maskormenacelogs | now the wind, now a voice it carries --

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now the wind, now a voice it carries --

WHO: Jorah of Mormont, Simon of Illyan, and Frederick of Chilton featuring Haen of Hitheil.
WHERE: The Prototype imPort Containment Center in the basement of Heropa Downtown Hospital.
WHEN: The early morning after this.
WHAT: After the assault comes the interrogation.
WARNINGS: Probably violence, abuse of psychiatric medication.

Frederick Chilton had kept the intruder Simon, presently known by his alias "Arthur", captive into the night. He had requested that a deeply sedated Simon be moved down into the basement, where the small but clinically sterilized laboratory that Chilton had constructed for his own amusement lay in wait. Its pale tiles underfoot, the luminescent bright lights lining the ceiling above, the whiteness of the walls -- it was all clean, controlled, and concealed. Chilton had long ago petitioned for a little department all his own, a place where he could hold violent imPorts if necessary. A place with three transparent cylinders, thick in bullet-proof plastic, every one equipped with steel reinforcement and government-authorized power dampeners.

Chilton's imPort Containment Centers.

The middle had deep claw marks sunk into a curve of its wall -- from the interior. Artifacts of a prior imPort, one now long exported out of this world. Chilton touched the mark from the exterior layers of plastic, his eyes softly gazing at the gouge. Sentiment wrote sentences on his face.

"Strap him to the chair for now," he said, nodding to a metal chair that had been edited with restraints attached at the arms, the legs, and the backing of the recline. Chilton glanced up, his mouth softening, as if to impose a gentleness to the command after its delivery. Baelish had lent him Mr. Mormont for convenience, and Chilton was undeniably grateful for it. The Ambassador, absent these bleak hours in the morning, had meanwhile taken care of clean-up.

Walking around the middle Containment Center now, Chilton laid eyes on a lone silver and wheeled table off to the side of the room. There rested medical instruments, some that ventured outside a psychiatric scope. Behind the wheeled table was a thin, white cabinet with a large silver lock on it. Chilton had the only key.

"He's been sedated all this time, it isn't going to be a pretty wake up." He looked at Simon, his expression a cold sneer. "But it should be any minute. I calculated the last dosage precisely."

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The hair on the back of Jorah’s neck hackles as he crosses the threshold, his eyes already distant with distrust, everything all sterile white and fluorescent lights glancing off stainless steel. Grit follows at his heels -- rope fiber and horse hair and bits of dirt scattered loose across polished tiles with each step. Even scrubbed clean, in fresh clothes and free of his armor, he smells like he spent the better part of his morning on horseback.

He unloads “Arthur” off of his shoulder and into Chilton’s special chair like a slaughtered calf, content to staple loose limbs into place with buckles and straps after the fact. There’s no love, here. No bedside manner.

He locks the restraints tight, tests their hold, and smothers one broad hand heavy over Simon’s mouth and nose.

Then he waits.

The less time he has to spend down here, the better.

It's a very effective method of insuring Simon doesn't have any time to gather himself before his captors are alerted to him waking. Panic at not being able to breath lances straight through him, making him sluggishly jerk away before he can consciously remind himself of the importance of remaining calm. All his thoughts fall down around him, jumbled and out of order—He needed to remember how to be interrogated; he needed to know what was wrong with the chip; he needed to calm down so he could think and string together a coherent list of actions.There was a plethora of relevant data, memories of being in a similar position spread across a decade superimposed on one another but Simon could divine nothing useful; the common thread of his own terror linking them together just increased the distant, panicked thumping of his heart as instinct kicked in and he tried to bite Jorah's hand.

"Unhand him," said Chilton. Softly. In a bout of good cop/bad cop, Chilton was perfectly suited to play the role of the former; he was insidious with his manners, serpentine in his poise. The veneer of support was an easy gloss to wear.

It was clear that Simon was panicked, evident enough from the sluggish jerk -- and Chilton scoured for other signs to better manipulate in the coming hour. He walked over to Simon, walked behind him in his chair, and reached around to press his fingers against Simon's temple. Stroking it. Both a threat and a comfort stapled to one gesture.

