*** The needles ***

* Sometimes in little flat boxes where they get stuck, sometimes in little containers with their covers cracked, sometimes in paper envelopes that they pierce easily, sometimes pricked in a lovey tomato made in fabric that has been taken for a voodoo doll. Or worse: sometimes pricked in bobbins or loose at the bottom of the box. It has never been 100% safe playing with them. *

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Skipper opened his eyes. He didn't recognize the place where he was. Around him everything was gray. Unlike the rest of the subterranean agency building, the walls in that place weren't painted. A lonely lightbulb lit the place and, judging by how he was seeing it, he was in horizontal position. And tied by traps to a concrete table, as he could verify immediately later. And covered with electrodes.

What was he doing there? He remembered the argument with Norbert. He had lost his cool and had wanted to kill that bastard, but he hadn't managed to hit him. He was sure that it was Norbert who had put him to sleep and who had taken him there. He never fought, he always played dirty.

"Norbert, I know you're there."

Skipper didn't get a reply.

"Are you going to interrogate me?"

An unpleasant creak was heard and, next, a distorted voice letting out a swear word: the interrogator was sitting on a swivel chair and he had a problem with it. Every time it sounded it would mislead the machine.

"Yes, Skipper. I'm Norbert and I'm going to interrogate you. Though it was easy to imagine it." He sounded incredibly peaceful and polite to be him, he was cleary acting.

"No kidding..." Skipper said.

"It will be a fast interrogation because we don't have much time. First, I'll tell you how this works." A light was switched on. "If you look at your left you'll see a mirror. I'm at the other side and I'm seeing you. Like in movies. If you try to escape, I'll see you and I'll shoot you. It's not a bulletproof glass. This part is easy, isn't it?"

"Go on, please." Skipper didn't look impressed.

"Now, if you look at your right, you'll see that you have an IV in your flipper. Don't try to tear it out or the same will happen. We know about your aversion towards needles, so we prepared everything before you woke up."

"What a detail," he said, squinting at the IV. "We know, we prepared... How many are you?"

"More than you imagine."

"How great," Skipper commented. "And now you'll tell me that you're going to inject me sodium pentothal so that I'll tell all the truth even if I don't want to."

"It's very cliché, right?"

"Enough cliché."

"Do you have any idea about why you are here, third-rate little soldier?"

"Because I've grabbed you by your neck, right?"

"Apart from that." Norbert made a pause while he was opening some folders in the adjacent room. "I have your report from Denmark here. We're going to revise it because I know that what you told Flint is a lie. I have a machine that transcribes what you say to human writing, also I'll prove the agency that you are a liar and I'll give the humans news from you too. Remember that they have your photo, but not your name or anything else. And you know what means if humans know what you work at, right?" He pressed a button. "Now pentothal will flood your veins. In a minute, we'll be ready. You have a clock in front of you."

Skipper felt the liquid entering his bloodstream. They were some seconds. Possibly due to the placebo effect or due to the impression, he felt his head lighter. Meanwhile, Norbert held his flipper on the machine switch to transcribe the parts he was interested in.

"Ministry of Open-Faced Sandwiches," he started. "This is the opening. Case..." he raised his flipper momentarily. "Or date. Two eight zero three two zero zero nine. Skipper."

Next, Skipper heard his three aliases and a personal comment. Apparently, Norbert didn't like them. Though he was a sourpuss and he liked nothing, so it wasn't a surprise. After that, he felt that he was going out of his mind. He didn't know if he was asleep or awake. The weirdest ideas were coming to his mind. He didn't recognize them at that moment, but they were the crazy ideas suggested by Manfredi when he and Johnson arrived at the zoo. Why was he remembering all that at that moment? Until he understood: as Manfredi had predicted, ideas came to the rescue at the most urgent situations.

"We'll ask some control questions, Skipper. Tell me your name and rank."

"My name is Skipper and I am the captain in my unit."

"Species and origin."

"Adélie penguin, from Antarctica."

"Where do you usually live?"

"In Central Park Zoo, New York."

"Are you right-flippered or left-flippered?"

"Right-flippered."

Norbert saw on a screen that the medic was nodding at the adjacent room. He pressed Enter.

"Negotiated summit between... Skipper, did you attend a secret meeting with high commands during the Danish mission?"

"Yes."

"Who did you meet?"

"Sasquatch and the Monster of Loch Ness."

"Stop screwing up, Skipper," Norbert said, visibly irritated. "Medic, give him another dose."

"Another dose would be lethal," they heard say from another distorted voice, which sounded almost the same as the one that Skipper had been hearing until then.

"I don't care, do it."

Skipper looked at his right and saw the drip entering his body. He closed his eyes. Norbert calculated one minute and went on.

"Where was the meeting?"

"In Atlantis, off the coast of Brazil."

