The Omega
Mutation
by Joshua Falken
Thanks to BenRG for beta read this chapter and for his patience with this writer :-D
Author's note - I want apologize by the delay in update this fic. Due a very important admission test, I had to use my time mostly to the studies, so I was forced to choose between the studies and the fic writing. But now, I intend return to writing. More of "The Omega Mutation" and "Osteogenesis Imperfecta" and another fics will come soon. :-D
Joshua Falken, January 5th, 2002
Chapter 11 - Inquisitions
General Kent Williams tried to swallow dryly, but the tight grip that the woman who had identified herself as 'Omega' had around his throat made it impossible. He was trying to control his instinctive terror and to understand what was happening. In his current circumstances, none of these tasks were easy. If the simple sight of Delilah Ketchum in that alien form hadn't already turned his blood turned into liquid helium, the effect of that sight combined with the deadly, supernatural light in her glowing serpent-like eyes...
"So? Where is my son?" Omega asked in the same tone of voice that she would use to ask what the weather forecast was for the next day.
Why, in God's name, does she think that I, of all the people, knew where her son is?
"Mrs Mrs. Ketchum, I don't understand," Williams said, trying to keep his voice level. All those lessons he had received on how to resist interrogation and get the confidence of your captors were firmly in mind. "I don't know where your son"
SLAP! Omega slapped Williams's face. She had not used enough force to break his jaw only because she needed him capable of speech. The mutant woman grabbed the stunned officer's hair with the left hand and stared into his eyes. "Don't try to insult my intelligence, General!" she hissed. "I know that you ordered Ash's kidnapping..."
What? Williams thought.
"I also know that, in some way, you used your own daughter to lure him to you."
'Your own daughter?' Williams thought, his mind locking onto this salient fact. She could only be talking about Misty! After all, she is Ash Ketchum's girlfriend, if Daisy and Lilly's gossip is anything to believe
Omega looked at directly into Williams' eyes. "Now," she whispered, "Assuming that you want to leave this room alive, if not necessarily intact... you had better tell me where you have hidden them."
General Williams' mind span as the reality of his situation became clear in a flash. My God! I am before an alien... or whatever she is... capable to destroy strongly fortified facilities in a blink of an eye, who thinks that I kidnapped her son... and my own daughter!
Omega misinterpreted Williams' stunned silence as defiance. With an angry scowl, she began to use Toxic, leeching deadly acid-like toxins from the hand wrapped around the man's throat. There was a sizzling noise and the awful, unforgettable pork-like smell of burning human flesh. Williams gasped in pain and bit his bottom lip to hold in a scream. Blood trickled down his chin from the bite.
Omega's expression did not alter in the slightest. She released her grip around Williams' throat, noting the horrible burns she had left from her attack. She began to massage her knuckles like a prizefighter and repeated her question. "Where are they, General? Where is my son and your daughter?"
Williams growled weakly. The toxins from the Toxic attack had given him a headache, and that was doing nothing for his infamous temper. "I don't know of what are you talking about!" he shouted. What else could he say?
Omega rolled her eyes. "Why do you military types always insist on doing this the hard way?" she asked. Suddenly, she was punching the man's face and body with blurring speed and stunning force. After a minute of beating, Omega stood back and watched the blood running from the man's nose, noting the heavy bruising all over his face and chest. She hated every minute of this, but she had to remember Ash and Misty Especially Ash "Okay, General," she said. "Now you know the penalty for not co-operating, tell me where they are!"
Williams couldn't see from blood leaking into his right eye from a cut on his brow, but his mind was still assured. "I'm telling you that don't know, you blue-skinned Gorgon!" the black-haired man shouted angrily.
Omega's right eyebrow shot up. Blue-skinned Gorgon? Omega repeated silently. He was creative; she had to give him that much. She had always wondered how the usually demure and peaceful Misty had got her fierce temper. Now she knew.
"Thank you for the praise," she said sarcastically. "Now, if you have finally finished demonstrating your stubborn streak, tell me where you are hiding them!" She gently wiped a little of the blood from the man's brow and looked at him with a mocking smile. Playing this role from a bad movie was frankly embarrassing, but sometimes you just had to give people what they expect if you want results.
Williams closed his eyes, unable to believe her sarcasm and lack of shame. Omega noted that her basic interrogation methods weren't working at all. She had no choice but to use other means. Her black-slitted eyes began to glow. "Tell me, General," she remarked thoughtfully, "have you ever read 'The Lord of the Rings'?"
