Kyle had not seen an interrogation room for a long, long time… but he still recognized one when he saw it.

  He was in a chair; a sturdy one, bolted to the floor. His legs were bracketed to the chair legs, at both ankle and knee. His wrists and elbows were bracketed to the table.

  It was all designed to be detached with ease; magnet-driven bolts that his parents had used before when they were training him.

  The advice had been pretty simple. Either rig up his implant so he could shut off his pain centers, and you’d need to kill him to effectively torture him, or develop a pain resistance that would make the interrogation pointless.

  No matter where he was, they’d come get him eventually. He just needed to buy time.

  The room was solid black, as was the table, and the brackets. The LED light a simple, plain white. The design was good enough to hold someone without a broken arm, even if they had augmented strength.

  The fact that he was alive, that the block shutting off sensation in his broken arm was still in place… both very positive signs.

  Him having been nabbed out of darkspace, something he’d never heard of happening before, and was now in an interrogation cell? Less positive.

  He should figure out how they did it. Obviously it was a tracking device of some sort. But even with that, getting close enough and grabbing a target without killing it?

  Was he on a ship? On some Empire base? Obviously he couldn’t trust these people, but it felt like the sort of perfect 1G gravity that was always artificial if you weren’t on earth… a place he’d never been.

  When the room opened, it wasn’t a door… the wall he was facing merely slid out of existence, revealing two people in Empire uniforms. Both clearly ethnically Japanese. One of them short enough to likely be a heavy-G augment. Both men; aside from the height difference, they might be brothers. Dark hair, pale skin, white uniforms with the rising sun insignia…

  He smiled, leaning back as best he could. “Well hello there, gentlemen. Don’t trouble yourself, I won’t be here for long.”

  The two men glanced at each other. Mentally, he labeled them Tall and Short until they chose to introduce themselves.

  Tall stepped forward, while Short moved off to the side, watching him. Yup Heavy-world augment. Bodyguard. The elite among the Empire were almost as bad about bloodline purity as the Alliance. This guy likely had pure human genes from all the way back.

  “You will be here as long as we choose, Mister Huxley… though there are actions you can take to dramatically change that duration, and the quality of it.”

  Kyle nodded. “True enough. I’m gonna just go ahead and shut off my nerve centers and knock myself out for now. Wake me up when my mom has burned enough of your hardware and infrastructure for you to be ordered to release me.”

  The man frowned. “...That…. Isn’t going to happen. I assume from the name that she’s related to those mercenaries. But if she is, she has no idea what’s going on. We’ve been jamming things since shortly after you found the dragon.”

  “And I got a comm buoy out and sent a message before that. Would you like me to recite the public statement regarding the abduction of Skulls and their family members? If you don’t present me for a trial, shit’s gonna get real bad. And if you do, you better have convinced me to accept that NDA software, or its gonna go real bad for you people.”

  The man rolled his eyes. “You seriously expect us to be concerned about the threats from some two-bit mercenary group?”

  “I’ve seen military installations nuked into oblivion. Listened to the cries of the dying as their homes burned around them. Watched good, capable soldiers cower and run before being gunned down. Directorate, Empire, Republic, Alliance… they all bleed the same. Do you know what the Dubs did to my grandfather’s family?”

  He shook his head. “...How is that significant here?”

  “They made a genotype of combat augments. Berserkers. They had this gland built into them that pumped you full of a special chemical. They were already stronger and faster than regular people. But when they triggered it? They became bloodthirsty monsters, deadlier than anybody else humanity has managed to produce. Not just good at killing. Enjoying killing. Addicted to it. My grandfather died in a pool of the blood of his victims, and my mother and uncle both aim to do the same thing.”

  Kyle tried to shrug, but his arms couldn’t quite move. “She wouldn’t just butcher a thousand, or a million, Empire citizens to get me back. She’d have fun doing it, and thank me for the excuse.”

  Tall studied Kyle for a moment. He set an object on the table. “...I’ll look into things. But to be frank, even if she is as dangerous as you claim, the Empire would likely willingly sacrifice a world or two, and a fleet, to crush her, rather than give away this secret.”

  “This chip will implant the NDA software. When you want out of the chair, call out, and we’ll put it on you. Until then… you’ll sit right here. With the lights off. If it goes more than a couple of days, we’ll put IV fluids in you to keep you alive. Either you agree, or you die in that chair. Eventually.”

  Tall turned and stepped out of the chamber. Short focused on him for a moment, before turning and stepping out as well. The room slid shut. The light went out.

  He was trapped. Barely able to move. In darkness.

  He sighed…. And accessed his implants. Time to catch up on his reading. He likely had some Empire-related stuff on tap.

  He’d deliberately had his own implants set so this sort of tactic would be useless. They could kill him. Chop off his limbs. But the mental torture wouldn’t really help them.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  ***

  While Kyle remained in darkness, a few decks away the man he had imagined as ‘Tall’ was stepping into a medical bay.. And stopping next to a corpse hooked into a variety of machines; the bloody and heavily damaged body of a former Empire agent; Yumi.

  As he stopped by the body, a doctor who had been a few rows down, seated behind a desk, rose to his feet, and gave a short bow. “Captain.”

  “Report.”

  “The agent was killed by the destruction of her right lung, heart, and significant other internal damage. Post-mortem, she was at least briefly exposed to vacuum. Her implants are hooked up, and we’re talking to her, but… its likely going to be either regrowing her a new body, or replacing most of it with cybernetics.”

  A quick nod. “And how is she mentally?”