"Good morning," said Chilton. His eyes were on the back of Simon's head, he trusted Jorah to be watching Simon's face. "I think you owe an apology to the man standing before you."

A wink for Jorah.

"You already know what this is, don't you, Arthur? Are we still using Arthur? Should I call you by something else?"

A decade’s worth of dust and salt infused into the leather wrap braided around Jorah’s palm is all Simon’s liable to sink his teeth into. Jorah clears even that by Chilton’s command, stepping well back.

He’s a living anachronism in the confines of this medical dungeon, not happy to be here but hiding it well enough to serve. His wounded leg is whole, no evidence of the damage in linen or wool or leather, clothing all in earthy shades of green and brown. No blood.

He might look tired. Worn down. It’s hard to tell, amidst all the bristle and the baleful stare.

Maybe he always looks like this, equal parts watchful and utterly disinterested.

Simon swallows, trying to clear the taste of salt from his already dry mouth. Belatedly he realizes he's still drugged, making the chip kick out a fairly useless, out of date list of pharmaceuticals he may be on, sorted by effect. That meant the chip was still on the fritz for sure, since had made a point to look into the modern drugs of this era. That alone was nothing to panic over, he told himself. It could even end up being an advantage, if it blacked him out again. Maybe.

His thoughts feel like a slowly collapsing house, falling down around him in irregular bursts of activity. A terrifying feeling on a number of levels, more so because of the associations it triggered. Sitting on a hospital bed 8 years ago feeling the edges of the shaved portion of his scalp while a doctor spoke to him, The side effects were primarily concerned about are uncontrollable flashbacks and memory cascades...

Simon swallows again. Looks around, tries to focus. The distinctly hospital feel of the place makes his chest squeeze even tighter with anxiety. God, he hadn't thought of Illyrica in years. But this was the first time his chip had malfunctioned...

Not malfunctioned, he tells himself. It was a temporary effect.

If it wasn't there was nothing he could do about it right now.

At least it tipped him on to a more productive line of thought. The chip was working, but imperfectly. That might mean his fledgling mental connection with the Lord Regent was still partially alive. With his mind so disorganized, he really couldn't tell; he just reaches for it, what it felt like, reaches for it and leans all his terror into the space where he thought it might be. Whatever reserve he might have felt at exposing so raw an emotion is excised by necessity.

He couldn't tell if it worked at all but he did feel oddly better after the attempt, as though he had really managed to set his panic aside. He breathes a little easier and steals another moment by focusing in on Jorah, squinting at him thoughtfully. Chilton behind him is maddening but this is not Simon's first interrogation: He doesn't flinch.

"Arthur should be fine," he says amiably. His words come out a little too deliberate: the drugs, but he's being extra careful not to let his accent slip into Russian gutterals and it takes far more effort than he'd like. He sounds utterly bland. "Sir Mormont does not seem much worse for the wear despite my best efforts."

"Mm, well. Sir," Chilton arched an eyebrow at Jorah. "Mormont maintains an excellent healthcare plan with his employer. Perhaps you ought to consider something similar."

Halfway a joke; Chilton assumed that Baelish would want to do a lot more with Simon before employing him. The doctor now pressed two fingers of each hand on both sides of Simon's head, moving his fingertips in a small, circular motion against the temple. His frown would not be visually apparent to Simon, but it was possible that the captive felt the disappointment within the pressure Chilton applied.

"I would rather we did not lie to each other. Aren't you exhausted by this pretense?" Chilton's glance moved to the silver table. Maybe it was better to drop the calming contrast to Jorah's salted ferocity... No, no. Switching tactics too quickly would tip "Arthur" off and reverse the current power dynamic.

Better to keep the status quo arrangement. Make an impression first.

"He needs a little persuasion." Chilton spoke to Jorah now, locking eyes. A little persuasion, there was only one way to convince a man strapped to a chair in a partially hidden hospital room. That singular option wasn't going to be fun for Simon, and Chilton doubted that it would be much fun for Jorah, either. The knight did not demonstrate a sadism in his counterattacks, and that was crucial to note.

