Interrogation

The extra-long sequel to: www.flickr.com/photos/133558185@N07/23290211525/in/dateta...

 

Chris Peterson’s eyes snapped open. He was in some kind of interrogation chamber, immobilized in the grasp of a wicked apparatus. Assumably he was still on board the Blabber superweapon. A dark, cloaked figure stood before him, its emotionless visor reflecting his own face back at him.

“So, you’re finally awake,” it said, in a rather disinterested voice, “I would’ve thought my neural stimulators would’ve woken you up faster, but I guess you don’t have enough brain mass for them to be effective.”

“Nice torture chamber,” said Chris, looking around with a smirk, “I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect such high-grade facilities from an Overlord of your, erm, caliber.” He smiled to himself as he surveyed the forbidding room. Doubtless this darkly arrayed being felt rather put out by his coolness, he thought, after all it’d gone through to look intimidating. Maybe it even felt a little insecure, after all…

“AH!” Chris cried, his train of thought cut short as he turned his head and found himself staring down the four barrels of an oversized laser turret.

“That… That’s big,” he added, trying not to look like he’d almost wet himself.

“I have some questions for you,” said the figure. Chris’ face hardened.

“I’ll never tell you anything, murderer. I’d sooner be smashed to subatomic particles than breathe a word to you,” he said.

“Well, then I suppose there’s no point in keeping you alive,” said the figure, turning away. Light suddenly blazed in the turret’s barrels, promising to literally blow Chris to atoms in a few seconds.

“Wait, wait, wait!” he screamed, “I’ll talk, I’ll be reasonable! I’ll say anything you want! Just turn that thing off!” The upcoming blast faded away back into the depths of turret and the figure turned to face him once more, chuckling.

“Your endurance is truly heroic.” it said, a sarcastic smile in its voice, “Now, onto the questions. First, what is this? A laser plunger?” The figure pulled out Chris’ weapon of choice, igniting its glowing conical end.

“No, no, that’s an Electromagnetic Extractor,” Chris explained, “Though, now that you mention it, it does kinda look like a toilet plunger… Aw, cummon, why’d you have to point that out? I never noticed it before!”

“Moving onto the second question—what is this?” the figure pulled out Chris’ Superdimensional Karate Assistant & Travel Evolver (SKATE) board, throwing it down on the floor. In its folded state, it rather resembled a mangled duck made of titanium, but Chris knew it was much more powerful than it looked. He thought fast. If this overlord found out that his SKATE board was an interdimensional conveyance that could go nearly anywhere in the universe in a matter of minutes, it would doubtlessly use it for its own purposes. And that would be… Bad. Really, really bad.

“Oh, uh, that’s um, uh… That’s kinda personal,” he said, wracking his brains for a conceivable lie.

“If you’d rather not tell me, I can just melt your face off and figure it out myself.” suggested the figure, glancing at the turret.

“No, no, if you really wanna know, I’ll tell you,” protested Chris, “It’s a… Mobile waste disposal system.”

“It’s a what?” asked the figure.

“It’s a portable toilet,” Chris elaborated.

“Ahuh,” said the figure, glancing at SKATE with a mixture of newfound disgust and curiosity. “Moving on—why, and more importantly how, did you just walk into my Blabber and sabotage my Phlebotium Core? Do you have any idea how freakishly hard it was to get the Phlebotium to make that? Do you? Because I feel like, if you did, you would’ve thought twice before blowing the entire thing to smithereens without a thought about the trials of an Overlord.” The figure’s voice, previously apathetic and emotionless, started to betray some annoyance.

“Oh, I know how hard it was for you to get that. In fact, I was the reason it was so hard for you to get your Phlebotium whatchimidoohickey. And, if everything had gone well, you would’ve never even gotten it in the first place,” said Chris, with some pride he couldn’t conceal.

“Is that so?” asked the figure, “What great operative do I have the honour of addressing?” His voice was laden with sarcasm.

“I’m Chris Peterson,” said Chris, “And I’m not an operative. I’m a freelancer.”

“I can tell,” said the figure, eyeing the Electromagnetic Extractor with contempt. “May I ask why a freelancer would sneak into a top-security superweapon-equipped space station that belongs to an obscure overlord without a planet to his name?”

