The Simulacrum - Chapter 118 - Part 2 (Patreon)

They say that time flies when in good company, but the same applied to while being busy. It was hard to believe that it's been nearly a week since I took Percival into custody, and in the meantime, my life settled into a predictable rhythm.

In the morning, I would eat breakfast in the Elysium while listening to Jaakobah's reports. Then I would spend the morning pretending to train my Praetorian Guards, followed by a light lunch. In the evening, I would Phase back to the base to pick up supplies and have Fred do some more tests on me to monitor the Polemos memory fragments, after which I would pay a visit to the girls, and then return to the Elysium to spend the night with reading and occasionally signing documents sent my way by the Directorate.

Now, the eagle-eyed probably already noticed the big hole in the schedule during the afternoon, and it was exactly where I was heading at the moment, walking down the corridors of the Migdál's ground floor in my fancy Polemos guise while flanked by the ever-dutiful Mountain Girl and Jaakobah. The latter was holding a clipboard in his hands, and combined with the tiny reading spectacles on his nose and his simplified dress uniform, he looked more like a secretary than the head of my honour guard.

"Whose turn it is today?" I asked absently as we passed by a group of saluting security guards, and he took a glance at the papers on the clipboard before answering.

"According to today's schedule, it's the Justice Department."

"Oh? That's ironic, isn't it?" I said with a hint of a smile, but he apparently didn't get it.

I was tempted to go ahead and explain to him how it was funny that the arbiters and judges of Elysium were about to be judged by our very own Arbiter, but we were already in sight of our destination, so I refrained from doing so. Explaining a joke was bad manners anyway.

In the meantime, we arrived at a small waiting room. Its only entrance opened from the same corridor as the one leading to the Praetorian Guards' barracks, and it was currently filled with about a dozen nervously fidgeting Celestial bureaucrats sitting on some very uncomfortable benches. I ignored them, and the three of us walked past everyone as we headed to the door on the other end of the room.

The chamber on the other side was made to my very exact specification. It was completely empty, save for a plain wooden desk in the middle with a chair behind it facing the entrance, and a simple wooden stool on the other side, a couple of steps further from the table. The walls were covered with light green wallpaper depicting repeating vertical patterns, but tinted in an uncanny shade of yellow by the single lamp embedded into the tiled ceiling. The carpet under our feet was the same, and due to the very carefully engineered corners that just barelyweren't at right angles, the whole place gave the impression of looking at a picture taken at a mild Dutch angle. That, combined with the loud buzzing of flickering fluorescent lights (which I had to cheat in with some enchantment-tinkering, because the local lights were normally completely silent), the room gave off an eerie vibe.

That was kind of the point though, and I was already used to it to the point where the ambience didn't bother me at all. The same couldn't be said about our targets though, and after I took a seat behind the desk, and Rinne and Jaakobah occupied their customary spots near me, I raised my voice to call in the next vict— I mean, interviewee.

A second later, a short, middle-aged woman entered the room. She was wearing one of those toga-adjacent ensembles, though without the laurel crowns, and looked extremely uncomfortable. Just as intended.

"Come inside and sit down. We don't have all day," I instructed her and tapped on the desk in front of me.

"Yes, O Archon! Please forgive me!" she squeaked out and hastily sat down onto the stool. I let out an appreciative hum and gestured for Rinne to get working.

Walking over to the Celestial's side, she offered her Onikiri's handle, one thumb firmly pressed against the guard so that it couldn't be pulled out, and nodded, signalling that we could begin.

"Name," I uttered with the same, indifferent tone I had mastered over the past couple of days, and she shuddered in her seat.

"I'm Danit Arkho, Director of the Department of Justice, O Archon!"

After a neat, Rinne nodded, and Jaakobah ticked a box on his clipboard. I waited for him to finish, and then uttered a disinterested, "Very fitting."

"Thank… you?" she muttered, but I ignored her and recited the usual line I'd spoken about a hundred times already.

"I'm going to ask you a series of questions. You answer with either 'Yes', 'No', or 'I Don't Know'. If you try to lie, my Arbiter will know, and so will I. Do you understand?"

"Y-Yes, O Archon…" she muttered, apparently finding it hard to deal with the pressure. All the better for us.

