Lea started with the obvious questions. The “Who are you” and “Who are you working for”. Those questions were met with silence until her face went stony and she simply said, “Jazzosaur.”
He sent a spike straight through the guy's knee and out the other end. His spikes were pretty big, about the width of three fingers, so anything he pierced with it was going to hurt like a bitch.
Normally I’d say we’d have to be careful with the kind of damage we dealt, if we removed limbs I would only be able to keep them from bleeding out, but I wouldn’t be able to regrow the limb. But given that Jazz was the one actually torturing them? They were essentially just getting impaled, and for whatever reason, my healing decided that repairing two-inch holes in someone’s chest was something I was capable of, but not regrowing limbs.
So that’s how the rotations ended up working out. Jazz would shoot them with a couple of spikes causing agonizing pain, and then I’d bring them back to full health so we could do it again. I didn’t like being the one that tortured people, but I guess that was one thing I should be happy about meeting Lurks for. She had pretty much desensitized me to this kind of shit. I wasn’t necessarily planning on thanking her, even in the somewhat tattered sanctity of my mind. But at this moment? I certainly wasn’t complaining. I considered what Jazz was doing to him to be fairly tame.
I could wreak absolute havoc on his nerves and sensory system if I had wanted to, but looking over at Jazz’s face I realized I would deprive him of something he apparently enjoyed.
Being a sadistic piece of shit.
I felt like it should’ve been fairly obvious that he would have something like this as a hobby given how he had acted in all our prior interactions.
After nearly an hour of spike, heal, spike, heal Lea called for us to stop, “Alright, this isn’t working.”
I nodded, looking down at the would-be assassin.
“I agree, he’s well-trained or a fanatic to whatever organization he’s with.”
“Well, it’s not like I can exactly torture him harder. He’s too weak for me to hit him with much more than I already have,” Jazz said matter-of-factly.
Lea let out an aggravated humming noise. That was honestly a little surprising, Lea hardly ever let her frustrations show other than through brief looks of disappointment at the person or thing causing it.
I looked down at our prisoners again, the other man hadn’t woken up yet. If I didn’t know better I’d say he was dead, but I’d personally healed him myself and from this close, I could clearly see his brain activity. He was alive, not dead or even brain-dead. Just happened to be in a deep sleep after being unconscious.
I started running my minds in an effort to find a potential solution. They argued and bickered with themselves, positing their ideas and different merits only to have them get shot down for one reason or another.
Ideas such as trying to mind-read him. That one was denied on the basis I didn’t know how to mind-read. Another trying to read the electrical memory data in his brain, that one seemed more like a skill I’d acquire or some technique I’d devise after many years of practice, not great for right now.
Rewriting his brain to make him like us, once again I didn’t know how to do that.
That’s basically what all of my ideas boiled down to. Except for one.
I didn’t really want to go through with this one, but it was the only idea that a majority of the minds collectively agreed on was actually usable, from the standpoint that I could do it, I just wouldn’t like it.
I sighed, “I could… step in instead.”
Lea gave me a look that I couldn’t quite decipher, “Alex, you don’t have to do anything you’re not necessarily comfortable with.”
“Even when people's livelihoods depend on it? If this is our only option, what choice do I have?” I retorted.
She just pursed her lips and held my gaze for a moment before, almost imperceptibly, nodding.
I appreciated the concern from her, but between my own apprehension to be the one to do the things to someone else that Lurks had done to me and the fact that getting knowledge on these people would save lives?
There was zero question in my mind about what needed to be done here. I could live with being a monster if it meant saving the lives of the innocent. And if that wasn’t a slightly disconcerting thought.
I knelt down next to the prisoner. Obviously, he had heard every word of what we said. We hadn’t exactly been trying to hide it from him. We would have if we’d been talking about anything confidential, but telling him we planned to cause him more pain? That wasn’t exactly a secret.
I laid my hand over him, making contact with the thing I was going to try and manipulate helped with clarity and control. So I placed my hand on him to get a clearer picture of his nervous system and brain activity.
I wasn’t planning on stabbing him or shooting him with lightning. While those were painful, they weren’t any more painful than what Jazz had been doing. No, I had access to something that Jazz didn’t have.
It wasn’t the brain either, you couldn’t actually hurt a brain. It didn’t have any pain receptors in it, it instead cataloged the pain the rest of the body felt. Headaches were apparently something like the brain swelling and pressing against your skull. I wasn’t too sure, but I was fairly certain it was something like that.