The military officer looked confused. What she was talking about?
Omega reached out psychically and began to use Nightmare, using one for her favourite sections of her favourite book. "I call this one 'Orc Attack.'"
Suddenly, Williams' heartbeat and breathing accelerated. Pale-skinned, horrifically ugly semi-reptilian creatures waving sharp bladed weapons and firing deadly barbed arrows at him were chasing him in an endless underground warren. Just as the arrows were about to turn him into a human pin cushion, Williams was sitting in the chair again, staring at Omega. Whatever that was, she had somehow tapped into the most primal fears in the human psyche. His breathing and heartbeat were only beginning to slow down. He could smell the tang of urine and realised it was coming from himself.
"Are are you enjoying yourself you sadistic bitch?" Williams spat out, as he looked up into Delilah Ketchum no 'Omega's' glowing green eyes. He was drenched in sweat and was panting hard in panic.
"Enjoy?" Delilah asked with a snort. "Let me turn that question around, General. Did you enjoy kidnapping your own daughter as bait to capture my son?"
"You crazy freak of nature!" he shouted, showing the legendary temper of the Williams family. "Why can't you understand that I don't have anything to do with this?" The man sucked in a deep breath before continuing. "I would never hurt Misty! Never! My girls are all that I have left of Rose I I could never bear to see any of them hurt I" The man's head lowered and Delilah could swear that she could hear his breathing break up into sobs.
Delilah stepped away from her prisoner for a moment and had to hug herself hard. She felt like shit for doing this. While he had been unconscious, she explored Williams' disciplined mind to try to get the information she sought. And to her dismay she felt that, in different circumstances, she could like him, maybe even more than that. Now she was inflicting pain on this man and inflicting psychic terror on him to the point where he was losing all control of his body. To her surprise, her hands were shaking and she felt that crystalline tears were trying to escape her eyes and run down her cheeks.
Oh, she had done this before. Hell, she had done far worse, but that was when she was still Agent Omega of Team Rocket. At that time, however, the vicious devices that the Organisation used to keep her under control had enslaved her mind. She had no excuses this time. She, Delilah Ketchum, Delia Darkholme, was consciously torturing this man before her. Surely this made her the villain of the story, now...
Then Delilah's eyes fell on the picture of Ash at his victory in the Orange Challenge Cluster, two long years ago. This is for Ash, she reminded herself. She would do anything to protect him, anything at all. She didn't have to worry about losing her soul. She had lost that many years ago. I probably could be Mordor's new Dark Queen, she thought. Delilah turned back to her prisoner. "Where is Ash?" she repeated.
"I DON'T KNOW!" Williams nearly screamed.
Omega's eyes narrowed. The voice was eerily calm. Her face was expressionless.
"All right, then," she said coldly. "Just remember that the choice was yours."
She walked over to the window that was the only light source of the room and closed the blinds. Now, Omega and Williams were in total darkness. She turned back and stood behind the sweating military officer. She had hoped that the fear-inducing pheromones that her body produced continually while she was at her default form, with some physical "special effects", would break Williams into telling her Ash and Misty's whereabouts. That hope had not been borne out. Now, the time had come to move beneath the surface of Williams' mind. Deep inside, we all have irrational fears and demons that dominate our subconscious thinking processes. She had to use those against her prisoner now.
Silently, she held one of her hands either side of his head. Reaching out with her psychic powers, she began to probe at Williams' fear responses. To her surprise, she almost immediately found a particularly strong response. She probed at it and found a memory
"Kent! Kent, why don't you play in Grandma's garden?"
"Yes, Mommy!"
Delilah stepped forward into the dream world and watched as the four-year-old who would one day be General Kent Williams tore through the back door of a middle-sized suburban house. From the flora, she assumed that this was somewhere in Johto. This must be one of those life-defining moments that we all retain from our childhoods. Delilah was curious as to why it was associated with the fear emotion
Kent ran excitedly into the big garden, laughing happily. In between the back patio area where his paternal grandparents' garden shed also stood, and the main grassy area of the garden was a Shinto-style wooden arch. Without slowing down a bit, Kent charged through the archway and felt something invisible but clinging grabbing at him.
Instinctively, the boy reeled back and began to twist, trying to get free. To his horror, the near-invisible strands of sticky silk tangled around him further. The boy cried out in terror, stumbled and fell back, his upper body now totally entangled with silk. "Mommy! Daddy! Help me! Help meee!"