  The doctor glanced back at his desk. “Sane and competent. Refusing to answer questions until we give her the key phrase from her handler. I believe her protocols would be correct in this, and she is following her agency’s directives.”

  “Excellent. Work out how she wishes to recover, and explain her options. I’ll let you know once we’ve recovered the code phrase. Also…” He grimaced. “I want you to start growing a clone of one of our prisoners, mister Huxley. The others have already agreed to have the software implanted, but not only is he being stubborn… but retaining him long-term may be inconvenient.”

  The doctor nodded. “Of course, sir. I assume I should also go over the original body thoroughly to check for tracking equipment?”

  “Exactly. If he hasn’t complied by the time the clone finishes growing, let me know. We’ll make one final attempt at persuasion, and then execute him so you can move any trackers to the clone.”

  “I’ve got enough material to make a complete clone within the week. If I use the existing body and just clone a brain, I can have it done within the next twenty-seven hours.”

  “That…. Is a much better idea, doctor...Just the brain, with an implant that matches his as closely as possible. Having an existing broken arm will help sell it. We’ll give them back either a brainwashed, mindless clone, or one of our agents in a false body, depending. Perhaps Yumi, if she’s interested. She at least met the man, after all.”

  The captain had just run a search on their prisoner, and determined that his mother was in fact sufficiently highly placed in the ‘Screaming Skulls’ organization to be a serious problem; and that she had on at least one previous occasion used a nuke on a ground target that could debatably be called civilian, though she claimed differently.

  And that was for money. What would such a lunatic do for one of their own children?

  Much better if she receives a damaged but alive Empire agent that merely looks like her son, and has enough data of his to act like him.

  As he was headed back towards the bridge, he heard a sudden blaring siren… the hull breach alarm.

  He was intensely confused. The only people who should be capable of seizing a target, even one they were tracking, in Darkspace, were his own navy. What could possibly be happening out there?

  ***

  Buried inside the corpse of its mother, a freshly hatched dragon had been eating, ravenously… and growing at a truly ridiculous rate. It was already several meters long, and had eaten the most dense metals inside its mother’s corpse… and it sensed even better, hotter, sources nearby.

  It could also sense the eggs of its siblings… but some deep-seated instinct kept it from consuming those while other food was available. The child consumed a path through it’s mothers flesh, basking in the heat of it, until it reached her scaly shell… and started chewing and tearing its way through with its jaws… until it found… another shell.

  For a moment, the child was confused. The layer wasn’t dragon scales… but was extremely similar. Almost exactly the same. But it didn’t feel, or taste, like a dragon.

  Still. It wasn’t a living dragon, or a sibling. So it kept right on chewing, jagged jaws tearing away bits of it, until it came to a tough, smooth, metal surface… one so tough that it couldn’t tear through it with its jaws alone.

  And so, it did what its instincts told it to do… opened its jaws… and spat white-hot molten liquid onto the surface, letting it heat up, soften…. And then devoured the whole mass, tearing a hole through into… something very different.

  The space here was still comfortingly warm, but not hot like the breath of a mother dragon. Still. There was a source of heat and heavy metals nearby, through another one of these smooth metal surfaces. This one was softer. It tore in the dragon’s jaws as the creature melted it apart, using it to fuel its growth.

  There was a strange, momentary pain. Something had hurt it?

  The dragon tilted, looking in the direction of the pain; there was a strange creature. Not a dragon. White, with five odd protrusions from its body.

  He spat a glob of molten hull metal at the creature, which immediately collapsed, making some sort of strange noise… and then burrowed through the next wall… finding what it needed.

  It was a strange shape; but comfortably, intensely hot, and while it was surrounded by softer metals, it had a core made of far more delicious, heavier ones.

  Exactly what a growing dragon needed.

  There were more of the white creatures, and the dragon felt more pinpricks of pain; and so they made their odd noises as it jumped on them, spat at them, and rolled around like a massive serpent, shattering everything within reach in the room… before looking around.

  None of them were moving anymore. No more of those strange noises, either.

  The dragon turned back to the bulky machine, and started to chew and tear, devouring everything in its path. At first it was just almost tasteless light metals. Then denser ones.

  And finally, right at the source of all that lovely heat, the best ones of all. Clamping its jaws around it, feeling the intense heat filling its body, the creature devoured it as flames filled the chamber it was in, ignoring them as it kept chewing, eating… and felt its own internal temperature start rising as it finished.

  It could feel that there was another like this, somewhere nearby. More of these extremely hot, heavy metals. In fact, they’d grown even hotter as it had started eating, for some reason!

  It tried to spit another glob of molten metal at the walls between itself and the next source. Only this time… it wasn’t just a glob of heavy metal. It was a powerful jet of superheated plasma.

  That was new! It had never done that before.

  As molten metal splattered to the ground, and more of the odd white creatures scattered, making their strange noises, the dragon played around with this new talent, watching as the corridors went from the normal dull cold to a beautiful hot, and the noises went silent.

  It almost forgot the next meal that awaited it as it kept playing around, trying to feel if there were any of the small creatures nearby to spit at… but they were so soft, so tasteless, that they were hard to spot when there was anything between them.

  The dragon finally got bored of playing, and set its jaws to reaching that new food source. It hadn’t even realized it had grown bigger as it kept eating, and had to struggle a bit with a hole it had made, before re-melting… and tearing a path through.

  So much stuff in the way, and it was all food! But the really tasty treats should always go first, so one of its siblings didn’t hatch first and grab it away.

  There was only one more of the really big ones, and it certainly didn’t want to share.