Chapter Fifteen: Interrogation

[Eleven years ago]

The sky was cloudy, a telltale sign of an agitated storm brewing. The pale white sun leaked beyond the dark, covered with every stroke of wind that pushed a cloud in front of it. Jaundice grass poked up, spiky and untrimmed, from the corners of every ashen cracking grave. It was mid-day, but almost empty in living population. Just an endless field of gravestones, shaded by the overhanging clouds.

In the midst of it stood a seventeen year old. Not quite a boy, not quite a man, but refined to a pearl of perfection that was smoothed out over years of private schooling and careful, concise decisions. Never his own, since he was well known for his tomfoolery, but from his parents. Two individuals not biologically related to him that he trusted and adored with every fiber of his being. Now, only one remained.

Life had been a series of bumps, never running smoothly. A clock that ticked irregularly, unsure if it ever really wanted to work. His life moved in intervals of fear, pain, or contentment. Sometimes it was a mixture. Ever since his birth parents had died, things had changed drastically, leaving him a leaf caught in the endless winds and waves of the world. Never in his life had he felt more alone.

He stared down at the grave before him, eyes swollen and tender from sleepless days and nights of crying. It had been a long week. The disappearance of one of the few people he held close in his life and then the confirmation that he never wanted. A letter that left he and his only remaining family devastated. Death had a habit of doing that, worming into his life just on the brink of happiness. He and his last living family member cried together.

Alone, he collapsed to his knees, and a crack formed into his perfected pearl of beauty and prestige. With a whimper, he openly began to sob, allowing the bitter and painful tears to run freely. He'd cried in his bed, in the living room, in the car, at the funeral, but only then did it all truly set in. It wasn't some sort of uncanny dream. It was reality, a harsh sweep of ice into his once almost fortuitous life.

It wasn't an accident. It never was. It hadn't been with his real parents, and it hadn't been with his adoptive. Another grueling fact of life that tried to hold him down in a tight, airless atmosphere, suffocating him and pushing him into eons of suffering. He wanted to uncover the truth, unravel the fabric that bound him to a life of misfortune. He needed to, if he wanted to survive, needed to know so that he could combat the predator that so ruthlessly eradicated his safety.

"I won't rest," he hissed out, his forehead resting against the stone. "I won't rest until I find out who did it."

At a location much further away, in a dark room that was miles underground, two men were at odds. One was begrudgingly handcuffed to a chair, the other a well trained supervisor in interrogation. Though there was honestly someone else who took that job more often, as his personal duties were far more substantial, this was a questioning he wanted to personally experience. Extensive research and education through the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation was a decent foundation, but the concept of not using force escaped him. Illegal? He didn't give a damn.

With his outstretched arms balanced on the table between them, he stared down at his captive, glaring harshly. The handcuffed man was flippant, turning his head to the side in an expression of disrespect.

"I didn't do it. You won't be getting a confession from me. I didn't do anyzing. You are ze one who should be arrested, for vat you did to all those innocent peoples." He turned to his captor with an intense scowl. "Is zat vat your division does? You kill innocent people on ze off chance zat maybe one person vas responsible for something?"

"Isn't that what yours does?"

A glare.

"In murdering my double agent, you compromised very sensitive information about the Red Squirrel." He ground out with indignance. "Those civilians? Nothing in comparison to the billions that could die because of Red. You're the cause of their death, not me."

Unimpressed, the subject snorted and scooted backwards in his chair to lean back. "Ja right. Guilt, mental games, and zen… Vat, are you going to take away my sight? Sensory deprivations, right? I read ze handbook too."

"More like torture." A yawn. "Sensory deprivation works, of course, but there's also excruciating pain. Just enough to leave you on the edge of death, wishing it would come."

"Eh," the German cracked his neck. "Whether I confess or not, you are going to torture me. You have already done ze deciding zat I'm guilty. If I don't confess, you vill continue doing torture until I am dead, and if I do, ze same zing will happen. Zer isn't a point, is there? No one knows I'm even here, I bet."

The older man took a step back and laughed, crossing his arms. "No no, don't be ridiculous. I won't do any of that to you."

His captive paused at this and looked up at him in curiosity.

A sinister grin. "I'll do it to Skipper."

His expression grew nervous and wary, and his fingers began to play with each other. "Ah, no… You - you couldn't."

"What's stopping me, hm?"

"Nigel. He has too tight a lock on him. Skippar reminds him of himself, remember? He wouldn't let you touch him." He attempted to divert his idea and assure himself at the same time.

"Ah, Nigel." He smiled fondly. "I hate that man so much. You're right, he does have Skipper on tight patrol. But that doesn't mean I couldn't steal him away like I did you."

"You wouldn't." More of that anxiousness. He was beginning to sweat. "You couldn't, Nigel would never let you."

