Inside the room, Grunwald has settled on the other chair. It was a plain white one, nothing special to it. From a glance, Cassandra guessed it to be made of plastic of some sort. She wasn't exactly sure which kind it was, yet the scratches on the side told of much use of it. Perhaps it had been thrown before?

Not that surprising, honestly. Mind-games were a favourite tool in interrogations. Everybody knew of the ‘good-cop bad-cop' spiel, yet so few ever considered that there were so many other ways to make somebody break in an entirely safe and ethically sound way.

The position of the two remained for the next few minutes. The officer sat in a relaxed pose, looking entirely casual about being there. Quite the peculiar look for a man who was always so uptight about everything, but Cassandra knew that it wasn't real anyway. It was all an act and one that would prove vital in the next few minutes. Starting from that very moment, the first movement began stirring up.

He looked groggy, tilting his head up in a small jolt, immediately groaning a bit from the movement. There was an attempt to put his hand on his face, but that was instantly stopped by the restraints at his wrists. And that certainly made him wake up a bit quicker, there being immediate attempts at freeing himself from his position. From the readings, the criminal was experiencing higher stress levels. Not to the point of being worried, of course. No… they had been gambling on this exact reaction. It just worked so well.

“Are you doing fine, Mr Manson?” Officer Grunwald asked warmly, looking as if he was still getting into a comfortable spot on the chair. Entirely an act, of course. The man had been sitting there for more than just a few minutes at that point. Everything done, said, or acted upon was all made for one single purpose. To put pressure on an already-uneven situation.

The older criminal finally looked forward at that point, the vitals jumping a small bit at the voice. Was he not used to social interaction after waking up? The brain being put out of its regular pattern was known to cause extra stress, but not normally to this level. Cassandra supposed it could have been a side-effect from the longer time spent unconscious, but she wasn't really sure about it yet.

“Who the hell are you?” The criminal tried to shout, but his throat was raspy, not having been used much. An audible swallow seemed to fix that in a short time though. “Who are you?”

“Somebody that will be judging you for the next while,” Grunwald answered, taking a small piece of paper out of his pocket. It was blank, with nothing on its sides other than empty space. Not that this stopped the officer from acting like he found the content interesting, however. “Manson… is not your original last name. Was there any inspiration when you took that name?”

“A cop,” the man who took the man Manson said. “You’re a cop. I’m being interrogated.”

“An acute observation on your part. I had not realized it myself,” Grunwald said with the driest of tones. “Getting back to the topic at hand now. Who exactly did you feel was important enough that you just had to change your name to theirs? Was Miller not good enough for you?”

“How did you even know that? Nobody should be able to access that information,” the man who was called Miller in the past asked. “How did you get it?”

“We know much about you. More than you will ever know about yourself,” Grunwald answered, saying it in such a way that it felt like a common fact had been stated. That answer was a good one. It unleashed what could only be called a whole-hearted attempt at freeing himself from his restraints. A bit of blood actually started leaking from the restraints, the skin being torn from the friction.

Not that it worked or anything. Cassandra did tighten the restraints a bit more though, to discourage any additional attempts. It wouldn't hurt yet, but it would be impossible to be comfortable with how tight it was.

“Of course you bloody do,” the criminal said, putting his head back and laughing a bit to himself. Was he being delusional? No… the levels might have been high, but they had not reached levels that high.

Nonetheless, they were still incredibly high, to the point where the protocols strongly recommended calming the criminal down. Not that Cassandra believed that would work. If anything, such an attempt might just have had the opposite effect.

They were currently dealing with an older man who had never been caught before. There had been many close calls, yes, but there was not a single point where he had been taken into custody. Just what could be felt, when a multi-decade career of crime was stopped during a routine scavenge?

“Do you want to answer my question about your name, or should we just move past that?” Grunwald asked, seemingly unbothered by the larger reaction from the older man. Cassandra wouldn't have put it past him. With how long the officer had worked in his position, it was customary to assume he had done the current task many times before. Not that much hadn't been seen yet.

“... I took it from a great man,” Terrence Manson finally answered. His face was getting more silent in nature, yet his vitals were still going wild. “One you won't ever know.”

“Oh, I don't doubt it. He is dead, after all. But… did you feel like you didn't live up to his name fully? That’s the only reason I can find for why you didn't take his first name as well.”

“You know nothing!” the criminal shouted, seemingly more than a little offended from the officer’s statement. Quite surprising. At least it was to Cassandra, who wouldn't have known that was a button to push.

