Chapter 10
Emma felt an odd sensation of the entire world, suddenly being jarred. It was as if Atlas had been squatting and suddenly, he stood up. The next movement was in a horizontal direction, but was accompanied by a methodical up-and-down motion. She heard indistinct noises from outside the walls of her tiny cell—scraping, a motor, what might have been shouted commands. Some of the sounds coincided with a vibration in the concrete floor she was lying on. Eventually, the horizontal motion stopped and if felt like she was rising in an elevator. She was too weak to even change her position, let alone respond to this change in her environment. Already at a point beyond despair, Emma had lost hope of being rescued or even having contact with a human being again. There was a short downward motion, followed by a thud below her and noises like metal on rock above her. When the ceiling was removed from her cell, she could hardly comprehend what was happening. The light seemed somehow brighter than light had ever been. It was blinding even through her eyelids.
"Emma DeLauro?" a voice said. She wondered whose voice it was, not recognizing it. For weeks she had expected to hear Marlowe telling her what a fool she had been to sacrifice herself for Adam's lost cause. Eventually she had hoped for it. The important thing was that it was a voice not her own. Relief from isolation was more important to her now than even food. She mustered up her waning strength and rolled over. One of the four walls was taken away from the cell and she vaguely realized that she had been imprisoned in a cement box. Her box was on the floor of a freight elevator. With her eyes squinted against the light, she looked around and found the source of the first words she had heard. An enormous man was looking down at her. He was still holding a five foot square piece of concrete that was six inches thick. Presumably, he had carried her container to this point and she could hardly imagine what kind of strength that would take. He leaned the wall section against the remaining walls of her cell and she could sense how heavy it must be by the sound.
There was another voice. "Can you stand up?" she was asked. Emma looked in the direction of the wall that had been removed and could see Charles Marlowe standing before her. His voice was wonderful and magical to her. It was amazing—two living, breathing human beings. Hearing another voice, a real voice was more important to her than anything. Somehow, slowly, she managed to stand. She was terrified that if she didn't they might seal her up again.
"Come with me," Marlowe instructed. Slowly, supporting herself on the wall and pausing frequently, she managed to follow him. He waited when she needed to rest, mindful of her weakened state and the stiffness of her muscles. It was only a short walk, before she was ushered into a long room with a table in the center. Some part of her mind dimly recognized it as an interrogation room. Six people were already seated at the far ends of the room along the walls. "Sit down, Miss DeLauro." Gratefully, Emma sat down. She laid her hands on the table, but she was so disturbed by how thin her arms had become, she hid them from sight. "I have some questions for you." Marlowe shuffled some papers and laid them on the table, taking a seat across from her. "Wait just one second," he said and beckoned to a woman who had followed them into the room. He briefly gave her some instructions and then she went back out into the hall. Emma was found herself going from joyous at finally seeing other people, to overwhelmed by how many there were.
The woman who had left reentered with a hot bowl of chicken noodle soup, which she placed in front of Marlowe. Then she took a seat behind Emma, just inside the door. Emma's mouth watered and her eyes focused in on the steam rising up from the liquid in the bowl across from her. The smell filled the air and she began to cry as it filled her nostrils.
"Like I said, I have some questions for you," Marlowe said. "I mainly would like to confirm some things your friends have already told me."
"That's a lie," she accused. Of course, she couldn't be sure. She could not read Marlowe.
"So you say." He pulled out a piece of paper, put it aside and began eating the soup. Emma knew it was possible she had failed in her attempt to wall off every piece of information in the minds of her teammates that might lead the Strand to the location of Sanctuary, Adam's research and the mutant underground. Given time, fragments of memory they retained could be pieced together and Marlowe's people might have been able to reconstruct them into the answers they were seeking. Maybe she should have blocked out their memories completely, but if she did that, who would come to her rescue? There had been so little time then and she hadn't wanted to risk damaging her friends permanently. Why hadn't they come for her? Were they still alive? The seeds of doubt had been planted. Emma didn't know if there was anything left to fight for. "Where is Sanctuary?" Marlowe asked.
