Alessia, Ilad
The gunman is unmasked. He has no identification. He has no identity. Almost none. Before Ilad and Alessia arrive in his hospital room, Chandran is able to tell them this much. His facial features suggest Borbora, but perhaps the old police head is seeing shadows, projecting his suspicion. This much they can tell from just looking at him - he is young, younger than Ilad, perhaps of an age with Alessia or a little younger. His features are smooth, his hair is cropped, and he is awake, watching the ceiling, tracking an invisible fly across its surface.
Alessia lets Ilad take the lead, injured or not. Finishing off a piece of licorice she's swiped from Gabe's stash, washing it down with some fruity flavored water in a bottle. She watches the young man, before she's letting her mind do the walking.
Ilad makes for a looming presence as he enters the hospital room, and holds to quiet for a long moment, pacing around the foot of the bed. He favors one leg, coming to halt none too far from the younger man with his weight braced largely on the other leg. Tall and dark in a suit that, with the jacket open at the front, does little to hide the holster he wears at his hip, he watches the injured gunman with narrowed dark eyes and does not immediately stir to speak.
The young man traces his fly and his eyes drift over Ilad almost unwillingly. He draws in his breath and closes his eyes. In contrast to his calm of last night, the gunman is filled with dread. But that hint of anticipation is still there.
Alessia finds a place near the bed to take a lean up against the wall. Blue eyes track over to Ilad, just he faintest of nods.
"It seems," Ilad intones in his desert-draped voice, a low and shaded dark and quiet, "that you have placed yourself in a difficult situation, do you not." It's not really a question; preliminary, mild-toned, neutral-expressioned, Ilad's intent gaze does not leave the young man's face, level and unwavering in its study.
The dread peaks, then settles. The young man is afraid, but there are worse things than fear. Dread is enforced controlled by a wan sort of confidence. All right, all right. "I am not afraid," he lies. His English is still halting, accented, but rather good for a man of no identity.
Alessia snorts a little bit, but says nothing. She just watches the young man with steady blue eyes, not trying to ease his fear while she listens in to his thoughts.
"Of course not," Ilad says smoothly. "I laud your courage." He takes a single uneven step closer to the bed and stares down at him. "It takes a great deal of courage to give up your life for what you believe in, after all." He touches his thumb lightly against the weapon that rests dormant in his holster and asks, musingly, "What is it that was worth so much to you?"
The young man speaks English, but does not think in English. The dread muddies, though, mingled with doubt. There is a broad, dark face, contorted with anger, two feet in a doorway, the rest lost in darkness, a cry. He takes in his breath and, "Assam. Free Assam." It is mechanical.
Alessia's expression changes, a look of pity crossing her features for a brief moment. She says nothing to Ilad yet.
"Yes. Freedom." Ilad shapes the word carefully on a low exhalation. "You will free Assam with the abduction and brutal murder of foreign scientists."
"Yes," the young man says with a little more emphasis. Groans in the darkness, crying. A wooden frame that swings abrupt from horizontal to vertical position, streaked with blood. "To show-- to show we are -- serious." His hesitation could be poor acting or uncertain vocabulary in equal measure. "So you - pay attention. You are here now."
Blue eyes look from the young man to Ilad, wide. She doesn't want to interject her own question, but she now is getting the idea there's more to this than they thought.
Ilad lifts his pistol from its holster and holds it balanced easily in his hand, drawing a stroking fingertip over its muzzle. "Yes," he says, "I am here now. You have my full attention." He does not aim the weapon, of course; he merely fiddles with it, his gaze fallen to its gleaming length. He looks up again, his focus upon the young man's features. He does not immediately note Alessia's glance; his dark eyes are intent upon his target. "But you have my full attention as an abductor. A murderer. A terrorist. Where is Henry Wilkinson?"
The young man keeps his eyes stubbornly closed. His next words are almost shrill. "You'll kill me before I tell." The fear takes another resurgence, but it comes paired with another flash of the contorted, broad face of a man. Dark. Why are his memories always dark?
Al bites at her bottom lip, eyes resettling on the young man as her brows draw together to suggest a frown. Hands slide into her pockets, a deep breath taken and exhaled.
"I could," Ilad says mildly. "I could shoot you right now. Of course, you are conveniently located in a hospital. You might survive." He flicks his gaze sidelong toward Alessia, one eyebrow cocked, and slowly, slides his weapon back into its holster, leaving his hand to curve possessively over it even as he returns the weight of his gaze to the man in the bed. "But I think I will keep you alive to sweat and bleed upon those sheets. A man can experience a great deal of pain before his life ends. A bullet in the gut ... that hurts, does it not?"
"I do not care," the young man says through gritted teeth and there is a sense of confirmation in his thoughts. That his situation is in some sense preferable. "You - you cannot make me talk."
Al glances at Ilad. "No, maybe you can take the pain and not break and tell us all you know. But you could tell us what you know, what we need to know, and we could have you sent away somewhere safe."
