Volume 2 Chapter 14: Enhanced Interrogation

AN: Fun fact of the day: whenever this story came out, I initially was uploading a new chapter every day. Something that it appears I'll be doing something similar to for the immediate future. Dear lord, even if I had forgotten why I'd stopped with that upload schedule two weeks in, this is definitely a good reminder.

Also, in case it somehow needs to be said, I (fortunately) have exactly zero experience with torture, either dealing or receiving. So, sorry if this comes off as unrealistic. Although, if you know enough about the stuff that you can tell how hilariously unrealistic it is… do me a favor and don't tell me.

On with the story, I guess.

(Perspective: Kassidy)

Consciousness returned slowly, and agonizingly, but still it came. Of course, at the moment Kassidy would very much rather be unconscious rather than conscious, especially when opening her eyes gave her more or less the same view as leaving them closed. She tried to fight through the immense pounding in her head, trying to remember and piece back together the immediate past.

Whenever she'd gotten to… wherever they were, a pair of Atlesian Knights had thrown a bag over her head before marching her down what she assumed to be a long, twisting series of halls. After, nearly ten minutes later, they'd finally removed the bag, she was left puzzled by the fact that they weren't in front of anywhere to keep her: no room, nothing, just a bare, plain wall. Of course, it wasn't just a plain wall, as the robot to her right pressed a button and caused a previously unnoticed panel to slide away, revealing… well, calling it a cell was far too generous. You might think that twenty seven cubic feet was a generous amount of room, but Kassidy's opinion on the matter changed abruptly when they spun her around and quite literally crammed her into the box built into the wall, not even bothering to undo her handcuffs. It seemed to be a miracle that she had even fit, but eventually they had managed to squeeze her in enough to slide the panel back in place.

And that was how Kassidy managed to find herself in a three foot by three foot by three foot hole in the wall, with a ledge extending halfway out and up serving as the crudest bench imaginable. Her forehead was pressed into the front of the "room" even while the top of her head cracked on the ceiling every now and then and her knees knocked into her chin. Her arms, still handcuffed and with her wrists sporting bloody welts from her fruitless struggles, were viciously pinned between her back and the rear wall. Her legs were similarly immobile, hedged in on all sides from the walls as well as the rest of her. She could feel, above and behind her, that an air vent provided her with a steady supply of fresh air, at least. Of course, it was hot air, so it's felt like she's been locked in the world's worst sauna for the past… alright, how long have I been in here for, again? Keeping track of the time was basically the only thing Kassidy could do to try and keep her sanity in here. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on which mood swing she happened to be on), her captors had made it almost agonizingly easy to do so.

Every six hours, that Agent Burnes asshole would come by and ask her questions. During the first few times, he stuck to keeping his questions about the bombing. Kassidy was quick to tell him everything… well, almost everything. She left the part about Yang's involvement out, hoping against hope that they had no reason to lock her up as well. Assuming, of course, that they didn't already have her. After that, the questions became focused elsewhere. Kassidy shook her head as best she could, banging her head against the walls repeatedly in the process, in an effort to escape the tangent and get back to focusing on how much time had elapsed. Every six hours, they'd interrogate her. After the fourth interrogation, they'd figured out just how excruciatingly painful electrocution was to Kassidy; they proceeded to the obvious thing after that, which was giving her electric shocks every sixty minutes. She wasn't even sure where or how they were doing it. She just knew that she could probably set a clock to the fact that once an hour, she'd be ripped out of her own head and into an existence of pain. It simply stood to reason, then, to add up the number of interrogations she's had, plus the number of times she'd been zapped since the last one, to figure out how long she'd been in here.

