Chapter 15: Fighting Alone

Chapter Eighteen: Fighting Alone

May 24. The Star and Moon Joint Commanderies. HL branch headquarters, an interrogation room with outer walls of pure alloy.

The room was barely ten square meters, with a table, a desk lamp and two chairs in the middle. All interrogation rooms seemed to be furnished this way. Who designed them, anyway?

When the two officers assigned to the interrogation came in, Time Attendant was doing a handstand in the corner...

“Mr. Joseph Nolan.” An HL lieutenant general in sunglasses and an immaculate uniform spoke first. “Would you please come over here?”

Time Attendant went over to the table and sat down, studying the two men.

The lieutenant general who had spoken wore a poker face. He stared gravely at Time Attendant as he slowly sat down opposite him.

The man behind the lieutenant general looked to be in his thirties. His chin was covered in stubble, his uniform was a mess, his collar hung open, and he stood like a street thug. He held a gourd in one hand, taking the occasional swig of some unidentified liquid.

“Mr. Nolan, I'm Lieutenant General Carmen. This is...”

“The Drunken Viscount?” Time Attendant interrupted. Though this was his first meeting with either man, Kou Linzai was fairly well known. He'd spent all these years drunkenly muddling along and somehow muddled his way up to brigadier general.

“Hic...” Kou Linzai opened his mouth and immediately belched. “Even the deputy director of EAS knows me, eh? Heh heh...”

Carmen shot him a sideways glance. “Would you like to lean against the wall?”

“No need! No need... glug... I'm fine. Steady as can be,” Kou Linzai replied. His tone and manner were indistinguishable from those of a drunk on the street.

Carmen could only shake his head and sigh. This was his first time working with the Drunken Viscount, too, and he couldn't understand why his superiors had sent someone like this.

“Mr. Nolan, I'll get straight to the point,” Carmen said. “We've been sent here to ask you some questions. If you're willing to cooperate and give us a truthful account, I believe you can soon be reinstated...”

At this, Time Attendant suddenly cut in. “I've been dismissed?” Only as he asked did he realize why they were calling him “Mr. Nolan” rather than addressing him by his position.

“Please understand, Mr. Nolan, we're here today to ask questions, not answer yours.” Carmen turned to Kou Linzai. “My lord.”

Kou Linzai seemed to be standing there in a daze, deaf to everything. Carmen called to him several more times and cleared his throat loudly before his lordship finally responded. “Huh? Oh! Right, right, right...” He took a voice recorder from inside his uniform and switched it on.

Carmen turned back to Time Attendant. “Where were you at approximately one in the afternoon on May 21?”

“Do you think taking my statement in that bureaucratic tone serves any purpose?” Time Attendant replied.

“Please answer my question, Mr. Nolan.”

“I've listened to plenty of these interrogation recordings. Those politicians send you here to ask prepared questions, get the answers they want, then take them out of context to suit their purposes.”

“Please answer my question, Mr. Nolan!” Carmen's voice grew stern.

Time Attendant carried on regardless. “I've waited here for three whole days, wasted nearly seventy-two hours cooperating with your idiotic HL procedures, just so those idiots in Tiandu could concentrate on investigating the Inverted Cross and tracking down that Xingtian lot. And now you come here and play these games with me?” He paused briefly. “Let me guess... are a few pigs named Kleiss pulling the strings behind all this?”

“Please watch your language when referring to nobles who are also senior imperial officials.” Carmen maintained his official tone. It was part of his job, especially while being recorded.

Kou Linzai belched again. Then came a crack as the voice recorder snapped in his hand...

“Sorry, my hand shook...” Kou Linzai leaned against Carmen with an arm around his shoulders. “Lieutenant General, you... go get another... hic... recorder.”

“My lord... I outrank you. You should be the one attending to such matters. And please mind your appearance and speech.” Carmen's face remained stiff, his manner stern and proper.

“I'm afraid something might happen to you if you're left here alone...”

“What did you say?” Carmen demanded loudly.

“Hahaha... slip of the tongue, slip of the tongue... I'm drunk, sorry. What I meant was... I can't even tell which way is north anymore. You'd better go get it.” Kou Linzai laughed it off.

Carmen gave a cold snort and left the interrogation room, closing the door behind him.

The Drunken Viscount sat down opposite Time Attendant. His voice still sounded half asleep, but he didn't waste another word. “That subordinate of yours, Francis, put in quite a few good words for you, but his testimony has been deliberately suppressed. Here's where things stand. Xingtian sank two shuttle ships and seized the other four, along with the Divine Mist aboard them. You, Cao Shuo and Xingtian's ability users destroyed half a city, and one of the Ten Celestial Guards died. With losses and repercussions on that scale, the people at the top need a scapegoat. Your guess was right, too. Those Kleisses clearly want to use this opportunity to finish you off.”

Time Attendant said, “Why are you telling me this?”

The Drunken Viscount didn't answer the question. Instead, he said, “That doesn't matter. All you need to know is that I have more information than you do, so right now you need my help.

“At the moment, I can offer you two options. First, keep quiet and be patient. Don't answer any substantive questions, but don't take too hard a line. There are still capable officials in the upper ranks of the Empire who can tell right from wrong. They won't let someone of your talent be harmed by nobles or politicians settling personal scores. I can pull some strings for you on the outside, and I believe your EAS director will do everything he can to protect you, too.

