The Interrogation
I
t was a dark cabin hidden in the woods. The splash of dusk, the shabby-looking cabin was camouflaged with a special technology that gave it an illusion of dry summer leaves. The cabin looked shabby but had a hidden bunker beneath its floor. It was the interrogation room for Emilia. She couldn’t risk to take anyone to her abode, just in case they had a tracking device on them. This secret hide-out was also used by her father, the Sacred Crow for interrogating villains and used a lower path of it as a research facility.
The bunker was large and had an interrogation room and several other rooms. Her father had used this place for a lot of interrogations. Some of the greatest villains in the history of Vellomn-Metropolis confessed to their crime here. Everything in the bunker reminded her of her father as a hero… a hero she rarely knew and that’s she was getting to know every day she spent here. Sacred-crow touched many lives and was still immortalized in the heart of the people, even though the government under the influence had tried to labelled him as a common thief.
Malice was chained to an iron chair and bounded with very strong glass shackles. There was a very huge-torch directly above his head and one against his face to stop him from noticing his surroundings. His bare feet were deepened into a bucket full of a fluid which ensured that he was awake without possibility of getting any sleep. Into his ears were Ear-Pierce, vibrating Sonic sounds that weakened his psychological and mental faculties. This messed with his mind and head, leaving him susceptible.
Emilia had learned that for a cruel vagabond like Malice, physical torture would be fruitless but with mental and psychological torture, even the strongest of men break. She left him like this for 28 hours straight up, to ensure that he was worn out by the first interrogations. Emilia waited a little more, she turned off the Sonic sounds and turned on the sound of dogs barking for about an hour. She turned it off, and turned on the sound of a grown man begging and pleading for his life. At this point, the almighty Leftner, Malice started sobbing like a child. At this point she realized that he was broken and ready to be interrogated. She smiled to herself, even the toughest of men were not tough enough for this kind of torture. She left the room and returned in two hours’ time. When she entered, he was still sobbing profusely and tears were streaming down his eyes. Emilia enjoyed the pain that he passed through, but even that was not enough to satisfy her hunger for revenge. She switched off the sound but left the other on. The sick and week Malice did not know when he heaved, a little relieved.
“Can you hear me?” Emilia asked.
But Malice could hardly hear her, there were still little vibrations in his ear drums. Emilia waited for three hours before he could regain his hearing ability.
“Can you hear me?” Emilia asked again.
“Yes, yes, yes” he answered desperately, some worth grateful to hear properly again.
“Good…you are the Leftner for the year 1941, right?”
“Yes, I am”
“I need the record for April 9th of that year.”
“For the record to be accessed, you would need to connect my spine to a computer. The storage device is hidden in my spine, with USB portal visible in my back.”
“I don’t have the time, tell me.” she barked at him angrily.
“To be a Leftner, one needs to have an identic memory, but we in our self can’t access the system, unless the security system in our spine is breached or the password is inputted, this is to ensure that they remain in control”
Emilia knew that she was going to have to break protocols, she needed to get Ivy down here to her secret interrogations room or take Malice to her house, but that would put her life in danger. She loved Ivy too much to risk such exposure. The whole Jixor cult would be on the watch, the kidnap of a Leftner is regarded as the invitation for war. It was a grievous crime, that Jixor took seriously.
She plugged in back the Sonic sound to keep him subdued and she stepped out and picked her secured line and she called Ivy and told her what was happening and what she needed from her. She went to the front of a pub and picked her up and sped through different uncharted areas and drove around for any hour, just to make sure that she was not followed by anyone and also to make sure that Ivy could not remember the route to the location.
Finally, they arrived and Emilia entered a secret pod hole and parked her pod. She led her to the interrogation room and placed a voice distorter device on her neck.
“Ivy, one more thing, don’t call me by my name and I will also not call you by your name.” Emilia instructed, “my name is wood and yours is stone”
Ivy nodded affirmatively. Emilia went to Malice and injected him with a tranquilizer to knock him out. When it kicked in, she cuffed his leg and hands and lay him onto an iron table, face down and chained him to it and placed torches against his face to blind him partially and to ensure that he notices nothing. She got a plastic bag and poured in the liquid which had been in the bucket. She dipped his legs into it and fastened it with a tape. She ripped off the jacket on his back and the shirt with a sharp dagger she evoked from her hand. She could see the USB portal, Ivy plucked in a wire and connected it to her system. The whole of Malice’s spine glowed read, green and blue and with a ticking sound. Emilia knew that if they failed to enter the system three times, Malice would become an explosive. There was a self-destruct program put in place in case anyone tried to override or hack the system.
