Line 124: Further Then I've Ever Been
Despite his protests and demands to be called a hero, the men in black took Tycho Rivers and Charles Adami both at the same time. The trip was long, and the destination uncertain. There were no windows to look out of. He could only tell that they were not going towards the nearest police-station. Heck they were driving for so long, they could have left the state for all he knew. Who where these people; agents from the federal bureau or some other security agency? They were not allowed to talk, Tycho simply stared at him with vicious intent. He probably would have challenged him to another duel if he could, but they took all their dueling equipment away as well. Silence won out until they reached the end of the road. A tense aura awaited him outside the car. "Follow us please." More officers in black waited, to escort him from a dimly lit parking garage through long hallways. Tycho stared around with questioning eyes. His expression had changed, he did not trust these people anymore. Though what he felt did not stop them from taking him away to a different area.
As for him? Charles Adami was taken to The Room.
It looked like a typical interrogation space: with a one-way mirror on the left wall. Three things were put there for him: a glass of water, a meal on a plate, and a seat. Charles was worried, but not to the point of expecting the food to be poisoned. So he accepted the offerings. But as soon as he was done, the man came in. A tall blonde-haired man with a friendly face and a thick mustache. He dressed differently from the others. He had one question to start with. 'Do you know why you are here?' And Charles, still confident in his own innocence, told him pretty much everything ..
From Mister Static to Miss Echo to Millennium and Evert Hansen: the whole tale must have made him look like a madman. Yet the guy who sat opposite of him absorbing every word with a smile. And after a while Charles could not stand it anymore. "Why am I here?" This entire situation was new to him, but he was pretty sure he still had a couple of rights. "Now now. We will ask the questions." Rights they were seemingly not willing to honor. "I've already told you everything that happened!" What more could they ask him? "That you have. Yet we still need to verify your information. Or did you expect to be let go on good behavior? You already admitted to aiding and abetting a terrorist cyber organization. That is grounds enough to place you under arrest pending further charges." The interrogator flatly laid out the facts. He clearly had no room for sympathy in his line of duty. That did not mean Charles had to let them get the final say. "But that was part of the plan! I was an infiltrator! I have people who can verify for me! People who know me!" And so he kept pushing, he did not have time to be affraid with so much at stake.
"Oh that is right. You claim to be the duelist known as Void and that someone has stolen your account? A curious statement when it is physically impossible to steal another persons account. And this Mister Static element sounds farfetched as well, doesn't it? Furthermore, we have checked into your own records and possessions. We do not doubt that you are Charles Adami. But we have found nothing to corroborate that A Charles Adami was ever tied to the account of Void. Or to any other account. All we discovered is a heap of illegal money transactions wired through your bank accounts."
"What!?" Charles flinched. This was the first he heard about that. "But what about my equipment? The VR set at my house? My computer?" The evidence could not be all gone! "We confiscated those as well of course. But that only shows that you were able to get into STHEREA, you would be surprised how many illegal names run around in there. You made sure to erase your history and fry your computer, you even seemed to have encrypted your social id. Unfortunately for you, you cannot bury your crimes so easily." The interrogator smirked. "I did not bury anything! I did not funnel any money! Whatever you found, it was his doing! Static's! And if the data on their end is gone, it must be because their storage system was overloaded by Echo!" Charles felt like snapping right here and now. How could everything turn against him so quickly and smoothly? Perhaps he was going mad. "!?" Except then he remembered what really caused the network to forget Charles Adami: Millennium. Anyone that joined Ezra's group would slowly forgot their real life and be forgotten by their real life. At least that's how it worked mechanically. Ever since he accepted a position in Millennium, the network must have started removing all traces of his legal activities.
"Dharma!" But people would still remember him, people he directly interacted with. And while most knew him as Void, one person knew him as Charles Adami. "Dharma, she goes by Madam Blanche on the network! She will vouch for me! She knows who I am!" It was his only chance. Even if they did not believe him, they would want to make contact with her just to be sure. "Madam Blanche?" His reaction caught Charles off guard though, almost as if the name amused him. "I get one call, don't I? She knows everything I know and more. But you have you to contact her quickly. Or contact Therese Hansen from Exeter! This is bigger than me now, they have to be warned. Static is about to do something!" He did not care what happened to him at this point, he just wanted his friends to be safe. Static had to know that framing him would eventually get more attention focused on him as well, so he would move faster with his plans too now. If only he knew what they were. If only they listened. "You've watched too many TV shows, kid."
