[Duncan/Jai/Siegmund] - interrogation
Who:
Duncan
Jai
Siegmund
When: Saturday, November 26th
Where: The basement of the Fox'n'Crown
Rating & Warnings: PG-13 for blood and death
Jai gets his hands on Siegmund and brings his new torturer in for his first interrogation.
No matter how tight a lid one pressed to a pot, the ugly contents it contained were sure to boil over eventually, and leave all in their path stained and ruined. The Guard would filter down to the Tavern as soon as they heard, and by then the taproom, the front, all that surrounded it had to be cleaned spick, and scrubbed span. Jai had little interest in such particulars, and a great deal in locating and flaying those responsible for the crisis in an up-close and personal manner. He’d sat inside for the bulk of the day, his mind ticking over the morsels of information his teams were bringing in.
Owen’s sense had prevailed over his sensibility, and Gladio Siegmund was, as required, on Jai’s floor by sundown on Saturday, and at this juncture Jai would take what he could get. With the spirit of his dead Lieutenant no doubt wailing over his shoulder, he’d smacked the Gladio over the temple with a tankard and fastened his unconscious body face up to a bench in the very cellar he’d been hiding in. Duncan’s dejected form stayed silent in the background, and for a few precious moments, there was nothing but silence,
The trickle of water breached it slowly, with irregular, rapid thuds as the droplets beat a staccato pattern on Siegmund’s forehead.
Duncan stood beside his bag of surgeon's tools, gaze settled on the prone figure of the boy, but flipping occasionally to Jai as he waited for something to happen.
Duncan was not okay with this. That boy on the bench was somebody he'd met, been introduced to, exchanged words with. He'd been able to perform vivisections because they were people he didn't know--they weren't people, they were criminals. This--this was something altogether different. It wasn't for the furthering of medicine, it was causing pain for its own sake.
But the worst part, beyond everything else, was the small part of him deep down that wanted to do this and learn from it. The part he was sure Belief had created.
Siegmund slowly came to. The last thing he remembered was hiding out at Owen's, and the first thing he noticed was the pounding headache. The second thing he noticed was the irregular drip of water on his forehead, and the third thing, when he tried to move out from under it, was the fact that he couldn't move.
That was when he panicked. He struggled against the ropes, too panicked, unfortunately, to think to try to use the most recent power he'd discovered to melt out of them.
If the boy really was an Other as Mari had suggested, now would be the time his skills would manifest. Setting the water container aside, Jai waited for it, silent and tense. When nothing came about, he drew in a silent breath and stepped into place at the top end of the bench. "Siegmund," he began, and set each palm of his hand to either side of the bench, looming over the prostrate figure with a reasonable, if low key expression painted onto his features. Jai was like that; affable, approachable, familiar. He could even be merciful when the opportunity presented itself. With Rhys dead, though, there were a collection of people baying for blood. Siegmund, the poor sod, was going to give his quart. If he talked, it'd be a quick delivery. If he didn't, Duncan would get the opportunity to hone his skills. "I'd apologise for the uncomfortable bed you've got there, but I'm sure I don't need to explain why you're here."
He paused, allowing a few heartbeats of peace to return to Owen's silent cellar. The chill from the winter had seeped through the soil and brick, but Owen kept his holdings well, and it wasn't bitter in this room. The smell of sweetened alcohol lingered on the air. "I need some information," he explained. "I'm relatively sure you'll try lying at first, people always do for some reason... but rest assured, the longer you prevaricate, the more excited my silent friend over there gets." Here, Jai's head lifted, glancing over towards the voiceless Evandros at the other end of the room. It was a fleeting glance, just enough for Siegmund to get an idea of where and what Duncan was. Then the Whisper's calm eyes returned. "Any questions before we start?"
It was a purposeful lie, Duncan knew, to convince the boy to talk. Still, being spoken of in such a way made him feel sick. He didn't look excited, not one bit. Just stoic, the face of somebody waiting patiently.
Siegmund's eyes snapped up to Jai and he went still. They were glowing softly in the dark, the only obvious sign of his Otherness. They flickered toward the other side of the room as Jai's gaze moved toward Duncan. A man he recognized, the same one who'd sewn up Rhys's wound. That left him confused. If Duncan was a Whisper, how had Indraneel known him? Were all his friends Whispers without him knowing? Were the Whispers simply that pervasive?
His eyes turned back to Jai, his fear clear on his face. "I won't lie," he insisted. Please just let me go, was not something he could say, despite how desperately he wanted to. He knew how these things worked. He was going to be killed. The most he could hope for was a quick death with minimal pain.