No, what I could do was simultaneously activate every single pain receptor in the human body. Not all pain receptors were for the same purpose, so it was generally pretty hard if not downright impossible, in some cases, to activate more than one.
People like me or Lurks though? It was child’s play. She was able to simulate in my mind the feeling of all of them activating at once and had done so more than once. As such I had a pretty good idea of what it felt like.
It was excruciatingly painful. And that kind of description was an understatement. Suffice it to say, this pain would change the course of his life, much like it had mine. Only for him, it was actually going to be real, unlike the fake pain Lurks had put me through.
I spread my control over his entire body and activated all of the receptors, using my wood control to hold his body down as he tried to thrash. The pain was so overwhelming he couldn’t even scream.
I didn’t run it for longer than a few seconds, Lurks could always fix my mind if it broke too far. I couldn’t necessarily do that here.
I smiled, almost subconsciously. He should be grateful.
At least I couldn’t force him to crave the pain like a drug the way Lurks could.
***
It didn’t take much longer for him to crack. And he spilled everything he knew.
Which unfortunately wasn’t much. He had been a peon for a group called the “The Sons.”
The Sons of what? It was definitely a pretentious name in my mind, although a nondescript name was generally better from an organizational standpoint than an overly complicated one.
The last thing you wanted to do was name yourself exactly what you planned on doing.
They apparently had a watch system set up and had seen some NSA members heading to their operating areas.
Yes, that was plural. They were an international group, they had their fingers in Seltas, Alixia, Bratvers, Melistinia, Caldan, and more further north and east. I hadn’t ever heard of them, but both Lea and Jazz scowled at the name.
He went on to say that the other guy we captured wasn’t even a designated leader, they were just throwaways sent to either die against the trespassers or to kill them and return.
Something he also spilled was the location of their current base of operations, there was an encampment located about twenty miles south of the village. They hit this village and everything roughly within a 100-mile radius. This is somewhat absurd until you realize that most tier-3 system-enhanced humans are as fast, or faster than cars going highway speeds.
We got everything we needed, from numbers to the average level, and how often they resupplied, among a few other things that Lea wanted to know. We also managed to find out that the archer had been a guy they’d had watching the operation, but once he determined that the group was a lost cause he was to return to base and report on the situation.
So basically any chances of secrecy were gone, not that they hadn’t been gone before, since we’d been ambushed. Given how quickly they reacted, how long had they known that we were here, or rather on our way? Something else to think about.
What I ended up finding particularly strange was that they didn’t hit Lustirne in any capacity. What would they get out of hitting a couple dozen small villages? If they were looking to cause mayhem, wouldn’t it be better to invade a larger town or maybe a city and cause mayhem there before breaking away and resettling on the other side of the country to do it again?
I didn’t understand it. Maybe we’d get a clearer idea of the picture once we captured their boss.
The other prisoner woke up during our interrogation and was giving his friend shit about spilling the beans until I zapped him. He, to our dismay, promptly shat himself, stinking up the area. So we stuck him outside, while we figured out what to do with them.
“I say we just kill them,” Jazz said, “There’s no reason we should hold on to them, that’s just more trouble than it’s worth. Besides, they’ll be executed anyway once they charge them for crimes.”
“I agree, we have little to gain from holding on to them. We should just kill them both.”
Jazz gave me a slight look of surprise as I agreed with him. Honestly, I even surprised myself just a little bit. I normally wouldn’t advocate for just killing someone and would prefer to let the justice system handle them. But I didn’t quite know how that system worked here, and well… it’s kind of hard to want to let people that tried to kill you live.
Lea nodded, “I agree, but I figured I’d at least give you two a chance to chime in if you had ideas. I personally can’t think of any further ideas for them, but one of you might’ve had something.”
I shrugged, “I could use them for experimentation? Figure out how to better use my abilities. I’m not sure how often I’m going to get chances like this after all.”
Lea’s lips pursed slightly. It wasn’t necessarily that she was set against an idea, it seemed more the facial features she made when she thought hard about something. Weighing pros and cons against morality.
I guess there was some aversion to human experimentation no matter where you are from.
“I guess you could do that. I can’t say that I necessarily approve, but if you eventually get to the point where you could control someone then it might be worth it.”
