Huh?

I had no idea about this.

Who would send me a letter, my parents? Have they finally decided to pay at least a drop of attention to me? I looked at the letter in her hands. It had no name, no initials, no stamps, nothing. It was like the sender put it in the mailbox themselves.

“Uh, may I have the letter?” I asked her. I didn’t expect her to say yes.

“Depends, can you even read it?” She said in her high-pitched voice, that voice actually hurt my ears a little.

I furrowed my brows. My resting face dropped into a dissatisfied one. Did she assume I can’t read because I’m a Zero?

“It’s in a code even I can’t decipher,” She said, almost as if she could read my mind. “That’s not why we are here, though. We are here because you entered this prison for barely a week, and two people have already died. Now, a day ago, while you were still out from that bloody event in that kitchen, a letter was mailed to you by an unknown sender in a code that I can’t read,”

I tried my best to look stupid, as though I wasn’t the person who caused every event that she was referring to. I stared at her with my eyes widened, my mouth a bit open as though I was shocked.

“I do not know what you are referring to ma’am,” I finally choked out a few words.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought you would say,”

She proceeded to stand up from her chair and slowly walked over to me. Because then I could see her up close, I got a better view of her uniform. Her uniform was unlike any other guard here, it had golden vertical stripes coated with actual gold, otherwise, it was navy blue, with extra compartments holding various types of weapons. I saw guns, grenades, flashbangs, smoke grenades, everything that I would have seen only in an action video game. She was as slim as a stick, but I could tell that she was fit, perhaps capable of performing high-level physical tasks. Does she have a Physical Spirit? I thought to myself.

“Do you know what this uniform means?” She raised her eyebrows, snapping my attention back onto her green eyes.

I shook my head. For some reason, I felt inferior to her in this room. I wanted to stand up from this chair, but an invisible force called fear held me down. She circled me, I was trying my best to not do anything suspicious, but I could feel the cold sweat dripping down from my face. I didn’t know why she terrified me, perhaps was it because she could stop my plan? Killed me right here, when I could basically taste the freedom on my tongues?

“Each gold stripe represents a 10% on the Importance Scale, you know, the one where

you didn’t get anything from,” She said, revealing her white teeth with a smirk on her face. “I, luckily, had 8, representing at least an 80% on the Importance Scale. That’s close enough to call me a Perfect, don’t you think?” She continued

Her? A Perfect? She must have been out of her mind, a Perfect wouldn’t spend their time in a prison like that one. Perfects lived like Royals, with all the social benefits anyone could get. They were more important than the Leaders themselves, actually, they probably were the Leaders. But there would be no benefit for me to say my thoughts out loud, so I decided to play along with her.

“Yes,” I told her.

“Good. And, as a Perfect, I have in my hands a power that is one of the bests in this world, the power to program my voice,” She sounded like an old lady. From looks alone, I would say she was around forty, but her manner of speech made me feel like she was much older than that.

“I am not following on how this relates to me, ma’am.”

“Well, maybe the Truth Serum didn’t work on you, I never trusted that nurse anyway, so I will be doing a test on you myself.”

Oh shit, again. I didn’t know what to do. If what she said was true, and she could truly program her voice like how I thought, there was nothing that could help me there. There was just me and her in this room, no one else to help me.

“So for, example, this is how my voice works. Stab yourself with your own nails for me.”

After a few seconds or so, I felt excruciating pain in my mind. It was like a knife scraping against a glass bottle, but the sound itself was playing through a speaker right next to my ears. It was so horrible that I had to put my head down. I couldn’t hear her through the pain, but she said something, and the noise gradually faded away.

“As long as you do what I say, that won’t happen again,” She said.

I could already imagine what she was going to do next. She was going to make it so I couldn’t lie, or else my ears would be on the verge of destruction again. The only way out of this was to tough it out, or somehow bend the truth so she could interpret it differently. Toughing it out would be hard to do, especially as soon as I heard that voice, I instantly wanted to put my head down. So there was only one option left.

“Just so you know, you are not the first person I interrogated. If speak anything but the truth, that’s going to happen again. Now, what’s your name?”

“Arthur Thester,” starting off easy I see, she should be going to the main question now.

“So, Arthur, have you ever killed anybody?”

“Yes,” There was no way out of that, a maybe would be a yes in that situation.

“Who was it? Was it the officer in the backyard, or was it the old chef in the kitchen?”

“It was my employer, I stabbed him in the head, he should be dead from that,” I dodged her questions.