"As you say," Jai said, the bland, noncommittal tone of his voice belying the acceptance the words might suggest. "We'll see how you go."
He straightened up. There was no need to hunch over the kid like that, and his back was starting to ache. One foot rattled a stocky barrell across the floor to sit beside the bench, and Jai's tall frame hunched down to sit on it. "Did you kill my Lieutenant?" Rhys hadn't officially been a Lieutenant, of course, but everyone who was anyone within the Whispers knew he'd been marked out for it, was it in all but name. Now that he was gone, it seemed petty not to give it to him. Besides, Jai had liked Rhys, perhaps a little too much. Too many idiots running around these days.
Confusion flashed across Siegmund's face, followed closely by realization. Rhys had been given a lot of responsibility recently, he knew, but he'd never been told that Rhys was so high ranking. "No! I didn't kill Rhys, it was M. M saw us together and he said I am a traitor and he told Rhys to come and he killed Rhys and he tried to kill me--" The words spilled out desperately, in the vain hope that if he volunteered more than he was asked for, Jai would go easy on him, take his word at face value instead of digging deeper.
The rush of words didn't usually come so early in the sequence. Panic was a reasonable emotion for Siegmund to be feeling, and it wasn't necessarily to be expected that Rhys' level of customary calm would be employed in his nearest and dearest. The question remained as to whether Siegmund was genuinely trying to impress him, or whether he was spewing what he thought Jai wanted to hear to get himself out from under the butcher's knife. Jai's eyebrows rose. "Who is M?"
"One of the Dogs," Siegmund answered. "Very high-ranking, I see him with Lady Rapier sometimes."
Rapier was dead. Jai was absolutely sure of it. He rubbed a finger across the tip of his nose. Why hadn't M passed that information onto his lackies? Was the loyalty he hoped for not yet secure enough that he could do so? Living under Rapier's shadow had to be a real mood-killer - so catching and killing Rhys was likely his attempt at a career-maker. Sadly for him, he'd only signed his own death warrant. Next question.
"Not sure I believe you," he commented. "That was a lot of information you threw out, there, and so easily to a man who's supposed to be your enemy. Either your loyalty is worth next to nothing, or you're full of shit. Which is it?"
Jai didn't believe him. Duncan took a breath, held it, let it out slowly. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets, his head lowered slightly, his eye still watching the two of them. His services were going to be called in shortly, he felt. He hoped not.
"He killed my friend in front of me!" Siegmund's voice was pitched, desperate, pleading with Jai to believe him. "He tried to kill me! He says I am a traitor! I don't have anything to be loyal to!"
"How come you were there in the first place?" Jai's voice was deceptively smooth. Siegmund was quite possibly innocent of murder, but of luring his friend out into plain view to be taken he had not yet been exonerated. "What part did you play in the Dog's arrangement?"
He lifted a hand, beckoned once to Duncan. Bring a toy, Doctor. So far, there would be no blood spilled, but it was too easy, too simple; too much was falling out of Siegmund's mouth.
Duncan's chest tightened when he saw the gesture. He wanted to turn and run up the stairs and never come back, but where was there to go? The fact that Jai needed him around was the only thing keeping him alive. If he left, the only thing waiting for him would be the noose.
He bent to retrieve his bag from the floor, and approached the bench in even, measured steps, stopping at Siegmund's side. He looked at Jai, waiting for orders, to avoid looking at the boy's face.
Siegmund flinched at the sound of footsteps, and shrank against the bench as Duncan's shadow loomed over him. It was too dark in here for him to freeze people; the shadows weren't distinct enough. He tried to remember how he'd done what he had to get away from M's lackeys, but through the headache and his panic he just couldn't.
"M used me to make Rhys come," Siegmund said. His eyes left the doctor to try to capture Jai, but he couldn't crane his head far enough to see him. "I didn't do anything, he tied me up and told Rhys to meet him."
Jai barely glanced at Duncan as he arrived, instead focusing every eyelash on Siegmund. He was tied with his arms by his sides, fastened securely to the table top. The ropes here, though, left his wrists bared. "Check his wrists, Doctor," the mobster suggested. "Is he telling me the truth?"
Duncan glanced at Siegmund. He didn't miss the way it made the boy flinch. Siegmund was terrified. His heart would be beating like a rabbit's whether he was lying or not. "His pulse won't tell you anything useful," Duncan replied. "Fear response is the same whether you're lying or telling the truth."
