Re: Vendetta [S!2 Round 1 ~ Presidentialgon]
06-03-2012, 04:53 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by XX.
“Do you mean to tell me there is nothing- nothing, not one single fleck of a concept, not so much as a precious blueprint or a muddled scribbling on a bathroom wall- nothing here that would give even the slightest indication that you Neanderthals have developed anything at all even marginally more powerful in this anthill of a political center than some quibbling excuse for a nuclear warhead?”
The stag glared coldly at the members of the Erstwhile Cabinet, ears pressed irritably against his skull, and willed the mood in the room down. It was a simple process, so mindlessly simple that there was no need for him to guide it; it was the most basic influence the Laurels could produce. A slight inflection of the commanding voice downwards was enough to stun an ordinary participant- he liked to call them that, it amused him to imagine them having an option- into willful submission. Here, with Rayeln’s lurking bulk and the judging stares of the mob as amplifiers, the effect was lobotomizing. He could almost feel the poor idiots’ hearts break as they glanced away from him like scolded children, the weakest among them visibly holding back tears.
“Our… deepest apologies, Administrator Exida,” the War Minister said. It was either a very mannish woman or a very womanish man; Exida hadn’t decided. “We, ah, well it’s just that this is uh, this is a very… delicate time in- with- I personally was led to believe that the developmental departments had several projects that they were assigned,” the Minister said desperately, stabbing a blank notepad with a badly-chewed pen. “I- I think in particular there was a sort of accelerated arboreal device and a prototype version of a virus that, er, did something rather strange to the, er, subjects’ eyes and a sort of… large tank-like thing that might quite possibly fly under the proper circumstances…”
Exida didn’t hear the rest of the whining thing’s speech and didn’t particularly care to. He’d enjoyed this once, he thought, the sheer ease of the Laurels’ power. It was cleaner than machines, simpler than psionics, and significantly less dangerous to the soul than any worthwhile form of arcana. Its effect was universal and nearly impossible to negate; given a sufficient amount of time Exida suspected even the Seven would have succumbed. He’d paid for as much.
“Wasn’t there something about some kind of heat beam?” another subject said, glancing hopefully at the deer brooding at the head of the table. Her face fell at Exida’s bored glare. “I- I did hear there were significant hopes for that…”
The stag sighed, blowing smoke across the table. His cigarette was down to a stub. Stress did that to a man.
“Perhaps a biological weapon of some kind?”
It had seemed to him when he’d entered the chamber that the greatest minds of this sad world might be something more than limp-spined sniveling sycophants, that maybe something might be in place to prevent widespread mental rewiring from a glorified parlor trick, but he’d been disappointed. This was only another puffed-up troupe of monkeys playing at world domination. From the corner of his eye Exida saw Rayeln glance at him, sliding his sword from its resting place deep in the antique molding. He could have the barbarian kill everyone in this room, the deer thought. His mouth twitched. A few words and he could just walk away.
At the same time as Exida was thinking this, a rather large piece of nothing appeared directly to his left.
No, he corrected himself after a stunned moment, not nothing. Very distinctly something, very clearly someone standing beside him, except for the fact that they weren’t. There was the impression of a person, certainly; a sort of human-ish thing, not any particular color or texture or size or shape, but very clearly standing to attention at the corner of the conference table. The air around it seemed to waver slightly; the harder he looked the more his eyes slid past the thing, as if deliberately trying to hide it from him. He wanted very badly to turn around and ignore it. Every part of him whispered that nothing was there, that he had something, anything else to attend to…
“Psychic disruption field,” Exida said quietly. He fixed his eyes exactly two feet above the nothingness’ head. “Where did you get this?”