Ivy tried the first time to hack into the system but was denied. The ticking sound become louder and faster. She was perspiring seriously and actually she knew that she needed to neutralize the security fire wall or she and her friend would be neutralized by the mutant explosive. Malice was now awake and screaming. Ivy tried to again but was denied, the beeping sound was louder now and faster. Malice’s spine was glowing only red this time and his eyes were blood shot and he was having seizures.
“Ivy, I believe in you, try one more time.” Emilia begged.
“You are going to get us killed!” Ivy complained.
“Just one more time, stay behind the glass, this interrogation room will contain the blast if it comes to that”
“Okay” they both moved safely behind the monitoring screen and Ivy tried one more time and it beeped once and a computerized voice spoke through Malice. Access complete, you might access the long-time memory Leftner 11/11291249/16…Malice was back to himself
“Malice tell me about the execution of April 9th, 2043” Emilia asked him.
“There was only one execution on April 9th. It was secret operation and the order came from the three mutant locket council.”
“What’s the three mutant locket council?” Emilia interrupted.
“Each branch of the Jixor-Cult is ruled by a council of three extremely powerful mutant called the three mutant lockets holders. They call the shots and order the execution of only top opposition of the cult. These three mutant locket holders are mostly comprised of great mutants.”
“So, what about the men who pulled the trigger on that day?”
“Do you mean the men who shot Mike Lawkens, operation code name Black-spike file 2581944?”
“yes”
“The executioner committed suicide to eliminate any trace back to the three mutant locket holders. They were buried by two mutants, who also committed suicide to eliminate any traces. This is standard procedure for any three mutant locket council ordered killing”
“So how do I find out who the three mutant lockets are?”
“No one knows them by name”
“So how do I find them?”
“you can’t find them, but you can make them find you.”
“How?” Emilia asked desperately.
“They are called the mutant locket holders because they are given a symbol of authority. A locket forged by the Mutant sorceress…. she is the second to the Ordainer of the Jixor cult. The three-mutant locket of Vellomn Metropolis ordered the execution of Mike Lawkens. Find their priceless lockets and they will find you.”
“How do I find the three powerful lockets when I can’t even find the three mutants’ holders that wear them?”
“The locket is too powerful to be worn even by the three mutant holders. This is why the locket is only worn only once in a while and is called the rituals of shadows, which is usually at the beginning of a new year or during a full moon, can’t really tell exactly.”
“But that’s too far…how can I find these lockets?”
“the lockets are ceremonial weapons and so would be locked up in any of the vaults banks managed by the Jixor cult. When you see the locket, you might know, sometimes they reveal themselves to any of the true pure blood of the Vixor royal blood line. The blood line ordained for rule, by the forces that rules the mutant’s race.”
“So how come they can wear it even though they are not pure blood?”
“The lockets they wear are conjured to become vile by the sorceress, but when they come close to a pure-blood mutant of the royal blood line, Vixor, the chosen mutant can absolve the lockets. That has not happened in over a thousand years. This is why the three mutants can wear it only once a year but the chosen one can wear it all the time.”
“Okay,” Emilia whispered, remembering that the day she robbed the Vellomn metropolis bank, she felt like something was calling her. Could that be the lockets calling her?
“Remember. Anyone who steals the divine lockets has just started a war. Malice warned.
“No, they started the war when they executed my father in broad day light and denied him justice” Emilia retorted
“You don’t know what you want to start…. the Jixor cult is bigger and stronger than anyone can ever imagine, even the Velmins fear them.”
“Every great empire was brought down by the first pang, struck into its hearts by a revolt hungry for change and justice.” she answered him and knocked him out with a blow.
She packaged him and tied him up and left him in front of the Vellomn Police Department with a note saying: proof that the Jixor cult exist.