Ilad turns a glance on Alessia, his eyebrows arching distinctly. "My partner," he says with a whisper of growl buried in the word, "is correct. We can offer you protection. But I don't think you want it. You will not betray your cause. You will die before you speak." He turns aside, snagging a chair one-handed, because there must be a chair in here, however rickety and uncomfortable it might be; he folds himself down into it, straddling it backwards and folding his arms across its back. "Except that we won't kill you. How much do your comrades trust your loyalty, do you think?"
There is a long pause. The young man thinks of his crowded darknesses. Gunfire. Hours of gunfire with the broad man behind him, training his arm, soft-voiced in the echoes after the guns were lowered. A knife. A dropped knife. Still clean. Trembling hands. The terror resurgent. "Why would-- they would-- trust. Never betray family. Cannot."
Alessia gives Ilad a level blue look, trying to tell him silently she's acting on what she's 'hearing'. "Would your family ever believe you hadn't talked, if we let you leave here alive?"
"Ah, and you are young," Ilad murmurs, though his eyebrows lift, a faint twitch of his mouth at one corner as he flicks his gaze back at Alessia. He returns his glance to the young man. "Your whole life ahead of you. We have resources to offer. We could break you with pain, or with bribery, with money. As corrupt foreigners may."
And in that moment, the young man breaks, his mind cramped with scared hurt. His eyes finally open, if their gaze is deflected. "Please," he says. "Please take me far away."
"We can offer you safety." Al reaches out to touch his arm. "Tell us what we need to know, and we will arrange to have you brought away from here."
Softly, from his folded-up perch on the chair, Ilad asks: "Where is Henry Wilkinson?"
The young man breathes in and out, rapid, and certainly painful. "In the -- in the old base. It is--" He blinks twice. "Underground, mostly. There is a -- guard tower, if you look hard, in a tree. They will kill him. They must kill him." Another breath and, "Hard to find. Find-- Amrit. He will show."
"Easy...Who is Amrit, and where can we find him?" Al is doing her best to be calming, vocally and with a touch of empathy.
"They must kill him?" Ilad arches his eyebrows significantly as he looks across and down at him. "To free Assam?" He flickers a gesture at Alessia, a kind of impatient flicker of his fingers, although it may be difficult to interpret what precisely he means without telepathy, but since they have already dispatched a team to talk to Amrit, they need not press that point.
"Everyone can find Amrit," the young man says with sudden contempt, that seems to be echoed from elsewhere. There is no attendant picture of anyone in his mind. Just that dark, scowling face. "It is-- not to free Assam," he says, as if this were a hard admission. "I do not-- it is all for the monster." A vague impression of blood.
"The monster. The one who needs the blood?" Alessia asks, feeling her eyebrows arch, a glance at Ilad. "He's some sort of...sacrifice?"
"Ah," Ilad says, with alert interest and no skepticism at all. His dark eyes are hard and bright; they flick to the side, marking Alessia for only a heartbeat before they return. "Yes. Tell us about the monster."
"I-- I don't know." A refrigerator filled with blood, the broad man hunched in the wan, cool light of it, distant, only a glimpse. A door, barred. "Biren fed the monster, then ULFA killed him and then he went mad and we have to feed the monster, or it will feed on us." An old memory of pain, the broad man's face in his, slamming his back too-hard against the stone. "That is - that is what he said." All these hes, like a fear of the name.
Alessia looks at Ilad, swallowing back the metallic taste suddenly in her throat. "Do you have the monster locked up?"
Ilad glances at Alessia with a blink, but not party to the silent, he does not immediately raise another question. He returns his focus to the man in the bed.
"I -- there are places I am not allowed to go. I am a - foundling." A memory, a body on the floor, two bodies, male and female and viewed through a distant strain, the dark, broad man again, training a gun on his chest and whispering. "I do not know. Biren is dead and his wife is dead, he says ULFA killed them, he is mad. Maybe there is no monster."
"Who is he? Who is the madman?" Alessia presses quietly, hoping for a name.
"Fakaruddin." The young man's voice and mind abruptly ease with the revelation. Another vision, a woman carried through a door by the broad man, his face contorted the more painfully. He is shouting, she is limp. It is recognizably the woman Alessia saw in the blue man's mind. The young man's laugh is rasped. "He killed my parents. He left me to die by your hands. Please take me away."
Alessia goes pale with the revelation, a look at the young man, then to Ilad. "We will not kill you, and we will not let him kill you. We will send you somewhere safe. We will stop him."
"We will find a place for you," Ilad murmurs agreement, with a slight inclination of his head. "I believe Interpol has some connections in the American government that can find a situation in witness protection." On a note of warning, he says, "You will be far from home." But then he rises, a little stiffly, weight carefully apportioned between his legs. "But you shall be safe."
"All right." The young man exhales deep and closes his eyes. "It is all right. There is no home to miss," he says with a hint of that odd ease. Like he were finally working himself through a block at last.
"We will take care of things." Al states, almost a promise, before she heads on out of the room.
Questioning! GMing by Eit.