"In the Atlantic." Norbert wasn't very sure of what he had heard, but Skipper couldn't be lying with a double dose of pentothal.

"Whatever."

Norbert pressed Enter.

"We'll go on with your team members, Skipper. Who accompanied you during the days you were in Copenhagen?"

"Manfredi and Johnson."

"Why are you telling me that if I already knew it?"

"Because it's the truth."

Norbert didn't judge each one's last interventions. He just hissed visibly furious. He hated Skipper too much to use his brain.

"Medic, revise his vital signs."

"They correspond to a state of high relaxation on the edge of wakefulness, which is commonly called hypnosis."

"What does that mean?" Norbert asked, irritated.

"It means that the drip is taking effect," the medic replied. "We can continue."

Norbert hissed. "Okay. Was there anyone else?"

"Hans," Skipper answered.

"Hans? What Hans?"

"Agent Hans, the puffin."

There he was. Norbert, among his papers, had enough information about Hans' role on the operation and it wasn't big deal for him. He didn't come after him, but after Skipper. So he recordered the whole sentence.

"Agent Hans the Puffin successfully ruined an operation infamously dubbed The Copenhagen Incident."

Norbert thought that by doing that he was portraying Skipper as a useless guy unable to abort a counter-mission. He went on revising the papers. Apparently, there had been a fight between both. Perfect.

"Did you eventually confront Hans at a fight?"

"Yes," Skipper answered.

"With weapons?"

"With fish."

Norbert knew that among sea birds it was plausible, but if humans read it... He had enough with all the folklore that Skipper had sneaked at the beginning of the recorder, and pentothal effect was short-term.

"When was that?"

"Before waking up in Kyoto on a bed of counterfeit deutschemarks."

Norbert swore himself that he would strangle him as soon as the interrogation ended. He had dismissed the fish fight and in exchange Skipper had told him that nonsense. Bloody jerk! He pressed Enter.

"Now we'll go with your recruits. Let's start. Co-conspirators Manfredi and Johnson." Norbert had a long list of stories. "There was a meeting. What happened?"

Skipper drowned laughter. "In a meeting Chinstrap Sisters flirted with them."

"Has that ever happened again?"

"At Nairobi surprise party."

Skipper was beating around the bush. Norbert only wanted information about the mission in Denmark: how free time was used by Skipper's team was not useful at all, at least at that moment.

"What else did they do in Denmark?"

Bzzzzz-Bzzzzz Bzz-Bzzzzz Bzzzzz-Bzz-Bzz. Skipper felt a slight discharge. And another. And another. Bzzzzz-Bzzzzz Bzz-Bzzzzz Bzzzzz-Bzz-Bzz. He heard a door opening, but it wasn't at the room where he was. Instinctively he knew what he had to do. Talking. Talking a lot. He winked his right eye.

"They investigated, they hacked the systems... as they had been told. But they did a lot more."

Norbert was listening attentively not knowing that a door was opening behind him.

"They survived when flying piranhas attacked them, playing with an exploding elephant's foot, they traveled inside a Beluga whale that swallowed them."

The medic was behind Norbert.

"We sometimes presumed them dead, thinking that we buried what was left with a teaspoon and that they fitted in a manila envelope from Manila. And they had an accident at the worst talent show ever."

Norbert noticed someone spinning the chair where he was sitting and let go the button. He saw the face, completely black, of the medic who had administered Skipper the drip.

"Do you know who I am?"

Norbert didn't have time to reply. He was given a blow and fell forward motionless. The door in the interrogations room opened.

"I knew it was you," Skipper said while Madeleine untied all the straps that prevented him from escaping.

"And how did you know? Morse?" she asked him, removing his IV.

"No, before. It's not the first time I've been interrogated with pentothal, did you know? What did you inject me?"

"Hospital saline solution."

Madeleine helped him sit up. Both went to the room from where the questions had been made. Norbert was unconscious, lying on the floor. Next to him there was a metal bar stained with blood. Madeleine touched his flipper.

"He has pulse. He'll walk away from this... unfortunately."

Skipper saw on a screen the report that the machine was making from the words of both. He recognized the code, though he couldn't interpret it. He saw the key and the button. He pressed Enter, the button and made a colophon for the report.

"Ray of Black and White: Penguins."

He pressed Enter twice and unplugged the machine from the net.

"There you have the official version," he said, laughing.

Both leaned at the corridor. Madeleine went to the previous room. She had to remove the paint from herself.

"You should know that it wasn't funny to be given a shot," Skipper protested. "You know I hate needles."

"It was necessary," she said, rinsing her head at the office washbasin. "Or would you have preferred him to choose the method to get the intel?"

"And the true medic?"

"Norbert is not the only one with access to darts, did you know?"

When she finished, she and Skipper went back where Norbert was. He was still unconscious.

"Good riddance, father," she whispered to him.