The italics and the arched brow earn a more direct look look across the middle ground that is Arthur -- Jorah arches his brow right back. There’s natural swagger to the way he shifts his weight, lazy pride worn into muscle memory despite the decade. And the disgrace.

Small, circular motions at Simon’s temple draw his eye, and the attitude he has etched into crow’s feet tightens into something more like a wince the longer it goes on. Judgmental.

It’s not half a subtle as he’d like to think, with this thumb hooked over the pommel of his sword and his hip cocked.

He has no difficulty locking eyes, for all that he’s looking on as if he’s being forced to watch a rectal exam. The delay in his response is just short enough to avoid insubordination; he circles around to Simon’s left side and sets to unfastening the restraints pinning his arm there.

Jorah closes Simon’s left hand in his right before he looses the strap there at his wrist. From there, depending on the amount of resistance Simon puts up, it may take him a moment to steady stiff at Simon’s elbow to jolt and snap the ball of his shoulder out of its socket. His hands are rough; bones may chip or crack in the process.

But that’s what they have Haen for, isn’t it.

Edited (vestigial words) 2016-10-01 18:48 (UTC)

Simon doesn't know why Chilton is touching his head which, more than anything, puts him on edge. They can't know about the chip—They haven't made any reference to it. Even if they did, it wasn't as if they could take it out—Probably. It was supposed to be extraction-proof, dependent on its organic matrix to work. And there was no way they could access the information on the chip directly through him; that had been something only Ezar and Negri and now Aral Vorkosigan knew the trick to.

Simon is not prone to arrogant laughter, but if he were Chilton's angling would do it. Exhausted by this pretense, not likely. He thrived on pretense. He'd been an undercover agent years before becoming Chief of Imperial Security and those habits were ingrained in him, down to dressing and acting to be underestimated every day. If anyone was putting on a pretense it was Chilton, playing the good cop. Simon was betting he had not run many interrogations.

Simon had run quite a few.

"If we're being honest, this doesn't look like a room concerned with psychiatric care." Simon addresses Chilton, mild, but his eyes stay on Jorah's, meeting them calmly and without animosity. The man doesn't look pleased to be here. That's a friction to potentially exploit. Obviously Jorah did not serve Chilton directly, and Simon wondered if Jorah's leash would either stay him or compel him to go along with whatever Chilton chose to escalate to. There were certainly thing Simon would not do now, because of who he served, that he would have done in the past...

Chilton was obviously the sadist here, which he should have suspected given his Betan-esque penchant for wanting to screw around in someone's mind. Simon could manage pain. He had before. When Jorah twists his arm he doesn't bother to stifle his ragged gasp; there was no benefit to putting on a show of stoicism. It might encourage Chilton to try alternative means.

If Chilton could have psychically read Simon's thoughts, he would have sneered at the miscalculation. Chilton had run kinds of interrogations -- perhaps not the ones Simon was used to, perhaps not the ones intended for solely informational extraction. Chilton's psychiatric engagements -- exclusively the special kinds -- drew out fact and laid it bare before Chilton's judgement; if he disliked it, if he found it boring or useless, he would change the reality. For his patient, his special case study. He had done it to Abel Gideon, making the man falsely believe that he was the Chesapeake Ripper, psychically driving narratives into him after determining the truth of Gideon's psychosis.

But that was another world, where Chilton had undisputed power and indefinite time to soak his patient's brain, wring it dry, and force it to scrub whatever new dirt he wanted infused. This was Heropa, this room had Sir Mormont in it. And Chilton had already assessed that Jorah was not the type of man that he wanted to expose himself before.

Lucky for Simon.

"Because it isn't," he said. Sharp truth delivered in a dispassionate manner. "This is where criminals who assault me go."

Technically another truth, given Walter White and Jonathan Crane's interactions in this room.

"Which brings me to the question of who sent you. It was quite obvious that you had a mission intended to extract information from me, without my consent." He smirked, the implication of eye for an eye justice lingering right on his tongue. Chilton had reviewed the tapes, he understood the context. "What is your interest in Petyr Baelish?"

Chilton hadn't had Jorah aligned with him before, and the hesitance in Jorah's obedience was reminder enough, but surely pointing out to them both why Simon was here would do the trick. Surely Jorah would want what Baelish wanted, if only as consequence of his servitude.