The something-nothing chuckled. The Ministers hadn’t noticed its presence; they babbled senselessly at each other, scribbling down ideas for superweapons on rumpled bits of cocktail napkins. In the far corner a pair of them held hands and began a rather wobbly rendition of Kumbaya. “Very good, Mr. Exis,” a gentle voice purred. His ears picked up the subtle hiss of a sonic disguise, the unnatural smoothness of its tone. The deer shivered as a hand lay itself across his shoulders: it was cold as steel. “I think the good people of this Cabinet have garnered your point.”
“Have they?” Exida said. He stared hard above the nothingness’ head. At the edge of his vision a slim figure swam into view, rigidly posed by the table and clothed in something that seemed almost certainly grey. The field was too strong to distinguish much else. Best to keep it talking. “Tell me, do you greet all your new governmental figures this way or is my initiation a special affair?”
“No, Mr. Exis,” the voice said, and he felt the faintest warning prick of a needle against the nape of his neck. “For an initiation there must be a welcoming and you, Mr. Exis, are not welcome here. Not in the slightest. You’re a very long way from home. Excuse yourself from the table, we have business elsewhere.”
The deer growled, a difficult feat but not an unusual one for a man of his character. The noise caught the attention of the Ministers, who squirmed nervously in their seats. “I’m afraid I must leave you,” Exida said, painfully aware of the needle pressing against his fur and the blurry presence holding it. A small round of moaning began around the table; he narrowed his eyes and it immediately ceased. “I will return shortly. See that you don’t disappoint me.”
“I suppose that will have to do,” the voice said. It almost sounded amused. “Follow me. Do not stop for any reason. Do not speak to anyone.”
Seething, Exida watched the vague blur drift casually towards the doors. He felt its hidden eyes on him, silently awaiting his cooperation. They thought him an amateur, he thought as he followed it. He was slightly stunned. Rayeln called something to him as he left; he didn’t bother to respond. The brute would have to manage without him. Nothing annoyed Exida more than a minion who couldn’t improvise.
The hallway outside was conspicuously empty, echoing with the distant sounds of sirens and gunfire from some far-off wing of the seemingly endless complex. Whatever remnants of the mob that had decided to stay with Rayeln and him had dissipated during the Cabinet meeting. Exida vaguely mourned their loss; god only knew what they’d gotten into feeble little heads after the initial stranglehold of the Laurels had worn off. If he was very lucky they’d started a riot somewhere and all gotten themselves shot.
Underneath an oversized portrait of Space President Roosevelt a patch of empty air wavered temptingly. Exida sighed. “This is terribly exciting,” he said, averting his eyes, “but I’m rather busy right now, as you most likely noticed. There are people trying to end my life and I would really rather like to stop them. It’s a strange habit of mine. Who are you and what do you want from me?”
The nothingness shimmered; there was a soft click and the portrait slid into the floor, exposing a narrow corridor illuminated in neon yellow track lighting. “I want you to walk with me, Mr. Exida,” the voice said, and very suddenly coalesced into a strict-looking woman with gleaming metal skin. “We have a task for you.”
_________________________
Rayeln was growing angry.
The squealing whore-pigs at the table were gibbering like frightened chickens in a slaughterhouse, too distressed by the deer-leader’s exit to do anything other than babble mindlessly. He felt his lips curl back in disgust at their antics. These limp aristocrats and their sniveling ways would come to an end soon, he swore on his father’s father’s grave. Their days of oppressing the weak and the hungry were over! Long over! He would be the one to mount their heads on stakes, just as soon as his cervine friend returned from whatever urgent business had called him away. This Exida was surely the sort of man who would be honored to supervise the mass executions. No doubt he would allow Rayeln the pleasure of removing their weeping heads himself! The revolutionary’s chest swelled with anticipatory pride. It was a good, good day for an uprising.
