Chapter Thirty-Six

On a list of things Saskatchewan had never thought he'd ever do in his life, interrogating a prisoner locked in a large plastic dog crate was one of them, and certainly up there on the list. Corvus scowled out at him from the confines of the padlocked crate, looking for all the world like an angry cat stuck in a pipe. He wasn't a tall man by any means, but he was rather stout; it was a miracle he even had room to turn around in there. His suit was wrinkled, giving the enraged premier the appearance of an angry raven. The dingy basement lighting didn't help, and neither did the contents of the basement. While some people might keep a kayak or bikes or a workbench or whatever else in their basement, Corvus kept his collection of torture instruments, numerous safes (one of which appeared to be a gunsafe, judging by the Remington logo on it) and rows of shelving. There was also a workbench at the far end, and while it did have normal-seeming tools scattered about its surface, it also had a tiny cage that appeared to be for mice and a strange apparatus laid out on it- like someone has screwed tiny restraints to a wooden plank. To complicate the picture, around the plank was a selection of medical tools- mostly scalpels, and a tiny saw.

Saskatchewan liked to catch mice in traps and leave them on his fence posts for the ravens, and even he considered that unnecessarily cruel.

"Get out." Corvus hissed, nursing his wounded pride and turning away from the province to face the inside of his crate. He'd been humiliated and beaten, and more importantly, he was fucking trapped in this goddamn thing like…like an animal. A dog. Alberta didn't need Saskatchewan and British Columbia by its side; they needed to invade both provinces and wipe them off the face of the fucking earth. Just Alberta West and Alberta East, that's all they'd be when he was done with them. The farmer and the hippie bitch? Well, they'd die. He hoped. He sincerely hoped that obliterating a province's legislature and shooting them in the head was all it took to kill them, but the fuckers were so resilient he'd probably have to pay off the US army to nuke them from orbit to be sure.

Saskatchewan sighed and crouched down so he could be on Corvus's level, carefully setting the urn containing his mother's ashes on the ground and letting go of it. He scooted back a little, showing the premier he wasn't trying to blackmail him or trick him.

"I'll put her back as soon as we're done talking." He promised truthfully, keeping his words calm and even. He needed Corvus to talk, and if the premier didn't want to sing, then they were all fucked.

"Fuck off." The normally-eloquent man had apparently decided he was sick of playing nice, and snarled, "I'm hungry, and thirsty, and I need to take a fucking piss. My back hurts, I'm crammed in a fucking DOG CRATE, AND YOU EXPECT ME TO COOPERATE WITH YOU IN ANY WAY?!"

Saskatchewan sucked in a breath between tightly clenched teeth. Oh, yeah. That…That would prove to be a problem. He needed Corvus to talk, but the man was in too foul a mood for reasoning to work, but…perhaps…

"…I want to join your cause." He said calmly, face a hardened stone mask that betrayed nothing; no truth, no lies, nothing. Only his twin could see through the pokerface Saskatchewan wore, and Corvus couldn't know his true intentions at all.

The premier turned around in his cage, looking at the province with a single skeptical eyebrow raised in disbelief.

"Bullshit." He replied, "You're lying. If you were truly interested in joining the cause, I wouldn't still be in this cage."

It was a hint, a hint to Saskatchewan to let the monster go. Which seemed an appallingly bad plan, until he realized that winning Corvus's trust could be an incredibly important and useful thing to have around. The other thing was that the premier mentioned having to pee, and well…he didn't want to have to deal with the consequences of that. So Saskatchewan sighed, pulling the padlock's keys out of his pocket and slotting them in the lock. With a simple 'click', Corvus was free. And unsurprisingly, he sprang out of the crate and hoofed it across the basement floor and up the stairs, intent on relieving himself and giving the farmer a moment to think about the best way to get the information out of him.