"Spinarak!" hissed an inhuman voice. As the terrified boy looked on, a massive (to him) bug-type Pokémon climbed down from behind the arch and leapt onto his chest. From his close perspective, Kent could clearly see the creature's venom-laced fangs and tearing mouthparts as the Pokémon glared at him emotionlessly. This touched something very primitive in the boy's hindbrain. The terror of a creature ensnared by a potential predator. He screamed loudly.
Behind him, the back door was thrown open as Kent's parents and grandparents came tearing out. "Oh my God! Kent, baby!" Kent's mother screamed.
The Spinarak hissed dangerously at the adult humans and reared up, ready to utilise a Poison Sting attack. "Go Growlithe!" Kent's father shouted, releasing his fire-type dog. "Use Ember on that Spinarak!"
From Kent's perspective, the fireball barely missed his nose, but it struck the Spinarak full on and knocked it off of his chest. His mother grabbed him and pulled him along the ground. The Spinarak finally used Poison Sting, but on Growlithe, who was strong enough to resist such an attack. Another Ember attack struck the bug-type, knocking it onto its' back. It struggled for a moment as Kent's father pulled out a Pokéball and threw it at the wild Pokémon. Kent saw the flash as the Pokéball captured the weakened spider-like bug-type.
"Mommy! Mommy, it was going to eat me!" young Kent wailed as his mother tried to untangle the sticky web from around his head and shoulders.
"Shh" his mother soothed. "Don't worry, baby. We've chased it away and it won't ever hurt you again."
"P Promise?" the little boy sobbed, hugging his mother as if he wanted to burrow into her.
"I promise, baby," his mother replied.
Delilah considered this entire scene for a moment, then reached out and touched the association synapse again. She was rewarded by a near-hysterical fear response. He's an arachnophobe? Delilah asked herself in amazement. She could barely believe it: Kent Williams, one of the UNDF's top officers, a man decorated for bravery and courage in the face of incredible odds more time than she cared to count, was... scared of spiders? She had to resist the urge to laugh.
Like most people with phobias, the Williams family had sought therapy for their son, and the phobic reactions were buried deep. However, they were still there. Indeed they would never fade. Delilah pushed on the mental association harder.
Kent looked down and saw a stream of spiders crawling up his legs. He shouted in surprise and tried to shake them off, but his leg was bound to the leg of the chair and he couldn't move. "Get get them off!" he snapped.
"Get what off, General?" Delilah replied gently.
"The spiders, damn you! Get them off!" The first spider, a particularly hairy specimen, was now on Kent's chest. He could feel the needlepoint of the creature's toes gripping its' flesh as it clambered ever upwards. There were still more of them, climbing up his legs and entangling him in thick, choking cobwebs.
"Get them off me! Please!" Kent shouted.
"Why should I do that?" Delilah asked, walking around in front of her prisoner to smile humourlessly at him. "Until you tell me what I need to know, I have no reason to help you whatsoever."
"Please, God! I don't know where Misty and Ash are! I swear it!" the man was babbling. "Please believe me! Oh God, oh God! Get them off of me!"
"But they seem to like you so much," Delilah said with a sadistic smirk. The creatures were all over Kent now. One particularly large one was standing right on his face, so close that he could see every detail of the underside of its' thorax. The man opened his mouth to scream again and it climbed in to his mouth! More of them were crawling into every orifice. Kent Williams screamed like a lost soul, his body jerking and twisting as if he were suffering an epileptic fit. "Where are they, General?" Delilah shouted. "Tell me and this ends!"
"I don't know!" Kent shouted as he writhed in the grip of a legion of imaginary arachnid terrors. "I tell you I DON'T KNOW! Stop it please! Stop it! STOP IT! NOOOOOO!" The man's final desperate jerk was so powerful that he physically lifted the chair off of the ground, and only Delilah's inhumanly fast reactions stopped him from crashing painfully, perhaps with crippling force, to the floor.
Delilah immediately ceased her attack on the man. His eyes rolled up into his head and he sagged in the chair, drool trickling from the corner of his mouth. She turned away and dry heaved for a while. She didn't digest food anymore, but she would have been sick if she could have.
She looked at her catatonic prisoner for a few moments. That was more effective a terror than she had anticipated. She walked away from her prisoner, suddenly feeling the need to wash her body all over, wash until every cubic millimetre of her body was clean again. She exited the room and waited until General Williams recovered somewhat... to continue the interrogation.
