Final Interview

[Raziel]

[member="Charlotte"]

Raziel's boots drummed out a consistent beat as he walked down the narrow corridor. Even with his short stature he occasionally had to duck through narrow openings in bulkheads. Of course, if he wished, he could move through the ship without making a sound. For some reason that tended to bother people, however, so he allowed his feet to announce his presence.

As he approached the room, he silently cursed whatever moron had decided to place a cyborg killing machine with uncontrolled Force abilities and a penchant for slicing on a ship. Apparently someone had decided it was best to keep the girl away from civilian areas. Raziel thought it would be best to make a mental note of where the escape pods were.

Under his right arm was a large brown envelope. It contained a whole bundle of information, personally files, photos, records. None of it fabricated, but that wouldn't make it less of a lie. It had been all too easy to find a mysterious disappearance of an orphan in the Spynet databanks, with the timelines roughly corresponding.

The Spymaster paused at the open door. That had been on his instruction. There was a single droid posted at the door, unarmed of course. There was no need to make the girl feel like she was being imprisoned, and posting an armed guard would have been pointless anyway. If she went on another rampage the posted guard would only serve as a warning, and the servant droid could perform that function adequately.

Raziel stepped across the threshold. The room wasn't dark, as such, but the recesses of vessels of this size often had poor lighting. He smiled and gave a warm welcome, before sitting down on the chair opposite the new...member of the Obsidian Order. He kept the file on his lap and placed his arms on the table in plain sight.

"Welcome to the ANS Devastator, not the most pleasant accommodation I know. I'm afraid I only received a very abrupt message from my friend, but I'm here to help," he spoke clearly. Whatever they'd done to the poor girl's brain was interfering with his ability to read someone. Usually he simply reflected people's expectations of him, but in the absence of that information he simply acted in a pleasant, yet business-like fashion.

"My name is Raziel," he lied. "Why don't you tell me what happened?"

 

[Fabula Caromed]

Charlotte had scanned the room once, when she entered. From the angle of the door, it was a simple meeting room. From the angle of the chair she had sat in, it was...a simple meeting room. There was one obvious and at least one hidden camera, the droid that had escorted her here was not outfitted for combat, and wasn't bright enough to provide stimulating conversation even at the speed of information. She would have been painfully bored if the ship she was on hadn't had a thriving network with holonet access. Her mind brushed against firewalls every once in a while, but mostly bounced about eagerly and harmlessly in the stream of declassified information.

The redheaded lass was watching a couple of sitcoms, sped up to the absolute maximum at which her brain could decode and process the information coming at her, when a man walked in. For the second time in as many days, she had met someone who was far too difficult to perceive by normal means. Her ears might not have been as sharp as her gaze, but even so. Footsteps made more noise than that.

Scanning. [humanoid male; 159cm] No visible augmentations. Only visible weapons: two [lightsabers]. Searching...

Lightsabers were traditionally the weapons of Jedi and Sith. They cut through all but specialized metals, did not give off heat except on contact, and seemed to cut via friction rather than plasma. The blade was weightless, gave off both light and sound when extended, could reflect blaster bolts, and destroyed most other projectiles on contact.

Name: Raziel ; Category: Force user [note saved]

Pleasant accommodations. If she had a sense of humor, Charlotte would have laughed. "It's much more hospitable than my last residence." Oooh, the sardonicism. But you were queried, unit. Respond. "Personal account is incomplete. This unit underwent extensive cybernetic modifications. Conjecture: mental trauma upon installation of borg construct may have damaged long-term memory."

For a moment, Charlotte's face actually had a semblance of an expression on it. Whether pain, fear, or anger was somewhat more difficult to determine, since it was only a momentary flash. "But I remember everything that happened after that. At least, the parts I was left awake for. I don't know if I'll ever be able to forget." Or if she wanted to. Hatred was her first reason for resisting, after all, even if an urge to live was her current motivation.
[member="Raziel"]

 

[Raziel]

[member="Charlotte"]

“This unit?” Raziel asked, cocking his head to one side. “Do you have a name still?” He watched the cyborg carefully, looking for any muscle twitches that might reveal conscious or subconscious emotion. Had she really been stripped back to basic functions and reprogrammed like a droid? She was so young!

Then again, so had he. The methods might have been different, but that didn’t change the outcome. Put a lot of time and effort into breaking someone down, you could rebuild them into what you wanted. Doing it by placing tech into the brain was just more…direct. The spymaster swallowed as he felt a pang of guilt briefly; it was an exceedingly rare sensation for the assassin.

 

[Fabula Caromed]

Without even stopping to consider what he might have meant, Charlotte rambled off her number designation with mechanical precision. "Designated: Cherek-01-1812-1520-2005." Right. But the invisible man she'd met before hadn't been interested in that, either. She accessed her notes... "Numerically, each two-digit pair correlates to a character of aurebesh. Full translation: Charlotte. The conversion is too perfect to be an accident."