On the one hand, he was in the basement surrounded by torture instruments and even a prototype rack that seemed to be adjustable in size. On the other hand, he needed the human alive to allow his rough sketch of a plan to come to fruition…and also, not liable to order their deaths. So that left him one other option. His eyes fell on the urn containing Corvus's mother's ashes, and wondered to himself what kind of woman she'd been. Probably a good one, if he loved her that much, although it was just as likely that she could be a neo-Nazi.

But still, he did love her. And Saskatchewan's mouth twitched upwards in a half-smile. He knew how to extract the information from the premier without harming a hair on his head. His eyes fell on the rack of expensive-looking bottles of wine, whisky, and scotch, and he grinned evilly.

A short while later…

"A toast to my health, b'y." Corvus smirked, lifting the glass and taking another swig of it, only to discover, much to his dismay, that he'd already drank the last of his scotch. He wasn't drunk to the point where he was slurring his words, but a noticeable change had befallen the cunning premier. For a start, he'd relaxed quite a bit, adopting a casual, chatty sort of demeanour. That hadn't helped with his mouthiness, but it was a start, at least. But the oddest thing, at least to Saskatchewan's ears, was the fact that Corvus suddenly had an accent. The premier had a noticeably Maritime lilt to his words, and it was not an easy sort of contrast to swallow. And while it made sense that the man would have some sort of an accent based on his upbringing (a small coal-mining town in rural Cape Breton), it didn't make the contrast any less…jarring. Hearing the cute, folksy accent of the Maritime Provinces coming from the lips of a man who enjoyed cold-blooded torture...it was deeply disturbing.

The premier stared at the empty glass in mournful confusion for a few seconds before holding it up to Saskatchewan and shaking it expectantly, like an asshole diner who expects to be waited on hand and foot at a restaurant. And the farmer had no choice but to fill his glass again with the last of the fifteen-year-old scotch, watching as Corvus knocked back the hundred-dollar bottle like it was nothing. His last public audit had revealed he was as good as his word and hadn't been skimming off the public purse, not even a single penny. When he went travelling, he would dip into his own considerable bank account for use of a private jet and his hotel room, refusing to take the money set aside for travel expenses.

Still, there had to be SOMETHING shady going on with the man's money, considering he had a cupboard full of bottles just like that one, and yelled at Saskatchewan for daring to present him with beer.

"I'm so glad ye've come to yer senses and started servin' yer betters," Corvus said, taking a sip of the watered-down scotch on the rocks he'd just been poured. Saskatchewan decided to ignore the comment- it was an impressive feat that he'd even managed to get Corvus talking at all. As expected, Corvus had been remarkably reluctant to start drinking with what he perceived as parasites and lesser to himself; it was Quebec who'd initially broken the ice, sitting down at the table and carefully asking a few pointed questions about Corvus's mum, and then one for his own interests about the origin of the premier's name. That, strangely, was the straw that had broken the camel's back; Corvus had reached for the alcohol, and more specifically the special mixed drink that had been set on the table before him. Little did he know that Saskatchewan had prepared his first drink with some help from Quebec, very carefully spiking the mixed drink with rum and vodka until it was a potent cocktail that went down smooth as silk.

"Premier Corvus, sir?" The words rolled off Saskatchewan's tongue without the gag that normally would have accompanied them- the man had played straight into his hands, and now it was time to ask the pertinent questions. Quebec had gotten up and left a few minutes earlier to put on dinner; or so he said. The farmer didn't much care why Quebec had left, only that he had; the last thing either of them needed was Corvus deciding to sling shit at Francophones instead of spilling the information they needed to hear.

"Ah, me full title an' everythin'….Finally, ye've learned some respect! What's it yer in need of?" He smiled lazily, taking another sip of his scotch and putting the glass down to better look at the province in the eye. He'd swelled with the flattery,

"How is it that you're immune to your frequency, your Excellency?" The question was direct, wrapped in a small nugget of flattery; inflaming Corvus's ego seemed a sound idea for getting him to talk.

Corvus looked at him with a lopsided smirk.

"I've always…always been immune to it. I just am. I don't know how. An' before ye ask, I really only discovered the damn thing by accident anyway…"

"That…wait, you discovered it? Then why get Menger involved?"