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Meanwhile, three persons and a Meowth jumped over the barbed wire fence of the E. Valdez Metal Salvage, a Team Rocket-owned junkyard, in outskirts of Gunjo City's massive industrial district. The three human figures in black were Jessie Gibson, James Morgan and Mondo Treleaven.
"I knew that these Black Arachnid costumes still will be useful some day!" James commented, grinning.
"Why don't you talk less, and search more, James?" Jessie asked, adjusting the simple mask covering her face. "Mondo, are you sure that the files are here?" She looked around. A scrap yard was the last place in the world in that she search for a missing agent's personnel files...
"Yes, Miss Jessie. According to the computer, sometime after Project Omega was cancelled, all the information about Agent Delia Darkholme was transferred to another location, by the orders of the Boss himself! And this was..."
Before Mondo had the chance of finish his explanation, a growl told them that they aren't alone. Five very angry Houndours were all standing behind them, snarling fearsomely.
"Argh! Meowth Whadda we do now?" a scared Meowth asked no one in particular.
"James! Do something!" she ordered.
"Then I think that is the time to test my new assigned Pokémon," the blue-haired man said, sweating, pulling a Pokéball from his Pokébelt. "Go Vileplume!" There was a flash and a walking flower with bright red petals materialised in front of the befuddled fire/dark-types. "Use Stun Spore, Vileplume!"
"Vile PLUME!" the plant-type responded and spat an orange-yellow cloud of sparkling dust over the Houndours. The Pokémon were paralysed immediately.
"Now use Cut!" James ordered. Vileplume charged and slashed razor-sharp petals over the creatures' muzzles and they all tumbled onto their sides, knocked out.
"You've got a Vileplume?" Jessie asked in shock. James shrugged as he recalled his Pokémon to its' Pokéball. Of all the 251 Pokémon in the world, James had been assigned the same one that his psychotic ex-fiancée, Jessibelle Stephanie Waterstone, had used to torment him. Talk about wild coincidences, Jessie thought. She shook her head and went back to business.
"Okay, let do it this way," Jessie said, taking charge with her usual smoothness. "Mondo and Meowth go to the east side and James and I will go to the west side in search of this..." she grabbed a paper in her costume/cat-burglar's uniform pocket. "IndigoRail Cargo Car number 1953-ADN." They split up (with Mondo visibly upset that he couldn't go with Jessie) and searched by the scrap yard for a half-hour. Then James found, under a mountain of old cars, an old railroad cargo car. His partner's black-gloved hand cleaned the dust covered plate revealing the inscription "1953-ADN".
"WE FOU..." Jessie was about to scream when James covered her mouth with his gloved hand.
"SHHH! Some guard could hear us!" he whispered, then he began to try to open the car's door with his lock-picking skills. Meanwhile, Jessie called Mondo and Meowth through a small radio. When they arrived, James opened the lock.
Jessie entered first. With a flashlight, she found two big metal boxes, apparently completely sealed, with the Greek letter Omega in red on them. They found what they had come to get. She looked in silence to the boxes for some moments: she just needed open that and she would discover what really happened with her mother...
"HEY, WHO ARE YOU?" An angry voice comes from behind them. A huge man, in a guard's uniform, was clearly not very happy to see them...
Everything was over in an instant. Meowth leaped over to the guard and attacking with his Fury Swipes attack. Before the man had a chance to recover, James ordered his Victreebell to knock him out with Sleep Powder. While the guard lay snoozing like a contented baby, Mondo, James and Meowth carried the metal boxes outside the old railroad car, and put it on the guard's pick-up. James noticed that Jessie was painting something on the old car.
Then the redhead gone to them, take the wheel, take them outside the E. Valdez Metal Salvage, smashing down the front gates rather than trying to open them.
"Jessie, what do you wrote behind there?" Meowth asked, while holding for his dear life, while Jessie sped through the streets. Everyone was glad it was night and there wasn't much traffic on the streets, otherwise Jessie would certainly have crashed into someone or something by now.
"Oh, just a little notion of mine," she answered with a smile. What she had written (in lipstick, actually) was 'The Black Spider Gang Was Here!' Hopefully, it would slow an investigation into what had happened a little. "Now, let's get back to the balloon!" Jessie cried out, whipping off her mask.