After he said it, he realized he shouldn't have. He should've just felt for Siegmund's pulse and confirmed it as the truth, and then they could've ended this without Duncan having to open his bag at all. It was Belief. That small part of himself that wanted to do this. He felt sick again.
Jai awarded Duncan a blank look of confusion, but it swiftly faded to comprehension. Breaking in a new torturer was always an issue - especially one who'd lived a privileged life beforehand. "Our friend here says he was tied up," he said, gently, and beckoned Duncan to look at one of the limbs in question, setting his fingers about one of Siegmund's wrists. "Marks of rope burn," he said, "will tell us far more about his honesty than any beat of his heart."
Sure enough, the skin was ruddied at the wrist, where rope met struggle and won. "You two should never have met in public," he noted, flicking the bitter black of his stare back down to the boy on the table, releasing his wrist. "Next question: where would I find this Dog you mention?"
Oh. Well, now Duncan felt stupid. But that was nothing new, he'd been missing the obvious his entire life. He folded his arms, leaning over to look as Jai showed him what he meant. The marks were definitely consistent with having been tied up, and Duncan nodded to affirm that.
Siegmund let out a quiet breath of relief as the two confirmed his story. Maybe he could convince Jai he wasn't lying, then. "I know," he said, not quite crying, but the guilt when somebody else pointed it out was overwhelming. "I know, it was stupid."
Then his breath caught, and he stared up at Duncan for a moment before his eyes tried to find Jai again. He knew how this was going to go. Any question you had to answer with 'I don't know' was going to result in pain, until the person questioning you could be sure that you really didn't know. "In the Grounds," he said carefully. "He comes around every week to talk to the cell leaders."
"The Grounds encompass a large area," observed the Whisper, quietly. "You'll have to do better than that." He shifted upwards a little, folded his arms against the table. It was difficult, this, to remain calm and easygoing with an enemy gang member who thus far was his only ticket to revenge. Panic him too early and he'd reveal nothing useful except excrement, don't lean on him enough, and the lies would be more subtle, more deliberate, but ultimately useless. This dainty response Siegmund had given suggested his brain was collected enough to retain a measure of the style of answer he chose to give. That wasn't good enough. "Doctor, I'd customarily start with fingers, but that feels a little vulgar to me today. Why don't you cut our friend's stomach clear of obstruction?" And to Siegmund. "Where in the Grounds do they meet? Where do your cell leaders have their hideouts?"
Duncan's breath hitched and turned shallow. He didn't want to do this. He didn't have a choice. He knelt to pull open his bag and retrieve a knife, serrated, for the ropes. He set a hand on Siegmund's stomach, unable to ignore the way he flinched at the touch, and carefully sawed away the ropes across his abdomen.
He tried not to look at the kid's face while he did it, but it was on the wrong side for his missing eye to be convenient. The terror was present in his peripheral vision the entire time, while he cut the ropes, and still there while he yanked up Siegmund's shirt to expose the pale skin of his stomach. He automatically adjusted the knife in his hand for an incision, then lowered it to his side, realizing what he'd just done and feeling ill.
No. No no no no no Siegmund panicked again, tears in his eyes this time as he spilled the locations of all the cells he knew of. His own, even though they'd been family to him for years, and two or three others. He didn't know many. The street-level gangs of Gladio were largely independent. "But I don't know where M stays," he insisted, after the rush of information. "I only know he comes to the cells every week."
Jai tilted his head, a gentle cat-grin curving his mouth. "A little easy," he chided. "How do I know you're not lying about this? While I investigate the locations, you'll yet be alive." Duncan was practically gibbering behind him, and for once Jai blessed the curse of his gender for the wider sense of vision it granted him. Men were blind, women were not.
Duncan bit his lip, glancing over at Jai, anxiously fingering the knife. It might have looked like anticipation from the outside, but it was trepidation. He still didn't know exactly what was going to be asked of him, and he most certainly did not want to be left to self-directed torture while Jai ran off to fact-check.
"I don't lie!" Siegmund cried, his eyes going from Jai's face up to Duncan's, down to the knife in the doctor's hand. "I don't lie, it's true! Please, Rhys was my friend, I don't want to protect M at all, I tell the truth."
"So you keep saying," mused Jai. "So you keep saying." He rose, leaning over the table once again. "By the way, is this what M did with Rhys, before he died? Did they have the same little chat we are?"
Siegmund tore his eyes away from the doctor, staring wide-eyed up at Jai. "No." He shook his head. "No, he just asked Rhys to give him information and Rhys gave it if M said he would let me go."
