Chapter Fifty-Eight - Interrogation

“Gentrification of music and art is a bitch, ya know?

Man, used to be that art meant something. Now some punk kid in some backwater shithole neighbourhood makes some trashcan hip-hip about how shit life is, gets picked up by a label, and a week later he’s ODed off some blow he sniffed from his new corpo wife’s rack, meanwhile, everything he’s made, everything he stood for has been mined and broken apart and sold to the highest bidder.”

--Scoop Doge, from his penthouse suite in Ohio Two, 2051

***

I figured that with about a dozen heavily-armed dudes looking out for him, as well as his nervous secretary, Burringham would be just fine if I left him for a bit. Anyone that could kill that many guards to get to him would probably kill him whether I was there or not.

The healing kit I’d left jabbed into him would take care of his injuries in the mean-time. He’d be just fine.

“So, where did you hide the assassin again?” I asked.

The guard gestured ahead, down one of the corridors that I imagine most guests weren’t supposed to see. It wasn’t nearly as well-decorated and opulent as the rest of the hall. “Security room. We have a medic working to keep him alive.”

“Shit,” I said. “What’s his condition like?”

“Not very good,” the guard said. “Your shots didn’t kill him immediately, that’s all I can say.”

I nodded. I’d have to buy a second kit to keep him alive. Great. That’s exactly what I wanted to do. Spend some of my hard-earned points on a man that had just tried to shoot someone. A politician, mind, so it was only like shooting half a person, but it still counted.

The security room, as it turned out, wasn’t so much a single room as a small area marked off for the guards and the like.

There was a small waiting area, with a few couches and a TV against the far wall, as well as a counter with a microwave and minifridge. The other side of the space had a glass door with an armory behind it, and past that a corridor with doors on either side.

There was only one door currently being guarded.

The guard accompanying me guided me over to that door. It opened into a white-walled room with an interrogation table in the middle cast in harsh industrial light. The gunman was on the table, face locked in a grimace, his clothes tossed off and piled up to the side where someone had obviously cut them all apart.

His mechanical arm was missing at the shoulder, and his other hand was handcuffed to the edge of the table.

A guard was wiping his chest around an already bloody bandage. “How is he?” I asked.

The man screamed and twisted on the table, tugging at the handcuff as he did so. He opened his mouth, and it was clear that someone had torn out some of his teeth.

“He’ll live,” the medic guard said. “The shot didn’t do him any favours, but it missed most vital things.”

“The shot, singular?” I asked.

The medic nodded. “One hit his mechanical arm. Tore a gash into his back on the exit. Nothing too serious. Second hit him high in the chest. Punctured lung, three broken ribs, some internal bleeding. I have him filled with foam to keep the bleeding down. Haven’t sedated him.”

“Why’s he missing his teeth?” I asked with a gesture to his face.

The guard looked up. “Suicide capsules in his teeth. Aug-linked. They didn’t go off.”

“Ah, that’s my fault,” I said.

“They could have been triggered manually if he crushed them enough, so the teeth had to go,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Shit, that sucks,” I said. “So, he’s going to live, huh?”

“He should, assuming we get him to a hospital within the next twelve hours or so. I haven’t administered pain medication yet, I don’t want him hazy for any interrogations.”

“Nasty. We get an ID yet?”

The guard who escorted me into the room was the one to reply. His eyes were glowing, a tell-tale sign he was deep into his augs. “No ID. He entered the gala under the name John Black, but Mister Black’s actual location was confirmed minutes ago, he was unable to attend because of other matters. We’re investigating.”

“Is his face real?” I asked. To pass himself off as someone else...

“The files on Mister Black’s identity were changed. He’s a close-match, appearance-wise.”

“Huh,” I said before I leaned down atop the table, then pressed my hand over the guy’s sternum as he tried to push himself up. “Hey buddy, what’s your name?”

He screamed into my face, which was a little rude. His eyes locked onto my helmet, and he spat a gob of blood at me that splattered against my visor and immediately slipped off and splattered on the table.

“Okay,” I said.

You might want to consider connecting to his augmentations and use those to identify him.

“Not a bad idea,” I said. I noticed the medic looking up at me, but other than checking the bandage, he didn’t interfere. I opened my cyberwarfare software and linked back into the guy’s augmentations.

Just about everyone had physical identification of some sort, but a lot of shops and places accepted aug-based ID. Our mystery friend’s augs had plenty of ID, those at the top were all linked to mister Black, but he had about a dozen more past that.

“That’s a lot of IDs there, buddy,” I said.

“Probably a professional then,” the medic commented.

“Yeah, I bet. You don’t hire a chump to kill someone like Burringham when there’s this much security around,” I said.

“The arm scanned as a normal prosthetic,” the medic added. Was he making excuses for why they’d failed to nab the guy?

“I’ll bet,” I said. “Myalis, you have any clues here?”

Checking the IDs... they’re all false except this one.

One of the IDs grew in my augs. Ralph Slim. Nearly the same face as the guy I was holding down, with some slight changes around the eyes and jaw, and a bit more scruff, as if he hadn’t shaved in a day or two. He was almost handsome.

“Ralph, huh? Yeah, I’d change IDs too if I was called Ralph Slim,” I said.

Ralph glared up at me. “I’m not saying shit,” he said.

“You don’t need to say anything, Ralphy, I have... well, Myalis. She’s a friend, currently living in my grey matter rent-free. She’s real good at digging into stuff. You wouldn’t believe the gossip she can dig up on people in a few seconds.”

If I could, I would be blushing.

“Do you want to spill your version of things while she gets to rooting around? Because what you’re working for here is sympathy.”

“What?” he asked.

“Sympathy. Specifically mine. See, Myalis doesn’t care, she’s going to come up with the cold hard facts, and those never make anyone look good. Doesn’t matter how vanilla your tastes are, they’ll still make some people hurl. Now, your continued existence depends entirely on how I feel about you in the next couple of minutes, and she’s not going to paint a pretty picture.”

“Just, just hand me over to the police!” Ralph said.

“No,” I replied. “I don’t want to.”

He started to twist and fight back, but against the handcuffs holding his arm down, as well as the weight of my suit on his collar, it only made a racket. “You can’t do this,” he said.

“I... I’m literally doing this right now? All I’ve done so far is hold you down. I haven’t even started to ruin your life.”

“I’ve, I’ve got a wife, and kids!,” Ralph said.

He doesn’t.

I jabbed him in the ribs. “No lying Ralph,” I said.

“I... come on, I’ll pay you!”

I shook my head. “I’m richer than you.” Which was a weird thing to say.

“Ten million credits. Fifty million!”

He really wanted me to like him. “What do you want for that many credits? For me not to question you?”

“Please!” he begged.

I shrugged, then stepped back while leaving a hand on his collar. “Hey, you want to question him in my place? I’ll do the torturing, you do the questions. I really don’t know how this stuff goes anyway. Out of my depth here.”

“Certainly,” the guard said. “We have training for this. Try not to do anything debilitating.”

“No problem,” I said.

“Wait! Wait!” Ralph said.

“You know, your answers are worth... about fifty to me.”

“Fifty million?” Ralph asked.

“No, points. That’s fifty points worth of vanguard-grade torture equipment. I don’t know what that’ll look like, but I’m sure it’ll be pretty fucky. I’ve got the impression the aliens have seen and done some fucky shit, you know?”

“Hey, hey, I’ll tell you what you want to know, please.”

“I don’t actually have a torture implement catalogue,” I said. “But I do have one for sex toys, and I’m very sure that they’re close together. You know, putting the M in BDSM.”

“I'll fucking talk!”

***