The Light Warrior Files
Chapter 2, Part 3: The Interrogation
By Chris Ward
As they came in, they introduced themselves to Marita, telling her they knew her as the
Shield Maiden. Pointing out Daniel where he lay on the sofa, I commented, “I think our
guest will sleep for a while yet. Why don’t we go to the kitchen, get some drinks, and
decide how we’re going to do this.” As Marita made coffee and started pouring drinks, I
went back to the living room and picked up the various items we’d discovered, and the
phone.
While the three of them looked at the other items, I started poking around on the phone.
The phone book contained five numbers: a Texas number for Primatech Paper, a Las Vegas
number for the Linderman Group, an overseas number labeled Chennai Contact, as well as
two New York numbers under the headings Partner and Headquarters. The recent calls
showed a one to Partner, a couple to Bennet and several from someone named Thompson.
The only other item of interest was a single text message from Headquarters that read,
“CONT WHEN S MERCH BAGGED 4 SHIP.”
Looking up, I thanked Marita for the Irish coffee and caught Ishmael’s attention. Dumping
the phone on the pile I said, “This stuff pretty much let’s us know who our guest is, and
gives us some idea of who or what he’s working for. What I need, though, is the details. Is
there some way we can get the information without resorting to, shall we say, crude
interrogation techniques?”
He laughed quietly. “That’s why I brought the Lady along.”
Turning to her in surprise, I said, “Can you really get more than surface thoughts? I guess I
assumed you to be limited in that regard.”
She smiled slightly, and took a small drink from the tea she had requested. ‘When reading
men’s minds, emotions are easiest to see, and are what I first look at. When it comes to
reading thoughts or memories, it is much more difficult. It gets more difficult still the
further they are buried. Those things one is most desirous of concealing lay buried under
layers of secrecy, making it nearly impossible to see them unless the mind is specifically
led to them.”
Naturally, as she worked with lawyers regularly, Marita was the first of the two of us to
figure out what she meant. “In other words, you need one of us to question him in such a
way that he has to think of those things he wants to keep secret?” With a slight grin she
said, “I can do that easily.” Arching her eyebrow at me, she asked, “How long can you keep
him blind?”
“The hard part is starting or stopping it. Once I blind somebody, they stay that way until I
change my mind.”
“Bueno, when do we start?”
“In a minute.” Turning to Builder, I tossed over the memory stick. “Is there some way to
open this without risking any damage or hacking to my computer?”
Holding it in his hand, he concentrated for a minute on the problem. “Yeah, shouldn’t be a
problem.”
“Good. In that case, while we’re having a chat with our guest, you can go ahead and see
what’s on there.”
“Where’s the computer?”
“Depends on how quiet you want it. There’s a computer in the living room, on the other
side from where we’ll be, or you can use the one in the study area around the corner.”
As we headed into the living room, he sat down at the computer and began working.
Ishmael and the Dark Lady sat down in chairs near the sofa, while Marita handed a notepad
and pen over before ensconcing herself in our chair. I, on the other hand, stood behind
the sofa in so I could quickly control and reprimand him as needed. It was needed almost
immediately. After slapping him awake, he levered himself to a semi-seated position and
began to swear about his blindness, the ropes and his state of undress. After a couple
seconds of this, I cuffed him on the back of the head. “Watch your mouth, Danny boy. There’
s a lady in the room. I seem to remember telling you that earlier.” With this, I signaled Marita
to begin questioning him.
She waited for another minute, looking through the various id badges while she composed
her thoughts. “I suppose the best place to begin is with the simple question of your identity
and employer. Your badges all indicate your name to be Daniel Mills, but that doesn’t
exactly mean much. They also indicate that you work for Primatech Paper in Texas, the
Linderman Group in Vegas, and some unnamed company at Kirby Plaza. All of this leads to
the simple question of who are you and who do you work for?”
His face had turned white while she was speaking. Almost before she finished, he spat in
her direction and growled out, “I’m telling you nothing, Bitch!”
Grabbing his hair in one hand, I pulled him upright and slapped him hard enough to leave a
handprint. “Politeness, boy. You don’t spit at a lady, and you better learn to control your
tongue in her presence, or this is gonna get really painful, really fast. Now answer her
question, who are you and who do you work for?”
For the better part of 2 hours this continued. Ruled by a shake or nod of the Dark Lady’s
head, Marita proved herself to be nearly a genius when it came to questioning our captive.
