Manipulate (Book 1, Alien Cadets)

Chapter 23

Sam stared at Downy, trying to make the goofy, annoying Downy he knew into the vicious killer he was. Downy had been given anesthetic to numb his lower extremities, and it seemed to have numbed his tongue too.  Ten minutes of questioning had gotten nowhere, and any moment the emperor might put a halt to this interrogation, leaving them with nothing.

It was time to push Downy over the edge. Greg’s careful questions were too easily sloughed off. Downy would have to be baited to the edge of sanity to give himself up. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately for him, Sam suspected that the edge of Downy’s sanity was a cliff both nearby and dangerous.

“Why didn’t you kill me?” Sam asked Downy, interrupting Greg. “That must have been your goal.”

Downy ran a claw around the edge of his sensitive eyestalk. “I will confess nothing.”

“Paolo. He died the week you joined us. It wasn’t an allergic attack, was it?”

“I confess nothing.”

“Paolo nicknamed you something, I can’t remember what. It made us laugh, though. And General Gustav laughed too, I do remember that.”

Silence.

“The tower… I thought you liked sheep. You went to that petting zoo, and you always tried to pet the feral cats on campus. What was that about?”

Downy flickered a smile and Sam felt rage building inside him.

“Nat. Jia. The kitchen. Oh Li.”

Downy scratched around his other eye, twitching when he scraped too close to the nerve. He was silent.

“Why did you hurt Oh Li? He wasn’t going to be a witness. He probably offered you a snack before you killed him.” Sam ran a hand over his bald head. “And you never got to me. You slept in my room. You couldn’t kill me in my sleep?” Sam got to his feet.

“We were right about you. We thought you were pathetic, a throw-away son of the emperor, and we were right.”

Downy twitched again. Sam stepped up in front of him.

“General Gustav didn’t want you as an apprentice, that’s why he sent you to Greg. Greg didn’t mind you, but he’s good at dealing with weaklings, isn’t he? That’s what you think of us, and that’s what he thought of you.”

Sam crouched over Downy, close enough that Downy could smell his breath.

“Pathetic. Puppy.” Sam said.

With a growl, Downy used a good leg to kick Sam in the stomach. His claws tore holes in Sam’s clothes, scratched his chest. Sam stumbled back and let himself fall to his knees.

“What about the riot?” Downy hissed, hoisting himself out of the chair like an injured roach and grabbing Sam with his claws extended. “Poor Sam, all that shooting, all his fault – and it was me. All me. And your great rebellion, your interview – it was me. Of course I gave you the information on purpose.”

Downy pulled Sam to his feet, his claws sinking in to Sam’s upper arm. “You are pathetic. You think you’re a great leader and you haven’t made a single decision of your own. You escaped the execution by luck; you escaped the Rik by luck. YOU are pathetic.”

Sam gasped, the pain in his arm hard to ignore. “But you couldn’t kill me.”

Downy screamed and Sam flinched in anticipation of the pain. But then the pressure was gone, and Downy was flailing through the air on a wave of orange energy. The edge of the field caught Sam and spun him around, into the wall. Greg kept the energy device in his hand as he stood over Downy.