Layer 003:
Criminal Cases
(Ow ow ow ow owowowowoow!)
Zell could feel pins and needles all through his hands and feet, and there was a bitter taste in his mouth. A headache was throbbing in the back of his skull, threatening to make him black out again. Fortunately, he didn't seem to be suffering from any additional memory loss--although it occurred to him that he might not know if he was.
He opened his eyes, and discovered that he was on the floor. There were machines on the opposite end of the room, and he recognized them as propulsion systems. He was in the engine room.
With the limited range of movement his bonds granted him, he managed to crane his head around. Tanker and Siobhan were nearby, each tied and Tanker gagged. A bandage was wrapped around the team leader's calf, stained the distinctive red-brown of dried blood.
It didn't make sense that their captors would leave them unguarded, but Zell couldn't see anyone from where he was lying. He kicked, only to find that the rope tying his feet was attached to the wall behind him. Curling up, he tried to see if he had enough flexibility to reach the bonds with his hands--but a thin cord he hadn't noticed tightened painfully around his neck before he could.
"They certainly aren't amateurs, are they?"
Zell would have jumped, had he been standing. As it was, the motion came out more as a startled twitch. "Siobhan?"
"The one and only." Siobhan groaned, and Zell did his best wriggle around to face her. "We're trussed up like spring hams," she said. "These people had some training at this stuff. The cord around your neck is metal strangling cord, and the stuff on your wrists has been soaked in poison. We can't gnaw our way out of this one, and you can't get near your feet unless you fancy losing your head. Can you cast anything?"
Zell thought for a moment. "...no," he said.
Siobhan chuckled. "I've got Silence powder in my mouth," she said. "Tastes awful, too. Tanker seems like he's down for the count. I've been awake for maybe an hour, now, listening. Nothing much seems to be going on down here."
"What happened?"
"Damned if I know." Siobhan shifted, very slightly. "If I had to guess, I'd say a stun or a Sleep grenade of some sort. I can remember everything that happened right up to the moment I was knocked out, so it can't have been that rod-club-thing you ran into. Doesn't really matter, now."
Zell was inclined to agree. "Shouldn't we be trying to escape?" he asked.
"We should. Can we? Who knows?" Siobhan tugged against the ropes holding her near the wall, meeting with very little success. "I've been through every contortion I can imagine, and I can't get at any way to get free of these damned cords. I tried untying my wrists with my teeth, but I got woozy before I could even loosen the knot. I even tried calling for someone to come in, but no one answered. Unless you're really good at escaping, we might be stuck here for a while."
"Well," Zell said, "They have to untie us sometime. I mean, they don't want to kill us, or they would have, right? So as soon as we're untied--wham! That's when we break out."
There was a dry chuckle. "If the opportunity presents itself."
"Wha--?"
"I mean if they don't knock us out again, or they don't have guns trained on us, or--there are a thousand things that could happen. But if it looks like we have the chance and won't be killed on the spot, we take the opportunity. Get it?"
Zell nodded, managing to not choke himself as he did so. "Okay! ...how long do you think it's going to be?"
"The Kobayashi Maru is a clipper ship. Juska--the northern port, remember? The one we were headed to?--would take us about three and a half hours, and it's one of the farther ports on this side of Esthar. I said I was up for maybe an hour, and I don't know how long I was out. If we're heading to Juska, I'd say that we have maybe a couple of hours or less. Anywhere else, I have no clue. It depends on where they're taking us."
Zell considered that for a moment. There was something very reassuring about Siobhan's tone--she sounded....
(She always sounds as if she has everything under control.)
Even if--as it was clear in this case--she really, really didn't.
Something occurred to him, dredged up out of memories from the Ultimecia campaign--something about how even people you expected to be in control sometimes weren't. "Siob?"
Siobhan jumped a bit on hearing her nickname, but twisted around enough to look over anyway. "What?"
"Are you all right?"
Siobhan stared at him for a moment. "As right as can be expected," she said. "Why? What happened? You hurt?"