Repeating questions, rewording questions, doubling back to cover already covered
information, she found him in several inconsistencies and jumped on them with all the
viciousness of a lioness on the hunt. Several times during the course of the interrogation,
he started swearing at her, forcing me to smack him down. At one point, however, he sat up
as straight as he could, spat in her direction again and said, “F**** you, c***. I’m telling you
shit, whore!”
I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. Hearing a gasp, I saw Marita nearly leap to her feet
and slap him across the face. It was only when I looked down and saw blood on his cheek
that I realized she was slicing him with her nails. Before I could get around the sofa, she
smacked him, nails curled in, a couple more times. Finally I was able to get hold of her,
stopping her from slicing into him again. As if my touch freed her tongue, she began
screaming out profanities in English, Spanish and what sounded like French. It took several
minutes to get her calmed back down. Finally we were able to finish the questioning.
After asking her last question of Dan, she looked around and said, “So, is that everything
then?”
Looking over at the Dark Lady for confirmation, I said, “Seems to be,” as I went back around
the sofa. Kneeling in front of our captive, I grabbed him by the throat, which was wet with
the blood from his torn cheek. Lifting him until he was at eye level, with me blocking his
view of anyone else, I removed the blindness from his eyes. Keeping a firm grip on his
throat, I made my voice as low and menacing as possible and rumbled, “Listen you stupid
bastard, you’re going to be free in a couple minutes. I want, however, to impress one thing
on you: if I ever, at any point, find you on my tail I will hunt you down and murder you like
the dog you are. Is that understood?” I started squeezing until he nodded, at which point I
slammed my fist into the side of his head, hard enough to render him unconscious.
After untying the ropes, I dragged him through living and dining rooms until reaching the
fire escape. Looking out, I waited until nobody was near and then opened the window,
turning myself and him invisible while I did so. Dumping him out onto the escape, I grabbed
his clothing, turning it invisible as well, and joined him on the escape. Hauling him down, I
dumped him and his clothing into the trash bin, making him and his clothing visible after
doing so. After climbing back up, I turned myself visible as I climbed through the window
and closed it.
Stopping long enough to wash my hands in the kitchen, I sat down in our chair with Marita,
letting her curl into me as I draped my arm around her waist. Looking over at Ishmael and
the Lady, I asked, “So, what were you able to learn from him?”
Consulting her notes regularly, she told us everything she had gleaned from her mind
reading. “Although he remembers being called by another name at one point, he associates
only the name Daniel Mills with himself. He’s not even certain what that other name was. He
works for a group which he refers to merely as the Organization. It appears to have no
actual name. Primatech Paper and the Linderman Group are both front companies for the
Organization, and the Kirby Plaza address seems to be its main headquarters. Although he
takes his orders from someone named Thompson, he believes that Thompson takes orders
from at least one other person higher up.
“As of now, those orders regard you, Light Warrior. He and his partner have been ordered
to locate and, to use their euphemism, collect you. In other words, you were to be abducted
and taken to the facilities in the Kirby Plaza office. Once there, you were to be studied and
tested, possibly recruited if you proved amenable.
“He and his partner comprise what he termed a Bag and Tag team. They work in two man
teams, comprising a partner that is what the Organization terms a Special Genome
[Manifested] and a partner that is Normal. The marks on his neck and on the special id
badge you found indicate that he is the SG [Manifested] on this team. In his case, it takes
the form of Empathic Psionic Manipulation. Basically, he is able to find those deepest
emotional motivators and triggers, and create a purely psionic illusion giving them full
play.” She shuddered a little as she recalled what she read in his mind. “He delights in
locating those deepest, darkest fear triggers and forcing his victims to live them. He has
killed several people this way, literally frightening them to death.”
As we digested that information, Builder hollered out from his station at the computer.
“Hey, guys, you’ll never believe this stuff!” After we had gathered around the computer, he
pressed a few keys and brought up a Power Point presentation. The presentation linked
hundreds of prophecies and pieces of artwork with the events that they predicted.
Nostradamus, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, even the work from a new artist named Isaac Mendez
were included, among others, and were shown to predict nearly all major, and several
minor, events for the last thousand years. Finally a voice came on as new art was shown
which predicted the same explosion in New York City that the Dark Lady’s prophecy did.
According to the voice over, the total death count would be “.07 percent” or the world’s
population. He said that the world would unite in a “common hope born of a common fear.”
He clearly explained that Nathan Petrelli would win his congressional election by a
landslide, and that the explosion would happen no more than 2 days afterward, propelling
Petrelli into the White House.