A Minister broke suddenly into tears, startling Rayeln out of his fugue. His fellow working men and women barked with anger, glaring suspiciously out from their huddled heaps against the walls. When Exida returned he would ask the deer to give them another speech, Rayeln decided. Their morale was fading. This would not stand, not in this terrible hour of need! Furtively he glanced from side to side, assessing the dire situation. The room was still in chaos; the Ministers swarming over the table, the few traitor guards stiff at attention but long-since unresponsive. If the deer did not return soon Rayeln feared they would soon lose progress. He could not allow that to happen, he realized with a grave sort of manly terror. The aristocracy must fall at all costs!
In a burst of energy he leapt up from the floor, carving a neat swath out of the wall with a great sweep of his blade. The time to strike was now! Exida was a man of the people; of course he would understand the need to keep the revolution in motion. He wasn’t entirely sure why the deer had kept him silent for all this time, assuming he had his reasons, but even a fool could see that now was the time to mobilize! Exida would thank him when the time came. Thank him with the dismembered corpses of their mutual enemies!
“BROTHERS AND SISTERS,” Rayeln howled. If the mob’s answering roars sounded a little less convinced than usual the revolutionary didn’t notice. He struck his sword upwards towards the beatifically smiling cherubs painted on the ceiling, challenging the heavens themselves to stop him. “WE MUST MOVE FROM THIS PLACE! WE MUST CARRY ON! THE BLOOD OF OUR FOES AWAITS, MY COMRADES! ONWARD! ONWARD TO VICTOOOORRRYYYY!”
As the last of the riffraff headed out, the Ministers shrugged at each other and calmly went back to panicking.
______________________
The room was cold: bright fluorescent lights on bare polished steel, immaculately bare except for a low metal table and a pair of highly uncomfortable chairs isolated in the center of the floor. The lights were bright enough to force him to squint but not so bright as to blind, only barely enough to obscure the figure that sat at the opposite side of the table. It couldn’t have screamed “interrogation room” harder if the phrase had been painted on the walls in six-foot letters.
“Mr. Exis,” a calming voice said, “Please have a seat.”
“Thanks, but I’m a deer,” Exida replied sharply. “I’ll stand if it’s all the same to you. We really could have a much more civil discussion if you didn’t insist on these primitive surroundings. You seem to know something of my background and you know damn well we’re both beyond amateur hour. A spotlight? Really? You do know bright lights are only intimidating to genuine animals.”
The voice on the other side of the table sighed. He suspected this one was male. The metal woman had left shortly before ushering him into this waste of a perfectly good cliché, not that he’d had any time to grow fond of her. He would have preferred her to this sap, given a choice; at the very least she had displayed hints of a sense of humor. “I will be perfectly honest with you, Mr. Exis,” the new voice said, “We actually know very little about you. You arrived in this location three hours seventeen minutes and forty-five, sorry, forty-six- seconds ago, and in that time you’ve managed to gather a mob, incite several riots, overwhelm an in-session Senate, be the cause of three direct and fourteen indirect deaths, cause several hundred thousand dollars in property damage, and despite all this be unanimously and completely illegally voted into a major governmental position. You exhibit characteristics of an experienced insurgent leader and appear familiar with technology not yet publically widespread in this area, and you somehow convince nearly all encountered persons to assist you with little more than a series of verbal commands. You are also a deer. A talking deer. Make no mistake, Mr. Exis, what we know about you is highly insufficient for the kind of work our organization performs.”
“Shadow government?”
“Something like that.”
Exida snorted. “And I assume torture will be my suggested incentive to cooperate.”
The figure behind the light shrugged apologetically. “If you insist on continuing to cut to the bare bones, yes, physical coercion would be the simplest method for us, if somewhat less efficient than our… other methods.”
He shouldn’t bite, he didn’t want to bite, but even without the additional empathy of the Laurels Exida knew a spike in heart rate when he saw it. Just enough to suggest something interesting, though given the standards of what he’d seen his hopes weren’t high. “Go on,” he said, “impress me.”