James winced as the pick-up performed a four-wheel skid as it shot around a corner. That assumes that we live that long, he though, sweat-dropping hard.
===============
Omega was under the shower, thinking hard. She had to find a way to make Williams talk! That is the only way to find Ash! What she don't understand is how he keep saying that he didn't knew their whereabouts, after everything she done!
Maybe because he didn't kidnap them, a voice whispered in her head.
She shook her head. No, he has to know, she told herself. She began to see a possibility of another approach. Hum... he said that he couldn't bear see any of his daughters hurt... Of course, she didn't believe him; after all, he had used Misty as bait...
Omega made a decision: she didn't have hope in that course, but it worth a try, anyway. She strode out of the bathroom, with the water still dropping from her body. On the way to the room where General Williams was, her body, all of sudden and very fast, heated up to nearly the temperature of boiling water. Suddenly quite dry, Omega entered the room.
Even in the darkness, she noticed that the man was awake. Delilah decided to give him one last chance to co-operate. With her legs spread and her hands on her thighs, she leaned over him and looked at him with a mocking smile. "So, General? Did you take the chance to think about your situation? Have you finally decided to tell me where Ash and Misty are being kept?
The black-haired man just rolled his eyes. Omega sighed and walked behind him. She breathed deeply and touched the sides of his head. A hint of doubt crossed her mind. She knew that, if she made a single error, what she was about to do could easily drive him insane. Hell, she would probably go insane if she suffered something like her next physic attack... Then, she looked at Ash's picture. He was holding the Orange Challenge Cluster Trophy with his left hand, while Drake Highway, the Gym Leader of Pumello Island's Moray Eel Gym and the reigning Orange League Champion, was holding Ash's right hand aloft, acknowledging the other trainer's victory. Pikachu sitting on Ash's shoulder. Delilah remembered that she had joked with Ash that she could use the trophy as a barbell. She noticed how his eyes were bright with life and joy... Find him, a deadly part of her soul snapped. Whatever it takes is worth it. Find him.
General Kent Lanning Williams opened his eyes, and saw that he was in the Cousteau Park, close to his daughters' Pokémon Gym. What I doing here? he wondered. In that moment, he realised that there's smoke coming from the Cascade Gym! The man ran as fast as he could. "Please, let then be okay!", he prayed silently.
When he arrived there, he only found ruins. It was almost as if the Gym was destroyed by the detonation of a thermite bomb!
"Misty! Daisy! Lilly!" he yelled but no one answered. He searched although the demolished Gym, and only found their bodies. Bloody and lacerated. "No! Please, this is not happening.... Please!" He covered his face with the hands, tears pouring down his face.
"Are you crying?" A sneering voice asked.
Confused, General Williams lifted his eyes and saw... Misty standing up! But she was clearly dead, her body lacerated and burnt, blood trickling down her body.
"IT'S YOUR FAULT THAT THIS HAPPENED!" She yelled to him, at same time that Daisy, Violet and Lilly stood up, all of them genuine examples of the living dead.
Williams staggered to his feet and began to back away from the nightmare zombies walking towards him. "No" he murmured as fear and guilt filled his voice.
"YOU ARE THE ONE WHO ABANDONED US!" Daisy screamed. They were walking in his direction.
"NO! I I TRIED...! I..." he tried explain to them. Explain how guilty he felt for their mother's death. How guilty he felt for not having the courage to talk with them... to be the father that they needed after poor Rose died
"IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT!" they yelled at him, like a chorus from Hell.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Back to the reality, General Kent Williams was screaming like an innocent soul, wrongly condemned to the Hell. Omega stopped her attack immediately. The man was still crying, still murmuring the names of his daughters. A great horror struck her: A man capable of using his daughter as a tool in his strategies would never have such a violent reaction! Never! Of course, that meant that
Shaking her head, Delilah pushed forward through the man's weakened mental defences, searching his mind and his memories... She found nothing about Ash or Misty being kidnapped. However, she found a memory that made her feel sick with herself.
General Kent Lanning Williams was at the reception after Violet's wedding. He was trying very clumsily to start a conversation with his daughter, Lilly. He noticed how uneasy she felt about it. "What shows what kind of father I am..." he reproved himself silently. Then he saw her, the beautiful redhead in the midnight-blue dress.
She is really amazing! he thought. No! More than that, she is beautiful! "Hey, Lilly, who is she?" he asked, gesturing casually and trying not to appear too interested in the answer.
