Chapter 8: The Man Without a Face
The first thing I knew was darkness, total and suffocating. It wasn't the absence of light; it was a presence. A thick, claustrophobic pressure that smelled of sterile plastic and recycled air.
Then, a sharp click.
The pressure lifted. Light, harsh and white, flooded my vision. My eyes snapped open, not with a groggy start, but with the instant, jarring alertness of a soldier waking to an explosion. The mask they'd used to subdue me—some kind of sensory-deprivation hood—was being pulled away by a pair of gloved hands.
I was in a chair. Not a comfortable one. It was a solid block of some cold, white material, molded to my body, with restraints clamping my wrists and ankles. The room was a perfect cube. White walls, white floor, white ceiling. The only color was the dull grey of the restraints and the man sitting in front of me.
He was unnerving. Not because he was menacing, but because he wasn't anything at all. He sat perfectly still in a simple chair, wearing the same kind of sterile, grey uniform as Koshva, but without the rank or nameplate. His face was a smooth, featureless plane of skin. No eyes. No nose. No mouth. Just a blank, slightly convex oval that gave no indication of where he was looking.
'I've seen masks. I've seen helmets. I've seen men whose faces were ruined by war. But I've never seen a man who simply... didn't have one.'
"Am I supposed to be impressed?" I asked, my voice a hoarse rasp. My throat felt like I'd swallowed sand. "Or is this the new look for interrogators? Very minimalist. I give it a 6 out of 10."
The face didn't change, of course. It couldn't. But a voice emanated from it, a calm, tenor drone that was as featureless as the face it came from. "The subject is lucid. Auditory and verbal functions are nominal. Begin interrogation."
"I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to the wall," I shot back. "And since when do you talk to yourself in the third person? That's a bad sign."
The voice from the face ignored me. "Designation: Anomaly 734. You are currently within the Phekda Central Authority Containment Wing. Your designation has been upgraded to Class-2 Reality Deviation following your unprovoked assault on Authority enforcers."
"Unprovoked?" I laughed, a dry, painful sound. "They shot first. I just had a bigger caliber."
"Your classification is based not on the act of resistance, but on the method," the voice continued, unflappable. "You did not deflect or absorb the energy. You negated it. You removed a localized phenomenon from existence without a corresponding Law or registered Skill. This is a paradox."
"A paradox, huh?" I leaned back as far as the restraints would allow. "I just call it being difficult. You should try it sometime."
The featureless head tilted a fraction of a degree. "We have analyzed the nutrient beverage you consumed. 'Cactus Cooler,' distributed by 'Sunny-Side Up Vending Corp.' It contains trace amounts of raw essence distilled from the Cacti of Xoth. A potent, if volatile, energy restorative."
'Xoth? That's a name from the old stories. A dead planet. How is there essence from a dead planet in a cheap soda? The system is more corrupt than I thought.'
"You're telling me I beat your killer robots with a sugar rush?" I grinned. "That's embarrassing for you, isn't it?" a small chuckle escaped me
"The beverage is not the anomaly," the voice stated. "It is a catalyst. You are the source. We wish to understand the source. To that end, we will conduct a series of diagnostic procedures."
"That's a fancy way of saying you're going to torture me," I said, my grin fading. "Let's save us both the time. I'm not going to tell you how I did it. I'm not going to tell you who I am. And I am definitely not going to let you stick your probes anywhere."
"You misunderstand," the voice said. "The procedures are not for information. They are for correction. We do not wish to understand the paradox. We wish to resolve it."
The white wall behind him shimmered, and an image appeared. It was Valentina, standing in an observation room, her arms crossed, her face pale. She was looking directly at us, or rather, at a one-way mirror I couldn't see through. She looked worried.
"Anomaly 743," the voice from the face said, and for the first time, there was a hint of something new in it. Not emotion, but purpose. "We have a proposition."
"I'm not really in a position to negotiate," I said, rattling my restraints.
"We are aware. However, Ment Koshva has filed a formal recommendation on your behalf. Citing your 'cooperative' nature and 'potential for rehabilitation.'" The voice was so deadpan it was clear it thought Koshva was a moron.
That poor, miserable bastard. He'd actually stuck his neck out for me.
"And you're listening to him?" I asked, genuinely surprised.
"We are listening to the data," the voice corrected. "The data indicates that terminating you is... inefficient. Your ability to negate phenomena is a unique variable. It could be a valuable asset. If it can be controlled."
He let that hang in the air.
"What kind of deal?" I asked cautiously.
"Join us," the voice said. "Submit to Authority oversight. Allow us to study you, to calibrate your abilities. In return, you will be granted provisional status as a Class-3 Ment, under the direct supervision of Ment Valentina. You will work for us, and in doing so, your 'debugging' will be indefinitely postponed."
Work for them. After they tried to atomize me. After they strapped me to this chair. They wanted to leash the thing they couldn't kill. To turn the glitch into a tool.
I looked at Valentina's worried face on the screen. Then I looked back at the smooth, blank mask of the man in front of me. It was the ultimate test. The system wasn't offering me a way out. It was offering me a cage with a slightly better view.
"I think i'm Good thanks!"
"Ha!" it laughed, that shocked me more than anything else up until now.
"So you do have emotions it seems."
"I apologize, i was just amused by the fact that you think you have a choice", it's voice returning
back to the toneless way it was before. "It's either die, or live under us. No third option"