"Hurt him. I want his adrenaline running higher," said Chilton as he walked towards his locked cabinet.

Adrenaline, psychiatric care.

Mormont isn’t accustomed to feeling this dim. He keeps abreast of the drama, for the most part, with context clues, dry affect no more sympathetic to Simon’s plight than it is to Chilton’s indignation.

‘Hurt him,’ Chilton says. Jorah maintains his hold, grip like wrought iron.

The slow breath he pulls in isn’t destined for a sigh. Rather, he holds it in to brace his strength behind a sharper wrench and snap, cracking through the slender overlap of radius and ulna with a pair of wet pops. He grunts with the effort, low and rough in his throat.

This time there's not much pause between order and follow through. Slippery slopes.

Simon lets out another shout, and waits until he's got better control of his breathing more he answers. "Baelish is politically powerful in the import community," He says as blandly as possible. A non-answer. Even that little leaves him feeling shaky. His migraine and his knee are starting to throb in time with his shoulder, and the over-all effect makes it hard to focus. Simon follows Chilton to the cabinet with a fresh wave of anxiety: Whatever is in that cabinet is either a drug or something to hurt him with. Frankly, Simon hopes for the latter.

"Are you going to ransom me?" He sounds wary, with a ragged edge of hope. What he actually is is curious how Chilton will answer. That had been a smooth move with Jorah; Simon needed to get a better handle on how he worked.

"What? No, no, you will not be ransomed. Do I look like I need the money?" Chilton approached Simon, clearly insulted, a covered syringed in his right hand, and a second one in his pocket. The former was an excessive dosage of Dextroamphetamine -- enough to aggravate a list of side effects now that Simon's heart rate was already raging. A baseline of rushing adrenaline was practically an invitation for a panic attack.

"Really." The nerve to suggest ransom, even as a vain hope. "Now, Sir Mormont, if you don't mind ensuring that he won't jerk as I inject him... It would be a pity if a few air bubbles accidentally got into his bloodstream and caused him a brain damaging stroke."

Such a pity.

"Listen to my voice, all right, you'll want to do that. It will be your sole anchor to surviving this."

Because if this indeed went to shit, Chilton had an alternative use for Simon: the pocketed syringe was filled with lysergic acid diethylamide. He had been aching to experiment with an imPort of cognitive ability, and Simon's apparent hypnotic power would do just fine.

Chilton uncapped the needle, cleared the skin, and pressed the syringe into an evident vein in Simon's untouched arm.

This is witchcraft if he’s ever seen it, sans the chanting -- and the smell. With Simon’s broken wing outstretched in his hands, Jorah cuts a sidelong look across to Chilton with the syringe, what the hell are you doing? writ in hard lines over his brow.

Unspoken, of course.

In the meantime he does what he’s told, steady pressure promising further pain against any sign of resistance.

God, but Simon hates drugs. He closes his eyes and tries to pull in a steadying breath before the dose kicks in, not bothering answer Chilton.

It's obvious enough when it hits. Simon feels his chest wring impossibly tight around his throbbing heart. He doubles over, bucking in Jorah's grip heedless of the pain, half trying to fight and half just trying to breath. He knows how to handle this but every time he reaches for that knowledge all he can feel is the dead silence of the chip and the nagging feeling that's he's forgetting something vital and it trips him into the cycle all over again.

"Lovely," whispered Chilton, his eyes on Simon. The reaction was precisely anticipated: the shortness of breath, the racing of his heart. That coupled with the agony Jorah had wrought, it was an ideal combination.

Simply lovely.

"Now I am going to ask you. One. More. Time." Chilton leaned in close to murmur near Simon's ear. "Who sent you to my office?"

Jorah bears down half a second late, caught off guard by the intensity of Simon’s reaction. He has the sheer strength to stifle the worst of it, forearm and shoulder wrangled with all the conviction he’d apply to a struggling crocodile.

At this rate, who knows what might happen if he lets go.

Hellfire, bat wings.

“Answer him,” he says, at an even growl, composure maintained despite the strain. This can’t be comfortable.