"Wait! Anders Green! I told him my real name too!" But out of all the names Charles dropped, only that one got the interrogator to freeze up. "Anders? You know about him? Hmm." He rubbed his chin in contemplation, but called in security anyway. "You're giving us plenty to think about, mister Adami. We're done for now and we will inform your next of kin. But we cannot let you talk to them yet. You will be staying with us for a little while longer."
Nothing, they gave him nothing. Was this normal? Charles wanted to yell or shout, but he knew it would not stop them from ushering him out and walking him through the same stark hallways. This was no ordinary police or federal station. If he could pause for a moment, he might have been able to focus on the strange sounds around him and figure them out. But one officer pushed him further and further, bringing him several levels down with an elevator. "What is this?" He asked though he could hazard a guess. Before him stood a row of glass-wall cells, some lit up and others dark as the night. "Get in." The guard behind just force him inside one cell with a shove and closed the door behind him. "Hey! You can't do this!" He got left behind, the lights in the hall turned off again. This could not be right, what was this place? Where did Tycho end up?
"?" ..And who was in the room next to him?
"..." He had a neighbor: a girl in a leather jacket, black shirt and jeans. She sat on a bench with her arms wrapped around her knees. And while long dark hair partially obscured her face, he could tell her eyes were pointed his way. "Eheh. Ehahah.. AhahaHAHAHA!" Apparently he was the funniest thing she had seen all day. "What's so amusing?" Charles did not really expect that as her first reaction. How long had she been in here? "You are the one? You're supposed to be Ezra!? Get outta here! He's crazy! They're all crazy!" It was when she started to talk, that Charles recognized her. "Cherry? Cherry Anise?" She had a certain dialect that the voice filters in STHEREA could not really hide. Charles also only knew two female duelists who could bring up Ezra's name. And if she was here, then he was truly far from home. "Oh? We've met before? Then I guess you're one of ours after all. 'Fraid I don't recognize you at all. Ahah, sor-ree. Still! Did they really think you were Him? After everything I told them, how could they make that mistake? How could you?"
Cherry turned to a cell on the other side of the hallway. "Tycho?!" Only now did Charles notice the tense duelist, pacing back and forth in his own dark room. "Even if I am wrong! This is still all your fault!" Of course, Tycho did not have much niceties to say to Charles once he saw him. "Me? You are the one who attacked me first! Seems to me like they were after you as well anyway!" Charles did not have to take that, not from him. He might as well have been talking to the walls around him for all the good that did. "Fine. What did you tell them, Charles? Did you sell me out?" Tycho seemed to live in his own paranoid world. "I told them the truth! What did you say?" Charles possessed a little more faith in the system, though that clearly did not pay off either. "You what? How gullible can you be? Don't tell them anything! I know how this is supposed to work and these people are not on the level! I told them where they could stick their charges and demanded a lawyer! They ignored me. They didn't give you one either, did they?"
"Yo! Will you two stop yapping like you're on a honeymoon!?" The girl shouted to break up their own max-volume conversation. "I mean if you're so smart, why didn't you figure out that they are probably listening to us right now?" She cast her glare specifically at Tycho, which got him to sulk back to the corner of his cell. "And you, who the hell are you anyway? I mean I figured him out right away. Only a loudmouth like Alpha would whine about Ezra 24/7. But you, what's your deal?"
"I'm.. Charles. Charles Adami." He felt like he'd been saying that line a hundred times today. But she at least remembered Ezra using that name. "Charles? Oh you mean Void? Mister goody-two-shoes double-agent?" The girl let out a sigh of disappointment. "I guess that makes more sense than... You know when this guy started yelling at me, I really did think that I was about to see Ezra again. I almost wanted it, just so I could personally curse him for everything he did. But no, its just you. Who did you piss off to wind up in here?" She could not hate him, or feel anything for him really. Not the worst reaction to deal with. "Because I was set up by Static. He took my identity away from me and framed me for crimes I did not commit." He at least had someone to talk too. "Static? I thought that guy had packed his bags already." Someone who would actually believe him. "No. He wanted us to think that. But that was his plan all along, why he chose us. He needed a duelist to possess." Void sighed. Mister goody-two-shoes Cherry called him. Gullible Tycho called him. They were both right, he made for the perfect victim. "Ha. You should have gotten out while you could, Void. I did."