A shame that Rhys had broken so easily, but his worst flaw been his biggest asset - he was a people person, Rhys. He formed attachments. Jai had told him frequently that it held him back, that it caused concern; in the end, it had been the thing to kill him. Shameful, really.
"And did he?"
"Yes."
Silence pervaded the cellar. Jai could almost feel the shreds of personality leaving him, each minute connection that Jai as a character possessed unclipping from the whole. Of course Rhys had given it, and knowing him, he'd likely told the truth about it. Selling out the many to protect -- what. To protect the one. This pitiful, sobbing wretch on the table, who had somehow managed to escape with nothing but a few rope burns on his wrists.
In the end, all it took was a single gesture. Jai's left hand flashed out, seized the serrated knife that Duncan was holding, and swiped it across the Gladio's trembling throat in a deep, upward cut. Blood bubbled from the incision, but Silence, maskless, ignored it. He locked eyes with Siegmund, and held them until the frothing ceased.
Duncan jumped, recoiling, watching wide-eyed as Jai killed the boy without a word.
It was easy to watch people die. He'd been doing it for years. He could pinpoint the exact moment of death by now, the instant where light left a person's eyes and their soul fled their body. As he watched it happen to the boy on the table, he felt relief.
It was short-lived. Relief at not having to make a monster of himself, that the boy had been killed before Duncan was forced to torture him. Relief because somebody's death was a good thing for him. Did that make him inhuman? To be glad that somebody had died before he was forced to be inhuman?
He let out a slow, quiet breath, watching as the flow of blood stopped, the struggling stopped, the body went perfectly still and limp. His eye moved up to Jai's face, silent and intense. He didn't say anything. He waited. He didn't want to interrupt Jai's thoughts and have that knife turned on him.
Jai's fingers twitched for needle and thread. This was not a straight assassination, it did not need to be hidden, or disposed of, or used as a message. It was his kill and should be marked as so. With Duncan there to witness it, though, Silence could not be the murderer, and therefore the ritual would go incomplete. There would be no row of stitches to close this boy's mouth as it should be. The knife left Jai's hands, ruining the still picture further by piercing Siegmund's breast with the shaped blade. There between the third and fourth rib on the left hand side the heart would be pierced. Silence did not pierce the heart in his murders. It was uncouth, it was raw, and it caused all kinds of mess.
Then again, Silence did not kill out of revenge or emotion, no matter how angry he might be. Perhaps there was no need for a needle, this was Jai's kill, after all.
Leaving the knife where it was, the gangster let life flow back into his face, and reached for a cloth to remove any faint traces of blood from his hands and face. There were none, the knife had been neat enough, and a puddle of blood was already starting to seep through the basement flooring. "Cut that up into small pieces," he instructed Duncan. "Parcel it all up but for the head, and scrub everything."
If fortune played kind, the next person in here would be M. He, in turn, would meet Silence, and be silenced.
Without waiting for response, Jai stepped out of the bloody puddle he'd made, and strode off up the stairs to the back room. Without knowing exactly what Rhys had spilled, Jai had to assume it was everything. The Gladios knew every single hideout, every single safe house.
Everything had to move.
Duncan watched Jai leave. Only after the door was shut behind him did Duncan start breathing again, turning down to the body on the table. A long pause followed before he finally reached a shaking hand out to the handle of the knife, wrapped his fingers around it, paused for the space of a breath to steel himself for what he'd been asked to do, and yanked the blade out of the boy's chest.
He knew exactly how to dismember a corpse, of course. How to saw through flesh and sinew until you hit the bone. Where to leverage pressure to pop the bones out of their joints, separating them from the cartilage, so you could remove them without need of a bonesaw. It was slow, methodical work. He shut himself down, running on muscle memory and instinct, not giving himself the time to think and examine what he was doing. Not giving himself the time to become disgusted by it, and conversely not giving that small part of himself the time to be fascinated by it and enamoured of it.
A pile of limbs built up on the floor beside him. It was only when he got to the head, having to saw through a neck while staring at the face it belonged to, that he had to put the knife down. He turned away, took a few steps, fell to his knees, and let himself be sick. It was like the first time he'd performed a vivisection all over again, retching even after there was nothing left, wondering how he could live with himself after doing something like this.
But that was an easy question to answer. He'd live with himself the same way he always had. The only difference was that this time he wasn't denying that what he did was monstrous.
He forced himself to his feet, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, and went to retrieve the knife. He'd clean up the last remnants of his humanity along with the blood.