This whole scene was set up on purpose, just to unnerve and unbalance the people we interro— I mean, interviewed. I knew first-hand how easy it was to circumvent Onikiri's truth detection function with technical truths, but those took some effort to come up with on the spot. That's why I decided to arrange this uncomfortable situation in a creepy environment, stared down by the second coming of their legendary leader and his enigmatic, faceless enforcer. And Jaakobah.

"First question: do you know the square root of sixty-four?"

"… Yes?"

Rinne signalled, Jaakobah noted, and I pressed on.

"Is the sky green?"

"I… No," she responded, and the same process repeated itself.

"How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?"

Her eyes opened wide for a second, and she glanced around the room for a moment before she finally responded in a mousy, barely audible voice, "I-I… don't know."

"Good. Calibrations are complete," I declared while doing my best to keep a straight face and interlinked my fingers on the table. "Here come the real questions. First, are you an Abyssal spy?"

"No!" she protested, audibly outraged, but I didn't really care. I waited until Rinne gave her signal and Jaakobah ticked another box.

"Are you a loyal subject of Elysium?"

"Yes."

"Are you willing to follow all orders of the Directorate without question?"

"Y-Yes," she insisted, though I could hear her voice buckle a bit.

I nodded and continued questioning her. Most of them were simple questions about whether she had seen anything suspicious, or if she was aware of any Abyssal agents, and other such nonsense. They existed as part of a classic 'hide the needle in the haystack' strategy, so that I could occasionally weave in a few more important inquiries.

"Do you consider the rules Deus set for Celestial society to be perfect and beyond question?"

"Yes!"

I waited for Rinne to nod, and then let out a pent-up breath and nonchalantly waved in their general direction.

"We're done. Thank you for your cooperation. Send in the next person on your way out."

The director let out a relieved breath and pulled her hand away from the sword's hilt, as if she was touching the hot stove, and I couldn't exactly blame her. I could still vividly remember the time Mountain Girl put me to the test in that alley a couple of months ago, and the weird sensation crawling at the back of my mind at the time. That was as far as my empathy went though, and I was already preparing for the next round when I notice the expression on Jaakobah's face.

"You haven't asked all the questions," he told me, and I shrugged in return.

"I asked the important ones," I told him, and when he remained unconvinced, I added, "I have plans for this evening, so I want to wrap this up as soon as possible."

My Praetorian Guard captain blinked and seemed to be hesitant for a moment, but in the end, he resolved himself to ask, "Are you planning to visit Director Savir again?"

"No," I responded flatly. "I visited her quarters once, and you make it sound like it's a regular event."

"That's what the rumors say," he pointed out, earning him a frown. It didn't faze him, and he dully stated, "It's hard to dissuade such speculation, considering your mysterious, frequent, and unscheduled disappearances."

"… I swear, this place has more gossip than in a high-school cheerleader squad's locker room."

"I wouldn't know. I've never been a cheerleader," Jaakobah responded without missing a beat, but before I could call him a smartass, the next contestant poked his head into the room, so I dropped the issue and waved for him to come in.

The rest of the interviewsfollowed the pattern of the first one. Guy comes in, I ask a few warm-up queries, get them wondering why Circe the sorceress sells striped seashells by the seashore, and then ask them the actually important questions interspersed between meaningless ones. Same old, same old.

Thanks to my efforts to speed things up, we made record time and finished questioning everyone by three in the afternoon. Even if I gave myself an hour of leeway for preparations, I still had more than enough time to do everything I planned, and comfortably be back by dinner.

With the last person for the day leaving the room with the poise and dignity of a bat out of hell, I allowed myself to slouch down in my seat for a total of ten seconds before exhaling hard and getting back on my feet.

"Jaakobah? Do the usual." That was referring to him summarizing the data he collected on his clipboard, and he nodded as if that was self-evident. "Also, clear up my schedule for the rest of the afternoon."

"What about your dinner with the Primus or the Director of Military Affairs?"

"I'll attend that," I told him as we walked out the door.

Today was promising to be extra busy, but if everything played out well, it would put us on the fast track to resolve this whole Polemos situation and I could soon return everything to the usual groove. So long as I didn't run into any obstructions, that is. Such as the stern woman waiting for us on the other side of the interrogation room's door.

"Polemos," she greeted me with a restrained voice, and I took all my willpower not to groan.