"Are you two both in on this?" Tycho growled, unable to stay silent any longer. "When you say 'this', you mean Static? Then yeah, I got invited by him too. But I was already a part of Millennium by then, so I could fake my own self-destruct and BAM! I escaped his 'game'. He's real, Alpha. Whether you like it or not." She hissed back. "My name is not Alpha! And your name is not Cherry! Stop pretending. You're not in STHEREA anymore!" He got even louder and slammed against the glass walls just to remind them of their predicament. "Oh I see that. I can see every stain in this miserable piece-of-crap-world. I saw it all from the moment Ezra kicked me out. But I am not going to revert to that old life. You can call yourself whatever you want, Alpha, Tycho, whatever! I am Cherry Anise and nobody else."
"But how did they find you? How long have you been here?" Charles wondered. It could not have been more than two days since Ezra banished her back to the real world, and it seemed unlikely that any authorities could have tracked her down in a matter of days. "I.. ahah, that was my big-brained idea." Cherry let out a moan and tapped the back of her head against the wall. "You'll laugh when you hear this.. But it made sense to me! Ezra betrayed me, so I would show him! I went to the police and told them everything I know! What he really looked like, what his real name was, what he had done. If I could not be a part of STHEREA anymore, than I would take him with me! Heheh. That was stupid of me. But I was mad, okay? Like, you can NOT imagine. And what did it get me? One day I was at the police station, the next day some strange men in black-types came to take me away for more involved questioning. I'm sure you met the guy, with the glasses and that phony mustache. He asks all the questions and then he sends you back here. I should have just stayed quiet... At least the food is nice. And I have company now." The girl shrugged. She hated every part of reality equally anyway.
"Just like us.. Except we did not even get to meet the real police... They cannot keep us here indefinitely though." Charles tried to reassure her. "Oh yeah? Are people gonna miss ya? You still have a mommy and daddy who care about you? You still have friends? Must be nice." Cherry said with nearly clenched teeth. Charles could assume a lot from her tone, but he would not pry. "I know of people who can help me. Help us." He would not mention his family either. They would not be able to help him, nor were they on speaking terms. "Help us? Do you think we need your help?" Tycho cursed. "Pretty sure yeah." Charles retorted drearily. "Dont get mouthy, 'Charles'! Maybe you were a big shot in STHEREA, but here you're as pathetic as the rest of us! And your friendclub, the heroes of pandemonium, can't do anything for us here either!"
"Dharma can!" Charles snapped. "Dharma?" Tycho had no reaction to the name, naturally. "Madam Blanche. She already helped us more than you know. She was the one who delayed the shutdown of STHEREA, she fought one of the champions in one of Exeter's own buildings! And she knows who I am. Whoever these people are, they will want to contact her too." And from there it would all snowball until all his friends knew about the situation: that's what Charles counted on. "Dharma? You mean.. Dharma Bonnet? Little Bonnet?" Though there were a few leftover facts to add to his expectations: facts spoken by Cherry. "Dharma Bonnet?" Charles did not know Dharma's last name, but she did? "You never looked her up? You never watched the junior league? She's been dueling on live television ever since they introduced fusion monsters! She's basically a celebrity! Though I am surprised that she can just waltz into the company apparently." The jaded girl revealed just how little Charles actually knew. Was that why the interrogator smiled when he said her name.
"Well, assuming she hears about this at all. What good does it do for us? Why would you two even help me?" Cherry said. She and Void had never really been on the same side. "Because keeping us trapped in here is not going to help anyone out there. And no matter what you did, you don't deserve this either." Charles did not care about whoever his old enemies were, he only saw one enemy now. "What I did? What about him? What's his angle anyway? You hated Exeter didn't you?"
"I already gave him my story. I am not repeating it out loud in this prison! Because I bet Exeter is tied to this place as well!" He replied as he glared at every corner of his cell. "Exeter? But they're being investigated right now." Charles could not see the company doing their own interrogations whilst being interrogated. "Are you blind as well? Exeter is more then the company! Officials wont even scratch the surface! The things I brought up about them were already buried immediately after I talked about it online! Nobody probably even remembers me, or misses me! But I will get out of here one way or another! So I don't want you to speak for me, Charles. I work alone."
