too young to be an interrogator?” The man asks. Revenant rolls his eyes around.
“Everyone’s telling me that. At the beginning.” He says, prompting the Corporation’s member to stare at him without a word. “Name and rank?”
“Enlightened Udo Weber.” The man replies. He sounds… proud of it, really. “Truthseekers Corporation.” He decides to add his allegiance. With quite a lot of pride in his voice.
Was it a false name? Probably not. Corporation forces must have already realized that they were in a place populated by people dropped around at random from all parts of the Galaxy. There was no point of withholding such information unless you were particularly infamous. Who would recognize you, anyway?
And with the knight being the one to capture him - before handing him over to the people in front of him - they knew of his rank. There was no need to hide that and pretend to be someone he wasn’t.
“Revenant.” Revenant replies. Weber gives him a vaguely interesting stare. “My callsign. You can consider us to be… independent subcontractors, ready to ally ourselves with almost anyone with the right incentive.”
“You could have at least given me your real name, if only because I did the same.” Weber decides to be haughty. Irritatingly so. Still, Revenant let it slide.
“I could, but I didn’t.” He replies instead. “This is going to be the initial interrogation. Tortures, you see, are a dirty thing that I’d rather avoid. Thus I prefer to have a tender talk with people describing what they’re going to go through before all of that. Most of them see reason and tell me everything I want after that alone.”
That was the part that he borrowed from the Imperial Inquisition. He no longer remembers what book he read it in, though he’s certain that asking Decay would give him the answer.
“You really expect me to tell you anything?” Weber says, squinting at him. “I was…”
“...trained to withstand interrogation.” Revenant cuts in, while leaning to the side of his chair, his head resting on his right hand, the elbow on the armrest. “Of course you were. No organization like the Corporation would let you command their forces in the field without such training. Of course…” He lets himself smile a little. “...I’m an expert in getting information out of people like you.”
Weber says nothing, instead, he gives him a cold and, frankly, unimpressed look. This is fine. It wasn’t the first time. They all broke in the end.
“You were trained how to deal with the usual methods of interrogation.” Revenant informs Weber. “How to withstand the psychological tricks. How to not fall for ‘fellow prisoners’ planted in your cell. You almost certainly went through tests measuring your resistance to pain, prolonged discomfort, sleep deprivation, dehydration and starvation, and scaled highly enough to be given your current position.”
It wasn’t needed in a regular military, at least not outside of elite units. But the Corporation was a clandestine organization of the highest level. The CIA was one of the world’s best intelligence agencies, but they had nothing on the Corporation.
It survived, despite everyone out there wanting to kill it. Any piece of spilled information could threaten the existence of numerous assets. They took no shortcuts.
“We’ve even found signs of subtle modifications to your nervous system that numb your ability to feel pain.” Revenant continues. Overhaul caught up to modern healthcare with extreme speed, he had to give that to them. “On top of your already high pain-resistance you were also made to feel less of it. I commend your organization’s thoroughness.”
Weber’s eyes narrow. Someone’s starting to feel worried? About how confident Revenant appeared? Maybe. It would be nice, but… probably too nice.
“It would work against all the ordinary interrogators.” Revenant continues. “Regretfully, I’m not an ordinary interrogator.”
“Even if you’re an empath, it won’t give you a lot.” Weber replies. “Only vague reads on my emotional states, and even that would barely work with my mental discipline and fortitude. Nothing else would work. Corporation’s training is foolproof.”
Empath. Right. He read something about that after the last battle, when something similar to telekinesis brought Black Knight’s untimely demise. The discovery that locals had psychic powers (however rudimentary, rare and utterly inferior to individualities) was… interesting.
One more wacky side-effect of Hyperspace.
He suspected that HUMILITY knew more than what the official records said about it, so he delayed learning details until the AI’s return.
“Well, I have something better than that.” Revenant replies with a faint smile on his face. “You see, our unit is a bit special. Each and every one of us has a special… power. Though I assume that you’ve already known that from our brief encounter with your forces.”
The man says nothing. He doesn’t want to tell him anything, even something as obvious as this. Good move, although pointless in the end.
Revenant gestures at Hypothermia who approaches Weber and stands right behind him. Enlightened follows her with his eyes until she reaches her destination, before looking back at Revenant. Expecting more words out of him, perhaps?
Hypothermia touches his shoulder. In a second, the entire part of it - wide as her hand and as deep as it was thick - crystallized into red ice, tainted with the man’s blood, creating a bleeding, malformed injury.