"Who?" his third daughter asked curiously, twisting around to see who her father had seen. "Oh! Her? She is Delilah Ketchum, Ash's mother. You know, the mother of Misty's "he is not my boyfriend" boyfriend."
"I understand." Misty has a boyfriend? He asked himself in shock. Oh well! She is sixteen after all...
"Are you interested in her, Dad?" Lilly asked, almost making her father choke on his beer.
"Uh No. No, not at all! What made you think that?"
Lilly smiled. "No reason. Just a strange idea I had."
That was more than Delilah Ketchum could handle... She fled the room and fell to her knees, dry heaves wracking her body. My God... what have I done?! she asked herself as she cowered on the linoleum...
================
While her father was undergoing the most horrifying experience in his life, Misty Williams paced to and fro inside of the cell in that she had woken up in almost six hours ago. She remembered her waking moment very clearly. A woman very nearly identical to her, wearing the uniform of UNDF major, was watching her. "I hope that you have slept well, Miss Williams," the woman said in a tone of mock courtesy.
"Who are you? What am I doing here?" Misty demanded, using her patented yell.
"Who I am is quite irrelevant," Misty's double explained with a smile. "What you should focus your mind on is this: You are under arrest on charges of helping to hide a former member of Team Rocket and a mutant enemy of Humanity. If you want my advice, I think you should choose your friends better." Then the woman left, leaving Misty alone with her thoughts: Mutant enemy of Humanity? They could only be speaking about Mrs. Ketchum! How did they discover about her mutation? That meant that Ash and his mother were in danger! But... a former member of Team Rocket? No chance! The simple idea of Delilah Ketchum working beside Jessie and James, or worse, of Butch and Cassidy, was a joke. And a very bad one! Then, suddenly, she remembered something that killed the laughter before it could leave her lips. Delilah had said to her: "Misty, dear, this isn't about you, it is about me. After everything I've gone through in my life, it is very, very difficult for me to trust anyone..." Then there was what Ash had said about his mother's past (and he had been very evasive regarding that): "My mother is afraid that certain people that know about her mutation will force her to do terrible things again, things that made her very guilty. That is the why she hides her powers. But a thing I guarantee: she already paid in full and something more for what she done while she was a slave for that people..."
My God! If Ash for "certain people" meant Team Rocket... Misty cannot finish her thought. Sounds in the corridor indicated something large was on the move. What is going on? she thought.
Through the bars, the young woman saw somebody being carried through the corridor on a stretcher. Whoever it was had been tied the stretcher as if they were a dangerous lunatic or something. The person was a boy, whose brown eyes were glazed from the effects of immunosupressor drugs and tranquillisers injected continually in his blood stream; a 13-year-old boy with messy black hair that shook as if he were suffering from a fever. Misty recognised him immediately.
"ASH!" Instinctively, Misty stretched out the arm through the bars to reach him. One of the soldiers lashed out with the butt of his Eradicator rifle, crushing her hand against the cell door. Misty cried out in pain and pulled her arm back.
While she massaged her right hand, she saw Ash disappear down the corridor.
=============
General Jeffrey Archer Straker, regional commander of Sector Athena and commander of the Clearview Valley Base in Johto, strode quickly in the room, where Doctor Thomas Sanders and Major Sandra Stormer were waiting for him.
"So? Is he ready?"
"Not yet, General. It will still take five minutes for his system to metabolise enough of the tranquillisers so that he can be interrogated."
The black-haired man snorted. He didn't understand where his perfect plan had failed! He didn't think that Omega would move to the offensive so quickly, first destroying the UN Defense Forces bases in the Orange Islands and, then, kidnapping Williams! It is true that Straker didn't care with what she might do to that softhearted idiot, but... He was still a brother UNDF officer. Worse still, the ease with which Williams was kidnapped was putting a lot of pressure on Sector Athena. As the General Secretary had rightly asked: What reason did the United Nations's member states have to fund a specialised anti-terrorist force if it couldn't even protect one of the UNDF's own senior officers?
Through the window of the observation room, he saw Omega's offspring secured into the chair that formed part of the Mind Sifter interrogation machine. Right now, he needed the boy's testimony more than ever. Straker was proud of his Poker face. He could keep the same expression if he were complimenting a lady on her dress or if he were ordering the assassination of a terrorist leader, so no one could see the torment in his heart. The thought of using the Sector Athena's most powerful (and most illegal) interrogation apparatus on a thirteen-year-old turned his stomach. Get over it man, he told himself firmly. He's not a 'boy.' He IT is some kind of hybrid Pokémon, nothing more.