Duncan
Jai
Siegmund
When: Saturday, November 26th
Where: The basement of the Fox'n'Crown
Rating & Warnings: PG-13 for blood and death
Jai gets his hands on Siegmund and brings his new torturer in for his first interrogation.
No matter how tight a lid one pressed to a pot, the ugly contents it contained were sure to boil over eventually, and leave all in their path stained and ruined. The Guard would filter down to the Tavern as soon as they heard, and by then the taproom, the front, all that surrounded it had to be cleaned spick, and scrubbed span. Jai had little interest in such particulars, and a great deal in locating and flaying those responsible for the crisis in an up-close and personal manner. He’d sat inside for the bulk of the day, his mind ticking over the morsels of information his teams were bringing in.
Owen’s sense had prevailed over his sensibility, and Gladio Siegmund was, as required, on Jai’s floor by sundown on Saturday, and at this juncture Jai would take what he could get. With the spirit of his dead Lieutenant no doubt wailing over his shoulder, he’d smacked the Gladio over the temple with a tankard and fastened his unconscious body face up to a bench in the very cellar he’d been hiding in. Duncan’s dejected form stayed silent in the background, and for a few precious moments, there was nothing but silence,
The trickle of water breached it slowly, with irregular, rapid thuds as the droplets beat a staccato pattern on Siegmund’s forehead.
Duncan stood beside his bag of surgeon's tools, gaze settled on the prone figure of the boy, but flipping occasionally to Jai as he waited for something to happen.
Duncan was not okay with this. That boy on the bench was somebody he'd met, been introduced to, exchanged words with. He'd been able to perform vivisections because they were people he didn't know--they weren't people, they were criminals. This--this was something altogether different. It wasn't for the furthering of medicine, it was causing pain for its own sake.
But the worst part, beyond everything else, was the small part of him deep down that wanted to do this and learn from it. The part he was sure Belief had created.
Siegmund slowly came to. The last thing he remembered was hiding out at Owen's, and the first thing he noticed was the pounding headache. The second thing he noticed was the irregular drip of water on his forehead, and the third thing, when he tried to move out from under it, was the fact that he couldn't move.
That was when he panicked. He struggled against the ropes, too panicked, unfortunately, to think to try to use the most recent power he'd discovered to melt out of them.
If the boy really was an Other as Mari had suggested, now would be the time his skills would manifest. Setting the water container aside, Jai waited for it, silent and tense. When nothing came about, he drew in a silent breath and stepped into place at the top end of the bench. "Siegmund," he began, and set each palm of his hand to either side of the bench, looming over the prostrate figure with a reasonable, if low key expression painted onto his features. Jai was like that; affable, approachable, familiar. He could even be merciful when the opportunity presented itself. With Rhys dead, though, there were a collection of people baying for blood. Siegmund, the poor sod, was going to give his quart. If he talked, it'd be a quick delivery. If he didn't, Duncan would get the opportunity to hone his skills. "I'd apologise for the uncomfortable bed you've got there, but I'm sure I don't need to explain why you're here."
He paused, allowing a few heartbeats of peace to return to Owen's silent cellar. The chill from the winter had seeped through the soil and brick, but Owen kept his holdings well, and it wasn't bitter in this room. The smell of sweetened alcohol lingered on the air. "I need some information," he explained. "I'm relatively sure you'll try lying at first, people always do for some reason... but rest assured, the longer you prevaricate, the more excited my silent friend over there gets." Here, Jai's head lifted, glancing over towards the voiceless Evandros at the other end of the room. It was a fleeting glance, just enough for Siegmund to get an idea of where and what Duncan was. Then the Whisper's calm eyes returned. "Any questions before we start?"
It was a purposeful lie, Duncan knew, to convince the boy to talk. Still, being spoken of in such a way made him feel sick. He didn't look excited, not one bit. Just stoic, the face of somebody waiting patiently.
Siegmund's eyes snapped up to Jai and he went still. They were glowing softly in the dark, the only obvious sign of his Otherness. They flickered toward the other side of the room as Jai's gaze moved toward Duncan. A man he recognized, the same one who'd sewn up Rhys's wound. That left him confused. If Duncan was a Whisper, how had Indraneel known him? Were all his friends Whispers without him knowing? Were the Whispers simply that pervasive?
His eyes turned back to Jai, his fear clear on his face. "I won't lie," he insisted. Please just let me go, was not something he could say, despite how desperately he wanted to. He knew how these things worked. He was going to be killed. The most he could hope for was a quick death with minimal pain.