Zell shook his head. "No, just... wondering." He had a feeling that his show of concern had flopped.
"Oh," Siobhan said, and sounded uncomfortable. "...yeah. I'm... well, I'm not fine, but I'm okay. And that's really about all I could expect, I think."
If Zell had been slightly more acute in his observations of emotional displays, he would have noticed that Siobhan seemed ever-so-slightly flustered--as if asking her if she was all right had been the most unexpected thing she had ever seen him do. Zell backed off instinctively. "Well," he said, hoping to lighten the atmosphere. "At least we found Tanker."
Siobhan looked away, and Zell had the feeling that his joke had wound up even more left-handed than his query. Looking away from his teammate, he resolved not to open his mouth for the remainder of the trip.
His resolution had lasted for about a minute and a half before he realized he would never be able to keep it.
"Siob?"
There was a low noise from Siobhan. "Don't call me that."
(Oh. Oops.) "Sorry."
Siobhan didn't acknowledge the apology. After a moment, she moved slightly--cloth making a soft sound on the floor. "What?"
(...oh.) "I just wanted to say sorry for whatever I did. ...said."
"What makes you think you said anything you need to apologize for?" Siobhan quietly re-established her place in the corner of Zell's mind reserved for the utterly inscrutable.
Needless to say, Zell was confused. "I... you looked upset. I thought it was something I said."
Siobhan laughed dryly. "Zell?"
"Yeah?"
"You really are a rookie."
Zell's mood darkened. "What--what's that supposed to mean?" His fists tried to clench, but the tightening in his bound wrists warned him that it might not be such a good idea.
The dry laugh was repeated. "It doesn't mean a damn thing, and if anyone calls you that, ignore them. You didn't say anything wrong. Just don't call me Siob."
"Sor--"
"And stop apologizing for everything."
Zell shut up. Siobhan didn't sound annoyed--but, then again, her tone wasn't your classical example of amusement, either.
He felt a sudden pang of longing to be back a few months, still working with "the gang" instead of Tanker and Siobhan. At least with them--even with Squall, for Hyne's sake--it was possible to tell if they were mad at you.
"Shh," Siobhan urged, and Zell wondered for a moment if he had made a noise. He was about to ask, but then he decided that that would be a bad thing, given what she had said.
A moment later, the door opened. Zell screwed his eyes shut, hoping that whoever was coming would mistake him for still being unconscious. The person came down the stairs into the engine room proper, and an activated Phoenix Down swirled around him. So much for pretensions. Zell opened his eyes, looking up into the face of a well-built Desperado. The man nodded at him slightly, and turned to wake up Siobhan and Tanker. Wordlessly, he returned to Zell and placed his foot squarely on the SeeD's wrists. Bending down, he grabbed Zell's nose and pinched it shut. "Say 'ah,'" he instructed.
Zell, not intending to do anything the man wanted him to, clenched his jaw until the man reached down and pried his jaws apart in order to dropped a small pill into his mouth.
"Swallow," came his terse command, as he clamped a hand over Zell's mouth--effectively cutting off his air until he complied. The pill slipped down his throat, and the man let go and went to perform the same procedure on Siobhan.
A loud gagging noise provided ample evidence that Tanker had discovered the neck bonds the hard way.
Zell's stomach gave an uncomfortable queaze, and the Desperado moved on to Tanker. Tanker cursed something at him and kicked out, but the soldier quietly walked around him out of effective attacking range. Catching Tanker with the same tried and true maneuver he had used on Zell and Siobhan, soon he had fed him a pill as well.
Job done, he turned and walked back up the stairs and out of the room.
Tanker was hacking, trying to cough up the pill with little success. Siobhan had closed her eyes, either in defeat or concentration. There was a slight frown on her face that told Zell that things were going very, very wrong.
He glanced at Tanker, and decided not to say anything. He wasn't quite sure what he would have said, but it seemed like a good idea not to try thinking of something now.
Something wandered into the edge of his vision, and he turned to look at it--only to see nothing there. He felt a wave of heat, and a similar something/nothing passed through his vision on his other side.
