Chapter 35: The Interrogation

A stark knock at the door of Celia and Hikaru’s shared apartment rang out as they both prepared themselves for the inevitable. The two of them make their way to the doorway and open it to see two DDF officers standing outside.

“Hello,” said a man wearing a blue uniform with gold buttons, “My name is Agent Weston and this here is my partner Agent Anita, and we’re looking for two engineers that live here named Celia Reiss and Hikaru Fujimori.”

“Yes, that would be us,” Celia said as Hikaru waved from behind her.

“Alright, well we just need to ask you two a few questions,” he said, as Anita pulls out a tablet to take notes and record everything, “it has come to my understanding that both of you are not natural residents of Gran Andes correct? You arrived here on a ferry about a month ago.”

“That’s correct, yes,” Celia answered.

“May I ask why?”

“We wanted to gain more experience with working in different parts of the world. Gran Andes was our next stop after the Silk Axis.”

“And the two of you are both college dropouts?”

“Yes.”

“Are you trying freelancing or…?”

“Nah, we just thought we’d get better experience exploring the world.”

“I see. I’m sure the two of you have already heard the gist of it, but we’ve discovered a warehouse filled with parts of a rocket,” Weston said, “as protocol follows, we do a sweep around the city interrogating people who have an engineering license. You two unfortunately fill all the marks of being a high profile suspect because of the time of your arrival in Gran Andes and your status as college dropouts. Therefore, I’m going to need you to tell me the specifics of what you’ve been up to as well as any proof you might have.”

Hikaru walks up to him and shows his commission log on the ProtoTask app.

“Here,” he says, “we’ve mostly been working on commissions here and there. Like we said, we’re mainly here to see what it’s like working in Gran Andes.”

Weston nods his head as he reviews the commission logs on his phone before moving onto Celia’s and confirming the same thing. He then whispers something in Anita’s ear and she begins writing something down on her tablet.

“We also have an internship with Vitoria Santos so we’ve been spending our mornings working with her,” Celia added, “if you want proof, you can always just ask her for confirmation.”

“Well, everything seems to check out here,” he says, “it would indeed be hard to buy and store all these rocket parts in a warehouse while working this much on commissions every day as well as an internship with Mrs. Santos. I heard internships at our main branches aren’t very easy, so I suppose that proves your innocence for now. If we do have anymore questions for you, we’ll meet up with you later, but for now, I probably shouldn’t keep you busy.”

With that, he begins to leave as Anita finishes recording everything and they bid farewell.

Once they were out of sight, they both breathed a huge sigh of relief.

“See? I told you the plan would work,” Celia said as she walked back to their living room and slumped down on a chair.

“Yeah… I suppose I shouldn’t have doubted you too much,” he said, “it seems I’m still a bit afraid of us failing after all.”

“Hey,” she gently said, “it’s not your fault you’re forced to prove yourself in front of your mom alright? And for the record, even if we do fail, all that matters is that we had fun along the way right?”

Hikaru solemnly nodded.

“Besides, I’m sure your dad believes in you, even if he doesn’t seem like he does,” Celia said, “you said he hasn’t said anything bad to you about becoming an Aerospace Engineer right?”

“Yeah… he just looked a little disappointed that’s all,” he murmured .

“Well maybe he’s just waiting for you to succeed,” she considered, “I’m sure there’s a reason why he didn’t discourage you from your choices even though everyone else seemed to.”

"Do you think so?”

“I’m sure of it."

“That’s still a lot of pressure on me though,” Hikaru pointed out, “if anything, that makes it harder on me if I fail. Now, not only will it make it so that my mom was right, but so that my dad actually does have a reason to be disappointed at me.”

Celia pursed her lips at her poor insight.

“You know what? Screw them! Who cares what they think?” she announced, “all that matters is whether or not you alone believe that this is all a waste of time.”

Hikaru nodded.

“I suppose I don’t,” he said, “but I’ll have to wait and see how I truly feel by the end of it.”

He walks over to the fridge and pulls out a can of cold soda.

“Well then, we have the rest of the evening to ourselves,” he said, “once Alto reports that he’s finished clearing out the site, we can bring Vitoria over there and introduce her to everything.”

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Celia takes a walk down the street at a nearby park as she grabs a drink from a vending machine before sitting down to relax on a bench.