In Weber’s defense, he gasped loudly, but mostly out of complete surprise at the pain rather than the pain itself. His eyes immediately locked onto the injury, man clenching his teeth not to say anything.
He was a tough cookie, huh.
“Hypothermia’s ability is to turn water into ice.” Revenant informs Weber. “This includes the one within a human’s body. It hurts, doesn’t it? The instant change in temperature alone must be really setting your nervous system aflame. Not to mention the injury itself.” Weber says nothing. Revenant gestures at Hypothermia again.
In a heartbeat, she tears the entire frozen chunk of his shoulder out of his body. The injury gets worse. Weber flinches and clenches his teeth again, before taking a deep breath through his nose and giving Revenant a defiant, yet almost bored look.
“Overhaul.” Revenant says shortly. Overhaul approaches the Weber.
“Man, it feels like my time working in Langley.” Overhaul comments while taking their place right next to Hypothermia. “Really brings back memories.”
“You never worked for the CIA.” Revenant replies dryly as Overhaul puts their small hand on Weber’s healthy shoulder.
“Of course I didn’t.” Overhaul shrugs. “Who claimed otherwise?” Revenant doesn’t bother commenting on that.
The fun fact about Overhaul’s individuality that made modifications of others easy was that they could always reset the changes. That’s how their quick combat healing worked. Just touch the target and reset it to their state as it was a few minutes ago.
Weber’s entire body… blinks, for the lack of a better word. The next millisecond, he is back in full health. The fragment of his body that Hypothermia tore out vanished into thin air as well, the entirety of mass that used to form Weber’s body returned to its position and state in the instant.
“What?” Weber blinks in surprise at his own sudden healing. That’s when Hypothermia touches his shoulder again and… freezes his blood again.
This time Weber yells in sudden, overwhelming pain, throwing himself against his bindings in the instinctual attempt to escape from the pain just as the pained flinch erupts on his face. A second later, his eyes shooting back at Revenant who gives him a wry smile.
“Overhaul’s power is that he can modify organic matter according to his will.” Revenant informs Weber. “This includes restoring all injuries. And slightly modifying your pain receptors. Back to their original sensitivity.” The smile grows a bit wider. “Or more.”
Hypothermia returns to her earlier position. Overhaul touches him again and fixes the injury before nodding to Revenant and leaving the room completely. Kitsune will show up in a moment.
“I’m not the best member of our organization when it comes to causing pain.” Revenant speaks calmly to Weber. Now he has the man’s complete attention. “That would be Songbird. She can generate and control vibrations.”
Weber says nothing. But his eyes narrow again. Is he considering the implications of that? Revenant will help him with that.
“Her special technique for interrogation is called the Musical Hell.” Revenant continues. “She touches you and generates perfectly aligned vibrations right into your body. Causing discomfort and… more. Have you ever felt one of those sounds that makes you cringe automatically? Like nails on the blackboard?” He isn’t sure if Weber recognized the word. Blackboards are likely extinct. Even in his time they were practically absent from the world. “If not, then just imagine the worst cacophony you’ve ever heard. And imagine hearing it constantly. Over and over again. You can’t cover your ears. Even if you did, you’ll still hear it. And she’ll be reading your heartbeat to ensure the maximum discomfort and pain. Each time you’ll get somewhat adapted to it, each time you’ll start calming down even the tiniest little bit, she’ll flip her cacophony on its head, just to make it hurt again.”
Weber says nothing. But this time, something on his face flinches. Is that fear? Perhaps. It’s likely.
“The synergy effect with Overhaul’s nervous system alterations is an incredible thing to witness.” Revenant continues. “And they can even heal your hearing if it starts getting damaged. Or… subtly alter your auditory nerves to make the sounds much, much worse than you could possibly imagine.” Revenant pauses for a second to give the man another faint smile. “Starting to reconsider your position?”
“Only the degree of challenge that awaits me.” Weber replies. “A challenge that I intend to overcome.”
“Did I mention that the longest she has managed to continue her Musical Hell without any interruptions was seventy-four hours?” Revenant replies. “She then fell asleep for fourteen hours, before restarting the Musical Hell… and lasting for another seventy-two hours.”
This time, Weber says nothing. But he’s clearly shaken. The vision of going through something like that… it couldn’t be pleasant. Revenant lets him stew in it for a few seconds before snapping his finger.