"As you say," Jai said, the bland, noncommittal tone of his voice belying the acceptance the words might suggest. "We'll see how you go."
He straightened up. There was no need to hunch over the kid like that, and his back was starting to ache. One foot rattled a stocky barrell across the floor to sit beside the bench, and Jai's tall frame hunched down to sit on it. "Did you kill my Lieutenant?" Rhys hadn't officially been a Lieutenant, of course, but everyone who was anyone within the Whispers knew he'd been marked out for it, was it in all but name. Now that he was gone, it seemed petty not to give it to him. Besides, Jai had liked Rhys, perhaps a little too much. Too many idiots running around these days.
Confusion flashed across Siegmund's face, followed closely by realization. Rhys had been given a lot of responsibility recently, he knew, but he'd never been told that Rhys was so high ranking. "No! I didn't kill Rhys, it was M. M saw us together and he said I am a traitor and he told Rhys to come and he killed Rhys and he tried to kill me--" The words spilled out desperately, in the vain hope that if he volunteered more than he was asked for, Jai would go easy on him, take his word at face value instead of digging deeper.
The rush of words didn't usually come so early in the sequence. Panic was a reasonable emotion for Siegmund to be feeling, and it wasn't necessarily to be expected that Rhys' level of customary calm would be employed in his nearest and dearest. The question remained as to whether Siegmund was genuinely trying to impress him, or whether he was spewing what he thought Jai wanted to hear to get himself out from under the butcher's knife. Jai's eyebrows rose. "Who is M?"
"One of the Dogs," Siegmund answered. "Very high-ranking, I see him with Lady Rapier sometimes."
Rapier was dead. Jai was absolutely sure of it. He rubbed a finger across the tip of his nose. Why hadn't M passed that information onto his lackies? Was the loyalty he hoped for not yet secure enough that he could do so? Living under Rapier's shadow had to be a real mood-killer - so catching and killing Rhys was likely his attempt at a career-maker. Sadly for him, he'd only signed his own death warrant. Next question.
"Not sure I believe you," he commented. "That was a lot of information you threw out, there, and so easily to a man who's supposed to be your enemy. Either your loyalty is worth next to nothing, or you're full of shit. Which is it?"
Jai didn't believe him. Duncan took a breath, held it, let it out slowly. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets, his head lowered slightly, his eye still watching the two of them. His services were going to be called in shortly, he felt. He hoped not.
"He killed my friend in front of me!" Siegmund's voice was pitched, desperate, pleading with Jai to believe him. "He tried to kill me! He says I am a traitor! I don't have anything to be loyal to!"
"How come you were there in the first place?" Jai's voice was deceptively smooth. Siegmund was quite possibly innocent of murder, but of luring his friend out into plain view to be taken he had not yet been exonerated. "What part did you play in the Dog's arrangement?"
He lifted a hand, beckoned once to Duncan. Bring a toy, Doctor. So far, there would be no blood spilled, but it was too easy, too simple; too much was falling out of Siegmund's mouth.
Duncan's chest tightened when he saw the gesture. He wanted to turn and run up the stairs and never come back, but where was there to go? The fact that Jai needed him around was the only thing keeping him alive. If he left, the only thing waiting for him would be the noose.
He bent to retrieve his bag from the floor, and approached the bench in even, measured steps, stopping at Siegmund's side. He looked at Jai, waiting for orders, to avoid looking at the boy's face.
Siegmund flinched at the sound of footsteps, and shrank against the bench as Duncan's shadow loomed over him. It was too dark in here for him to freeze people; the shadows weren't distinct enough. He tried to remember how he'd done what he had to get away from M's lackeys, but through the headache and his panic he just couldn't.
"M used me to make Rhys come," Siegmund said. His eyes left the doctor to try to capture Jai, but he couldn't crane his head far enough to see him. "I didn't do anything, he tied me up and told Rhys to meet him."
Jai barely glanced at Duncan as he arrived, instead focusing every eyelash on Siegmund. He was tied with his arms by his sides, fastened securely to the table top. The ropes here, though, left his wrists bared. "Check his wrists, Doctor," the mobster suggested. "Is he telling me the truth?"
Duncan glanced at Siegmund. He didn't miss the way it made the boy flinch. Siegmund was terrified. His heart would be beating like a rabbit's whether he was lying or not. "His pulse won't tell you anything useful," Duncan replied. "Fear response is the same whether you're lying or telling the truth."