A long lull in the conversation followed. "And I would have won that duel." Until Tycho returned to a more recent topic. "Seriously?" Charles could not believe what he was hearing. "You might have survived that turn, but you were almost out of monsters and mine could negate whatever you wanted to send out." But Tycho made himself very clear. "Well we'll never know now, will we?" Charles just rolled his eyes. He almost preferred the interrogator over his company.
"Wait? You two were dueling? Like, with dueldisks?" Cherry followed the two with an exasperated expression. "I may not have been dueling for long, but I know it is a measurement of skill even in the real world. And my skill does not stop just because I am no longer online. You should have some pride too." Tycho scoffed. "Sure. I'll get right on that." Her response of course came laced with sarcasm. "What do you think will happen? They're gonna accept a duel from you to see if you can walk or not? At best they're just gonna wring more answers out of you before they get tired of us and put us on trial or whatever. Honestly, you're better off trying to get some sleep while you can. Who knows when they're coming back."
"Sleep huh.." Charles could not even tell what hour it was anymore, they took everything he used to keep track of time with. Was that really the best he could do? Cherry did not want to say anything anymore and even Tycho looked resigned. "..." He did not want to give in either, but eventually... exhaustion defeated him. He drifted away into a deep sleep, dreaming of places he would rather be and people he would rather see. But the dreams never felt real, they only felt like torment. His mind wanted to escape but the body held him back. And before he could even forget about his situation, the dream died and he woke up. Not because he wanted to... but because they came, just like Cherry said they would. The same men in black from before demanded his presence. Tycho was gone already. Where did they take him? Where they going to be moved again?
He never felt more helpless than now.
"I hope you had a nice rest." He arrived in front of the same interrogator. "Did you dream well? Anything to excite the memories?" The man already had his questions lined up, odd questions as well. "No..." Thinking back, Charles could only remember two sequences out of the many that passed his sleep. One involved him being back at his own home, the other involved Madam Blanche standing on a random stage. Neither were things he thought were worth mentioning. "Why do you want to know? Have my friends said anything yet?" Topics like that only made him impatient; they were wasting time. "Not yet. Neither has your family." The interrogator claimed, and Charles did not believe that. "What about Anders Green?" He was just guessing, but the former wielder of the World Crown would likely have been detained in a place like this as well.
"First we must we must finish a couple of tests. We have plenty of time." The man moved to the end of the table and pulled back a tarp to reveal a few objects. "Do you know what these are?" There lied his entire STHEREA kit: the headset, the demo visor, Tycho's dueldisks and his cards. "..Of course I do." Charles had no idea what they wanted from him now. "Good. Then put it on."
"On?" He winced. "We need to verify a certain element of your story. If you truly were banished from the network, then this device will not function for you. Rest assured, STHEREA is still in one piece. We know the shutdown did not affect it and your assertions of immanent catastrophe have thus far been proven needless. So, you can either put it on yourself. Or we will force it on you." The man slid the headset over to Charles. "...Nothing will happen." Charles claimed. "Then you have nothing to fear." The man smiled back. "..So you say." He took a deep breath and placed the device over his head. He knew that nothing he tried would work, just like the last time. But a part of him hoped otherwise, hoped that he could just close his eyes and be somewhere else. He almost got away with imagining it, feeling a rush of energy as he started his routine. "...See?" But no matter what button he pushed or input he gave, he stayed the same and the world stayed the same.
"Yes, it seems that part of your story is correct. Your friend Rivers and miss Kelly have given the same results. Thank you, mister Adami. That will be all for now." The man nodded at the mirror to the left of the interrogation room, signaling for the men to come take him away again. "Wait? That was it!? What about Anders? What about Static?" Charles yelled as the door behind him opened. "Anders is not with us anymore. He has told us everything we needed to know weeks ago. Your name never came up. You do seem to know more than the average Millennium member, but you have reached your limit of what you can tell us. So.."
"There is a third one!" Charles cried out as he reached the end of his wits.