The premier smiled wolfishly. He was still capable of being intimidating, even through the fog of alcohol, and he still projected an air of cocky confidence even while he was getting progressively more stoned.

"There's no cure, you know." Corvus slurred, sneering at him, "If that's why ye's askin' me aboot it. But since ye asked so nicely, I'll tell ya dis- Menger was involved because me frequency was pretty weak when I first found it out. He did all the research into it, he improved it, he made it what it is t'day. Good b'y, Menger is…"

Saskatchewan nodded, soaking in the information. Menger was a brilliant scientist, or so all the reports had said, so it only made sense that….wait.

Saskatchewan furrowed his brow and realized something. Menger would have had to work with the frequency all the time; add to that being around Corvus all day long, and you had a recipe for crazymaking. But Menger was a smart man; and Saskatchewan wondered if perhaps the mad doctor had developed a way to protect himself while working with Corvus's frequency. After all, it was what he himself would do; and Menger was a master of many disciplines related to the mind, from what the case had revealed. A man with his knowledge of how people's brains work would have easily been able to spot what a loose cannon Corvus potentially was….

"How did Menger protect himself from the frequency while working with it, Premier?"

Corvus shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "Beats me, b'y. He handed me a folder like this when the project was done, all his research notes an' shit; the whole thing was off the books, so he gave all the incriminatin' evidence to me for destruction…only, I never did get 'round to destroyin' it…"

Saskatchewan's eyes went wide. If there was any hope of his rescue plan coming to fruition, it would be hidden in Menger's notes.

"Where's the folder?" he asked Corvus, eyes wide.

"Why da fuck should I tells ya, b'y? You's gonna trot off to the police or…oh, wait. I fergot, the cops all serve me now. Ha, silly me. Fuck it, the folder's in my filing cabinet somewhere or other…Good luck getting' anythin' out of it, b'y. It's all medical bullshit, all the way through…I couldn't get a word out a' it."

Saskatchewan's nodded stoically, about three seconds from leaping out of his seat and punching the air in triumph, perhaps letting out an excited whoop like the 'Riders had just scored a touchdown. There was hope for immunization. There was hope. There was hope.

He was going to save his sister, come hell or high water. He was going to free Alberta.

They were going to be free.

"SASK! GET OVER HERE!"

Manitoba's voice was loud and echoing, the fear in his words snapping Saskatchewan out of his victory and saving him from seriously embarrassing himself. As the prairie province got out of his chair to make a mad dash for the living room, Corvus rose from his seat more slowly, ambling over to the phone with the intent of ringing up Edmonton for assistance. They'd confiscated his cellphone and kept him away from most other forms of communication, with the possible exception of snail mail; but Corvus still had a land-line telephone in his house, and it was the one thing that hadn't been tampered with, or so he thought.

Corvus picked up the receiver and pressed it to his ear, only to quirk an eyebrow when he was greeted with dead silence as opposed to the dial tone.

"Looking for this?"

He looked up and scowled.

BC smirked, dangling the phone's cord between her thumb and forefinger and holding it high above her head, a fistful of other such cords stuffed in her hands. Corvus snarled, leaping at her in an attempt to grab one of the cords, only for BC to dodge him and hold them well out of his reach.

"I can't believe you've still got a land line, ya loser. Talk about retro. And speaking of the good old days, I reckon it's time for you to get stuffed in a crate again, eh?"

Corvus stopped flailing and looked up at her, terror in his eyes.

They'd turned on Corvus's TV, and Manitoba had taken it upon himself to flip through the various news channels, scanning for any possible clues as to the goings-on in the outside world. With his injury, it was really the only activity he could contribute to the group; but it was nonetheless important, even if he was essentially just sprawled on the couch watching TV. There was a real danger to this, because all the locals news stations were playing nothing but the frequency nonstop, even in the background of their other programming, which largely seemed to be automatic; the CTV Calgary news station was simply the static playing over a black screen with some white text asking viewers to please not adjust their set and change the channel until CTV was back online in their area. But it was on the foreign-broadcast BBC that Manny finally found what he sought, and he hammered the record button as soon as he'd found it.