After he said it, he realized he shouldn't have. He should've just felt for Siegmund's pulse and confirmed it as the truth, and then they could've ended this without Duncan having to open his bag at all. It was Belief. That small part of himself that wanted to do this. He felt sick again.
Jai awarded Duncan a blank look of confusion, but it swiftly faded to comprehension. Breaking in a new torturer was always an issue - especially one who'd lived a privileged life beforehand. "Our friend here says he was tied up," he said, gently, and beckoned Duncan to look at one of the limbs in question, setting his fingers about one of Siegmund's wrists. "Marks of rope burn," he said, "will tell us far more about his honesty than any beat of his heart."
Sure enough, the skin was ruddied at the wrist, where rope met struggle and won. "You two should never have met in public," he noted, flicking the bitter black of his stare back down to the boy on the table, releasing his wrist. "Next question: where would I find this Dog you mention?"
Oh. Well, now Duncan felt stupid. But that was nothing new, he'd been missing the obvious his entire life. He folded his arms, leaning over to look as Jai showed him what he meant. The marks were definitely consistent with having been tied up, and Duncan nodded to affirm that.
Siegmund let out a quiet breath of relief as the two confirmed his story. Maybe he could convince Jai he wasn't lying, then. "I know," he said, not quite crying, but the guilt when somebody else pointed it out was overwhelming. "I know, it was stupid."
Then his breath caught, and he stared up at Duncan for a moment before his eyes tried to find Jai again. He knew how this was going to go. Any question you had to answer with 'I don't know' was going to result in pain, until the person questioning you could be sure that you really didn't know. "In the Grounds," he said carefully. "He comes around every week to talk to the cell leaders."
"The Grounds encompass a large area," observed the Whisper, quietly. "You'll have to do better than that." He shifted upwards a little, folded his arms against the table. It was difficult, this, to remain calm and easygoing with an enemy gang member who thus far was his only ticket to revenge. Panic him too early and he'd reveal nothing useful except excrement, don't lean on him enough, and the lies would be more subtle, more deliberate, but ultimately useless. This dainty response Siegmund had given suggested his brain was collected enough to retain a measure of the style of answer he chose to give. That wasn't good enough. "Doctor, I'd customarily start with fingers, but that feels a little vulgar to me today. Why don't you cut our friend's stomach clear of obstruction?" And to Siegmund. "Where in the Grounds do they meet? Where do your cell leaders have their hideouts?"
Duncan's breath hitched and turned shallow. He didn't want to do this. He didn't have a choice. He knelt to pull open his bag and retrieve a knife, serrated, for the ropes. He set a hand on Siegmund's stomach, unable to ignore the way he flinched at the touch, and carefully sawed away the ropes across his abdomen.
He tried not to look at the kid's face while he did it, but it was on the wrong side for his missing eye to be convenient. The terror was present in his peripheral vision the entire time, while he cut the ropes, and still there while he yanked up Siegmund's shirt to expose the pale skin of his stomach. He automatically adjusted the knife in his hand for an incision, then lowered it to his side, realizing what he'd just done and feeling ill.
No. No no no no no Siegmund panicked again, tears in his eyes this time as he spilled the locations of all the cells he knew of. His own, even though they'd been family to him for years, and two or three others. He didn't know many. The street-level gangs of Gladio were largely independent. "But I don't know where M stays," he insisted, after the rush of information. "I only know he comes to the cells every week."
Jai tilted his head, a gentle cat-grin curving his mouth. "A little easy," he chided. "How do I know you're not lying about this? While I investigate the locations, you'll yet be alive." Duncan was practically gibbering behind him, and for once Jai blessed the curse of his gender for the wider sense of vision it granted him. Men were blind, women were not.
Duncan bit his lip, glancing over at Jai, anxiously fingering the knife. It might have looked like anticipation from the outside, but it was trepidation. He still didn't know exactly what was going to be asked of him, and he most certainly did not want to be left to self-directed torture while Jai ran off to fact-check.
"I don't lie!" Siegmund cried, his eyes going from Jai's face up to Duncan's, down to the knife in the doctor's hand. "I don't lie, it's true! Please, Rhys was my friend, I don't want to protect M at all, I tell the truth."
"So you keep saying," mused Jai. "So you keep saying." He rose, leaning over the table once again. "By the way, is this what M did with Rhys, before he died? Did they have the same little chat we are?"
Siegmund tore his eyes away from the doctor, staring wide-eyed up at Jai. "No." He shook his head. "No, he just asked Rhys to give him information and Rhys gave it if M said he would let me go."
