Fool's Gold, Part 3

"I'm not sure I understand the question."

The water really wasn't all that cold. It made up for that fact with pressure and the fact that the man firing it was exceptionally good at making Ash fall on his face. With the room padded, this meant a lot of painful impacts with minimal marks.

The questions had stopped. That was the key part. Godfather had stopped coming, probably too interested in the bounties of his world and the damn Wunderwaffe. No longer there to insure the orders she had given were carried out. None of the other Magpies in charge, it seemed, were either interested in helping on that front, or were busy themselves. Or they were scared of Ivan. Lots of people seemed to be scared of Ivan.

No questions throughout the whole thing. Just constant blasts of water for who knows how long, and then back to his cell. Ash was pretty sure he spied a camera in the padded room on his way out; Ivan, it seemed, now preferred some distance.

"What is there to not understand?" The speaker, a young-ish fellow who looked like he would disappear in a Clark Kent impersonation contest, raised an eyebrow as he spoke, but otherwise didn't change expression. He, as well as the slim blonde woman next to him, were exactly the sort of people you shouldn't find here, which made all the stranger to Ash that they were. The man behind them looked more 'traditional', in size at least, but his expression matched the other two's. He had a number of grenades clipped to his vest that he kept fiddling with, a nervous tic that made Ash a little nervous himself. Hopefully he didn't accidentally pull a pin.

Tracy Owens - Telepath. Codename: Babel.
 
Willis Powell - Persuasive Voice. Codename: Whisper.

Declan Leopold- Low-Class Telekinetic. Primarily serves as support role, using power to throw explosives great distances with greater accuracy. Prefers flashbangs. Codename: Blindspot

"Ivan is abusing you," Willis continued, "for his own twisted amusement, and yet you don't... do anything. You just let it happen to you, despite the numerous opportunities you've had to resist. Why be so... passive?"

Ash considered asking the obvious question, but a cramp of pain discouraged him. He closed his eyes, thinking.

"...why do YOU think I'm doing it?"

"Lost hope? Waiting for an opportunity?" Willis shrugged. "What amazes me is the lack of screaming and begging, personally. Most of Ivan's victims tend to break in half a week."

"Personally," piped up Tracy, "I think it's a coping mechanism. After all, stuck in a strange land, cut off from your friends and acquaintances, being tortured by a registered psychopath and criminal for no motivation other than-"

The man immediately elbowed her in the side, adding a sharp glare for good measure, and she petered to a stop.

"...I'm rather surprised about the lack of screaming and begging myself. I...don't like pain. Hate it, actually." Ash said. "...and Ivan seems to have enough of a brain to realize pain has limits..."

Ash was not exactly claustrophobic, but he didn't have to be. The mental force field box, as it closed in, would be enough to inject phobias into anyone, squeezing him down into the smallest ball of himself he could make, and then just...stopping. And letting him sit there, trapped with no room to move. Minutes, hours, time lost all meaning. It would only expand out when his muscles started to cramp, and no sooner had he massaged the cramps away when he was squeezed down again. Over and over. Until it finally just went away and he was dragged back to his cell, utterly exhausted despite any actual physical effort.

They'd cut his meals down to nothing, as well. At least they hadn't cut his water.

"...do you have dangerous plants in this world?"

"Yes." Tracy nodded. "First to spring to mind is the Giant Coffin Rose of our South America - some call it the Red Maiden. It's petals are lined inside with spikes and connected to a spring mechanism, linked to trigger sensors on the inside. Step on it and the petals snap shut around you, slowly squeezing the breath from your body whilst the spikes pierce you all over. The process can take anywhere from three to five hours, depending on the length of the spikes or the size of the victim. So you get to watch your own blood trickle down to its roots before blood loss, asphyxiation or both claim you."

Willis shuddered, swallowing back bile. "Lovely," he muttered in a voice dripping in sarcasm.

"There's a plant in my world. We call them Landvines...they're these long thick ropes that have these big blue-green seed pods...and what happens is if it gets too dry, the pods break off. And if you step on one...there's a chemical in the plant cell walls that mixes with a chemical held in the pods, and they explode. Rather violently. Not as bad as your Maiden, but still, they throw people head over heels backwards, wreck boots, some people call them Toecutters because they've seen people lose toes to them. I heard a story once...where a Blackbird, a magician of my world, worked out a way to talk to plants. Plants don't really have much in the way of conversation skills, but when asked if he talked to Landvines about why they were so damn vicious, the answer was basically 'I wish no harm...but you step on me and I do what I must then.'