Abruptly a hand appeared on the shade of the spotlight and pushed it to the side. Once the stars were out of his eyes Exida could finally see the mysterious speaker: a worried-looking young man in a completely unremarkable suit, the only distinctive feature about him the mass of wiring protruding from behind his ears and the faint metallic sheen to his dusky skin. “I am sorry about that,” the man said, offering Exida his hand. The deer ignored it. “It’s standard protocol. I never liked it to begin with, it’s all a little too obtuse for me.”
“It’s charming, I assure you.” Exida stared at the man. “Does it bother you that this kind of containment is highly uncivil? Is this the sort of treatment you believe your fellow humans deserve, startled like animals and locked in a giant cage? What sort of monster do you have to be to-”
“Sorry, Mr. Exis,” the man said, and tapped his cranial wiring knowingly. “Immune.”
“It was worth a try.” The deer shifted his weight to a more comfortable position. “Is psychic shielding the only enhancement available to you or is it simply distressingly common here?”
The man scribbled something down into a notebook Exida hadn’t noticed and nodded. Briefly he pressed a hand to the back of his ear, bit his lip, and crossed whatever he’d written out. “It’s standard issue for our agents. I’m 5106, by the way. So your ability is psychic-based, then?”
“Not really. There are gods and a number of moral loopholes involved, it’s all very technical and tedious and took my best lawyer four days to muddle through the fine print. You know the type. If you were so concerned about my progress, why was I not apprehended sooner? Are you aware that there are at least seven other beings in this complex who pose- almost pose as great a threat as I do to your agency?”
“We are indeed aware of them, Mr. Exida,” 5106 said, and passed a small slip of paper across the table to the deer. On it were eight names, each annotated in miniscule writing with fragments of unreadable shorthand. “These entities arrived at the exact same time as you in various locations across the complex. Nearly all of them are, as you say, a threat, particularly-” he tapped a line reading J. Raptor, “this one. Our observations on the pair of you are curiously similar.”
Exida chuckled humorlessly. He hadn’t bothered to pay attention during the farce of a banquet those pseudo-Italians had orchestrated. The name meant nothing to him. “Is he a deer as well?”
“No,” 5106 said, “that appears to be only you. However, he does display physical and mental distortion on par with your abilities, though his approach is decidedly more haphazard. It was much harder for us to predict his actions. His reaction to your little announcement indicates a minimal at best comprehension of his surrounding; our analysts claim his talents are all that separates him from a total madman.”
“Fascinating,” Exida said. “If you have him here as well I’d like a chance to speak with the man. I’m sure the things he’ll say will prove boundlessly interesting to us both.”
5106 glanced up at him. The deer was surprised to note that his expression had not once changed since the interrogation began, nor did the man seem to need to blink. Or breathe, for that matter. “No. We concluded it was easier to observe him in action, as it is. He is rather more capable of keeping himself entertained than you.” The agent cleared his throat loudly; for a fraction of an instant, Exida swore he could hear a clipped voice emanating from the man’s wires. “And we are on a tight schedule here, Mr. Exis. Let’s get to the point. We need your help.”
The deer snorted in surprise. He hadn’t expected to go down this particular route. “For?”
The agent stared him down, dark eyes reflecting the golden glint of the Laurels. There was nothing in those eyes, Exida realized. Nothing at all. Not a single hint of fear or hope or anger. Just simple calculation. For the first time in years he felt a tiny shiver work its way up his spine. “Despite what you may think of us, Mr. Exis, we are still in charge of protecting this nation from significant internal strife and we will stop at nothing to ensure its safety. Nothing, Mr. Exis, do you understand me? As of this very instant in time you are worth something to us now as a curiosity. We feel that we have more to gain by keeping you alive for now than we do by killing you, and that is the only reason you have survived our attention for more than the five seconds it would take to eliminate you. You may wish to pray to your god of preference that we do not change our minds. I can’t imagine how it would help.”
Exida paused for half a second too long. “And what, exactly, do you expect me to provide assistance with?”
