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Red felt like he was dying, blood and bile rising up his throat and pouring from his lips onto the pristine floor before he could stop the flow.
"Now, now, there's no need to throw up at the very mention of being my son, Maverick," the President chuckled. Red's head was spinning, his eyes burning with unshed tears and the ache in his ribs increasing tenfold.
"You're lying," he choked, spittle clinging to his lips.
"I assure you I am telling the truth, Maverick. What reason would I have to lie?" The President turned away from him, slipping the memory microchips back in their case, the tiny slivers of gold destruction disappearing back into the safety of the box. "You're pathetic," he sneered. "Certainly a boy I wouldn't want as a son, but you can't choose family. If I had been lying, I would have chosen someone else other than you."
The words stung more than Red would have liked to admit. He bit down on his lower lip as the men restraining him tightened their grasp, making him whimper in pain. A monster...I would be the son of a monster. "I don't believe you," he said, his voice braver than he felt.
The President shrugged. "Suit yourself." He tapped one of the thousands of buttons that paved the walls, and Red's skull instantly exploded with pure agony, so intense he blacked out for at least a minute, the blinding pain throbbing behind his eyelids as he slowly came back to consciousness.
Before he could recover, floods of colour swarmed his mind, bringing another wave of suffering with it. His body spasmed as one memory after another flashed through his brain. The sensory overload was too much for him, his body spasming so much he slipped out of his captors' hands. Run! he screamed at himself, but he couldn't, so he lay twitching on the floor like a spastic slug.
Red shut his eyes again, which only seemed to make the pain worse. In his mind's eye, he saw a boy---a blonde one, a mere child who couldn't be more than five or six. There was a woman there too, with long, golden hair and emerald-green eyes. She was the spitting image of the tiny child, picking him up and swinging him around gleefully.
With a start, Red realised the child was him.
Is that...is that my mother?
A man came into the frame. When he turned, Red recognised the President---younger and with far more hair. His mouth fell open in a laugh as he teased the child with some sort of toy, dangling it in front of his face with an expression that could only be called kind.
No...it can't be!
The scene changed. An older Red, tall and gangly with a buzzed sheen of pale blonde atop his head and a hint of freckles swept across his cheeks, knelt in front of a wooden casket, hands laced together---as if in prayer. A photograph of a woman, the one from the earlier memory---his mother---sat on top of the coffin. His face was marked with tear stains. The President, much more gaunt and bald now, walked up to him, shouting something. As Red watched, the President drew his hand back and slapped his son in the face.