I nodded, “It’s not like I’m going to enjoy this, but furthering my abilities is only more useful to the group in the long run. Although I can’t say that this is going to pan out in any meaningful way, there’s nothing I can do except try to figure it out.”
She nodded back, “Alright, Jazz and I are going to get some rest. On the outside of this structure since we know it’s going to be safe. Keep them inside… I’d rather not have to hear whatever it is you plan on doing to them.”
I shrugged, that was easy enough. I’d be able to also keep an eye out on the surroundings while in here anyway and the wooden surrounding of the building wouldn’t hinder me in any meaningful way as well.
“Understood, I’ll wake Jazz when I’m finished or I’ll wake the two of you if it gets late enough into morning.”
They both exited the dome and I dragged in the stinky one before closing the wall up to block any sound.
“Alright, you two get to be my guinea pigs in figuring out how the human brain works and how best to manipulate it. You should be grateful for the advancements you will make in science! Or rather the advancements I’m going to make using your bodies. But that’s just a minor discrepancy, one you won’t need to worry about.”
For some reason, they weren’t particularly elated to hear about that.
***
I did end up working until way late into the morning. The first prisoner had ended up dying when I accidentally sent a little too much voltage through his brain. By accidentally I meant I deliberately figured out how much it would take to kill someone and by too much I mean his brain popped like a grape.
It was kind of gross, but now I had an accurate idea of how much force I could levy against a brain, at least of a tier-three combatant. I wasn’t entirely sure if brain durability differed between tiers, but I’d be happy to find out using the members of The Sons that we would hopefully catch in the future.
The second prisoner lasted the entirety of my experimentation. What was even better is that he was still somewhat coherent. So I hadn’t killed him and only given him a minor form of very serious brain damage.
I was slowly figuring out how the brain worked, although a lot of specific areas that handled specific tasks were exceptionally small. For example, motor control was part of the… was that the frontal lobe? What counted as being part of the front? This was technically on top of the head. Regardless, the motor control was a small section of activity on the top of the head. It was a little strange messing around with it and control was finicky, but I could make him move.
Just not always in the ways that I wanted. But this was a thing I was going to have to practice for a very long time.
‘Ping’ [Electric Manipulation] Has leveled 15 > 22
That was my seventh level so far. The system was very happy with me for trying something like this apparently. Maybe it was the fact that he was still alive and was thus considered an enemy? I know that I didn’t get a lot of experience in manipulating the nerves and muscles of a dead body.
The skill itself was also higher level than I remembered it being, possibly from the skirmish we had? I needed to look at the rewards when I got the chance. Or rather, when I wasn’t distracted.
I was also learning which parts of the brain responded to different stimuli and such. All in all, it was an extremely in-depth study that gave me lots of information on the brain and how to manipulate it.
The real question boiled down to this; what was I going to do with all of this information?
What did I want to gain from all of this? How did I plan on using it? It would be nice to be able to read surface-level thoughts just from seeing the electrical data flowing around. Was that something I could possibly do?
Even with a little over 20 minds working on the task I hadn’t discovered if it was fully possible. I hadn’t, at the very least, been able to discover a pattern to decipher. That didn’t mean that there wasn’t one, just that I wasn’t able to figure it out.
I’m sure doctors and scientists on Earth would kill for my abilities on being able to get this kind of data though, at least in the sophisticated manner I was able to gather it. Although that could really be said about most things that were enhanced by the system. Who knew how much they could accomplish with increased capabilities while retaining our current knowledge as a species?
Maybe finding a way back would be a good thing just from the prospective idea that I could glean so much information from the internet in my current state.
…
Could I connect to the internet with my brain by manipulating electromagnetic waves?
That would be pretty fucking cool.
I fantasized about my capabilities if I had gotten dropped back on Earth while I walked over to where Jazz and Lea were sleeping. Lea’s eyes snapped open as I approached and her head shifted to look at me.
“Decided to stay up all night then?”
I nodded, “I’ve learned a lot. One of them is even still alive, although slightly… inhibited in his brain functions. But I’ve also learned that I know even less than I potentially thought. I knew this already, but the brain is an extremely complicated organ. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to easily figure anything out about it. But I can’t really do anything about that except try.”
Lea stretched as she stood up, “Well, we can figure out what we want to do about this as a group as we go forward. For now, let’s wake Jazz up and plan our next steps. We have an international bandit group to crush.”