More cramps.

"...ever encountered an abused animal?"

Aside glances.

"...more than once." Tracy spoke hesitantly, unsure. "I used to work for the Crows - Delia's section. You have to be a certain kind of person to join them - broken, yet made savage because of it. And when you're a telepath like me, the mixture of hopeless, bottled anger, just waiting to burst out... It was why I asked for the transfer to begin with. I wasn't the kind of person she wanted."

"Then you know the effect. The....coring effect. How humans and animals can make each other better...and instead all the person did was make the animal...nothing more than an animal. Hell, not even that. A false purity, nothing but the most aggressive, violent instincts, no balance...because the animal has learned that's what it needs to survive. It can't understand anything else.

"...either of you part of a religion?"

Willis shrugged. "Not much of a believer, myself. My mother was a devout Mantran, though. Always said Chakravartin put everything on this planet for a purpose, but I couldn't really wrap my head around that. I mean, did he make things like the Hollow Field as well? I think she just believed because... There didn't seem to be another explanation for all the bad things."

"It's a bit hard to separate myth from reality," Tracy explained. "Especially when we have things like miniature dragons alongside hoverbikes and lasers."

"...Let me tell you a story..."

Honestly, in retrospect, Ash was surprised Ivan was smart enough to consider it. Three gallons of water left in the room...and then the door locked. The lights turned off.

Alone.

No one came. No one spoke. Time to heal, to regain strength...nothing but time. And the dark. Isolation. Absolute solitude.

Had they not mistimed it so that Ash was sleeping when they finally stopped the 'solitary confinement', Ash might have actually broken down and begged for...something. It was strange how a complete lack of torture could, if directed properly, be torture in and of itself.

So Ash did. About his mother, the equivalent of a pope, and about Schwarze Spinne, the Black Spider, the 'anti-pope' who desired to tear down Diana's city and ways and replace them with his own.

"Wandering his army in disguise, listening to them talk about how my mother, her people...flawed but good, how they were blasphemers, how they deserved the most ugly things to happen to them, how righteous and good it would be when they, the holy chosen, brought those ugly, ugly desires to bear on the 'false heathens'..."

Ash shook his head.

"Cut away the personal issues, all the rhetoric. In the end, all of Spinne's 'true believers' wanted to hurt people, and they were willing to come up with whole libraries worth of justification for it. How they were noble and right and GOOD for it. Just like your boss. Too many people died for me to succumb to that...more than I already have. Because my friends...there's nothing courageous about such a desire. Just that blind desire to hit...or hit back. Nothing special, nothing accomplished, nothing HUMAN. A PLANT can do it."

A long silence filled the room at that moment, the other three letting Ash's words sink in at that point. Even Declan had actually stopped fiddling with his grenades, much to the relief of everybody present, and had shuffled a little closer to listen in.

When Willis next spoke, his voice was quiet.

"...so what should we do?"

"...Believe me, if I knew...even I can't always keep to that fact. My current treatment...it's because I lashed out blindly, gave into that urge to strike back...the easy way. The one that so swiftly becomes 'Do whatever you have to indulge this, because it feels so GOOD. Any reason, any justification, any excuse, any cover...just give in'. You see what happened because I gave in. Your boss..."

Ash worked his jaw. At least his teeth were still intact.

"I don't know what he wants...any more than I really knew what Spinne wanted. Put aside the personal again...if I had to guess...he wants a world where his way is the first way, and the only way, all the time. Where all you have to do is give in. He wants a world where violence reigns...so I ask you...is that what you want? Because here's the thing...whether he's hurting me because I insulted his honor, or his sense of accomplishment, or whatever, or I'm hurting HIM because he hit a woman...it's all just violence. There's no balance in it. I'm not any more right in the end than him, because all I did was add more violence to the world. I...always wanted to be a hero. I've learned that being a hero is about a lot of sacrifice...so I try not to crack. Ivan, on some level...probably wants just that. So I ask again...what do YOU want?"