The five minutes had passed. "Begin the interrogation." he ordered.
================
Sleep. Cold. His arms and legs could not move. Shadows in doctors' and soldiers' uniforms. Cold. Weakness. Sleep with hallucinations. Cold. Fever. Movement. Again the shadows. Misty's blurred face. Cold. Something being placed around his head. Darkness. Those were the sensations that went through Ash Ketchum's consciousness since his kidnapping until he came to some measure of awareness in this unmarked room.
Suddenly, Ash was jerked awake by a loud siren that seemed to screaming from right next to his ear. With all the drugs in his system, Ash was totally disoriented. He didn't know where he was or what was happening. "State your name!" demanded a voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once.
"Huh...? Who are you?" Immediately, a massive electric shock racked Ash's body, making him whimper in pain.
"Answer the question! Who are you?"
Too confused due the tranquillisers and truth serums injected in his body, Ash only could answer the truth. "Ash... Ket-Ketchum." Immediately, a feeling of pleasure invaded his mind and all Ash could do was fight to stay conscious.
Major Stormer continued to do routine questions to their prisoner to allow the base computer to calibrate itself with the subject's brainwave patterns. When it finished, the system would know immediately when Ash was telling the truth, flooding his brain with a sensation of pleasure, or if he was lying or refusing to speak, in this case it would stimulated the pain centres of Ash's brain. The pleasure-pain mechanism, with the mind confusing drugs, guaranteed that Ash would speak... sooner or later.
"Who are you?! Ash got to scream for the voice, before the pain attacked again.
"This is not important!" Straker himself took charge of the interrogation. He also switched the Mind Sifter's response apparatus over to manual, trusting his own instincts from years of law enforcement over the machine's purely logical approach. "You should be worried about your future, Mr. Ketchum. Given your actions to date, that is looking like it will be spending the rest of your life in prison!"
"But... why? I don't..."
"You have abetted Team Rocket agent Delia Darkholme's flight from justice!"
Delia Darkholme? The small part of Ash's mind that could still think rationally, and just not to react to the artificial incentives produced by the computer, realised that they knew about his mother. My God... now what?
"Now Mr. Ketchum... Where is your mother's hide out?"
"I don't know!" Pain.
The general repeated the question. Ash repeated the answer: the Pokémon trainer knew that if they were asking that, it was because she was not at home or in Professor Oak's laboratory...
Straker decided to change tactics. "We know that Omega has a weakness, because she spent several days regenerating in a specialised facility," Straker announced. "What is that weakness?" Straker increased the flow of hallucinogens and the intensity of the pain stimuli, reducing the boy's self-awareness and ability to resist to almost nothing.
Ash bit the lips. I can't answer that! His head was spinning. If at least he was not with that fever... Straker repeated the question. "Go to the hell!!" Ash screamed, receiving the painful answer.
"You first, mutant freak!" Straker hissed in reply, his frustration and his guilt at torturing a child finally catching up with him. Ash nearly tore his arms and legs off as the pain tried to throw him from the chair of the Mind Sifter.
For fifteen minutes, Ash bravely resisted the torture and the threats. Straker looked at the biofeedback monitors and his eyebrows shot up in surprise. The effect of the drugs and the delta rhythm inducers wasn't increasing, it was decreasing, as if something were adapting to and neutralising their effects. The boy's mutant physiology, he decided. Ultimately, even the Mind Sifter wouldn't affect the boy. Of course, if the body was tough, the mind had a weakness. Without a flicker of guilt, Straker decided to use his special technique. A monitor flickered into life on the wall in front of the boy's eyes.
"Very well, Mr. Ketchum. Since you refuse to collaborate, I am forced to use more rigorous methods." The voice said. The image of Misty in her cell appeared at that moment. She was clearly very afraid. Two very strong soldiers entered in the cell and they grabbed her roughly. "Since you are clearly too strong minded to interrogate properly, I will see if your young friend is any easier to break. I do hope that my soldiers don't damage her too badly before I can start work on her It would be a shame to have such a pretty child damaged before I can enjoy her." Straker's voice dripped with sadism and venom. It was the voice of a man who would subject a girl to unimaginable torments and enjoy it.
"STOP! LEAVE HER ALONE!" Ash screamed as the two soldiers began to tear Misty's clothes apart.