He closed his eyes, but the somethings crept in underneath his eyelids. He spent a few moments trying to look away from them and toward them, alternately--each attempt was thwarted as they remained stubbornly at the edge of his vision.
There were heavy footsteps, and something closed around Zell's head. In a few more moments, the world faded to a pleasant sense of nothing.
-
When he woke up the headache had returned, and he was feeling anything but pleasant. He was strapped to some surface--something like a reclining wall, or an inclined bed--and a few hard tugs told him that these straps were no less unrelenting than the ones he had been subjected to back in the Kobayashi Maru's engine room. However, these straps at least allowed him a bit more mobility for his head--by craning his neck around, he was able to take in the room in which he--and, apparently, no one else--was being held.
From what he could see, the contraption holding him in place was in about the center of the room. There was a cluster of lights above him--the one lighting fixture in the room that he could see--and a large screen in front of him. To his left was a nondescript door, and to his right was a tall cabinet. At his left hand was a low table, barely close enough for him to brush the edge with his fingertips. A pale light--natural, most likely, and probably predawn if that was the case--was coming from somewhere behind him.
Glancing down, he looked over the new set of bindings that were ensuring his immobility. He was attached to the bed by straps around his ankles, thighs, waist, elbows, and wrists--each one was a wide leather band with a utilitarian buckle that looked like something he might see in the back Infirmary rooms or some mad scientist's lair.
At his right hand, there was a tiny panel with a central red button and smaller grey ones just above and below it. Acting on a sudden impulse, he pressed it.
At once the light cluster above him turned on, flooding the room with a pure white light. Zell winced, closing his eyes.
The door swung open, and he tried to look through the blinding light to see who it was. The figure approached until it was right by his side, reaching down and taking his pulse at the wrist as if he didn't think Zell was awake.
"Hey," Zell croaked--his throat was unpleasantly dry for some reason. The figure laid a hand on his forehead.
"You're burning up," a feminine voice said. "Wait right here."
Zell didn't quite see how he could avoid waiting right there, so he complied. A moment later something was pressed against his lower lip, and a bitter liquid poured into his mouth. He gagged on it, and it was taken away.
"It will help your head," the woman said. "Drink it. I'll bring something to get the taste out of your mouth."
The glass was replaced, and Zell tried to drink. It was quite possibly the most repulsive thing he had ever tasted--but the fact that as soon as he had swallowed the first gulp his headache began to fade convinced him that the concoction might have some merit.
A white-sleeved arm reached across the bed and pressed one of the grey buttons, slowly tilting the bed back until Zell was staring up at the lights. "Tell me how many lights you see, please," the woman said.
Zell tried to get a good view of the woman's face, but the light was making it difficult. "Where am I?" he decided to croak instead.
"How many lights, please."
Zell looked up, and did a quick count. "Seven."
A moment later something small, solid, and obnoxiously sweet was dropped into his mouth. "Zell Dincht, SeeD Rank 14. SeeD ID, 41270. First-year, fewer than ten missions. Do you know why you're here, Zell?"
(Because I got kidnapped?) "No--"
"You're very sick, Zell. You're lucky we got our hands on you when we did. You need our help; that's why we're keeping you here. You don't need to worry about anything."
"Where am I?"
"You're at Jennings Psychiatric Ward," she said. "We operate here under the auspices of the Estharan Ministry of Charity. I'm Doctor Jessie Cutwell, your observer. Doctor Dexter Fordham will be your caseworker."
The back of his brain quickly added one and two together to come up with something he really didn't like the sound of. "You think I'm insane?"
"We don't like to discuss that subject with our patients," Cutwell evaded. "It tends to distress them. If you'll just relax and cooperate with us, then there's no reason that you can't get well quickly--we've had genuine recoveries in as little as a week, even. Rest assured, once we've finished with your rehabilitation you can be on your way--a free, healthy man."
To say that Zell was stunned wouldn't do justice to what he was feeling. "Rehabilitation?"