"No," he snarls and twists his head to slam it into Chilton's face. That's the final burst of energy he has for now; the attempt wrenches his shoulder a little too hard and the shooting pain makes him drop limply, panting and trembling.

"Stop, stop, just—give me a minute." To think. Simon sounds ragged; he knows he does, he's aware of what he's saying even though it's pure panic pushing them out. He can't fight down the anxiety, so he uses it: panicked babbling over anything substantive, but not being able to instantly review whatever the hell he just said spikes his anxiety up even highter.

"Damn!"

Chilton staggered back, his hand coddling his nose. Blood dribbled from a nostril, nothing that required immediately medical attention. An inconvenience, for sure, but not a fully-fledged distraction. Simon had aimed well.

Babbling. The patient was babbling, and Chilton suspected the stream of consciousness was little more than a narrative defense. A wall rapidly erected to prevent true exposure -- it was frustrating. But Chilton knew how to cope with frustration, he knew patience with his patients. He was willing to sink time into this. The question was, how much time did he really have? Simon, listed as a John Doe in the hospital records, could only legally be detained for seventy-two hours. And it wasn't as if Chilton didn't have other clinical duties to attend, which would include his on-the-books patients.

A dilemma was bubbling. He considered Haen, given her remarkable power. She might have to short-circuit their captive when they hit their deadline. But as of this precise moment... He was willing to see how intensely that anxiety manifested for Simon.

"We saw the footage. We know of your ability. It is only a matter of time before you will be fully exposed."

That’s what happens when you get cocky.

Jorah watches Chilton reel back in a nose clutching bumble to see if he’ll keep his feet. Then he loads back and cracks his left fist through the side of Simon’s face as a matter of course, bringing the favor full circle.

He’s coldcocked men in armor -- men with swords trying to kill him.

Simon’s a sight smaller than the average sworn sword, and he takes that into account. Somewhat. Not a pulled punch, but not a killing blow, either. The look he cuts down and aside as he stretches his broken arm back out is dirty without real ire, understanding for the impulse hedged by a warning from on high.

Manners.

The hit blacks Simon out for a moment. When he wakes up, he only feels the hit as one more dull, throbbing ache among others. He takes refuge in the fact that they are probably not going to expect him to talk directly after a blow like that and tries to gather his wits.

It's automatic reflex to try and access the chip and use it to order his thought. The attempt makes a sharp bolt of pain stab through his head; he gasps. It spits out a staticy audio of Chilton's words, you will be fully exposed and a fresh wave of panic sluices through Simon. He'd be useless as an agent, useless in his chaotic world where his Emperor had already been tortured once.

God, he needed to think. The chip was more hindrance than help at this point, on and off again, interrupting his organic thoughts with bursts of sound bites and images too quick to recognize. No, he didn't need to think, he needed to improvise and pray he could keep a train of thought going long enough to be convincing. You might as well if everything else's gone to snot. Encouraging words from Negri, the former chief of impsec.

Simon coughs well and grimaces. His voice quivers just slightly, which is not even an affectation. "I'm going to die either way, looks like. I don't really see the benefit in cooperating."

Chilton shot Simon a look soft enough to be described as pitying. Sucking air through his teeth, he made the sound of a disappointed father as he wiped clean away the last of his own blood.

"Two things. First -- there is something inherently sad about how easily you would give up in the face of presumed mortal peril. And second, no, we are not going to kill you." His other hand in his pocket, his fingers stroking the LSD syringe. "We're going to do so much worse than simply kill you."

That would have been messy, pedestrian, and likely impermanent.

"I am willing to give you one last chance." Chilton considered Haen again, considered what she might be able to do with a rewiring of a chemical compound similar to sodium thiopental. Worth a chance, anyway, as Chilton was still curious to know who would take such a violent interest in Baelish -- and himself, by proxy. Whoever sent this man had a little hell to pay.

"Sir Mormont," said Chilton. "Could you check his straps before we have Haen sent in?"

“Jorah,” says Jorah, who can’t take it anymore. Lord Mormont, Mister Mormont, Sir Mormont. He spares Chilton another sidelong look as he flattens Simon’s broken arm back into position. “Ser Jorah.”