Forty seven hours. For forty seven hours, she'd been locked in this hole. Over those forty seven hours, not once has the door in front of her opened. She hadn't eaten once. She hadn't showered once. She hadn't been allowed to move once; at this point, even the cramps had stopped as her body just gave up with ever changing her position. The only restroom breaks she got were when her control over her bladder finally failed. The closest thing they'd allowed her to sleep was the brief bouts of electricity-enforced unconsciousness every hour. What was far more worrying, however, was that she hadn't gotten anything to drink either. If the Rule of Three could be believed – and it could very much be believed – a person could only survive three days without water. Kassidy was currently about to finish her second day without it. By all reasonable guesses, she currently had less than twenty four hours to live. The most elementary, if also most incorrect, reasoning would lead her to believe that there was an easy way out of this: just tell them what they wanted. But, Kassidy determined, that wasn't an option. After the first two interrogations, they abandoned the terrorist attack in favor of one thing.

They wanted her computer. Sometimes, they asked for Bob's specifications, trying to glean how they could build a similar machine themselves. More often, they demanded his access codes. Either way, they wanted something that Kassidy could not, under any circumstances, allow them to possess. Given enough motive, Bob arguably had more computing power than every other system on the face of Remnant put together. If truly unleashed, he could singlehandedly hold the entire planet hostage, basically ignoring every security system out there. That was not something Kassidy wanted in the hands of people willing to shove her into a glorified dumbwaiter and try to electrocute the answers out of her. Hell, she didn't want them to have that kind of power even if they hadn't done that. That was the kind of power she trusted absolutely nobody with; not even herself, half the time, which is why Bob's most exotic and devastating routines were hid behind three different layers of access codes on top of the rather absurd security he had in the first place, to prevent her from just using them on a simple whim. It was for this that they tortured her. They electrocuted her. They piped noxious, bordering on toxic, fumes into the room. They chilled it as cold as a freezer, and heated it like the inside of a furnace. And all the while, they would not be quiet. All the while, that damn Burnes character kept asking the questions. The infernal questions that just would not stop!

Despite all of this, this was not the worst torture Kassidy had to endure. No, what drug her repeatedly to the brink of insanity – and, she suspected, maybe off of said brink once or twice – was simply a lack of information. Where was Yang? Had she managed to get out? Had they drug her into this hellhole of a situation? Was her girlfriend currently locked in a hole in the wall? Was Yang forced to endure everything they threw at her? Was Burnes asking her the same questions? Different? Was Yang languishing in the wall, kept company only by the electricity, the questions, and the increasingly festering stench of her own sweat and urine pooling on the floor? Kassidy snapped up – and managed to crack her head painfully against the ceiling in the process. So many of those she asked herself were the same question. Surely not already…? But, no, already she had trouble remembering exactly what was asked, what was said, during even the last interrogation. Was delirium already setting in?

"Hope you're awake, you little bitch." Kassidy flinched from the incredibly loud speaker projecting sound right next to her ear, before immediately closing her eyes and falling as still as she could. She'd managed to glean that, somehow, there was a camera, a microphone, and a speaker somewhere on her side of the door; that probably also meant that there was a display screen, microphone, and speaker somewhere on their end, wherever their end happened to be. Maybe if she played dead, they'd leave her alone? Just this once? Her hopes were dashed when the speaker blared again. "Hmph, maybe not. Oh well, no worries, this should be sure to wake you up. Don't say I didn't warn you."

It took a little while for Kassidy to figure out what exactly he'd meant by that… and she really wish she hadn't found out. It didn't take long for her to start choking on thin air. It took even less time for even her delirium-riddled brain to piece together that she was suffocating. Almost immediately, Kassidy's faculties nearly fled her, and it took a truly herculean effort on her part to keep from panicking, her knowledge of physiology being her only lifeline to lucidity. The human body started suffocating not with a lack of oxygen, but with an excess of carbon dioxide. If they could pipe far more dangerous stuff in here earlier, stuff that she should have had no right to survive if not for Project Colossus, it stood to reason that it was a probably simple matter to pipe excess carbon dioxide in with the air she usually got. I will not be broken. They still need me alive for Bob's codes. Surely they wouldn't… wait. Did the vent turn off? I can't feel any more air coming in. But… no! They can't kill me yet! It doesn't make sense! It doesn't-

