Chapter 11 – Interrogation

Caelum tried to laugh at Ilyin’s compliment, but ended up coughing instead.

“Don’t be dramatic,” the younger medic told him. Her hands remained steady when she clipped something cool and rigid to his leg—a brace that pressed tight like a second bone. Then she placed a seal strip over the nanofilm. It warmed and softened, shrinking tight and turning from clear to a faint milky blue as it set.

A cold needle suddenly kissed his arm, and the earth swayed. Not a blackout, but everything went soft and distant. He felt as if he were floating just outside his skin, watching the truck’s lights pulse—too bright, then too dim—stabbing at his eyes when he tried to focus. Underneath it all, the MCV’s generators hummed, interlaced with the scanner’s thin whine. Under that, a sound that didn’t belong: wet leaves, insects, the rift resounding in his head.

“Antibiotic cocktail, as per protocol,” the younger medic announced, as if she were reading a menu. “Anti-parasitic. Broad-spectrum antiviral. Coag stabiliser. Standard for a GREEN gate.”

Ilyin tapped his scanner. “ARC sync is still choppy. We’re not clearing you until it behaves.”

“I’m… awake,” Caelum spat out.

“You’re awake,” Ilyin said. “And you’re definitely contaminated until proven otherwise.”

He produced three vials and a swab from an envelope. “Open your mouth.”

Caelum did. The swab scraped his cheek hard enough to sting.

“Blood next.” A tourniquet snapped tight around his arm. A needle moved in. Warmth filled the first vial. Then the second. Then the third.

Outside, the gate pylons thumped and wound down. Metal sighed as the stabilisers cooled. Caelum fought the image of the rift closing behind him, shrinking akin to a wound scabbing over.

They wheeled him out toward the rear of the truck, into a narrow corridor that looked like an airlock bolted onto a military vehicle. Plastic curtains that are arranged in overlapping sheets. A yellow line on the floor read DECON THRESHOLD in clean block letters.

“Strip. We need to replace those clothes,” Ilyin ordered.

Caelum hesitated. A helmeted enforcer at the door shifted his grip on his sidearm—not a threat yet, but a caution.

With fumbling fingers, Caelum peeled off his jacket and shirt, skin cold and sticky with dark blood and dried antiseptic. His clothes disappeared into a seal-bag the moment he let them go—boots, belt, knife, cords—all bagged and tagged. His pack had already been sealed away.

“You get these back?” Caelum asked hoarsely.

“If the lab doesn’t decide they’re on the menu.”

The curtains parted. Caelum stepped into the decon chamber with Ilyin’s aid.

Nozzles started up overhead, spraying sharp-chemical citrus that crawled up his nose, burned his throat, and stung his eyes. Then a second spray, colder and thicker, clung like foam. Where it touched old blood, it turned a sick grey. He gagged and tried breathing through his mouth, but it only made the taste worse.

A panel beside the door lit up. UV bars came on, violent purple light rendering his skin waxy. The foam tightened, then cracked and fell away in brittle sheets.

“Turn,” a speaker ordered.

Caelum obeyed.

“Arms up.”

He complied. Something intense under his sternum shifted—an energy awakened by stress, restless. The hairs on his arms lifted. A flash jumped between two drops of water on his knuckles.

Instantly, a warning tone blared.

The helmeted enforcer leaned in through the curtain, voice keen. “Stay still.”

Caelum froze. The spark vanished, but its memory buzzed under his skin.

“Good,” Ilyin’s calm voice fizzled from the speaker. “Do not discharge in the decon chamber. We have flammable agents in here.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Caelum ground out.

“Meaning doesn’t matter,” Ilyin replied. “Control does.”

When the chamber finally opened, they handed him a thin grey hospital gown and snapped a sensor collar around his neck. The click felt final.

Before his feet were even dry, the interrogation began.

They seated him in a smaller compartment of the MCV—brighter, cleaner, colder—where a metal chair was bolted to the floor, and cameras scrutinised him from overhead and the walls. A table featured a single datapad, face down, as if it didn’t want to be there either.

Two figures waited. One wore RMA grey, badge neat and polished. The other wore civilian black, no insignia, but tailoring that cost more than Caelum’s yearly stipend. Both regarded him with the same measuring gaze, as if he were just another asset in a catalogue.

The RMA officer spoke first. “Cadet Ward. First off, congratulations on making it back. I’m Intake Officer Jesse. This is Auditor Mason. You will answer questions. You will not embellish. You will not withhold.”