It was then that it occurred to me that she might not know whether I was feeling pain or not. Realistic, she could only tell based on my reaction.

“Did you kill anybody else?” She continued, pressing her voice harder this time.

“Yes,” After I said that, I immediately groaned and put my head down. I wasn’t feeling any pain, but as far as she knew, I was.

She had a questioning look on her face.

“Stop,” I gradually put my head back up after she said that. “Why would you lie about that?”

Good, she bought it, that was all that mattered then. I just stayed silent at that, after all, silence wouldn’t count as a lie now would it? She stared at me with her green eyes. The more she stared at me, the more frustrated her face became. She frowned, I guessed she was disappointed when her only lead to the murders that happened was lost. My eyes diverted back to the letter again, amidst the tense air of the interrogation, I completely forgot that it was the reason why I was called here in the first place. The fact that I was a Zero helped me out here. It would be hard to believe that a Zero would be able to overpower anyone with a Spirit, much less kill two people.

“Do you know anything about this letter, better yet, can you read it?” She asked me once more.

“No, and no.”

Nothing happened. There was no lie in my statement. The letter contents were laid out on the desk, it was scrambled with letters and numbers, and some of the symbols didn’t even exist in the English alphabet. I wanted to ask something, but my voice stopped midway in my diaphragm. The Head Warden noticed this and turned her attention to me with her sharp eyes.

“What, I hate it when people don’t speak up, what is it?” She snapped at me.

“Uhm, could I have the letter? It was directed to me after all,”

“Per the law, I must,” She sighed and stood up from the table.

I sighed out as well. If she was giving me the letter, that must have meant she trusted me enough to let me have it. She must have thought that a Zero like myself wouldn’t be able to decipher this code so it would be useless in my hands. She was right, I couldn’t crack this code, but that had nothing to do with me being a Zero. The only person I knew that would send me something like this would be Hano, my savior. She sent this to me knowing that I wouldn’t be able to read it, but she knew that someone I knew would. Alexei, the only direct connection I had to the resistance, should be able to read this. She didn’t send it directly to him because she knew that the letter would be interrogated, and he wasn’t capable to pass through an interrogation. Genius, that was all I could think of, genius.

Now that I could look at the room with less stress than before, it looked like it was beaming with the Head Warden’s personality. Medals, achievements, and recognizations were everywhere on the four walls. The air was filled with perfume, so much that I almost suffocated when I walked into this room. There was a big window behind her giant desk too. Everything in that room, as far as I was concerned, was overflowing with pride and honor. There was also a clock in the room, it strikes 10:17 AM. We have been here for 4 hours?

“We are done, you are now dismissed,” she finally said, going back to her paperwork on her desk.

I stood up. I felt heavy, the stress of the interrogation was wearing me down. I was extremely relieved when that was over. There was difficulty in opening the gigantic double doors because of the handcuffs, but I was able to manage. There were guards outside of that door, seemingly waiting for me. They uncuffed my hands, and I felt much lighter than before. That feeling was short-lived when they put their boulder-like hands on my shoulders, as they escorted me back. I had a better look at the administration hallway as well. Security room, accounting room, they are all here. It was overly decorated, if the entrance was in this hallway, people would not think it was a prison. It was carpeted, with hanging lights from the ceiling, and portraits of famous historians on the wall. The biggest portrait I saw was of Noxious Park, the man who found Spirits, and also the founder of Magnelia, the main corporation where people get their spirits from. Also, the person who created the Importance Scale, dramatically divided people into social classes. I had a natural hatred toward anything that was related to the founding of Spirits. If I would ever become someone in charge, I would destroy that Importance Scale, and end the National Enhancement Bill. Well, I needed to get out of this prison first, after surviving the confrontation with the Head Warden, I felt like there wasn’t much that could stop me. The cops led me to my cell again, where Alexei was at. Perfect timing, Alexei! I have something you need to read. The guards left as soon as I walked into my cell.

“Alright, Alexei, you got mail!” I said, almost sounding too happy. We still didn’t know what it was yet. I handed him the letter. He read it for a while with a smile, which confirmed my theory of it being from the resistance. That smile immediately became a frown as his face paled. I was afraid as well because it didn’t seem to be good news.

“I got bad news, Arthur,” He said, this was the most serious he had ever been.

“What is it?”

He stared deep at the crumpled paper in his hands with his eyes widened and said:

“They attacked the resistance!”