As the presentation faded away, Builder said, “Hold on, we’re not done yet.” Pushing some
more keys, he brought up a rapid series of pictures. Thousands of images flashed by in
mere seconds. Although they flew by too fast to make out details, I cold tell that markings
and borders were different on some than others.
“While you guys were chatting up our friend over there, I found this. The black border
around some of the pictures indicates that the person in question is a member of the
Organization, but the red one means they’ve been tagged but not recruited. The double
slash in the upper right corner means they’ve manifested an ability, clicking on the slash
marks will pull up a bio on the person in question, including a breakdown of their ability. If
the double slash is in the lower left, however, it means that, although there’s reason to
believe that the person in question will manifest an ability, it hasn’t been confirmed. If
there’s neither a border nor a double slash, the person in question is of interest to the
Organization, but is not suspected of having the potential to manifest an ability.”
With a few more quick commands, he pulled up the final surprise. “I don’t fully understand
the reasoning behind this one, but there are maps, blueprints and diagrams of every major
public or private building as well as every public works in the city.” He wasn’t joking. As he
paged through them, I saw maps and blueprints for hotels, apartment buildings, the sewers
and subways, schools and public buildings. Everything in New York City was represented in
the series of maps and blueprints. Also listed were all the pass codes, passwords and
security codes you needed. Combining all that with the skeleton key I had found in the pen,
you could get anywhere in the city easily and without being spotted.
After considering what needed done, I asked, “Is there anything in there that could pose a
risk if left on the computer?”
“Nope, not a thing.”
“Good, because here’s what we’re going to do: I want you to download everything on the
stick onto the computer, securing it under the password,” and here I grinned slightly at
Marita, "Mi Bella Loba. Then the three of you can take the stick home and look through the
information at your leisure.” Glancing at my watch, I was a little surprised to see that it was
a little after 5. “How long will it take to do that, Builder?”
After typing a couple commands, he pulled out the memory stick and said, “Done.”
Hiding my surprise, I invited the three of them to dinner with Marita and myself. After a
pleasant dinner, we went our separate ways. I took Marita for a carriage ride through the
park, something she always enjoyed, and then we came home around 10. Following through
on that rain check I had taken that morning, sleep was delayed for quite some time that
night.
Chapter 2, Part 3: The Interrogation
By Chris Ward
As they came in, they introduced themselves to Marita, telling her they knew her as the
Shield Maiden. Pointing out Daniel where he lay on the sofa, I commented, “I think our
guest will sleep for a while yet. Why don’t we go to the kitchen, get some drinks, and
decide how we’re going to do this.” As Marita made coffee and started pouring drinks, I
went back to the living room and picked up the various items we’d discovered, and the
phone.
While the three of them looked at the other items, I started poking around on the phone.
The phone book contained five numbers: a Texas number for Primatech Paper, a Las Vegas
number for the Linderman Group, an overseas number labeled Chennai Contact, as well as
two New York numbers under the headings Partner and Headquarters. The recent calls
showed a one to Partner, a couple to Bennet and several from someone named Thompson.
The only other item of interest was a single text message from Headquarters that read,
“CONT WHEN S MERCH BAGGED 4 SHIP.”
Looking up, I thanked Marita for the Irish coffee and caught Ishmael’s attention. Dumping
the phone on the pile I said, “This stuff pretty much let’s us know who our guest is, and
gives us some idea of who or what he’s working for. What I need, though, is the details. Is
there some way we can get the information without resorting to, shall we say, crude
interrogation techniques?”
He laughed quietly. “That’s why I brought the Lady along.”
Turning to her in surprise, I said, “Can you really get more than surface thoughts? I guess I
assumed you to be limited in that regard.”
She smiled slightly, and took a small drink from the tea she had requested. ‘When reading
men’s minds, emotions are easiest to see, and are what I first look at. When it comes to
reading thoughts or memories, it is much more difficult. It gets more difficult still the
further they are buried. Those things one is most desirous of concealing lay buried under
layers of secrecy, making it nearly impossible to see them unless the mind is specifically
led to them.”
Naturally, as she worked with lawyers regularly, Marita was the first of the two of us to
figure out what she meant. “In other words, you need one of us to question him in such a
way that he has to think of those things he wants to keep secret?” With a slight grin she
said, “I can do that easily.” Arching her eyebrow at me, she asked, “How long can you keep
him blind?”
“The hard part is starting or stopping it. Once I blind somebody, they stay that way until I
change my mind.”