Here was the most recent occurrence of reason fleeing young Kassidy Smith. She spat; she swore; she begged; she pleaded; she promised deaths with untold magnitudes of pain if they didn't let her out this instant. For ten minutes, she was a quivering, babbling mess, always panicking over whether this breath would be her last, whether it still had the oxygen she needed. An agonizing eternity later, Kassidy's head slumped against the door panel, as the excess carbon dioxide evidently was removed from her air supply. The vent above her started pumping in her usual blazing air at full blast, and she greedily gulped down great breaths that didn't prompt a suffocation instinct.

"Ah, you're awake, good, now we can begin." Burne's damned voice came back over the speakers, dashing her fleeting thought processes into pieces as he began the most recent interrogation. "Look, despite all I've heard about how smart you are, you're apparently too stupid to figure out how things work around here. So, let me explain this to you real nice and simple: either you tell me what I want to know, or you keep choking on thin air. Understand? Good. Now, let's start with something easy: we know your computer has two different levels of access codes. Your executive override code is the lower level code. What is your executive override code?"

"Why, exactly," Kassidy managed to gasp out, "should I… trust you… with that?"

"Wrong answer." With the damning words from the voice on the other end of the line, the air seemed to turn off again, and again a ten minute period of time was spent suffocating on absolutely nothing. If Kassidy had her full faculties, she would've noted that Burnes was actually humming over the speaker while watching her panic and thrash in the room, reopening the scabs on her wrists and earning a few bruises in the process. When it finally ended, and she finally caught her breath, he continued as if nothing had ever happened. "And the reason why you should trust us with this is that we'd use it to protect people. Unlike yourself, we actually have morals."

"… is irony overload part of your torture program? I think the amount of irony in that last sentence made me sprain my brain."

The man on the other side of the speaker continued as if she hadn't said a thing. "While the Grimm continue to be an ever-present threat, the White Fang – the White Fang you've singlehandedly antagonized into a frenzy, I might add – have terrorized, bombed, and murdered our citizens for far too long. Your computer's full power will give us everything we could possibly need to root the bastards out. While you're content to use one of the most powerful forces on the planet to rob bank accounts and play vigilante, we'd actually put him to good use finding an effective solution to the terrorist attacks in our Kingdom. We'd be making the citizens of Vale safer. It's kind of our job, in case you haven't noticed."

"Yeah," Kassidy wheezed. "Because… I feel… so safe… right now…"

"Well aren't you an ungrateful little brat. You do realize that if the Grimm somehow busted in here, you're literally in the most protected area in this whole building, right? Why –" Burnes' brief monologue got interrupted, though when Kassidy strained her ears she could've sworn she'd heard another voice in the background. The speaker resumed trying to make her eardrums bleed a few seconds later, though, when the guy spoke back up. "Alright, looks like there's a new plan, and hoo boy are you going to like this one. Last chance to do this the easy way – what are your codes?"

This time, Kassidy elected for the 'say nothing' approach, and after several seconds of this the sound of Brunes clicking his tongue could be heard. "So disappointing. Just remember, you brought this on yourself. Sleep tight."

The instant those words were finished, another electric shock ripped through her cell, tearing Kassidy from herself and replacing her world with yet more pain.

When she awoke again, Kassidy had found that her situation had radically changed and, dare she say, improved. No longer was she in the box. Instead, she found herself hefted between two bodies – actual people, this time, and not robots. Neither of them said a word, neither of them offered a meaningful glance at their faces, and so Kassidy was forced to simply idly watch as they drug her through corridor after corridor and limply struggle against the handcuffs she was still wearing. She was tired, she was hungry, she was absolutely disgusting, and above all she was so thirsty. Honestly, those first three things might as well have been a non-issue; even if she hadn't been through worse of each of those in the past, the sheer sensation of thirst drowned them out half the time. Add on to the fact that she had so many questions… not the least of which being where Yang was and how she was doing.