"…Our BBC field reporter is currently on the scene broadcasting live images from what some are dubbing the Battle of Calgary. Things seem to be taking a turn for the worse as these riots are far more organized than initial reports had assumed. Information we have received from an anonymous source within the Coalition's forces state that Prime Minister Jackson Slate was responsible for drafting the battle plans being used here and is also responsible for accepting intel from an alleged defector who may have been a spy. We return to the scene, where- Oh good god, Craig! Craig, what's happening down there?!"

Saskatchewan and Quebec arrived at roughly the same moment, which was to say, the minute the news footage cut to a live feed of what was going on in the street below. The picture quality wasn't very good at all; the cameraman was shouting in terror as a mob of people marched towards him in unison, all of them chanting three words over and over and over again, the madness in their eyes on display for the entire world to see.

"F- RUN! WE'RE FUCKED! FALL BACK! FALL BACK YOU FUCKING IDIOTS!" the reporter screamed at the few soldiers holding their ground nearby. One of them shouted at him to get behind them, which Craig did, and he immediately started babbling the second he was behind the small wall of protection afforded by the men.

"THEY-WE'RE OVERRUN!" he shouted shrilly, "THEY'RE MARCHING THEM AWAY IN HANDCUFFS! WE'RE ROUTED! I-"

And then the sound of grainy gunfire startled Craig, causing him to yelp in terror and run flat-out for anything resembling safety down the largely deserted street.

He turned around suddenly, and the camera, jittery though it was, showed the small handful of soldiers being absorbed into the mob; at the forefront, it was easy to see why. The shooting hadn't been at civilians; it had been at a line of Gunnar's rogue soldiers.

Craig screamed in terror, running away towards the setting sun, not even bothering to hold the camera up any more. The viewer could hear him panting as he ran, and then suddenly-

"OOF!"

Craig had apparently stopped watching where he was going, because the next thing they knew, he was tumbling to the ground, or more accurately the camera was. Someone caught it before it smashed on the pavement, and it turned, slowly, almost curiously in the new pair of hands that held it. The person slowly panned the camera up, letting out a little "Heh" of seeming amusement at the situation.

"Nice camera, ya limey fucker." The voice was definitely male, and definitely amused at the situation. He appeared to look at the logo plastered on the side of the camera, if the odd angle for a brief moment was any indication.

"Ooh, BBC, eh? Oh, and it's live? Am I on TV in the UK right now? Cool!" he sounded inordinately pleased with the turn of events- and then suddenly the camera whipped around to face a man in combat gear attempting to crawl away. The cameraman extended his other arm, which was clearly holding a machine gun, and he pointed it at the soldier.

"Get back here, you fucking eastern scum." He hissed, and then…the man chuckled.

It was not a pleasant sound.

Craig had managed to climb to his feet again, and it was then that the anonymous cameraman shoved the expensive device back into the hands of its rightful owner, smiling for the camera as soon as it was turned on him.

The man grinned like a shark, white teeth the same colour as his cowboy hat, and in the living room, the three men collectively gasped.

Calgary had the Prime Minister.

"Listen here, Limey. I don't hate Limeys all that much, so here's some free advice. Get in your rig and head for the 'States, you got me? Oh, and one more thing…Tell all the animals in Ottawa they can choke on Calgary's fucking dick."

And then the feed went black.

Saskatchewan went very pale and looked at Manitoba, then Quebec.

"I…We're out of time."

A/N:

Oh my god was this chapter ever a beast to write, help. But holy shit, we're getting there, guys. We're gonna get there.

I wanna just say that I have absolutely no intention of abandoning this fic, not after all the work I've put into it thus far. This fucked-up world is mine to share with you all; I'm gonna see it through to the end if it kills me. That said, if you want to help me out, leave me some feedback on the chapter! If you liked it, if you hated it, say whatever you feel about it.

Mid-terms next week. Probably not gonna have an update for awhile.