“Bueno, when do we start?”
“In a minute.” Turning to Builder, I tossed over the memory stick. “Is there some way to
open this without risking any damage or hacking to my computer?”
Holding it in his hand, he concentrated for a minute on the problem. “Yeah, shouldn’t be a
problem.”
“Good. In that case, while we’re having a chat with our guest, you can go ahead and see
what’s on there.”
“Where’s the computer?”
“Depends on how quiet you want it. There’s a computer in the living room, on the other
side from where we’ll be, or you can use the one in the study area around the corner.”
As we headed into the living room, he sat down at the computer and began working.
Ishmael and the Dark Lady sat down in chairs near the sofa, while Marita handed a notepad
and pen over before ensconcing herself in our chair. I, on the other hand, stood behind
the sofa in so I could quickly control and reprimand him as needed. It was needed almost
immediately. After slapping him awake, he levered himself to a semi-seated position and
began to swear about his blindness, the ropes and his state of undress. After a couple
seconds of this, I cuffed him on the back of the head. “Watch your mouth, Danny boy. There’
s a lady in the room. I seem to remember telling you that earlier.” With this, I signaled Marita
to begin questioning him.
She waited for another minute, looking through the various id badges while she composed
her thoughts. “I suppose the best place to begin is with the simple question of your identity
and employer. Your badges all indicate your name to be Daniel Mills, but that doesn’t
exactly mean much. They also indicate that you work for Primatech Paper in Texas, the
Linderman Group in Vegas, and some unnamed company at Kirby Plaza. All of this leads to
the simple question of who are you and who do you work for?”
His face had turned white while she was speaking. Almost before she finished, he spat in
her direction and growled out, “I’m telling you nothing, Bitch!”
Grabbing his hair in one hand, I pulled him upright and slapped him hard enough to leave a
handprint. “Politeness, boy. You don’t spit at a lady, and you better learn to control your
tongue in her presence, or this is gonna get really painful, really fast. Now answer her
question, who are you and who do you work for?”
For the better part of 2 hours this continued. Ruled by a shake or nod of the Dark Lady’s
head, Marita proved herself to be nearly a genius when it came to questioning our captive.
Repeating questions, rewording questions, doubling back to cover already covered
information, she found him in several inconsistencies and jumped on them with all the
viciousness of a lioness on the hunt. Several times during the course of the interrogation,
he started swearing at her, forcing me to smack him down. At one point, however, he sat up
as straight as he could, spat in her direction again and said, “F**** you, c***. I’m telling you
shit, whore!”
I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. Hearing a gasp, I saw Marita nearly leap to her feet
and slap him across the face. It was only when I looked down and saw blood on his cheek
that I realized she was slicing him with her nails. Before I could get around the sofa, she
smacked him, nails curled in, a couple more times. Finally I was able to get hold of her,
stopping her from slicing into him again. As if my touch freed her tongue, she began
screaming out profanities in English, Spanish and what sounded like French. It took several
minutes to get her calmed back down. Finally we were able to finish the questioning.
After asking her last question of Dan, she looked around and said, “So, is that everything
then?”
Looking over at the Dark Lady for confirmation, I said, “Seems to be,” as I went back around
the sofa. Kneeling in front of our captive, I grabbed him by the throat, which was wet with
the blood from his torn cheek. Lifting him until he was at eye level, with me blocking his
view of anyone else, I removed the blindness from his eyes. Keeping a firm grip on his
throat, I made my voice as low and menacing as possible and rumbled, “Listen you stupid
bastard, you’re going to be free in a couple minutes. I want, however, to impress one thing
on you: if I ever, at any point, find you on my tail I will hunt you down and murder you like
the dog you are. Is that understood?” I started squeezing until he nodded, at which point I
slammed my fist into the side of his head, hard enough to render him unconscious.
After untying the ropes, I dragged him through living and dining rooms until reaching the
fire escape. Looking out, I waited until nobody was near and then opened the window,
turning myself and him invisible while I did so. Dumping him out onto the escape, I grabbed
his clothing, turning it invisible as well, and joined him on the escape. Hauling him down, I
dumped him and his clothing into the trash bin, making him and his clothing visible after
doing so. After climbing back up, I turned myself visible as I climbed through the window
and closed it.
Stopping long enough to wash my hands in the kitchen, I sat down in our chair with Marita,
letting her curl into me as I draped my arm around her waist. Looking over at Ishmael and
the Lady, I asked, “So, what were you able to learn from him?”