“Uh…” said Chris, trying not to cross the line between bragging and blabbing, “No reason. Or at least, not one I’m going to tell you.”

“Well, alright,” said the figure, “Send me a postcard from the afterlife.” The turret powered on once more, this time so quickly Chris could feel the heat of the forthcoming beam on his face as he shouted in panic.

“Fine, fine! I’ll tell you! Just don’t blow me up!” he cried frantically. The dangerous light in the turret’s barrels slowly backed away, but did not leave entirely this time, lingering like the gleam of insectoid eyes.

“To clarify, it wouldn’t blow you up—it’d melt you. Slowly,” explained the figure, “Now tell me why you blew up my Core.”

“Well…” said Chris, hesitantly, “You kinda used your superweapon to wipe out six billion people or so… And that’s not cool. Thankfully your Blabber thing kinda blew up when you used it, so you backed off for about twenty years. But then you came back, and with your new fancy Core you were gonna be able to hit multiple planets in a row without a hitch and scare everybody into submission. And that really wasn’t cool. So I blew up your Core.”

“Certainly you had to have a better reason than that you thought my conduct ‘wasn’t cool’. Plenty of people think what the Overlords do isn’t ‘cool’, but few have the pluck to strike back against them. Or the tech, for that matter. So why’d you do it?” asked the figure.

“Because it was the right thing to do,” said Chris, proudly.

“Oh please,” snorted the figure, rolling its eyes behind its visor, “Everyone says that. What’s the real reason? Do you have friends down on my target of choice, perhaps?” The darkly-clad being wandered towards the big screen that displayed the planet the Blabber was orbiting. Chris new it well. Very well.

“Ehm…” stuttered Chris. The fact was, it was actually his planet, and he did have a dear friend or two down on it. He didn’t feel like admitting that was a good idea, though. Revenge ran deep in the blood of the Overlords. Or at least in blood of the ones who had blood.

“That would be an interesting revelation,” the figure continued, “I wiped out everybody on this planet with my first strike, except for a couple thousand or so. It’d be rather ironic if, out of that ridiculously small tithe of people, someone managed to grow up and then acquire the tech to sabotage my second design. Ironic and annoying.”

“Heheh, it is kind of ironic,” said Chris, before he could help himself. “I mean, uh, that you were thwarted at the same planet twice; the first time because you didn’t have a powerful enough Core, and the second time by a guy like me. You just can’t catch a break, can you?”

“Seemingly not.” said the figure coldly, “I have one last question: Where’s your girlfriend?”

“My what?” asked Chris.

“That lady you were with in the Core Room. She’s not showing up on any of my scanners. Not even giving a life reading. Normally I’d just assume she’d been smashed, but my security cameras and motion sensors seem to be telling otherwise. I’ve been catching glimpses of her for about an hour now. Where’s she hiding, and how is she doing it?”

“First off, she is NOT my girlfriend,” said Chris, “She’s just… No, not that… And secondly, I have no idea where she is. Even I can’t find her most of the time.”

“What stealth tech is using?” asked the figure.

“I dunno,” said Chris, which was true. He was bad at remembering names, especially technical ones. The lights in the turret’s barrels began to get brighter, and the figure turned round again.

“Don’t try and play games with me, freelancer,” it said, “You and your not-girlfriend are much more likely to live if you surrender. Just tell me how I can detect her and I’ll spare your lives.” Chris could feel the heat of the turret’s blast on his face, getting hotter and hotter.

“I seriously don’t know!” he cried, “Honestly! If I did I’d totally betray her like a weakling, but I really don’t!”

“Then why should I keep you alive?” asked the figure. Chris’ face was beginning to burn, and the light was so bright now he could hardly see. And then, quite suddenly, the turret switched off, the light exploding in its barrels as its containment field failed. A chunk of shrapnel hit the figure over the head, knocking him across the room. One of the floor grates was pushed aside from below, and out of the hole it left leapt the very woman they’d been talking about.

“Charlotte!” cried Chris, in surprise. Without replying, she snatched his Extractor and SKATE off the ground, grabbed him by the shoulder, and switched on the latter. A giant invisible sphere deformed the world around them, the interrogation room fading away as a wormhole sucked them into another dimension.

“This isn’t the end!” cried the figure’s voice, and then the physical world vanished.

Done