Chapter Fifty-Eight – Interrogation

Chapter Fifty-Eight – Interrogation

“Gentrification of music and art is a bitch, ya know?

Man, used to be that art meant something. Now some punk kid in some backwater shithole neighbourhood makes some trashcan hip-hip about how shit life is, gets picked up by a label, and a week later he’s ODed off some blow he sniffed from his new corpo wife’s rack, meanwhile, everything he’s made, everything he stood for has been mined and broken apart and sold to the highest bidder.”

–Scoop Doge, from his penthouse suite in Ohio Two, 2051

***

I figured that with about a dozen heavily-armed dudes looking out for him, as well as his nervous secretary, Burringham would be just fine if I left him for a bit. Anyone that could kill that many guards to get to him would probably kill him whether I was there or not.

The healing kit I’d left jabbed into him would take care of his injuries in the mean-time. He’d be just fine.

“So, where did you hide the assassin again?” I asked.

The guard gestured ahead, down one of the corridors that I imagine most guests weren’t supposed to see. It wasn’t nearly as well-decorated and opulent as the rest of the hall. “Security room. We have a medic working to keep him alive.”

“Shit,” I said. “What’s his condition like?”

“Not very good,” the guard said. “Your shots didn’t kill him immediately, that’s all I can say.”

I nodded. I’d have to buy a second kit to keep him alive. Great. That’s exactly what I wanted to do. Spend some of my hard-earned points on a man that had just tried to shoot someone. A politician, mind, so it was only like shooting half a person, but it still counted.

The security room, as it turned out, wasn’t so much a single room as a small area marked off for the guards and the like.

There was a small waiting area, with a few couches and a TV against the far wall, as well as a counter with a microwave and minifridge. The other side of the space had a glass door with an armory behind it, and past that a corridor with doors on either side.

There was only one door currently being guarded.

The guard accompanying me guided me over to that door. It opened into a white-walled room with an interrogation table in the middle cast in harsh industrial light. The gunman was on the table, face locked in a grimace, his clothes tossed off and piled up to the side where someone had obviously cut them all apart.

His mechanical arm was missing at the shoulder, and his other hand was handcuffed to the edge of the table.

A guard was wiping his chest around an already bloody bandage. “How is he?” I asked.

The man screamed and twisted on the table, tugging at the handcuff as he did so. He opened his mouth, and it was clear that someone had torn out some of his teeth.

“He’ll live,” the medic guard said. “The shot didn’t do him any favours, but it missed most vital things.”

“The shot, singular?” I asked.

The medic nodded. “One hit his mechanical arm. Tore a gash into his back on the exit. Nothing too serious. Second hit him high in the chest. Punctured lung, three broken ribs, some internal bleeding. I have him filled with foam to keep the bleeding down. Haven’t sedated him.”

“Why’s he missing his teeth?” I asked with a gesture to his face.

The guard looked up. “Suicide capsules in his teeth. Aug-linked. They didn’t go off.”

“Ah, that’s my fault,” I said.

“They could have been triggered manually if he crushed them enough, so the teeth had to go,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Shit, that sucks,” I said. “So, he’s going to live, huh?”

“He should, assuming we get him to a hospital within the next twelve hours or so. I haven’t administered pain medication yet, I don’t want him hazy for any interrogations.”

“Nasty. We get an ID yet?”

The guard who escorted me into the room was the one to reply. His eyes were glowing, a tell-tale sign he was deep into his augs. “No ID. He entered the gala under the name John Black, but Mister Black’s actual location was confirmed minutes ago, he was unable to attend because of other matters. We’re investigating.”

“Is his face real?” I asked. To pass himself off as someone else…

“The files on Mister Black’s identity were changed. He’s a close-match, appearance-wise.”

“Huh,” I said before I leaned down atop the table, then pressed my hand over the guy’s sternum as he tried to push himself up. “Hey buddy, what’s your name?”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He screamed into my face, which was a little rude. His eyes locked onto my helmet, and he spat a gob of blood at me that splattered against my visor and immediately slipped off and splattered on the table.

“Okay,” I said.

You might want to consider connecting to his augmentations and use those to identify him.

“Not a bad idea,” I said. I noticed the medic looking up at me, but other than checking the bandage, he didn’t interfere. I opened my cyberwarfare software and linked back into the guy’s augmentations.

Just about everyone had physical identification of some sort, but a lot of shops and places accepted aug-based ID. Our mystery friend’s augs had plenty of ID, those at the top were all linked to mister Black, but he had about a dozen more past that.