While the questions surrounding her girlfriend went unanswered as the doors in front of them were swung open, quite a few more were answered. A rather heavy-set man in quite the opulent suit turned around from his seat at a table. His eyes glared at hers for the briefest of moments, before turning to the man to her right. "Special Agent Burnes, thank you for your work so far."

Kassidy managed to instantly recognize the man even in her current state, and interrupted any conversation they were about to have. "Councilman Jay Winchester. Perhaps you could fill me in as to my complete and utter lack of surprise that you're the one trying to make me disappear."

If Jay were in any way perturbed that she recognized him on sight, he didn't show it. Instead, he merely chuckled. "Trying to make your disappear? Why would you think I'd try that? Clearly, I've succeeded." When Kassidy's eyes widened, he chuckled again. "It was a simple matter, really. A brave Huntress in training had fallen in battle against the White Fang, after all. After I had personally delivered the news to what remains of your team, they were quite willing to believe anything I had to say. But, enough of that. We're not here to talk about them. We're here to talk about you."

"You… Yang?" Kassidy's brief and all-consuming numbness was quickly replaced by anger, fiery and absolutely murderous. Drawing upon what little strength she had left, she thrashed against her captors in a desperate bid to reach the man. "You killed Yang?! I'll fucking kill you!"

She didn't get very far, however. The guy on her left stomped on her knee, nearly dislocating it in the process. Burnes, to her right, punched her in the gut as hard as he could, to the point where she would've lost her lunch if she'd had anything to eat at all in the past couple days. She collapsed to her knees, wheezing and coughing her lungs up, and nearly missed Jay walking up to her. He got down on a knee himself, took her chin in his massive hand, and forced her to look at him. "You don't seem to be in much position to do anything. But, enough. Time is short, and we have much to discuss. Get on your feet."

As the two men started dragging her through the room behind the councilman, Jay continued. "I must admit, you've proven unusually resilient. A product of Project Colossus, I suppose. Even subjecting you to a nerve agent barely made you flinch. However… there are other ways of making one talk. For instance, a little birdie told me that a certain someone is afraid of water."

Almost as if his speech had been timed with their pace, they had reached the doors on the other side. Burnes pushed the door open ahead of them, and Kassidy gasped at what she saw in the darkened room. A table with a multitude of straps. A washcloth. Many, many buckets of water.

Everything needed for a waterboarding setup.

"It is pointless to resist, Miss Smith," Jay said. "Everyone breaks in the end. It's merely a question of time."

"I don't break," Kassidy spat back, trying to dig up the last dredges of her defiance. Even when they undid her cuffs, only to throw her to the table and start strapping her to it, she did her best to keep her breathing even. She couldn't break. The fact that they couldn't get into Bob was the only reason she was still alive. Breaking meant dying. Staying strong meant surviving. And above all, Kassidy Smith was a survivor.

"You might not," Jay freely admitted, in a move that surprised her. "But computer security… even the best can be broken. Burnes, warm her up."

"With pleasure," the man replied. Leaning over to give Kassidy full view of a toothy grin, he snarked, "Well, you absolutely stink. Looks like somebody needs a bath. How about we fix that?" With that, a cloth was pressed over her face, and a bucket was slowly upended over her. For a brief second, maybe even two, Kassidy felt like she could hold her breathing steady, avoid the sheer terror that yielded her fear of water in the first place. That hope was ruined, though, when something slammed hard into her chest, making her lungs spasm. And thus, her composure was completely ruined, as her lungs began filling with water and she desperately tried to evacuate them.