Caelum swallowed. “My leg’s—”

“Documented,” Jesse cut in. “Time-stamped. Treated. It doesn’t affect your cognition. You are stable enough to speak.”

Mason remained standing, pacing behind Caelum’s chair like a predator testing the bars of a cage.

Jesse slid the tablet forward, revealing the ARC readout:

ARC // Assessment • Registration • Certification Interface
ARC — POST-RETURN INTAKE
SYNC: 52% (UNSTABLE)
MANIFESTATION TYPE: ELECTRICAL (PRELIMINARY)
BIOLOAD: PENDING
COMPLIANCE FLAG: NONE REGISTERED

“Start,” Jesse said. “From rift entry.”

Caelum forced himself to breathe slowly. If his nerves unravelled, the electricity would stir again, and they’d slap the unstable label on him before he could blink.

“Entry was stable,” he began, voice husky. “Mangrove basin. Mud. Two suns. I set up shelter in a hollow trunk about an hour in, set alarms with shells, and fished for food.”

“Hostiles?” Mason asked.

“A six-limbed predator,” Caelum said. “Black fur. A throat sac.” His mouth clenched as the memory returned. First contact on day two: it had shredded his calf. He’d stabbed it in the shoulder. It backed off, stole his fish, and left him bleeding.

Jesse didn’t flinch. She held his gaze until the flush drained from his cheeks. “Continue.”

“Day three. Spear-fishing.” Caelum swallowed. “I was ambushed by something like a salamander crossed with a Komodo. It delivered a shock—a white flash—then clamped onto my bad leg. I stabbed it over and over until I hit the gills. That’s when something in me caught the electricity instead of just absorbing it.”

He hesitated briefly, trying to find words that didn’t sound crazy.

Mason bent closer. “Describe how it ‘caught.’”

Caelum exhaled. “The pain moved—no. Not simply pain. Fuel. My blade felt faster, heavier, charged. I killed it.”

Jesse tapped the tablet. “Any structures? Any ruins? Any artefacts? Any anomalies?”

“No.” His voice rushed out. He forced it slower. “It seemed primaeval. Just animals, roots, floaters—jellyfish which shone at night.”

Mason finally moved into view. His face was blandly handsome, manufactured.

“I want the truth,” he said. “The rift gives power, yes—but it also leaves hooks. You don’t bring hooks into an arcology. Back into society.”

“I only brought back a sample for documentation,” Caelum insisted. “Even if it was optional. I could use the creds.”

Jesse glanced at her datapad. “For the record, Candidate Ward collected biological samples: two vials of soil, one water sample, one bark fragment, and predatory remains. Some written notes about the environment, too, seem to have been logged.”

“They’re now RMA property pending clearance,” Jesse said. “You will not see them again. If found useful, you will be issued your additional payment.”

Mason lowered himself to meet Caelum’s eyes. “You also discharged your issued sidearm.”

“I did.” Caelum forced himself not to flinch. The six-limbed predator had pinned him. He couldn’t move. He’d fired centre mass. It ran. Later, he’d found it dead. Standard outcome.

“How many rounds, for the record?” Jesse asked.

“Four,” Caelum said. He held onto that number like a saving grace.

“If it got on me, it would’ve been over. Self-preservation.”

Mason offered a smile without warmth.

Caelum’s hands tightened against his thighs as the weak hunger of electricity stirred under his skin, waiting.

Jesse rose. “Final question for this phase. Did you hear voices? Receive instructions? Make a bargain?”

Caelum blinked, not expecting the question. “What?”

“Answer.” Mason’s voice was soft now—dangerous, his eyes narrowing intensely.

His throat contracted. He remembered the rift’s silence, the insects, the floaters gliding as though they understood something he didn’t. He remembered the salamander’s shock, the world going white. But no voices, no bargains.

“No,” he said. “No voices. No bargains.”

Jesse watched him for a long beat, then nodded once. “Good. Because if you lie, the ARC will catch it later.”

She tapped her collar mic. “Transfer Cadet Ward to Intake Quarantine, Level Two. Schedule manifestation control assessment at first light.”

Mason straightened, already bored. “Congratulations, Ward. You survived the easy part.”

As they unbolted the chair and led him away, Caelum realised what had been chipping at him since he’d stepped back into this grey world.

It wasn’t the pain. He had returned alive. But freedom hadn’t come with him.