A shame that Rhys had broken so easily, but his worst flaw been his biggest asset - he was a people person, Rhys. He formed attachments. Jai had told him frequently that it held him back, that it caused concern; in the end, it had been the thing to kill him. Shameful, really.
"And did he?"
"Yes."
Silence pervaded the cellar. Jai could almost feel the shreds of personality leaving him, each minute connection that Jai as a character possessed unclipping from the whole. Of course Rhys had given it, and knowing him, he'd likely told the truth about it. Selling out the many to protect -- what. To protect the one. This pitiful, sobbing wretch on the table, who had somehow managed to escape with nothing but a few rope burns on his wrists.
In the end, all it took was a single gesture. Jai's left hand flashed out, seized the serrated knife that Duncan was holding, and swiped it across the Gladio's trembling throat in a deep, upward cut. Blood bubbled from the incision, but Silence, maskless, ignored it. He locked eyes with Siegmund, and held them until the frothing ceased.
Duncan jumped, recoiling, watching wide-eyed as Jai killed the boy without a word.
It was easy to watch people die. He'd been doing it for years. He could pinpoint the exact moment of death by now, the instant where light left a person's eyes and their soul fled their body. As he watched it happen to the boy on the table, he felt relief.
It was short-lived. Relief at not having to make a monster of himself, that the boy had been killed before Duncan was forced to torture him. Relief because somebody's death was a good thing for him. Did that make him inhuman? To be glad that somebody had died before he was forced to be inhuman?
He let out a slow, quiet breath, watching as the flow of blood stopped, the struggling stopped, the body went perfectly still and limp. His eye moved up to Jai's face, silent and intense. He didn't say anything. He waited. He didn't want to interrupt Jai's thoughts and have that knife turned on him.
Jai's fingers twitched for needle and thread. This was not a straight assassination, it did not need to be hidden, or disposed of, or used as a message. It was his kill and should be marked as so. With Duncan there to witness it, though, Silence could not be the murderer, and therefore the ritual would go incomplete. There would be no row of stitches to close this boy's mouth as it should be. The knife left Jai's hands, ruining the still picture further by piercing Siegmund's breast with the shaped blade. There between the third and fourth rib on the left hand side the heart would be pierced. Silence did not pierce the heart in his murders. It was uncouth, it was raw, and it caused all kinds of mess.
Then again, Silence did not kill out of revenge or emotion, no matter how angry he might be. Perhaps there was no need for a needle, this was Jai's kill, after all.
Leaving the knife where it was, the gangster let life flow back into his face, and reached for a cloth to remove any faint traces of blood from his hands and face. There were none, the knife had been neat enough, and a puddle of blood was already starting to seep through the basement flooring. "Cut that up into small pieces," he instructed Duncan. "Parcel it all up but for the head, and scrub everything."
If fortune played kind, the next person in here would be M. He, in turn, would meet Silence, and be silenced.
Without waiting for response, Jai stepped out of the bloody puddle he'd made, and strode off up the stairs to the back room. Without knowing exactly what Rhys had spilled, Jai had to assume it was everything. The Gladios knew every single hideout, every single safe house.
Everything had to move.
Duncan watched Jai leave. Only after the door was shut behind him did Duncan start breathing again, turning down to the body on the table. A long pause followed before he finally reached a shaking hand out to the handle of the knife, wrapped his fingers around it, paused for the space of a breath to steel himself for what he'd been asked to do, and yanked the blade out of the boy's chest.
He knew exactly how to dismember a corpse, of course. How to saw through flesh and sinew until you hit the bone. Where to leverage pressure to pop the bones out of their joints, separating them from the cartilage, so you could remove them without need of a bonesaw. It was slow, methodical work. He shut himself down, running on muscle memory and instinct, not giving himself the time to think and examine what he was doing. Not giving himself the time to become disgusted by it, and conversely not giving that small part of himself the time to be fascinated by it and enamoured of it.
A pile of limbs built up on the floor beside him. It was only when he got to the head, having to saw through a neck while staring at the face it belonged to, that he had to put the knife down. He turned away, took a few steps, fell to his knees, and let himself be sick. It was like the first time he'd performed a vivisection all over again, retching even after there was nothing left, wondering how he could live with himself after doing something like this.
But that was an easy question to answer. He'd live with himself the same way he always had. The only difference was that this time he wasn't denying that what he did was monstrous.
He forced himself to his feet, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, and went to retrieve the knife. He'd clean up the last remnants of his humanity along with the blood.