Cutwell seemed hesitant to speak on that subject. "If you feel comfortable talking about your situation I can send Dr. Fordham in to go over some things with you," she said. "Would you like me to?"
"Yes!" Zell almost exploded. Cutwell nodded, and hurried off.
(...they think I'm insane.) Zell could almost have laughed at that--in fact, he almost did. He wondered for a moment if they were the insane ones--what the hell were they thinking, anyway? Who were these people?
He paused on that last question, and went back to examine it more closely. Who were these people--what had happened to the Desperados? What had happened, for that matter, to Siobhan and Tanker? Were they being held here, too?
By the time Dr. Fordham came in, he was brimming with questions he didn't know whether or not to ask. However, the first words from Fordham's mouth ensured that he would get a chance to.
"Ah, Zell Dincht," the man said. "I understand that you'll have a lot to talk about. You're one of the few criminal cases we have here."
At that point, it seemed as if only the leather straps kept him from falling off the bed. "Criminal?" he asked.
Fordham gestured tactlessly to the bonds. "Mr. Dincht, you're here because of the danger you represent to yourself and to civil society. We're not a law firm--we don't have anything to do with the Ministry of Justice--but we do have some sway in legal matters. You've been convicted of a federal crime, Mr. Dincht, but we have good evidence that points to the fact that you may not have been able to fully appreciate the consequences of your actions. If this is the case, then your rehabilitation in this facility will waive your responsibility to appear in a federal court."
(This is insane,) Zell thought--not immediately recognizing the irony of that phrasing. "What do they think I did?"
Fordham produced a small remote from his jacket pocket, glancing upward. "One moment," he said, fiddling with the controls. Five of the lights above Zell switched off, dimming the light in the room to a more tolerable level. "Please look at the screen."
Zell did as instructed, and was rewarded with the rotating image of the IDA.
"Do you recognize this, Mr. Dincht?"
Zell nodded. "Yeah," he said.
"Please describe it for me. What it is, what it does...."
"It's the... Interfaced Data Assembly. It fakes diagnostic readouts."
Fordham hit a button, and the screen switched. "Tell me about the ship you see, her mission, and her crew," he said.
Zell stared at the rotating image for a moment. "...looks like the Harpoon," he said. "...er, it was a submarine testing out some new engine. It was taken over by the Desperados, who were mutineers from the Esthar army. It was hiding out in South Side because they were outlaws."
A picture of a generic man in a Marshal's uniform appeared on the screen. "Tell me about the organization this man represents."
"He looks like he's from the Marshals," Zell identified. "They work in South Side as... cops for hire, I guess. They run a few ships like that Kobayashi Maru, too."
The screen went blank. "Now, Mr. Dincht," the man said--a certain element of scolding in his voice. "Do you actually believe everything you just told me?"
(Huh?) "It's the truth, isn't it?"
The screen went back to the diagram of the IDA. "This," Fordham stated, "is an electromagnetic pulse disperser. It's used to scramble the electric functions in computerized systems--and, in some cases, if installed appropriately, it can lead to a fatal breakdown or an overload."
The Harpoon appeared.
"This ESF Harpoon, crew of thirty-six, was a prototype vessel for the Fleet's new impulse cannon. Her crew was composed entirely of Desperados--the chosen name for the Estharan Marine Corps, Division 47. An engine malfunction caused her to put into South Side for repairs."
The Marshal's image popped up.
"The Marshals are the dominant faction in South Side. They hire out protection only in the sense that the inhabitants must pay them or face the consequences. The Kobayashi Maru is a stolen commercial cruise ship, refitted to be a Marshal vessel--which they now use for running drugs, weapons, and whatever criminals can afford to pay."
The screen went blank. Fordham frowned.
"None of this information is classified or restricted in any way. If you wanted access to it, the farthest you would have to go would be an Estharan newspanel. Tell me, Mr. Dincht... where did you come across all of your flawed information?"