"W—," she couldn't get a word out. She hadn't spoken, at least not to someone who would have to understand her in weeks. "What is Sanctuary?" she managed to respond. They wouldn't have left her to starve for weeks if Mutant X's secrets had already been revealed. She had to believe there was still something to fight for.
Marlowe took a few more spoonfuls of soup and Emma thought she would die. "Can you give me some locations of mutant safe houses?"
"I—I don't know what those are," she responded weakly.
"Do you have any knowledge of Genomex technology or subsequent genetic technology developed by Adam Kane?" Marlowe wanted to know.
"I…," she drifted off as he tilted the soup bowl and filled his spoon with the last of the noodles and chunks of chicken.
"You were saying," he prompted, holding his spoon in front of his face in her clear view.
"I just know Genomex went out of business." She watched the spoon, "They were sold off in some sort of restructuring." She massaged her temples; the pain was returning to her brain and eating away at her sanity.
"The pain you are feeling in your mind is caused by the subdermal governor we are using. The plans for building the device, as well as the research, were destroyed and we have been unable to fully recreate some of its subtleties." She wondered what problem with the governor would cause this kind of pain in her head. "Your resistance does us no harm. You are the only one who suffers. You and your friends."
"I don't know where you'd find the information about them," she said. Emma winced. "It didn't hurt me before. Someone's trying to get into my head." She screamed and clutched her skull.
"Tell me about Adam Kane?"
Emma could barely keep a hold on her mind. "He's made some discoveries, but you can read all about them in the scientific journals," she said.
Marlowe put the spoon in his mouth and it emerged emptied. Emma felt a sob choking her throat, but now it was from the pain in her mind, not from hunger.
"Emma DeLauro, you are going to die. I don't want you to die and I won't kill you, but if you do not cooperate with us, I will not help you to live. You will not eat and you will die. If you tell me what I want to know, I will let you have the rest of the broth in this bowl." Psionics poked and prodded at her brain.
Emma's blue eyes saw nothing then but the bowl. Even the searing pain in her head dispersed at the sight of food. The odor of chicken noodle soup still filled the air. She could see small pieces of the meat and pasta still floating in the broth. She thought about her short twenty-two years of life and she thought about the team, but most of all, she thought about the soup.
Sobs of grief wracked her pale, fragile body, but she didn't talk. She wanted to tell him about Stormking Mountain and the addresses of the safehouses she knew off the top of her head and where to look up the others. She wanted to tell him about Adam's research and that Mutant X maintained a database of all of Genomex's research, even that conducted under Mason Eckhart. Not everything she thought was coherent, but she came to the determination that she would not break for a bowl of soup. She would not in any way let down her defenses against the psionics in the room who where trying to get inside of her as she was distracted by her hunger.
Emma DeLauro and Charles Marlowe locked eyes. Despite her inability to use her powers, she was still adept at reading people. Years of being certain, without a doubt, about what everyone she saw was feeling had made her an expert at matching body language and facial expressions to emotions. Since she knew what people were really feeling, she could even see how they were trying to mask their true feelings and what that looked like. Though her empathy powers were cut off, a lifetime of experience had taught her the emotions that the expression on Marlowe's face corresponded with. He was frustrated. Rather than feeling remorse for what he had done to her, he felt anger that she continued to resist. He did desire to kill her, but neither did he place any value on her life. She almost pitied him. Marlowe was a dead in a living shell. No matter what, a man like this could never be allowed the knowledge she possessed. She would die to stop him.
Finally, Marlowe picked up the bowl and threw it across the table, just over her shoulder, at the woman sitting behind her. "I'm tired of this game," Marlowe said. "Just break her." He left the room.
Emma's hands shook as she carefully tried to order her mind for what was going to happen. She had insulated herself from the pain caused by the Psionics gently digging into her psyche for anything she might reveal while Marlowe talked to her, but now hse would face an all-out assault. Two weeks ago, she felt she could have held them off indefinitely, but now, she didn't know. It began and she screamed.