"In case you haven't noticed, Nigel's not the best at keeping his agents under his wing." He chuckled darkly. "You're here, aren't you?"

"...Vell, ja, but…"

"But nothing. It'd be nice to see Skipper get taken down a notch, get what's coming to him."

There was fear in his eyes now. "You don't even have ze clearing to do anyzing like zat… You- you'd get released."

"I could burn him. Remember Manfredi and Johnson? He stayed up all night after their mission in Shanghei, trying to make sure they would make it alive through those third degree burns. Got freaked out when we had to remove Manfredi's eye."

A pause of petrified recollection. "I… I know, I vas there. You wouldn't do zat to Skippar, he-"

"I've thought of waterboarding him, since he loves swimming so much, being out in the water. Maybe make sure he can never look at the ocean again without having a panic attack."

"You c-"

"You know how scared he is of needles. I could push some beneath his nails, maybe toss him into a tub full of them if that's not good enough. Listen to him scream for awhile."

"No! Sto-"

"I could break his arms and legs, or I could just amputate them altogether. Make sure he's permanently disabled for life, that he'll never be able to do something without someone helping him. He won't be able to go on a mission, hold a gun on his own, hell- he won't even be able to go to the bathroom without someone. He'll never be the same."

"Stop-"

"Have you ever heard Skipper scream? Ever seen him cry, bleed out, really truly fear for his life? Because you can, I can make that happen for you. I can peel every inch of his skin off and you can listen to him call for you, and just wonder where you are, why you never came for him, why you didn't care enough to save him from death…"

"OKAY, STOP!" He screamed. "JUST STOP!"

Silence reigned for a moment or so. The captive sniffled, squeezing his eyes shut as tears dripped down his cheeks. His interrogator looked at him expectantly, tilting his head as he paused in his gruesome descriptions.

"I- I did it." He whispered, defeated. "I, Hans, killed Clover. I confess, just… Keep Skipper out of zis."

"Good boy. I'm satisfied, for now." His captor chuckled to himself, before shaking his head and relaxing entirely. "The things people do for love..."

He clicked the button on both of the tape recorders he'd had, before turning to leave. His prisoner looked up, eyes red from having wept on behalf of Skipper. He wasn't sure what was going to come next, and he was even less sure he wanted to find out. All he knew was that there was a world of torture awaiting his future. After his confession, there was no way he'd be freed very soon. He'd rather get it over with, but it didn't seem like that was going to happen right away.

The interrogator turned around just as he reached the door. "You know why Nigel gave you that mission, and not Skipper? Because you're expendable. Nigel knew it was a death mission, he knew I'd do something, but he just didn't care about losing you. You're easy to crack, weak, ready to give in the moment something you care about is threatened. Just like Buck Rockgut was."

The man who'd been torn apart moments ago had nothing to say to that, instead staring at the other in abject hatred and melancholy. He didn't know the history behind Buck Rockgut or what the man had done, how he'd disappeared or what he'd been like. Neither him or Skipper had ever had the opportunity to meet him.

He smirked, not having wanted a response. "Don't worry too much. You'll never have to see Nigel again. In fact, you'll never see the outside world."

With that the door shut, leaving him alone in the dark. The captive stared, wide eyed, into the pitch black of the room and hoped for a quick death. He knew his prayers would not be answered. On the other side of the wall stood the high ranking CIA commander, smiling as if he'd won the lottery. He handed the tape recorder to one of the guards, patting the Red Officer on his back.

"Send one of these to the director. The other one you can put in my office." He commanded. "I have a meeting right now, see to it that those are delivered by the time I get back."

The guard nodded, saluting and turning on his heel to do as told. The two of them went their separate ways, and there was a spring in the supervisor's step. As soon as the guard reached the end of the hall and turned the corner, however, he bumped into another man that he didn't recognize. He immediately frowned, taking a step back and looking him over. The newcomer shrunk nervously under his stare.

"...Do you have the clearance to be down here?" The guard questioned.

"Uh, I…" He clearly did not, fiddling with his fingers and glancing to the side.

The guard took a step back and narrowed his eyes, reaching for his radio. Before he could take hold of it, however, the unknown man panicked and leapt forth. He smacked the guard in the forehead with an open fist. Almost instantaneously, the guard crumbled to the floor, incapacitated and unconscious; the tape recorders fell from his hands and slid slightly over the tiles, snapping open. Breathing heavily, the intruder pushed his body to a more discreet area before looting one of the tape recordings for himself. Glancing around, he quickly made his escape.

He knew there was valuable information on the tape, and that he'd damaged the bulk of it when it had clattered to the floor. He only hoped that the knowledge he needed was still on it, a lingering hope that the truth could be uncovered.

"I, Hans, killed Clover. I confess, just… Keep Skipper out of zis."