It had been week since everything was resolved, and according to Alto’s report the facility was almost done cleaning. He had been working nonstop day and night, and the only breaks he had taken was an occasional battery charge in the sun so that he could continue working. Normally, cleaning out a building filled with rust and mold took a couple of months, but since Alto was a robot, he was able to work tirelessly without risking fatigue.

Meanwhile, on their end, Vitoria had been a great help with the funding for the materials they needed. She couldn’t transport too much metal over because her company would get suspicious of embezzlement, so Celia and Hikaru were still in charge of purchasing most of it, which they haven’t been doing much of yet, since they still didn’t know exactly which metals how much of it they needed.

However, she did help in other areas that neither of them had taken into account before. When asked if they had fuel to launch the rocket, they had to check in with Alto who confirmed that a large portion of the fuel stored at the facility had gotten stale and unusable over the years. Fortunately, Vitoria had the tools and chemicals to create the fuel they needed, and because her lab already had an abundance of it, she didn’t need to risk embezzling any funds to purchase more.

Everything had been going well for the two of them so far, and since they didn’t need to stress out as much about working anymore, they had been able to catch a much needed break from everything. Celia had been leisurely strolling around the park for the past few minutes, enjoying the view of the much more leveled area compared to the buildings all around them. Suddenly however, as she was taking a sip of her drink, a familiar figure caught her eye.

Weston?! she nearly spits out her drink upon seeing him.

Despite it being a week, she was still a little bit wary about being caught, despite not even being the one behind the warehouse incident.

It’s ok, she tells herself, pulling out her phone, all I have is to pretend to not have seen him.

She peers over to him at the corner of her eye and suddenly sees him coming her way.

Wait, is he coming over here?! she began to panic, stay calm, stay calm, act natural, and pretend that you have nothing to hide.

“Hey Celia!” Weston says, “what are you doing out in the park? Don’t you have an internship with Mrs. Santos?”

“Oh hey, Officer Weston,” she says, “I’m actually on a much needed break right now. What about you?”

“It’s Agent Weston,” he corrects her, “and I’m just here doing a routine patrol of the area. We still haven’t caught the culprits behind the warehouse incident after all. Our boss wants us to patrol the city for a little longer to see if we can at least scare them out of the city; basically we’re playing a war of attrition with them, except we don’t know how long they’ll hold out for.”

“Haha, it must be tough working in the DDF,” she remarks.

“Well it’s not so bad actually. We rarely get any incident reports, and when we do it’s usually resolved within a few days. This one's just an odd case,” he said, “I actually feel a lot worse for you; I heard engineers, especially intern level ones, get overloaded with work all the time at our main branch. I’m actually surprised you’re able to get a break.”

“Well I guess Vitoria understands that overworking people isn’t good for innovation,” Celia said.

“Hmm… I suppose so… how did you score an internship with her anyway?” he asked.

“I’m not too sure really,” Celia lied, “but I think a main part of it was because I had an internship at Terrastock previously, and that one I got by pure luck.”

“Terrastock eh?” he mumbled, “that’s another big company name; you must be a pretty bright person if you’re scoring these internships left and right. I can only hope my daughter turns out to be as smart as you.”

Celia blinked twice in surprise.

“You have a daughter?” she asked.

“Yep, a little one — about 9 years old,” he explained, “she’s living with her mom back in the UCA while I got called out here because of the incident. She’s a bright little girl that’s for sure, but sometimes I worry that the world just isn’t built for her.”

“What do you mean?” Celia asked.

“Hmm… she seems interested in space is what I mean,” he explained, “which… as someone who works for New Genesis… you can see how I feel about that. Sometimes I get the urge to try to steer her away from that path, but the way she talks about it sometimes makes me not want to. Sometimes my duty as a father conflicts with my morals and makes me want to break the rules… I’m just glad that she’s not old enough to go haywire so I don’t ever have to make the decision to arrest her or stand by her side as her father. I could only wish that that type of scenario never happens.”

Celia gives him a rough slap on the back, “as a daughter, if I were put in that scenario, I would want my parents to stand by me.”

“Haha! That’s a little bit biased don’t you think?” he asks, “but anyway, I have to get going now. I can’t spend too much time chatting with you. Good luck on your internship!”

As they wave each other goodbye, Celia sits there alone on the bench as a single question crosses her mind.