Cutwell slipped in, moving up to Fordham and handing him something on a clipboard. Fordham glanced over it, nodded, and handed it back. Cutwell promptly left. Zell stared at the screen, three parts dumbfounded and one part extremely skeptical. "You've gotta be kidding me," he said. "This some kind of a joke?"
Fordham shook his head. "I hope not, Mr. Dincht. If it is, then it's one of the worst jokes ever played. Over thirty-six Desperados were killed by your party in South Side--leading, in fact, to your tenure here. What we are trying to do here is determine guilt. At the moment, truthfully, you are being held suspect--but we want to help you in any way we can. We don't believe that you had full knowledge of your actions or their effects. But to prove your innocence, we need you to cooperate with us--just answer our questions as carefully and as completely as you can. That's all we ask. Are you willing to help us get to the bottom of this?"
Getting to the bottom of anything was pretty high up on Zell's priority list at the moment. However.... "How do I know I can trust you?"
Fordham sighed. "That is the problem, isn't it?" he asked. "Really, there's nothing I can say that will solidly convince you that you should be able to. We're going to be asking you to re-examine a lot of things that you've accepted as true before this. I can see how easily this could be mistaken for conspiracy--especially by one with all the training you've gone through, the warnings you've heard, the learned paranoia you've had to accept. I suppose what I'm asking is for a leap of faith, Mr. Dincht. And, even if you can't immediately trust us, at least give us the benefit of the doubt long enough to hear what we have to say."
That... seemed fair enough--for the moment, at least. "...okay," Zell conceded. Fordham nodded genially.
"I'm glad you're willing to cooperate," he said. "This will all move along much faster, and I'll try to provide any information which might help you understand what's going on. Now, tell me--who informed you of the nature of the EMPD, the Harpoon, and the Marshals? You needn't say any names if you don't feel comfortable doing so."
Zell nodded slowly. "...the people in my team told me," he said.
"You weren't briefed?"
"I... don't remember. Maybe."
Fordham nodded sympathetically. "The medical report said something about that. It seems one of the Desperados managed to use a stun rod on you. The rod uses an intense paramagical burst to incapacitate the target until he or she can be secured or brought into custody. What probably happened in your case was that it reacted with the Guardian Force inside your mind, creating a wave which travelled through all of your junctioned paramagic. Paramagic is stored largely in the memory center of your brain, and when it was disrupted it had the effect of overriding some of your shorter-term memory. This effect isn't permanent; with a bit of work, we should be able to undo its effects. But... back to more immediate issues. Where did your teammates acquire their information?"
"It... might have been in the briefing," Zell answered uncertainly. "And Ta--er, one of them knew about the area before."
"Would you be willing to tell me who had prior information?"
"...the team leader."
"Is it possible that he or she could have given your team the information?"
"I--it's possible, but so what? Why does it matter where I got it from?"
"Do you trust your team leader?" Fordham answered in a roundabout sort of way.
Zell was utterly taken aback. (Tanker? Do I trust him?) "I--" (He was... Tanker. I... I didn't like him, but... does this guy want me to think that he--) "I... don't know. I never thought about it. I... I didn't get along with him, but I don't think he lied to me!"
"Do you generally trust your fellow SeeDs, Mr. Dincht?"
"Well... yeah! I mean--we're all working for the same thing, right? Wh--"
Fordham held up a hand to forestall him. "Are you?" he asked. "How do you know you are?"
Mentally, Zell was spluttering. It felt as if he had spent his entire life thinking that one plus one equalled three, and now he was in a math class and was trying to defend an answer he had gotten to a teacher who thought he was--well, insane. It was so blindingly obvious that he couldn't help that feeling if there was something very, very wrong with Fordham then there had to be something very, very wrong with himself. "It's--it's a mission," he tried to explain, "and in the mission there's one goal, and everyone tries to get to that goal! So we have to work together, or you can't get to the goal. ...what are you trying to say?"
"I'm not trying to say anything," Fordham reassured him. "I just want you to think about this for a while. Mr. Dincht, how do you know in the mission that everyone is working for the same goal? How would you be able to tell?"
