I pulled a chair away from the small kitchenette and set it down in front of Toussant, then sat down with a sigh and eyed the man impassively. The anger, that cold, calculating, scheming anger, was still there. It was still plotting, still Machiavellian in its patience, but right now, my expression, my demeanor, and my voice were as calm as a windless mountain lake. Everything about the way I looked at Becky's murderer just sang of indifference. Not indifference for him, of course. He knew by now that my capacity and willingness to inflict unimaginable suffering upon him was almost endless. No, my indifference was concerning his fate.
He would give me what I wanted, or he would die the sort of death that horror films were made of. I just didn't particularly care which one happened. Success would give me answers, but it would rob me of the satisfaction of seeing him die. Killing him would mean I'd need to find my answers elsewhere but would grant some small measure of justice for Becky's death.
Behind me, on the sofa, was Charlotte, looking decidedly less impassive than I was. Her face was a mask of impatience and rage, but I had allowed her to sit in on this whole thing on the condition that she kept quiet and didn't react to anything. Behind her, leaning against the wall on either side of the front window, were Jerry and Fiona. There was no real reason for them to be here, but they were still in the area after cleaning up the debacle at Mary's house and were curious if this could be done. More than that, they knew the Conclave better than I did. They might have questions that wouldn't occur to me. Leaning against the door frame to her bedroom was the newly exonerated Evie. She was nibbling nervously on the end of her finger. She didn't want this, and she certainly didn't want to watch it, but she understood that she had been dragged into a war, and she was more eager to know why she had been involved than she was scared of the methods I would use to find out.
"Before we begin, I need you to understand something," I said calmly and levelly to the heavily breathing Toussant. "You... are already dead. You died the very moment that Becky did. From the second that bomb went off, your death became an inevitability. The only thing that has kept you breathing since then is the fact that I haven't killed you yet. I have just prolonged that last second between life and death. You are not alive, which means you are not a human or an Inquisitor. You are a
thing.
And as a thing, you are neither entitled to nor do you even qualify for concepts such as mercy. You are no more capable of receiving compassion than a piece of lumber that is to be sawn. I can... and will... do anything and everything necessary to get the answers I need.
"That, however, leaves me with something of a dilemma. I cannot trust a single word you say. You might tell me exactly what you think I want to hear just to make the pain stop...and there will be a
lot
of pain. You could lie, or you could tell me the truth. There is no way for me to know. That is made more complicated by the fact that you have no vocal cords and can't
tell
me anything, even if you want to.
"Unless I break you," I held the man's eyes for a few pointed seconds.
"Now, my friends here," I went on, gesturing to the two Evos at the back of the room. "Tell me that nobody has ever even attempted to break the mind of an Inquisitor before, let alone be successful. Conventional wisdom, they say, dictates that Inquisitors are immune to Evo powers. Therefore, your mind is simply beyond my reach." Toussant huffed a soundless breath. "The thing is, I know they are wrong. You see, at the party, when your people attacked mine, I
felt
the minds of those Inquisitors just as clearly as I feel the minds of a human. It was like running my fingers over a shape in the dark. I couldn't quite make them out properly, but I could feel them. More importantly, I could feel them cracking. I could feel the weakness. Of course, if it were as simple as just repeating the process, there wouldn't be all this build-up. The problem, at least for you, is that I don't really know how I did it.
"So, I am going to sit here, and I am going to bore into your mind like a drill. I don't know if it will hurt or not, but considering what I am about to do to you, I would imagine it is going to be excruciating." I could almost hear Toussant's heartbeat increasing in his chest as the killer let his fear overtake him. "This isn't torture, at least not in the physical sense that I'm guessing you have been trained to resist. There will be no way to block out the pain. You will not be able to use the mind tricks to distract yourself because it is your mind that will be hurting.
"You don't need to understand the processes here, but I have the minds of hundreds of Evos, hundreds of lifetimes in my head. I have seen true suffering through their eyes. I have seen men withstand terrible, horrible things. Pain, degradation, and despair, the likes of which you cannot possibly imagine. Do you know what is most remarkable about all of the suffering I have seen inflicted by one man upon another? None of the victims talked; they all kept their mouths shut. And do you know why? Because they believed in something. They had a purpose greater than themselves, they dedicated themselves to a cause, and they would rather die an agonizing death before they would betray it.
"Is that you, Jean-Pierre? Are you a true believer? We are going to find out together, one way or another. But when the pain comes...and the pain
will
come...we will see how deep your faith really runs. In the back of your mind, you are already thinking of the ways that I could break you, you are already thinking about your limits, and you are already asking yourself how much you can take before you snap. As the pain grows, you will feel that resolve breaking; you will feel those limits getting smaller and closer, and every time they shrink, you will know... Your belief is a lie.
"But before we start, I want you to take a look around," Toussant's eyes blinked and then scanned slowly around the room. "Do you see them? Do you see how they have all made themselves comfortable? It is because they know that this is not going to be over quickly."
"Now. Let us begin."
********
Perception is a tricky thing. It is influenced as much by what you are looking at as by how you are looking at it. Whether you are watching a cloud taking on a familiar shape, picking a side in an argument, or deciding which political faction best represents your values, perception is as likely to offer clarity as it is to lead to mistakes. After six hours of inflicting unimaginable pain on the captive Toussant, I sat back with a huff and began to wonder if my own perception was leading me down the wrong path.
Because this wasn't
fucking
working!
I should explain.
There was something intrinsically defiant about the mind of an Inquisitor. It was the mountain face that couldn't be climbed, the ocean that couldn't be crossed by plane, the land-speed record that couldn't be beaten. But these were not absolutes; they were just things that hadn't been accomplished until someone came along and accomplished them. This motherfucker's mind was my K-2. The difference between those intrepid climbers and me, however, was that I had
seen
the top of the mountain. I had thrown the vengeful fury of my mind at the Inquisitors who attacked the party. I had utterly destroyed the bodies of those I could reach and then hunted for those that I couldn't. I had tracked those impenetrable voids - the absence of thought that represented every human and every non-blocking Evo on earth - and I felt them crack.
As powerful and dangerous as my vengeance had been that evening, however, it had also been wildly uncontrolled. I had lashed out at any semblance of a threat and utterly crushed it. I had taken the rage, the fury, and the grief of losing Faye and channeled it into pure, unadulterated violence. What I had done to crack those minds was more the result of my emotional outburst than it had been a conscious effort.
So - my obviously flawed logic dictated - if I channeled that power, focused it, harnessed it, and targeted it directly at Toussant's mind, his' would crack in the same way.
It did not.
The pressure I put on my captive's mind had been enormous. The power I poured into him lit up every single nerve ending in the man's head. To him, it felt like his skull had been put into an industrial car compactor while it was on fire, and a colony of exceptionally ravenous fire ants had slowly peeled the flesh from his head, all while being kept on a healthy supply of pain-
enhancing
drugs. No human being had ever survived this level of suffering, at least not while remaining psychologically intact, and although I could accurately say that Toussant was not human, the level of pain he endured was still beyond imagining.
But he had not broken.