Consulting her notes regularly, she told us everything she had gleaned from her mind
reading. “Although he remembers being called by another name at one point, he associates
only the name Daniel Mills with himself. He’s not even certain what that other name was. He
works for a group which he refers to merely as the Organization. It appears to have no
actual name. Primatech Paper and the Linderman Group are both front companies for the
Organization, and the Kirby Plaza address seems to be its main headquarters. Although he
takes his orders from someone named Thompson, he believes that Thompson takes orders
from at least one other person higher up.
“As of now, those orders regard you, Light Warrior. He and his partner have been ordered
to locate and, to use their euphemism, collect you. In other words, you were to be abducted
and taken to the facilities in the Kirby Plaza office. Once there, you were to be studied and
tested, possibly recruited if you proved amenable.
“He and his partner comprise what he termed a Bag and Tag team. They work in two man
teams, comprising a partner that is what the Organization terms a Special Genome
[Manifested] and a partner that is Normal. The marks on his neck and on the special id
badge you found indicate that he is the SG [Manifested] on this team. In his case, it takes
the form of Empathic Psionic Manipulation. Basically, he is able to find those deepest
emotional motivators and triggers, and create a purely psionic illusion giving them full
play.” She shuddered a little as she recalled what she read in his mind. “He delights in
locating those deepest, darkest fear triggers and forcing his victims to live them. He has
killed several people this way, literally frightening them to death.”
As we digested that information, Builder hollered out from his station at the computer.
“Hey, guys, you’ll never believe this stuff!” After we had gathered around the computer, he
pressed a few keys and brought up a Power Point presentation. The presentation linked
hundreds of prophecies and pieces of artwork with the events that they predicted.
Nostradamus, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, even the work from a new artist named Isaac Mendez
were included, among others, and were shown to predict nearly all major, and several
minor, events for the last thousand years. Finally a voice came on as new art was shown
which predicted the same explosion in New York City that the Dark Lady’s prophecy did.
According to the voice over, the total death count would be “.07 percent” or the world’s
population. He said that the world would unite in a “common hope born of a common fear.”
He clearly explained that Nathan Petrelli would win his congressional election by a
landslide, and that the explosion would happen no more than 2 days afterward, propelling
Petrelli into the White House.
As the presentation faded away, Builder said, “Hold on, we’re not done yet.” Pushing some
more keys, he brought up a rapid series of pictures. Thousands of images flashed by in
mere seconds. Although they flew by too fast to make out details, I cold tell that markings
and borders were different on some than others.
“While you guys were chatting up our friend over there, I found this. The black border
around some of the pictures indicates that the person in question is a member of the
Organization, but the red one means they’ve been tagged but not recruited. The double
slash in the upper right corner means they’ve manifested an ability, clicking on the slash
marks will pull up a bio on the person in question, including a breakdown of their ability. If
the double slash is in the lower left, however, it means that, although there’s reason to
believe that the person in question will manifest an ability, it hasn’t been confirmed. If
there’s neither a border nor a double slash, the person in question is of interest to the
Organization, but is not suspected of having the potential to manifest an ability.”
With a few more quick commands, he pulled up the final surprise. “I don’t fully understand
the reasoning behind this one, but there are maps, blueprints and diagrams of every major
public or private building as well as every public works in the city.” He wasn’t joking. As he
paged through them, I saw maps and blueprints for hotels, apartment buildings, the sewers
and subways, schools and public buildings. Everything in New York City was represented in
the series of maps and blueprints. Also listed were all the pass codes, passwords and
security codes you needed. Combining all that with the skeleton key I had found in the pen,
you could get anywhere in the city easily and without being spotted.
After considering what needed done, I asked, “Is there anything in there that could pose a
risk if left on the computer?”
“Nope, not a thing.”
“Good, because here’s what we’re going to do: I want you to download everything on the
stick onto the computer, securing it under the password,” and here I grinned slightly at
Marita, "Mi Bella Loba. Then the three of you can take the stick home and look through the
information at your leisure.” Glancing at my watch, I was a little surprised to see that it was
a little after 5. “How long will it take to do that, Builder?”
After typing a couple commands, he pulled out the memory stick and said, “Done.”
Hiding my surprise, I invited the three of them to dinner with Marita and myself. After a
pleasant dinner, we went our separate ways. I took Marita for a carriage ride through the
park, something she always enjoyed, and then we came home around 10. Following through
on that rain check I had taken that morning, sleep was delayed for quite some time that
night.