“Well, for starters,” 5106 said lightly, “one of our containment units appears to be a forest.”
“Do you mean to tell me there is nothing- nothing, not one single fleck of a concept, not so much as a precious blueprint or a muddled scribbling on a bathroom wall- nothing here that would give even the slightest indication that you Neanderthals have developed anything at all even marginally more powerful in this anthill of a political center than some quibbling excuse for a nuclear warhead?”
The stag glared coldly at the members of the Erstwhile Cabinet, ears pressed irritably against his skull, and willed the mood in the room down. It was a simple process, so mindlessly simple that there was no need for him to guide it; it was the most basic influence the Laurels could produce. A slight inflection of the commanding voice downwards was enough to stun an ordinary participant- he liked to call them that, it amused him to imagine them having an option- into willful submission. Here, with Rayeln’s lurking bulk and the judging stares of the mob as amplifiers, the effect was lobotomizing. He could almost feel the poor idiots’ hearts break as they glanced away from him like scolded children, the weakest among them visibly holding back tears.
“Our… deepest apologies, Administrator Exida,” the War Minister said. It was either a very mannish woman or a very womanish man; Exida hadn’t decided. “We, ah, well it’s just that this is uh, this is a very… delicate time in- with- I personally was led to believe that the developmental departments had several projects that they were assigned,” the Minister said desperately, stabbing a blank notepad with a badly-chewed pen. “I- I think in particular there was a sort of accelerated arboreal device and a prototype version of a virus that, er, did something rather strange to the, er, subjects’ eyes and a sort of… large tank-like thing that might quite possibly fly under the proper circumstances…”
Exida didn’t hear the rest of the whining thing’s speech and didn’t particularly care to. He’d enjoyed this once, he thought, the sheer ease of the Laurels’ power. It was cleaner than machines, simpler than psionics, and significantly less dangerous to the soul than any worthwhile form of arcana. Its effect was universal and nearly impossible to negate; given a sufficient amount of time Exida suspected even the Seven would have succumbed. He’d paid for as much.
“Wasn’t there something about some kind of heat beam?” another subject said, glancing hopefully at the deer brooding at the head of the table. Her face fell at Exida’s bored glare. “I- I did hear there were significant hopes for that…”
The stag sighed, blowing smoke across the table. His cigarette was down to a stub. Stress did that to a man.
“Perhaps a biological weapon of some kind?”
It had seemed to him when he’d entered the chamber that the greatest minds of this sad world might be something more than limp-spined sniveling sycophants, that maybe something might be in place to prevent widespread mental rewiring from a glorified parlor trick, but he’d been disappointed. This was only another puffed-up troupe of monkeys playing at world domination. From the corner of his eye Exida saw Rayeln glance at him, sliding his sword from its resting place deep in the antique molding. He could have the barbarian kill everyone in this room, the deer thought. His mouth twitched. A few words and he could just walk away.
At the same time as Exida was thinking this, a rather large piece of nothing appeared directly to his left.
No, he corrected himself after a stunned moment, not nothing. Very distinctly something, very clearly someone standing beside him, except for the fact that they weren’t. There was the impression of a person, certainly; a sort of human-ish thing, not any particular color or texture or size or shape, but very clearly standing to attention at the corner of the conference table. The air around it seemed to waver slightly; the harder he looked the more his eyes slid past the thing, as if deliberately trying to hide it from him. He wanted very badly to turn around and ignore it. Every part of him whispered that nothing was there, that he had something, anything else to attend to…
“Psychic disruption field,” Exida said quietly. He fixed his eyes exactly two feet above the nothingness’ head. “Where did you get this?”
The something-nothing chuckled. The Ministers hadn’t noticed its presence; they babbled senselessly at each other, scribbling down ideas for superweapons on rumpled bits of cocktail napkins. In the far corner a pair of them held hands and began a rather wobbly rendition of Kumbaya. “Very good, Mr. Exis,” a gentle voice purred. His ears picked up the subtle hiss of a sonic disguise, the unnatural smoothness of its tone. The deer shivered as a hand lay itself across his shoulders: it was cold as steel. “I think the good people of this Cabinet have garnered your point.”