“Fundamentally, you did nothing wrong here. You submitted a report in advance, so we have documentary evidence. There are surviving eyewitnesses, as well as Francis's testimony. Given enough time, the truth will come out. In fact, you deserve credit, not blame.

“But weathering the pressure from the top of the Empire in the meantime will take political maneuvering. The way you behaved just now will only make things worse. So, when it comes down to it... be patient.”

Time Attendant said, “Be patient? Do you know what time means to me? Do you know that, even as we're speaking, a shipment of Divine Mist should be on its way to Hell Island, to guard against a horrific incident that's going to erupt in the near future? Things are already heading toward the worst possible outcome. The Inverted Cross's plan is on the verge of coming to fruition, and I've wasted three meaningless days here...”

“All right, all right...” the Drunken Viscount interrupted. “Sounds like you'd like to hear the second option.”

Time Attendant said, “I'm listening.”

“Run. Go do what you need to do. With your capabilities, I imagine even the Empire would have a hard time tracking you down and arresting you,” the Drunken Viscount said. “Once it's all over, come back. I can testify for you.”

Without a moment's hesitation, Time Attendant said, “You could've just said that in the first place.” He stood up. “Do we need to make it look convincing? Should I knock you out or something?”

“No need. I'll just pretend I've passed out drunk,” the Drunken Viscount said. “But I have to warn you, this is a dangerous gamble. You'll lose your status and authority, have no support whatsoever, and face threats from both this ‘Inverted Cross’ organization you speak of and the Empire.

“You'll be fighting entirely alone. When you return, I may not be able to explain things away for you. If it comes to that, whether or not the people you're trying to stop succeed, the best outcome for you personally will be getting thrown into Tidal Prison. And the worst...”

Time Attendant interrupted him. “Once a man is dead, what does he still need to explain to this world? To be acclaimed and praised as a hero, or reviled as a villain... what difference does it make to a lonely soul in a barren grave?

“As for your best outcome, I don't think it'll come to pass. If I return alive, you can go to the seventh prince. He'll find a way to clear me of every charge. At that point, I won't mind being patient.”

As he spoke, the door opened. Lieutenant General Carmen came in and almost collided with Time Attendant. “Mr. Nolan...” He glanced at the Drunken Viscount, only to find the man already slumped over the table, “asleep.”

“Where do you think you're going, Mr. Nolan?” Carmen was no fool. He had already noticed something was wrong. As he asked, he quietly eased back half a step and turned sideways, guarding against a sudden attack.

Time Attendant rolled his neck a couple of times and cracked his knuckles, looking ready to unleash the Fist of the North Star on someone. “It's not that I dislike you personally, but...” He held one arm straight out. “Please call me Time Attendant!”

Two seconds later, a dark figure shot out of the HL branch like a cannonball, blasting the wall to pieces. Carmen flew across several streets and fell into the sea...

..........

“Look, another one's dead,” a fellow member of the Laundry Gang said to Zuo Dao.

Zuo Dao watched the prisoner's corpse pass in front of him, dragged out by the guard they called Emperor Unfazed. He tilted his head. “That's the fourth today?”

“Sure is. Whenever the island rises, what cell block doesn't lose a prisoner or two...”

“Mm...” Zuo Dao nodded.

In the nine days since he'd arrived in this hell, Zuo Dao had seen all kinds of deaths. Death by fighting, torture, suicide, gay sex, and being inexplicably murdered by a complete stranger while minding your own business. That last one was common. There were plenty of lunatics here who would kill without warning. After all, murdering someone only meant a few days in a cage coffin. At worst, they'd send you to the special confinement block. They wouldn't just haul you out and shoot you. And even if they did, a lunatic wouldn't be afraid of being shot. Confinement had driven him mad and he wanted to kill. What could you do about it?

There was only one answer. Strike first. Whenever you saw someone standing outside your cell, leering at you while slicing his own palm open with his fingernails, drooling with a look of sick pleasure on his face, you should know what to do. Find an opening and kill him as soon as possible.

Blood Owl had dealt with one such pervert yesterday. Before getting to work, he'd said, “Wait here a moment. I'll go wreck him and be right back.” It had something of “slaying the pervert before the warm wine cools” about it, though afterward he'd been sent to a cage coffin.

Zuo Dao had long since found out exactly what a cage coffin was. They made an openwork iron coffin, rather like a birdcage, and hung it from a chain. Inside, you could only stand, with no room to stretch your arms or legs. They stripped you naked, locked you in, then lowered it into a cesspit. They stopped when about three quarters of the coffin was submerged and generally left you there for around forty-eight hours. If you'd pissed off the warden, he'd add a little time as he saw fit.

Inside a cage coffin, eating, drinking, pissing and shitting could pretty much all be taken care of on the spot. You only had to lower your head or stick out your backside. Short people had better stay out of trouble. There had been cases of people under one meter sixty drowning in there. Though, of course, it was hard to say whether they'd drowned or eaten themselves to death...

Naturally, when you came out of there, you had to be “cleaned” again with the machine they'd used when you first entered prison, so you wouldn't be beaten to death for stinking too badly when you returned to the cell block.

“Zuo Dao.” A guard came up beside him. “The warden wants to see you.”

...