Yes--very, very wrong indeed. "We all go to the same mission briefing," he said. "We all get told the same things. And then we all do what we're supposed to!"
"And nothing more, nothing less? Not ever?"
Zell opened his mouth for a rejoinder, but paused. (Nothing more... but that's different, isn't it?) He shook his head. "That's different. Sometimes the mission has to be changed--but the team is still a team, we don't just break up and run all over--"
"But the mission can be changed." Fordham nodded. "And, lacking all else, it would be the team leader's place to order those changes, would it not be?"
"But--but this one wasn't changed," Zell argued.
"How do you know? Your memory--"
"Because Tanker wouldn't--'cause Siobhan would object--" he had gotten halfway through two different sentences before he realized both that he had named each of his teammates out loud and that he didn't honestly have a leg to stand on. "...it doesn't feel right," he finished lamely.
"I can see this is agitating you," Fordham stated, "and I'm very sorry. But I can see that you're thinking about this--I can tell that some of the same questions we raised are being raised in your mind as well. We will get to the bottom of all this, Mr. Dincht--don't worry. But now, let me change the subject."
A change of subject seemed like a welcome direction for the conversation to take. Zell nodded mutely.
"Have you ever heard of the Blue Dragon Scandals?"
Zell shook his head. "...no."
"The Blue Dragons are northeastern Galbadian mercenaries," Fordham informed him. "They mostly do monster-hunting and guard work--low-key jobs that no one really objects to. They generally work in pairs--commander and subordinate--and are regulated by mission overseers who don't go out on the mission but analyze the mission reports and inform the commander of what to do. These overseers were traditionally the only ones the clients spoke to. Now, the Scandals were a series of thefts--the mission overseer would contact the commander and inform him that the client needed them to retrieve some stolen artifact or document, and that the client would pick it up from the overseer's office. The team would do as instructed, and the overseer would sell the stolen goods. Only in one out of six cases was the commander aware of this and cooperating. The subordinate was never informed, never aware."
Zell got a bad feeling as to where this subject was heading. "So, what you're saying is--"
"Nothing except that corruption can exist within even the most innocuous agencies. It can, in fact, exist right in front of one, one can live with it day by day and never know about it."
"That could never happen in SeeD," Zell said uneasily.
"Oh? Why not?"
"It--it's SeeD. They're good people. I know them--"
"All?"
There was a heavy silence.
"Mr. Dincht," Fordham said in a matter that was not at all unkindly. "Why did you join SeeD?"
Zell gave a low chuckle, and looked down at his hands. Somewhere in that exchange they had balled into fists, and he wasn't quite sure how to unclench them. "I wanted to be like my grandfather," he said. "He was a solider."
"Why didn't you join a standard army?"
"...'cause I live in Balamb," Zell said, and had to resist the urge to laugh.
"I see," Fordham said. "So SeeD was... another option, then?"
"Yeah. I... I guess so."
"Who do you live with, Zell? Or... who did you, before you joined SeeD?"
"I lived with Ma," he said shakily. "Pop was... he was never around. He mostly lives in Kipling, out by Deling City. For business."
"What did your mother say when you told her that you wanted to join SeeD?"
"Ma? Ma's... cool about almost everything. She said--said she was a bit worried, and she didn't know if being a mercenary was the right choice--but she seemed okay with it, mostly. ...mostly okay."
"I would like you to tell me about life in Garden. Tell me about your friends, your social life, your treatment... anything memorable about the people in SeeD."
"I... don't remember too much. GFs, an' all. But--"
Fordham waited patiently. "Go on."
"--I remember... didn't have too many friends. I commuted a lot, so I didn't really live there. Got along pretty well except for--" he froze up.
"Except for... what?"
"...hell, everyplace has bullies," Zell countered the accusation Fordham hadn't made. "An'--we were just stupid kids. It doesn't mean anything!"
"How long did this bullying persist?" Fordham's voice was gentle and unyielding--like one of those psychologists you saw in movies who always thought that everything was a displacement of something or other from childhood trauma. Zell had to fight through a vertiginous sense of irrational panic before he could even think about answering.