Where had the officer noticed that tick? Was it in the files? The woman had read the entire thing herself, yet even she couldn't find anything that even hinted about the name being so important. Could it be… that it was based on intuition?

With experience came premonition. But that shouldn't have held it all up. No, there was more to it than that. Something that Cassandra couldn't see, couldn't sense at all. And she was beginning to understand why that just might have been.

She had augmented eyes. It was a standard across the entire force, allowing for emergency recordings of crime scenes while also providing undoubted proof of an officer's innocence. However, there was so much more that could be done in that field. So many more sensorial-based augmentations. One could add colours to the spectrum that the eyes could see, make the ears more sensitive to specific wavelengths, and so much more than was hard to even think about. Entire senses could be added, to the point where some couldn't be described to somebody who wasn't augmented with it.

And the officer in charge of the interrogation had just that. Cassandra could remember reading about it during her first days on the job there. It was a legal requirement to notify all employees of being around somebody who was able to unintentionally invade their privacy. The woman was fine with it of course since there was no real way to stop somebody from experiencing input from a literal sense. No, she had only been interested in the sense itself.

The name itself was a blank to her, it being disregarded in favour of its description instead. The easiest way to think about it was that it was a mixture of echolocation and a general feeling of the electromagnetic feels that could be found in organic bodies. This included the brain first and foremost, among other things.

What did that mean exactly? It would be the same thing as saying that the eyes could intercept the general average of photons coming in from specific areas around them. It wouldn't make much sense until it had been experienced. And Cassandra was not among them, having not been in a position where she could have received such augmentations herself.

But the officer in charge had, and he was clearly using it to the fullest? He was able to find the perfect points of attack, and make decisions on the fly on how to change his strategies. It was all in the details, yet those small changes made all the difference. Cassandra could see that for herself.

“I certainly know something. We had that established a minute ago,” Grunwald answered dryly, not giving heed to the criminal's apparent anger. “But what I don’t know is why you feel inferior to him. Would you be so kind so as to-”

“I am not inferior to him in any way! I repeated his steps, I made my followers go to their knees in admiration, and I…”

Officer Grunwald smiled at that, looking a bit happy with himself. Even if it couldn't be seen by anybody else, Cassandra smiled as well, happy to see such workmanship performed right in front of her. Manipulation was its finest when it could be observed from a safe distance.

“That is something I did not know about you. How utterly interesting,” Grunwald said, readjusting his position in the chair so he could lean forward a bit more. “Tell me this… did you force them into subservience in the same way or did you do something original for once in your life?”

The criminal did not look happy, but neither was he extremely angry. In fact, he seemed a tad… down. His eyes were lowered a bit, not looking the officer in the eyes anymore. He had dark-grey eyes. Cassandra wondered how she hadn't noticed that before. She hadn't paid too much attention to his appearance before, yet it all struck out so much more than before. He looked more than a little old, the years catching up to him in a matter of seconds. Had a life of constant travel-worn him down more than expected?

…

There wasn't any sympathy to be had. An old man who had tried to kill deserved none of that, no matter the age that they were. A criminal never deserved that. If done in cold blood, there was nothing that could be done. Cassandra knew that, and she lived by it every day.

“I guess you could have just threatened them with an untimely demise. Maybe a bomb strapped to their throats? You seem to like those a lot,” Grunwald added after a few seconds of waiting. The criminal was not saying anything. Not the greatest thing in the world, when the goal was to have just the opposite. “Were there a few examples? If you’re going the original route, you could have taken a few kids, drilled a few holes, and tried to make them your perfect little-”

“There were no kids,” Terrence Manson murmured.

“Pardon? Mind saying that again?” Grunwald requested. The man had clearly been able to hear it but just had to get it out into the air again.

“There were no kids. I don't deal with brats,” Terrence repeated, lifting his head and staring daggers into the officer. The sensor was picking up extra activity. He was getting riled up again.

“But you deal with adults? Are we talking literal trading or-”

“I don't support slavery. Everybody who follows me does it willingly, no matter what you might-”

“They follow you?”

“Yes!” They-”

“Then that means my job isn't finished yet,” Grunwald said, getting up from his seat. Walking behind the criminal a few interfaces were pressed and the old man was down under again quickly.

Cassandra couldn't help but sigh. The information gathered was conclusive enough, to the point where she just knew that their job wasn't over with. The so-called lone wolf was apparently not as alone as the records had stated. He had a troupe following him in his steps.

And they would have to catch them. They had to be close.