Post by Loner。 on Jun 27, 2017 3:21:23 GMT
❖ DIO EVANS
The room was unadorned, the walls paved with varnished wooden boards. Likely they hid something far more solid behind them. The floor was concrete. There was little to see except for a table, with two chairs, positioned across from one another.
In the chair closest to the door, which was merely an opening and did not shut, sat a man in a suit. He had his hands folded nearly in front of him, and his expression was down difficult to read.
"Dio Evans, how nice of you to come. I'm told you have some news you wanted to share?" He addressed the young man sitting with his back to the far wall with incredible civility. He probably believed that he had the upper hand.
"Yeah," Dio answered "but not for free." The young man wanted something out of this, something that person across the table might have the power to provide.
"With your record, we could send you back to jail right now, this time to one who won't be so keen to let you out." The man near the door threatened. He was right, Dio was either convicted as or seen as a suspect regarding several crimes. It would be enough to put him in jail for life or worse. How Dio continued to wiggle his way away from such a sentence was a bit of a puzzle.
"Don't worry. I don't want much, and you don't have to pay if the Intel ends up phony." Dio was confident that his news was true.
The man in the suit took a deep breath. "what do you want?"
"A chance." Dio leaned back in his chair, radiating confidence or arrogance. "Aligning with these terms." Dio brought out a piece of paper and unfolded it, pushing it to the other's view.
The man examined the paper stoically, his eyebrows raising only once regarding a particular clause. He didn't have to agree to any of it. The difference between himself and this criminal were too great for this mock up contract to be binding. Yet criminals often held promise if shaped right.
"Consider this, if you conceal any of what you know, if you lie, if you give us a false lead, or even waste our time with unsatisfactory information, its the end for you. There will be no second chances. Any compensation will be awarded based on the terms explained to you before you were allowed to meet here. The question is whether you are going to speak willingly or not."
Dio knew that these people had ways of getting others to talk, and that those ways might not be humane. Dio knew that the man across from him knew that Dio knew. Dio also knew there were cyborg technology enhanced guards right on the other side of that door. Bluffing was not going to be an option here. He had no good cards to play.
Dio could only hope that they treated him favorably and offered him what he wanted anyway.
"You win mister." Dio said, dramatically raising his hands in the air in surrender. "See there's this kid who used to be in my class. He started acting strange about eight months ago."
Dio spoke about Malik. How his childhood friend had saved his life during a crime deal gone wrong. How Dio had witnessed Malik block bullets, heal wounds, fight with a speed and strength no human should possess, and even come back from what should have been a death-blow. That was the first time Dio had witnessed Malik's abilities.
Dio spoke about how on a day after the disaster which had flattened the city, he had caught Malik aglow in an abandoned building frightened, by the burden of what was clearly incredible power, and not even looking like a human anymore. That was the second encounter.
Dio described threatening Malik, how he'd tried to scare the blond haired black to do things Dio's way and be useful, and how Malik had decided to attack Dio, adding extra information to make it seem like Dio had ended up worse than he'd actually been. That was the last encounter before Dio had managed to land himself in jail in a grocery store riot. Dio didn't tell about that. The carjacking was already on his criminal record which the man across from him knew.
The man listened, asking no questions. when Dio was done, he simply said, "thank you for wasting my time with that impossible story. You may go."
He snapped his fingers and the guards came in.
Dio quickly got the impression that he wasn't actually being permitted to leave. Did they not believe him? Every word he'd said was true he insisted.
They took him to another room, one with bright white like lights and what looked like a torture chair combined with hair salon hair dryer cap.
For some reason Dio was not able to remember what they did to him next.