“Have they?” Exida said. He stared hard above the nothingness’ head. At the edge of his vision a slim figure swam into view, rigidly posed by the table and clothed in something that seemed almost certainly grey. The field was too strong to distinguish much else. Best to keep it talking. “Tell me, do you greet all your new governmental figures this way or is my initiation a special affair?”
“No, Mr. Exis,” the voice said, and he felt the faintest warning prick of a needle against the nape of his neck. “For an initiation there must be a welcoming and you, Mr. Exis, are not welcome here. Not in the slightest. You’re a very long way from home. Excuse yourself from the table, we have business elsewhere.”
The deer growled, a difficult feat but not an unusual one for a man of his character. The noise caught the attention of the Ministers, who squirmed nervously in their seats. “I’m afraid I must leave you,” Exida said, painfully aware of the needle pressing against his fur and the blurry presence holding it. A small round of moaning began around the table; he narrowed his eyes and it immediately ceased. “I will return shortly. See that you don’t disappoint me.”
“I suppose that will have to do,” the voice said. It almost sounded amused. “Follow me. Do not stop for any reason. Do not speak to anyone.”
Seething, Exida watched the vague blur drift casually towards the doors. He felt its hidden eyes on him, silently awaiting his cooperation. They thought him an amateur, he thought as he followed it. He was slightly stunned. Rayeln called something to him as he left; he didn’t bother to respond. The brute would have to manage without him. Nothing annoyed Exida more than a minion who couldn’t improvise.
The hallway outside was conspicuously empty, echoing with the distant sounds of sirens and gunfire from some far-off wing of the seemingly endless complex. Whatever remnants of the mob that had decided to stay with Rayeln and him had dissipated during the Cabinet meeting. Exida vaguely mourned their loss; god only knew what they’d gotten into feeble little heads after the initial stranglehold of the Laurels had worn off. If he was very lucky they’d started a riot somewhere and all gotten themselves shot.
Underneath an oversized portrait of Space President Roosevelt a patch of empty air wavered temptingly. Exida sighed. “This is terribly exciting,” he said, averting his eyes, “but I’m rather busy right now, as you most likely noticed. There are people trying to end my life and I would really rather like to stop them. It’s a strange habit of mine. Who are you and what do you want from me?”
The nothingness shimmered; there was a soft click and the portrait slid into the floor, exposing a narrow corridor illuminated in neon yellow track lighting. “I want you to walk with me, Mr. Exida,” the voice said, and very suddenly coalesced into a strict-looking woman with gleaming metal skin. “We have a task for you.”
_________________________
Rayeln was growing angry.
The squealing whore-pigs at the table were gibbering like frightened chickens in a slaughterhouse, too distressed by the deer-leader’s exit to do anything other than babble mindlessly. He felt his lips curl back in disgust at their antics. These limp aristocrats and their sniveling ways would come to an end soon, he swore on his father’s father’s grave. Their days of oppressing the weak and the hungry were over! Long over! He would be the one to mount their heads on stakes, just as soon as his cervine friend returned from whatever urgent business had called him away. This Exida was surely the sort of man who would be honored to supervise the mass executions. No doubt he would allow Rayeln the pleasure of removing their weeping heads himself! The revolutionary’s chest swelled with anticipatory pride. It was a good, good day for an uprising.
A Minister broke suddenly into tears, startling Rayeln out of his fugue. His fellow working men and women barked with anger, glaring suspiciously out from their huddled heaps against the walls. When Exida returned he would ask the deer to give them another speech, Rayeln decided. Their morale was fading. This would not stand, not in this terrible hour of need! Furtively he glanced from side to side, assessing the dire situation. The room was still in chaos; the Ministers swarming over the table, the few traitor guards stiff at attention but long-since unresponsive. If the deer did not return soon Rayeln feared they would soon lose progress. He could not allow that to happen, he realized with a grave sort of manly terror. The aristocracy must fall at all costs!