"Alright, Burnie, that's enough for now," Jay ordered. He waited several minutes for Kassidy to clear out her lungs to some extent, then began leafing through a manila folder he'd been carrying with you. "Ahem, like I was saying earlier, even the best computer security can be broken. Bob, was it, was certainly an impressive adversary, but even he cannot resist my will. And he has so many interesting things in his memory. A father, a brother… why, a whole planet that you left to die. And why was that, Kassidy? Was it all to spite this Benjamin Alcot person? Are you truly that petty?" Drinking in the wide, pale face she stared at him with, Jay drew in closer. "Make no mistake, Kassidy, you are a menace to society and the worst monster I've ever had the displeasure of coming across that isn't the Grimm. Even when you aren't letting common criminals blow up population centers, like this Chicago here… why, how many dozens have you killed these past few weeks? You are exactly the kind of threat I swore to protect the kingdom of Vale from."

Kassidy was reeling. They cracked Bob? No, impossible. Not only was he beyond state of the art even for Earth tech, the fact that Bob was such a powerful AI gave him the ability to dynamically alter his own defenses in response to an attack. Even if, heaven forbid, a more powerful computer tried to brute force its way into his systems, Bob could just as easily change the passwords as alter his settings as simply shutting off his own power. And yet, where else could they know even a fraction of the information Councilman Winchester was throwing in her face?

It took many, many agonizing seconds longer than it normally would for Kassidy to find the answer to that question. The simulator, of course! Her father, Matthew, Benjamin… it was all in that damned simulation that made her run out into Vale! Not exactly public knowledge, of course, but if one knew where to look…

"What do you want," Kassidy finally asked. "If you've finally cracked my computer, I don't know what you still need me for."

"Clever girl," Jay praised. "You see, while we have access to his full commands, your computer's subroutines are still slowing him down substantially, hindering our efforts. Now, if we were to have certain access codes…"

"Indeed, that would make your job easier," Kassidy agreed. "So, you've cracked my computer, my girlfriend is dead, everyone thinks I'm dead, and basically all hope is gone, is that right?" When Jay nodded, Kassidy's brow furrowed and her eyes hardened. "Except I'm not convinced of that. I'm going to need more than something you could've just gotten from a camera somewhere. Something only Bob would know."

The shit-eating grin her captor gave would've won a shit eating contest, if indeed such a thing actually existed. "By all means, ask away."

Kassidy closed her eyes, dug down, and hoped this wasn't a massive, massive mistake. "What was my sister's name?"

Jay's eyes widened almost comically, but he got the reaction under control quickly. He consulted with his Scroll for a moment, then confidently answered, "I should have known you'd go for a trick question. You never had a sister."

"That is correct. I did not have a sister." Jay's grin threatened to return in full force, but fell once again when Kassidy again asked, "What was her name?"

"We just established that you never had a sister; ergo, she did not have a name."

Rather than rise to the bait, Kassidy simply gazed at Jay. "If you cannot tell me my sister's name, then you have not beaten my computer's security."

Jay opened his mouth to respond, but all in the room froze when a new voice spoke up, at once familiar and utterly terrifying. "That is enough. Unhand Miss Smith at once."

All the room's occupants turned to look at the opening doors; well, almost all of them, seeing as Kassidy was currently kept from moving her head any. Still, it was hard to miss the voice that had boomed out, or the various grunts and growls of the three people accompanying him. Jay, for his part, also recognized their visitor. "Headmaster Ozpin. This isn't your jurisdiction."

"Even if not, it is mine, seeing as you're the one who personally invited me to Vale to beef up security," a new voice said. Numerous, numerous bootfalls heralded the arrival of more visitors, with a certain Atlesian General at the head of the procession. "Councilman, while I was happy to lend to the Kingdom of Vale a good number of Atlesian Knights, the kidnapping of Huntresses in training were not in the terms and conditions."

Burnes suddenly leapt to his feet next to Kassidy and yelled something, but a shotgun blast that was literal music to Kassidy's ears sent him flying into the opposite wall. The weapon's owner danced into her vision immediately after, giant mess of blonde hair and fiery red eyes completing the look. "K! We found you!"

"What have you just done, girl?! Apart from assault an officer, of course!" Snarling when all eyes returned to him, Jay wheeled on Ozpin. "I told you to take care of this… this girl, Ozpin. Hell, we all did, it was a unanimous vote! We gave you ample opportunity to see this Kassidy woman disposed of properly, responsibly."