"Concern for your friend? How touching!" Straker sneered. "If you want to save your lover, Mr. Ketchum, you will co-operate! What is your mother's weak point?"
"It's AO-X! A poison that Team Rocket developed to capture wild Dittos!" a voice answered. Ash blinked in confusion. Who said that? he asked himself. On the monitor, the two soldiers released Misty and stepped away. The monitor blinked off.
"You made the right decision, Mr. Ketchum." The voice of his captors answered. Ash only understood that moment that the voice that had heard was his own... He had revealed his mother's weak point... He had betrayed her!
"Mom..." he murmured, crying, before the tranquillisers put him to sleep.
Straker slumped backwards in his chair, turning off the Mind Sifter and pulling his microphone headset off of his head. He ran a shaky hand through his hair. That was one of the most unpleasant experiences that he had ever had, but it was all worth it. He had the information that he wanted.
After a moment sitting in the darkness of the control room, Straker slapped the intercom control. "Communications, send a priority signal to UNDF-GHQ about this 'AO-X' substance," he ordered. "They probably know about it. I want as much of the UNDF stockpile of the chemical that we can get without raising eyebrows in this base by the end of the week." He sighed. "Security. Have a squad sent to Interrogation Room 3 and take Prisoner Omega Two to the Slammer." He ordered, mentioning the special morgue room, build to hold dead bodies with suspection of a Level Four virus infection. Now, it was being used to hold a boy with mutant genes.
Straker, in one of the sudden changes of mood he was famed for, suddenly jumped to his feet and walked into an office next door to the control room. It was a sophisticated TV recording studio, with a set designed to look like a stereotypical jail cell. Major Stormer, once again in her 'Misty' costume, was sitting on the bunk, smoking a cigarette idly. "Did my 'performance' do the job, sir?" she asked.
Straker smiled. "Perfectly, Major. If you ever tire of security work, you have a future ahead of you in Hollywood or Calcutta." Stormer laughed and gave her commanding officer a mock bow.
"I'm disappointed," one of the soldiers remarked. "I was looking forward to the kid holding out so we could do the whole script."
"In your dreams, pal," Stormer snapped, making the soldiers laugh again.
Straker rolled his eyes. "Dismissed, Major," he said gently. "For god's sake, get some normal clothes on."
=============
Slowly, Delilah Ketchum rose from the ground and returned to the room where Williams was, still unconscious. She had spent the last hour fruitlessly trying to decide how she could make amends, even if only on a small scale, for the crime she had just committed. She had not only wasted time that she could have used to seek Ash, but she had needlessly and sadistically tortured Misty's father! Delilah wondered if she could ever face Misty again... Now the orange-haired girl would have all the reasons in the world to hate her...
The mutant woman breathed deeply and began to use Chansey's healing powers on the General. Slowly, he began to return to consciousness.
"What the...?" he asked weakly. Then he saw Omega leaning over him, and his heart almost stopped in terror. Delilah realised that he was waiting for her to begin torturing him again. Instead, she calmly untied the man and took his hands in her own.
I deserve such a reaction, she thought, consumed by shame and guilt. "I'm sorry, General Williams," Delilah said with her head lowered, unable to face her victim, let alone look him in the eye.
Did she say that she was... sorry?!? Williams asked in a daze.
"I... I feel a lot of the pain that I have put you through, and I am so very sorry," she continued. "I really thought that you were involved with the kidnapping of my son, but I... I was wrong. Please forgive me."
Kent Williams was totally astonished. She was not just apologising, which by itself would already be something incredible, for she was being completely sincere! It was written in her face! But the surprises had not ended. Delilah decided to add a detail.
"And General... Misty doesn't hate you. Actually, she thinks that it is you who hates her, because she thinks that you blame her for your wife's death. If God gives you the chance, talk with her about that, before it is too late."
Before Williams could assimilate these revelations enough to respond, Delilah teleported him to Vermilion City. His destination was Francis Crick Ecological Park, a nature reserve within walking distance of the city's local UNDF base.
Delilah Ketchum slowly sat down in the floor and she began to cry. She had tortured an innocent man and she still didn't have any clues on the whereabouts of Ash and Misty... "What I do now?" she murmured.
Much to Delilah's surprise, a rueful, humorous masculine voice, one that echoed in her mind rather than in the room, replied to her question. I believe that I might be of some assistance to you, my sister, it said.
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To be continued...