Page 7 of From the Noblest Motives
"Now he asks for representation. Wonderful," Mr. Reflective muttered, no longer smiling. "Go pull someone from the welfare pool. We're not having a mistrial called on something so trivial. Find out who dosed him with too much antribile. They're fired."
Shudder put his head on the table with a little sigh, let the pen roll away, and fell asleep.
When Shudder woke again, the headache was worse, but he could think in more than fuzzy dream thoughts. His hands were still uncuffed, but— His scalp felt oddly heavy. When he reached up to touch his hair, he encountered straps of metal. A speaker buzzed high up on the wall.
"You need to leave that on, sir," a disinterested voice informed him. "We're allowed to glue it on if you don't."
"All right." Shudder lowered his hands, nodding in case the audio was only one way.Great. This is just… great.
He had a strong suspicion concerning the device on his head. But just in case, he tried to reach for the ground below the building. A small tremor. A tiny murmur. The slightest connection…
Nothing. They'd fitted him with a variant suppressor cap—enough mu metal to interfere with variant brainwave transmissions to be certain he couldn't access his talent. He'd seen them on the news plenty of times during variant arrests and had raged at the use of them. Somehow it had never occurred to him that he might be wearing one someday. The sensation was…mufflingwas the closest he could come, giving everything a misty, dreamlike quality but not a pleasant one.
I wonder what the long-term effects are and if anyone's bothered to make a study. And why am I thinking about that when I seem to have been arrested? Maybe arrested.
He didn't think they'd moved him from the initial room, though he only recalled it in a fuzzy way. The stiffness in his back and the way his butt was half asleep told him he'd been sleeping sitting up with his head on the table. Moving him from one bare room with a single table and chair to another identical one and putting him back the way he'd been would've been a really strange waste of time and energy.
The paper, whatever it had been, no longer sat on the table. He had a bad feeling that he knew at least the sort of document if not the specifics. None of the excessively large city enforcers who had ambushed him in a dirty alley had said, "Shudder McKenzie, you're under arrest," but it had been clear enough. The issue was that he hadn't been in New Chicago recently and had never done anything beyond minor vandalism there, so he couldn't imagine what the charges were.
Fine. He had an overactive brain and could imagine all sorts of things, but nothing sensible.
Aforementioned brain had just jumped to the issue of what happened when he had to pee when the door opened, and a drab little man in a brown suit hurried in.
"Did you sign it?" The man dropped a document case on the table, glanced around the room, probably for another chair, and sighed.
Shudder flashed his most congenial smile. "Did I sign what? Who are you?"
"I'm your advocate, Harry Lapin." Harry stuck out his hand belatedly, his grip damp and unenthusiastic. "The prosecution has a confession they want you to sign. Did you sign it?"
"Oh, that's what that was." Shudder dropped the smile. It was hurting his head. "No, I was drugged past my eyeballs and couldn't manage an activity as complicated as using a pen correctly."
His advocate frowned, looking more discouraged. "Guess we're going to have to do this, then. Why don't you tell me in your own words what happened when you killed Minister Tapper?"
Shudder heaved an extra-dramatic sigh, since he couldn't possibly take this man seriously. "And I thought you were here to help me. I'd like to call my mother, please."
"Enforcement called your mother as next of kin." Harry pushed a sweat-soaked bit of hair out of his forehead's furrows. "She didn't want to take the call and states she won't speak to you."
"Did she? Oh." She'd threatened it for years, but he'd never believed she'd follow through with cutting him off entirely. The money, yes, fine, he had accepted being financially disowned, but she'd always taken his calls. "Stop the nonsense and come home, sweetie," she would say. "There are better ways to accomplish things." But now she thought he was… what? A murderer?
A hole had opened up at his feet and he couldn't stop falling. "I... what was the question?"
Harry's sigh was all nervous exasperation, no drama. "What happened when you killed Sheila Tapper?"
"Why do you think…?" Shudder trailed off and waved one hand over the other. "No. Wait. Question for question is a stupid game. I've never met Minister Tapper. I've never seen her in person. And I certainly would never have—did not—kill her."
Instead of relief, Harry's frown added extra furrows. "Look, Mr. McKenzie. I'm supposed to speak for you, but I can't help you if you want to play games. They have evidence that puts you at the scene. Right there when the wall fell on her. So we need to talk strategy. Were you impaired in some way? Was it an accident?"
"I feel like I don't understand words anymore." Shudder scrubbed both hands over his face, careful not to touch the arms of the mu-metal cap. "I came to the city in response to a request for help. No, I won't tell you who gave me the message. No, I won't tell you who the message was from. Just getting that out of the way. While walking to the meet point, I was jumped by a gang of thugs—oh, excuse me, enforcers—thrown down, sat on, drugged and cuffed, in that order. No explanations. The rest of my trip here is, let's just say, less than clear, so that's all the facts I have for you. Your turn."
"I'm not the enemy." Harry flung his hands up and paced in a tiny circle. "All right. Fine. They have you on security vid. Confirmed by three separate recognition programs. You. Talking to Minister Tapper. What looks like arguing with her. Bringing the wall down. Running away. Does that make it clear?"
"Harry, you have to know those can be faked. Especially if they really want me in jail, which they do. They have for a long time."
"They have other physical evidence," Harry snapped, flapping a hand at him.
"What sort of evidence?"
"How would I know?"