He punctuates the correction by buckling a restraint down tight enough to click at the spy’s broken bones.

The rest follow in kind; he’s already fastened most of them so tight that there’s no give to test. He dares Simon to get sassy with a glance as he checks the one at his waist. Secure as the rest.

“He’s not going anywhere.”

Simon flinches when Jorah touches him, his skin gone pale and clammy. He's limp in his bonds, eyes starting to go vague, not even noticing Jorah's warning look. The chip keeping flickering on in irregular bursts, dumping random packets of data through his conscious mind. The Komarran terrorist Ser Galen's file. A disorienting sound byte of Cordelia saying that exact phrase—He's not going anywhere, in a different tone. But Simon can't remember the context, and it makes his gut twist sick with fear. Suddenly remembering seems like the most important thing, but no matter how desperately he grasps he can't summon up the image of Cordelia to match her voice, and a wash of pure terror at that horrible blankness floods Simon's heart until he thinks it will burst with every beat.

Shit, Simon thinks during a merciful moment of clear-headedness. I'm losing it.

It takes an enormous strength of will not to follow that thought down all the way, back to Illyrica, back to the reports he wasn't supposed to read while his head was still healing from the surgery. A high incidence of iatrogenic schizophrenia in the surviving patients...

No, no, no. This was temporary. Drugs. It was just the drugs.

Simon tries to rein in his breathing, almost hyperventilating. "Wait," he says, voice shaking. He doesn't care if it's humiliating. He doesn't have too much pride to beg for his life so long as his life is more useful than his death. Sometimes he's not even sure he has pride; It's too an ostentatious emotion for the Emperor's left hand. We live to serve indeed, Imperial Security's catchphrase. God, he had to live. He had to stay sane. He had to focus. He had to do his damn job and get through a little torture.

"Russia. The Russian government sent me."

Chilton exhaled, already lacking the grace to subvert an eyeroll. It was time to bring in Haen.

"The Russians, who care little for our politics but massively for our power? The Russians who have a history of taking imPorts by the dozens -- especially if those imPorts have been utterly flamboyant with their abilities? Really." Perhaps it was simply unlucky for Simon that Chilton himself had the time to witness and analyze this adversarial behavior from the USSR, but such was the benefit of literal years spent in this world. Moreover, he was, after all, a psychiatrist. Analyzing behavior was his thing. And then the correlating facts: the restriction on travel, the limitations of those who had registered as Unsettled. Chilton was willing to bet that 'Arthur' was wary of that deal, as well.

"Just so you know, I am not going to tell her to make it painless. I'm sure she could do it as such effortlessly, but I would rather she did not."

When Chilton collected Haen, he would ask her if she could rewrite enough RNA acting between neurotransmitters to mimic a specific chemical. He would ask her if she could amplify the structure of sodium thiopental, if she could create a truth serum more powerful than what was medically available.

It would be interesting simply to see.

In contrast to Chilton and Jorah, the redhead looks almost comically nonthreatening. The fact that she greets Simon with a cheery smile would be almost sinister, if there wasn't a complete lack of mockery in the expression, as if Haen is genuinely glad to see him. If Simon has indeed been watching Baelish, he will know that Haen is frequently at his side at social functions, but beyond that, hasn't made much of a splash in the imPort community.

"Good guanines, but you're a bit of a mess," she tsks, pulling up a chair next to him with a bit of a sigh. "Some people say that a messy environment is the sign of a creative mind, but I've seen creative people with utterly impeccable living spaces, and messy people without an ounce of inspiration in their lives. So it really makes you wonder how a saying like that came about, although I've always thought it was probably someone who was messy and just covering it with claims of creativity, sort of like avoiding having to do the housekeeping, but then again if the phrase is still being used, that's a sort of creativity all in itself. Or infamy, that's never something to be underestimated, especially since fame and infamy are really only divided by a matter of individual opinion. Subjective things can be such a pain. Speaking of pain, that has to hurt, dear."

She settles her hand atop Simon's where it's buckled down, and with a shifty, queasy feeling -- not to mention the sensation of musculature and bones moving by themselves -- sets his arm back to an unbroken state.

"Is that better?"

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