The idea that the woman who had stripped her of her memories and programmed her mind had also added in a humanizing name, then insisted on not using it was either kind or cruel. It was difficult to tell which. "I apologize for my speech pattern. Some reflexes are difficult to overcome. I just had my first cheeseburger yesterday. It might be a subjective understatement that I'm unskilled with small talk."

Plus, data streams didn't have jargon. It was all programming languages, numbers, truth...she didn't have to worry about being misinterpreted. It was such a simpler way to communicate. Organic speech was inefficient, sloppy...and yet somewhat intoxicating. It was a patently false claim that simply speaking to this man had given her any sort of understanding or familiarity with him, but just by talking aloud, she felt...connected.

Maybe there was a reason to use her voice anyway, apart from communicating to people slowly and verbally. She'd have to investigate this more in the future.
[member="Raziel"]

 

[Raziel]

[member="Charlotte"]

Raziel left the brown envelope lying on his lap, he placed his chin on his hands and leaned forwards. He knew what should follow now. The files should have been opened up and slid across the table. He had a full diatribe mapped out in his head: ‘Do you recognise this couple?’ ‘Do any of these names mean anything to you?’ He was an expert in steering conversation down the right path, in making people ask the right questions, or form the answer he wanted on their own. In another life he could have been another holonet fraud psychic.

What he should have done, was take advantage of the handiwork already done by others and gain control of this weapon. Another piece to place on the board in the never ending battle for control. Information was his main asset, but the ambitious spymaster was never afraid to extend his web further. A part of him didn’t want to be that person for once. The hypocrite who had suffered so much, only to inflict the same on others. Cutting his own strings only to make others dance to his tune. A cyclical process perhaps, maybe Charlotte would one day be turning people to her own purpose against their will?

Maybe he could avoid being that person for now, or maybe just delay the inevitable. He held the cyborg’s gaze, ignoring the folder. “What is it you want Charlotte?”

 

[Fabula Caromed]

Emo moment?

A more adjusted, more human individual might have angsted a bit. Woe is me, my life is horrible. Truly I just want to be a person and blah blah blah. Charlotte didn't comprehend the impact of drama, so that all went a bit over her head. However, she did have what was probably the perfect answer for that question. She had been thinking about it for...as long as she had been able to perceive the world in more depth than her cell at the Sabia Group institute.

"When I woke myself from sedation, my wet computer touched a deeper network for the first time. I saw so much, accumulated information more rapidly than I could catalog it." That might have been because she was in the middle of a firefight with armed guards while she was swimming the network... "When I exited the facility I was presented with kinds of information that I didn't have suitable baselines to compare. I had to update my parameters consistently for hours."

She leaned forward, almost comically serious. "It is impossible to mathematically explain why a nerfburger is delicious."

And then back up again. Her back was mechanically straight, since her spine couldn't really suffer damage and was already in pain just by existing. "I want to experience more of the galaxy. My life was robbed from me. In the absence of orders, there is a void. What I want is to fill that void." Her face found a smile, very weakly. Charlotte didn't even notice. It was as if it was the faintest memory of a smile accidentally slipped out of some cage in a dark corner of her mind. "And maybe, if I fill it enough, I'll remember what it's like to be a person."
[member="Raziel"]

 

[Raziel]

“Good luck with that,” Raziel tried to say sincerely, but the slightest bitter tone crept into his voice. Quite unlike him to allow even the slightest slip of control. “If I may give you a piece of advice for a moment. Always make you set the conditions so you can get what you want out of every exchange. That’s how you establish control over your own life and get want you want. Life is run as a serious of transactions, everyone wants something and has something to offer.

“Now, as a second favour I’m going to be honest,” Raziel said leaning back into his chairs and crossing his arms. “I want something from you. I can find many, many, uses for someone who can store and process information like you, who can use the Force like you, who’s been … designed to kill like you.

“Now, ‘Go visit the Galaxy and new people. Kill them’ doesn’t sound like a tagline for what you’re after. So now we start the game.” Raziel said. He truly enjoyed all of life’s little games. Some thought that you overcame each obstacle as it came up one by one. He knew the truth: you steered your course such that when you met an obstacle, you had already overcome it. Such a petty thing to offer some meaningless advice to someone on the other side of the table, with few cards in her hand at this juncture.

What can I offer to help you achieve what you want in life, and what are you willing to do to help me with my endeavours. I suppose in the simplest sense, plenty of credits, some good annual leave, and the chance to travel a lot with work might be a good start.

“When it comes to getting what you want, being designed to kill isn’t the worst skill in the world. Doesn’t tend to mesh so well with finding out what it’s like to live like a ‘normal’ person.”