In a burst of energy he leapt up from the floor, carving a neat swath out of the wall with a great sweep of his blade. The time to strike was now! Exida was a man of the people; of course he would understand the need to keep the revolution in motion. He wasn’t entirely sure why the deer had kept him silent for all this time, assuming he had his reasons, but even a fool could see that now was the time to mobilize! Exida would thank him when the time came. Thank him with the dismembered corpses of their mutual enemies!
“BROTHERS AND SISTERS,” Rayeln howled. If the mob’s answering roars sounded a little less convinced than usual the revolutionary didn’t notice. He struck his sword upwards towards the beatifically smiling cherubs painted on the ceiling, challenging the heavens themselves to stop him. “WE MUST MOVE FROM THIS PLACE! WE MUST CARRY ON! THE BLOOD OF OUR FOES AWAITS, MY COMRADES! ONWARD! ONWARD TO VICTOOOORRRYYYY!”
As the last of the riffraff headed out, the Ministers shrugged at each other and calmly went back to panicking.
______________________
The room was cold: bright fluorescent lights on bare polished steel, immaculately bare except for a low metal table and a pair of highly uncomfortable chairs isolated in the center of the floor. The lights were bright enough to force him to squint but not so bright as to blind, only barely enough to obscure the figure that sat at the opposite side of the table. It couldn’t have screamed “interrogation room” harder if the phrase had been painted on the walls in six-foot letters.
“Mr. Exis,” a calming voice said, “Please have a seat.”
“Thanks, but I’m a deer,” Exida replied sharply. “I’ll stand if it’s all the same to you. We really could have a much more civil discussion if you didn’t insist on these primitive surroundings. You seem to know something of my background and you know damn well we’re both beyond amateur hour. A spotlight? Really? You do know bright lights are only intimidating to genuine animals.”
The voice on the other side of the table sighed. He suspected this one was male. The metal woman had left shortly before ushering him into this waste of a perfectly good cliché, not that he’d had any time to grow fond of her. He would have preferred her to this sap, given a choice; at the very least she had displayed hints of a sense of humor. “I will be perfectly honest with you, Mr. Exis,” the new voice said, “We actually know very little about you. You arrived in this location three hours seventeen minutes and forty-five, sorry, forty-six- seconds ago, and in that time you’ve managed to gather a mob, incite several riots, overwhelm an in-session Senate, be the cause of three direct and fourteen indirect deaths, cause several hundred thousand dollars in property damage, and despite all this be unanimously and completely illegally voted into a major governmental position. You exhibit characteristics of an experienced insurgent leader and appear familiar with technology not yet publically widespread in this area, and you somehow convince nearly all encountered persons to assist you with little more than a series of verbal commands. You are also a deer. A talking deer. Make no mistake, Mr. Exis, what we know about you is highly insufficient for the kind of work our organization performs.”
“Shadow government?”
“Something like that.”
Exida snorted. “And I assume torture will be my suggested incentive to cooperate.”
The figure behind the light shrugged apologetically. “If you insist on continuing to cut to the bare bones, yes, physical coercion would be the simplest method for us, if somewhat less efficient than our… other methods.”
He shouldn’t bite, he didn’t want to bite, but even without the additional empathy of the Laurels Exida knew a spike in heart rate when he saw it. Just enough to suggest something interesting, though given the standards of what he’d seen his hopes weren’t high. “Go on,” he said, “impress me.”