Another prolonged silence, punctuated by the click-click of Declan compulsively fiddling again.

Willis looked to Tracy. She returned the look.

Then they turned back to Ash and spoke, one after another.

"We... We want to get out. We want to stop all... this."

"What Ivan... what Godfather's doing... It's too much."

"Then leave."

"Impossible." Willis shook his head emphatically. "No-one leaves the Magpies. They hunt you down if you try."

"What about-?" Tracy began.

"Her?" A humourless chuckle. "She got lucky. Not even Godfather would mess with a demon. Us? We'd be dead before we even crossed the threshold."

"...Why are you here?"

A roll of the eyes from Willis. "Usual story, at least for people like me. Fell in with a bad crowd. Ended up owing money. Got roped in to pay it off. Only my talents caught Ivan's eye, and he got me shifted here. Dunno why he'd want someone with weird persuasive voice powers on his team, when he mostly solves problems by punching them."

"I didn't have much choice, either," Tracy put in. "I needed a roof over my head, food in my belly and money in my pocket. And they - he, rather - promised them to me. At a price, of course - didn't think this price..."

"You never realize the price of your choices."

From nothing but sleep to no sleep.

Light. Noises. People coming into his cell to rouse him, all of it making sure he never slept. When had he last been talking to Tracy and Willis, those two who had been given so many questions? He didn't know. His brain was frazzled. Everything was warped.

Subject a man to violence, and the violence in him will bloom. On a long enough timeline, the survival rate of anything drops to zero...

And it's faster if someone wants to prove a point, as the door abruptly opened and she was thrown in.

Tracy and Willis gone...that conversation had ended who knew when...

"Hello again," grumbled Hannah, picking herself up ruefully and dusting herself down. "Don't rush to get the cake, I already ate."

"Guhhhhhhhhhhh..." Was she here? Was he hallucinating? The world as it was seemed so less clear...even the head blows hadn't made him this out of it.

"...oh, dear."

Even through blurred vision, Ash could see what was wrong with the hand waving in front of his face. It should have been coated in a fine layer of flinty rock, as well as driving itself repeatedly into his jaw, stomach and various over vulnerable areas alongside an equally-aggressive twin. Not... flesh and blood, and just waving at him.

But what if this was a trick? After all, the foul-mouthed-

"Yo. Earth to dork. You there?"

...Huh. No swearing. That meant something was definitely wrong with Hannah Vallis.

"...youuuuuu?"

"Yes, me. Do I have to strip naked in front of you to prove it?"

"Nooooo...hurrrttttt..."

"Ugh, fine. Lucky for you I brought this, then."

A shuffling sound, as if something was being pulled out of a pile of rags. Then a clicking, popping noise, and Ash found the lip of a plastic water bottle being pushed between his lips.

"Drink," ordered Hannah, shortly. "It's got a diluted Nightbalm solution in it. Might help with the whole 'fuckers won't let me sleep' thing."

Ah, there we go. There's the sweary Hannah that was known and... well, tolerated would probably be the best word in this situation.

Though it seemed like Ash was in the least tolerating mood he could be, on the basis that he immediately grabbed Hannah by the throat.

"NO MORE HURT!"

"Then you know the effect. The....coring effect. How humans and animals can make each other better...and instead all the person did was make the animal...nothing more than an animal. Hell, not even that. A false purity, nothing but the most aggressive, violent instincts, no balance...because the animal has learned that's what it needs to survive. It can't understand anything else..."

"ACK!"

Hannah's immediate reaction was to start madly flailing, her fists hammering into Ash's ribs and shoulders. In a previous lifetime, it would have been enough to smash bones to fragments and organs to jelly, or send her attacker tumbling end-over-end backwards and give her time to retaliate. But when nothing in particular happened, her eyes, already bugging out from the shock and near-strangulation, widened even further as realization came roaring in.

Point One. Her power was gone.

Point Two. She was trapped in a room with a sleep-deprived, vengeful prisoner.

Point Three. He was nearly twice her size.

"Shit," she choked out. "Help! HELPPPPP!"

No one came. It took Hannah three seconds to realize no one was going to.

"...Where all you have to do is give in. He wants a world where violence reigns..."

The bill had come due.