"Hm? A third one.. of what?" This got the mans attention and he raised his hand to stop the guards. "Static, Echo, there is a third being like them!" Even if they did not believe in Static, they knew Echo existed. And clearly, judging by the mans serious expression, they believed him about this too. "I'll need to confer with my superiors about this, mister Adami." He grunted and adjusted his tie. "Superiors? Who do you work for? What do you want from us? Where.."
"Who.." Charles stammered and shook his head. "Is everything alright?" The man looked behind him, noticing the trailing gaze of his subject. "...It was nothing. I just thought.." Charles lied. His eyes went wide for a reason: he saw something. But no one else did, and he lost sight of it as well. "That you saw something? Yes, that is a good reaction. I believe we may have some use for you yet, mister Adami. We'll call for you again soon. We'll see to your every need in the mean time." Just like that, they got rid of him again. He ended up back in the same cell as before, with the only difference being the breakfast served to him on plastic plates. Tycho was returned too, as if nothing changed.. But something did.
...
"Let me guess, they asked you to show that you cant go back on the network anymore." Cherry asked eventually, staring at him and Tycho with her head on her hands. "That's not a guess, is it?" Tycho grunted. "No. They asked me the same thing yesterday. Not sure why they bother. No way they actually want to help us, and their help is not gonna do anything anyway." She shrugged. "Wont it? They seemed receptive to what I wanted to say, though they are still taking their sweet time. And..." Charles said, still reeling from what just happened. "Did any of you.. see or feel anything after they did the test?" He had many more questions than before. "Huh? What are you on?" Tycho obviously did not share his experiences. "Just now, when I looked at the interrogator, I saw a flash.. I thought I saw a monster, from the game. I couldn't tell which one, but for a second it was there as clear as anyone else in that room. Nobody had anything like that happen to them?" He looked at the others, and they could only shake their heads. "Just me then. I must be going crazy. Then again so is everyone else." They might as well have been inmates in an asylum.
"Hmph. For once I agree. Their questions are ludicrous, why do they care what my dreams are about?" Tycho shouted something that Charles did not expect. "Dreams?" Not the part about him agreeing with another, but the rest of the sentence. "Wait? You too?" Even Cherry noticed. "What? they asked you the same thing? What could they possibly learn from that?" Tried as he might, the fiery duelist could not make heads or tails of it. "Tycho. What did you dream about?" Charles on the other hand grew curious. Why did this pattern exist? "Now you too? Why should I answer you?" He refused to cooperate, which is what Charles expected. But if the hunch paid off, Charles would not have to force it out of him. "Did you dream about my house? Or about Blanche? Or about anyone else that you and me both know?"
"How did you.. how did you know about that?" That got Tycho's attention, it even spooked him. "About that? About which part?" Cherry just digested the conversation between the two with slight fascination. "All of it!" He screamed.
"I didn't. Those were just the things I dreamed about. Is it possible that we shared a dream, Tycho?" Charles finally revealed. "Why would I... Shared? How? What does that mean?" The frazzled duelist demanded an explanation. "I don't really know. Maybe your mind connected with mine because we both went through the same nightmare world that Ezra created. Allthough that does not explain why we both saw Blanche and the others." Memories could not account for everything, and this certainly could not be a coincidence either. "Unless.. what we saw was not.. a dream. What if the things we saw were events happening in STHEREA, right now?"
"That's impossible! STHEREA is just a game!" Tycho contended loudly. "Guess again, Alpha." Cherry casually asserted. "Ezra at least.. did not put me through the same torture as he did to you two. So I have no clue what you saw in those dreams. But Ezra showed me, many times, that the network was .. is.. so much more than a virtual game. That world gets into your brain, uses it for or against you. And maybe all of this is just withdrawal symptoms." She did not see how it could help them in the long run either way. "No. It feels like more than that. I think that we are, in some way, still connected. Static told me that STHEREA is just one layer away from the realm of the subconscious. Which means it is closer to our dreams than our reality. Maybe if we focus, we can actually use the dreams to your advantage." Charles theorized. "Oh yeah? How?" Tycho muttered. "These people are not here to help us or to contact my friends. So if we cannot reach them up here, maybe we can get to them through the subconscious connection. It may be our only way out of here... Then again..."
"I am beginning to think that this is what these people are after in the first place.."
(To Be Continued in Line 125)