Abruptly a hand appeared on the shade of the spotlight and pushed it to the side. Once the stars were out of his eyes Exida could finally see the mysterious speaker: a worried-looking young man in a completely unremarkable suit, the only distinctive feature about him the mass of wiring protruding from behind his ears and the faint metallic sheen to his dusky skin. “I am sorry about that,” the man said, offering Exida his hand. The deer ignored it. “It’s standard protocol. I never liked it to begin with, it’s all a little too obtuse for me.”
“It’s charming, I assure you.” Exida stared at the man. “Does it bother you that this kind of containment is highly uncivil? Is this the sort of treatment you believe your fellow humans deserve, startled like animals and locked in a giant cage? What sort of monster do you have to be to-”
“Sorry, Mr. Exis,” the man said, and tapped his cranial wiring knowingly. “Immune.”
“It was worth a try.” The deer shifted his weight to a more comfortable position. “Is psychic shielding the only enhancement available to you or is it simply distressingly common here?”
The man scribbled something down into a notebook Exida hadn’t noticed and nodded. Briefly he pressed a hand to the back of his ear, bit his lip, and crossed whatever he’d written out. “It’s standard issue for our agents. I’m 5106, by the way. So your ability is psychic-based, then?”
“Not really. There are gods and a number of moral loopholes involved, it’s all very technical and tedious and took my best lawyer four days to muddle through the fine print. You know the type. If you were so concerned about my progress, why was I not apprehended sooner? Are you aware that there are at least seven other beings in this complex who pose- almost pose as great a threat as I do to your agency?”
“We are indeed aware of them, Mr. Exida,” 5106 said, and passed a small slip of paper across the table to the deer. On it were eight names, each annotated in miniscule writing with fragments of unreadable shorthand. “These entities arrived at the exact same time as you in various locations across the complex. Nearly all of them are, as you say, a threat, particularly-” he tapped a line reading J. Raptor, “this one. Our observations on the pair of you are curiously similar.”
Exida chuckled humorlessly. He hadn’t bothered to pay attention during the farce of a banquet those pseudo-Italians had orchestrated. The name meant nothing to him. “Is he a deer as well?”
“No,” 5106 said, “that appears to be only you. However, he does display physical and mental distortion on par with your abilities, though his approach is decidedly more haphazard. It was much harder for us to predict his actions. His reaction to your little announcement indicates a minimal at best comprehension of his surrounding; our analysts claim his talents are all that separates him from a total madman.”
“Fascinating,” Exida said. “If you have him here as well I’d like a chance to speak with the man. I’m sure the things he’ll say will prove boundlessly interesting to us both.”
5106 glanced up at him. The deer was surprised to note that his expression had not once changed since the interrogation began, nor did the man seem to need to blink. Or breathe, for that matter. “No. We concluded it was easier to observe him in action, as it is. He is rather more capable of keeping himself entertained than you.” The agent cleared his throat loudly; for a fraction of an instant, Exida swore he could hear a clipped voice emanating from the man’s wires. “And we are on a tight schedule here, Mr. Exis. Let’s get to the point. We need your help.”
The deer snorted in surprise. He hadn’t expected to go down this particular route. “For?”
The agent stared him down, dark eyes reflecting the golden glint of the Laurels. There was nothing in those eyes, Exida realized. Nothing at all. Not a single hint of fear or hope or anger. Just simple calculation. For the first time in years he felt a tiny shiver work its way up his spine. “Despite what you may think of us, Mr. Exis, we are still in charge of protecting this nation from significant internal strife and we will stop at nothing to ensure its safety. Nothing, Mr. Exis, do you understand me? As of this very instant in time you are worth something to us now as a curiosity. We feel that we have more to gain by keeping you alive for now than we do by killing you, and that is the only reason you have survived our attention for more than the five seconds it would take to eliminate you. You may wish to pray to your god of preference that we do not change our minds. I can’t imagine how it would help.”
Exida paused for half a second too long. “And what, exactly, do you expect me to provide assistance with?”
“Well, for starters,” 5106 said lightly, “one of our containment units appears to be a forest.”