(How long? It... it went on until Seifer ran off--until I wasn't around him any more--but I can't say that, Fordham will think that--ulp.) "It wasn't that bad," he said as forcefully as he could. "He called me a few names. We got into a few fights. It was stupid kid stuff. Didn't really matter."
"Tell me... about your friends. Don't feel any pressure to mention names if you don't want to."
"Th-they're cool. We stick together mostly. Help each other out."
"Do you trust them?"
"...yeah. Of course."
"How did they see you? How did they treat you?"
"What?" Zell blinked. (How did they....) "They're my friends." (What is he asking?) "They act like friends."
"Tell me more," Fordham insisted.
"Uh--" He had to stop on that one. "More? They're like...."
(Like what?)
There was Squall, of course. Squall didn't really treat anyone like a friend, but he was Squall, and you had to get used to that. Didn't mean nothin'. And Irvine--Irvine just acted like that. It was an image. He was trying to get girls. They didn't get along that well, but Irvine was always trying to impress someone--and there was Quistis. Quistis was always so preoccupied--or she seemed like it--but she really did care, you could see it in her eyes, she just didn't always know what to do--and there was Selphie, and Selphie was just Selphie, she was a law unto herself, she seemed to like everyone in a sort of general Selphie-ish way that encompassed him as well because there was no reason for it not to and Rinoa was usually too busy trying to get Squall to open up or do something against his will to really interact with everyone else but she had stood up to Squall for him a couple of times and whether that was to get a bit further under his skin or what he didn't quite know but they were his friends, dammit, and Fordham didn't know how they had been through thick and thin together and--
"They saved my life," he said weakly. "They look out for me. Maybe we're not the closest friends ever, but why do we have to be?" He was shaking, and he didn't know why or how to stop. "They're still my friends."
Fordham reached out and put a hand on Zell's shoulder, an oddly comforting gesture. "I'm sorry if this is making you upset," he said.
Zell didn't know how to respond.
"I would like you to tell me something," Fordham said. "Do you think you can?"
(No.) "S-sure. What is it?"
"Have you ever regretted joining SeeD?"
The question got in under his skin, grabbing him and freezing him up like a Stop spell. (Regretted?) The question was a confusing one. "I don't know," he answered truthfully. "I--sometimes I don't quite know why I joined it, ya know? Sometimes it doesn't feel quite right, I guess. But... but it's what I know. It's where all my friends are. It's... it's who I am."
"But it doesn't feel... right."
"Sometimes." (This isn't fair this isn't right why is he asking me this I don't know I don't like this I want to get out of here--)
"Tell me about that."
"It--it just doesn't seem to fit. Sometimes I dunno what I'm doing there, or I wonder what I would be doing if I wasn't--sometimes I run into people my age who aren't in SeeD, and they're so weird--and then I think that they're probably normal, and I'm the weird one--sometimes I just don't want to fight any more. But it's my life, and I chose it, so I guess--" (What?) "--I guess that makes it what I want. Doesn't it?"
"It sounds as if you feel trapped," Fordham observed.
"Sometimes. Not all the time. And it's... it's just my first year. I probably just have the jitters. Or... or something."
"Do you think your uneasiness could have something to do with the nature of SeeD? Does the problem necessarily have to be inside you?"
"I--I don't know."
"Mr. Dincht," Fordham said, an edge of gravity to his kindly voice. "It's the opinion of the staff here that you are, essentially, an honest person--that you're experiencing a kind of mental schism between your own feelings and your loyalties to SeeD. In response to this, you may have suppressed some of your feelings--feelings which we are going to help you to sort out."
"...oh?" It was a lame response, and he knew it. But he didn't know what to say--didn't know what he could say.
"I would like to show you something," Fordham declared. "Something that may shed some light on your feelings. Please, direct your attention to the screen."
Zell did so, not sure what he should expect.
And Fordham switched off the lights, and lead him straight down into hell.