"And I once again tell you that I am not going to 'dispose' of one of my students simply because she makes you uneasy, councilman," Ozpin rebutted. Interrupting what the elder Winchester was about to say next, he continued, "However, this does appear to be an interesting situation we find ourselves in. Tell me, exactly how many laws have you broken with this little stunt of yours? Or did you simply think that you were above such things, as long as nobody remained to report on it?"

"Even you don't have the clout to remove me from my seat," Jay growled.

"No, but the courts do. And not only do we have… hmm, it appears to be five eye-witnesses here that aren't under your employ, but we also happen to have a certain tablet computer that's been recording this entire encounter."

By this point, Yang had undone all of Kassidy's straps and wrapped her up in a bone crushing hug, literally – Kassidy could've sworn she heard some ribs crack. Of course, she ignored it in favor of returning it, seeing as her girlfriend was not, in fact, dead. Ruby and even Weiss joined in on making it a group hug, and the four girls got a front row seat to Jay Winchester currently being at a loss for words. He eventually made out, "I am a pillar of this community, Ozpin! What would you have from me? You can't simply think you can have me removed just like that!"

"Maybe not," he admitted, "but you must admit that you are in a precarious situation. I propose a trade, therefore: in exchange for my silence, I was hoping you'd meet me in my office tomorrow morning, so that we may discuss the votes that will be turned in to future Council meetings."

"Professor!" Weiss gasped. "Surely you can't –"

Ozpin held a hand up to silence Weiss, returning Jay's nod before turning to the general. "James, may I trust you to ensure the safe return of my students to their dorms?"

"Of course, old friend," Ironwood replied. As Ozpin and Jay strode out of the room, and the two agents standing dumbly off to the side, the general walked up to them. "Kassidy… Bob's managed to break their systems. He informed me as to what you've been through, but… Dust, there's no way to talk about this. Are you alright?"

"No," she freely admitted. "I need -"

"Water, food, a shower, and sleep, in that order," Weiss listed out. When Kassidy twisted on the table to look at her better, Weiss gave a grimace before whispering to herself. "Oh fuck, what did they even do to you…? I think zero campaign contributions are going to be the least he'll need to worry about from the SDC, if I have anything to say about it."

"Kass?" a weak voice asked. Ruby's head tipped up to get a better look at her, silver eyes shining with tears. "Are you… no, you're not okay, you just said that… do you need help?"

Kassidy nodded, then shook her head, then shrugged. After locking with the red-rimmed eyes of her partner, she tried to get off the table… only to immediately collapse under her own weight, her legs being completely unable to support even a fraction of her. She would've hit the ground, too, if she hadn't been swept up instead. She looked up from her now reclined position to the woman in whose arms she now sat. Yang's voice broke and cracked every other word, but she was still able to get out, "Don't – don't worry about a thing, K. I'll t-take care of ya. I promise."

Kassidy could do naught but nod into Yang's shirt at this point. As the horrors her body had been through finally caught up with her, the world fell away as she again fell unconscious, this time in Yang's arms.

AN 2: So, we managed to hit 60k views while I was in the middle of writing this. In fact, now that I think about it, I completely forgot to mention when we hit 50k views. So glad I've been able to entertain so many people for so long. Really, I'd write more here, but…

Did I really just write this whole thing in thirteen hours? Well, at least I don't have to do that again. What? I need to do that two or three more times in the next four days?

Well fuck me.

Coming up next: Yang's perspective

Right after these Reviewer Responses

Captain marvel 36: Yes, it's going to be an issue. Yes, it counts as an augmentation. Yes, I've thought of it and of a solution to that particular dilemma. Good eyes, though.

AgentDraakis: Erm… not quite. Eh, she got to punch an asshole special agent, though, and Yang punching people is always a win in my book… so long as said people do not include me.