Kitsune enters the room, grinning in her usual way. Weber’s eyes immediately jump to her, probably wondering what’s going to happen. And if it’s not Songbird. Before he gets to say anything, Kitsune morphs. Her body and even clothes contort, rapidly changing shape and colour. This is enough to make Weber’s eyes shot wide in shock.
And that’s before she changes into a perfect copy of Revenant, down to the faint smile and the black suit.
“That’s Kitsune.” Revenant and Kitsune speak in unison. “Her ability allows her to impersonate people. For as long as she can properly immerse herself into them, she can do that perfectly.” Both of them smile widely. “Down to their memory, you see.”
Weber stares at him(them) in shock. The reveal that she needed to ‘immerse’ herself in people was mostly to not invalidate the rest of the meeting. After all, her being able to do it at will would make everything else pointless and would put its honesty under doubt.
“In other words…” They speak in unison once more. “It doesn’t matter how much pain you withstand. Eventually, I’ll break you. Eventually, you’ll tell me everything I want to know. And then, I’ll have Kitsune impersonate you and show herself to the Corporation, just to make them think that you willingly betrayed their cause.” They tilt heads in sync, giving Weber vaguely amused looks. “The question isn’t whether you’ll tell me what I want. But how much of your body and mind will be left intact at that point. And how much goodwill I’ll have left.”
Weber says nothing. He has good control over his body. But… something in his eyes crunches. Shrinks. Perhaps courage.
“If you tell me everything, you’ll be tried. Fairly. Under RPC authority.” Revenant (and Kitsune) continue. “You didn't do too much. No war crimes, since we’ve managed to stop you from committing one. You only killed legal combatants. So, you might survive that. If you get particularly useful, I might even look the other way when you disappear into deep space after we leave this planet.” They grin. “After all, it’s not like you’ll ever be able to return to the Corporation, am I right?”
Weber’s subtle shrinking continues. His mind must be racing through options. It could be staged, of course. They might have been actors. They might have been particularly human robots, operating according to well-written programs. But… he couldn’t explain Overhaul healing him. He couldn’t exclude the possibility that things were exactly as Revenant claimed them to be.
And that meant that his fight, his skills, his training, his bodily alterations… were pointless. And so was his life in service to the Corporation.
That’s how you break people… with pain and torture merely one of the options in your repertoire. Used sparingly but with purpose and experience. Archvile taught him well. Revenant will forever regret not getting to show that to the dark lord himself.
“If you keep resisting, well.” Revenant shrugs, Kitsune doing the exact same thing at the same time. “We’ll still get all the intel. We’ll still ruin your image at the Corporation. And then, I’ll leave you at Songbird’s mercy. She’ll torture you into complete insanity, until pain and despair will be all that you can feel. And then, I’ll do something worse than kill you. I’ll let you live. In fact, I’ll make sure that you’ll live a long life. Although I wouldn’t call it happy. In fact, I don’t think I can even call that ‘life’.”
Weber, once again, says nothing. But there is horror in his eyes now. He is still in control enough to try to hide it, but the realization of just how fucked he was was steadily eating at his control.
Time for the final shot of this fight. Literally.
“And if you think that death can give you a way out…” Revenant stands up, pulling a pistol out of the holster, just as Kitsune does it as well. “... I’m going to give you something to think about. After Overhaul puts your body back together.”
They both shoot, pulling the trigger in perfect synchronization, the bullets tearing through Weber’s upper body, blood splatters blooming on the wall behind him. They both aimed to avoid damaging the chair behind him, and Revenant made sure to arrive with his pistol filled with bullets that wouldn’t ricochet.
Two bullets into the upper shoulder, one directly between Weber’s eyes. His brain matter joins the splatters behind him. Overhaul will still patch him up perfectly, leaving him to consider - once the mental stupor passes - the implications of how even death couldn’t save him anymore.
Now it was time to face Onslaught. And hope that she wasn’t too angry… and that Weber would see reason. Because he really didn’t want to torture him or leave him to Songbird. He would absolutely do both, he just didn’t want to make Onslaught unhappy about it.
He was really getting soft nowadays, wasn’t he?
***
You know the deal and so do I :P
Obraz [https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1142152652864626789/1157244671450415104/00009-1991492393.png?ex=6517e796&is=65169616&hm=6e505f03a43b14ec6f91cf56722880f852182a012b3547be470d6bf29e1abb1d&=&width=651&height=651]