"Director Savir. What brings you here?" I responded as politely as my Polemos character would allow, but it only caused her brows to descend into a frown and gesture at the waiting room around us.

"I thought I was very clear when I told you I do not appreciate my people being questioned," she told me straight, calling back to an argument we had during one of the meetings I was forced to attend.

"Yes. And I believe I told you I would consider your words." She narrowed her eyes even further, and pointedly glanced at the Director of Justice, awkwardly shuffling her feet nearby. I followed her gaze, then turned back to her and added, "I considered them, and decided to ignore them."

"You did," she hissed, obviously displeased by the challenge of her authority.

"Indeed." I stood my ground and met her eyes, tit for tat. "When I said I would test every single official of the Directorate, I meant every. single. one.No exceptions."

Her expression remained frosty, but at least she reeled back her emotions and asked, "Are these tests really necessary?"

"I wouldn't waste my time with them if they weren't."

She exhaled a soft huff, and after a few seconds of silence, she told me, "Maybe we should discuss this topic in private. I'm free this evening."

I was only a hair's breadth away from facepalming at that. I mean, come on, woman! It's careless remarks like these why I've had to play whack-a-mole with all kinds of weird rumours ever since I first put my foot in this god-forsaken nest of gossipy vipers, and I didn't appreciate her adding fuel to the fire.

"I already have plans. Maybe another day."

That obviously displeased her, but I couldn't muster the effort to care, as I just noticed a purple toga in the distance, and was desperate to get away before I would get bogged down in the crossfire between two of the Chief directors. It had happened more times than I cared to count already, and I wasn't going to let them drain away the free time I saved up by rushing today's interrogations.

"Talk to my Praetorian Prefect. He's in charge of my schedule; he can tell you when I'm available."

Before either of them could protest, I turned on my heel, and walked down the corridor, with Rinne closely following behind me. Once we turned a corner, I headed inside an empty room and gestured for her to slip into my shadow before I promptly Phased back to my quarters. Thanks to marking the majority of the Celestials living or working in the tower, I could more or less freely teleport to any floor, though the density of the red dots in the vicinity made it a little harder to pinpoint people from time to time.

But putting that aside, the moment we arrived, Mountain Girl jumped out of my shadow and let out an exhausted groan as she took off her helmet.

"Rinne is tired."

"I can imagine," I told her and pointed in the vague direction of the bedroom. "Go, grab some snacks. I'll be switching out the cooler boxes tonight, so there's no need to be frugal."

I didn't need to say that twice, and she immediately left the living room. Speaking of which, since we had the construction workers over to fix the damage the skirmish between Rinne and Jaakobah caused, I asked them to remodel the rest of my quarters as well, and after the conference table got replaced by a few comfy couches and a coffee table, it finally started to feel like an actual living room. I also had one corner turned into a separate study room, where I got my daily reading and paperwork done, but that was beside the point.

Anyhow, once I was alone, I threw myself onto the aforementioned sofa and allowed myself a ten-minute break. All things considered, things were proceeding rather smoothly. I was done interrogating about two-thirds of the Directors and their immediate circle, with only the military branch remaining. As for the home front, Sir Percival's disappearance was kept under wraps until very recently, and the reason why I was about to act personally was related to that. Even so, while there was some friction with the Assembly, thanks to the concerted efforts of Naoren and Lord Grandpa, things remained remarkably stable over there.

All of that considered, I was ready to put my plans into motion and start the snowball that would inevitably lead to all kinds of unforeseen consequences (as always), yet there was a nagging feeling at the back of my mind that I couldn't quite silence. It wasn't a premonition, or even a gut feeling, but more of a… how should I put this? A sense of incongruity would be the best way to say it.

What I felt I was missing was the big picture. Not the 'Celestial' big picture, with all the factions and individual agendas, nor the 'Critias' big picture, with the Draconic Federation and the Assembly, but the 'Simulacrum' big picture. So far, there had always been a plot the world tried to adhere to. It was an emergent phenomenon, and for the average inhabitant of the world, everything made internal sense, but the deeper one looked, the more obvious the fingerprints of some kind of weird orchestrator became.

The same was the case here, with my kidnapping-in-name-only and the whole Polemos memory transfer thing, but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find the actual plot. In particular, while I was neck-deep in this whole mess, our resident protagonist was still completely absent. When I discussed this with Judy and the princess, my dear assistant's idea was that we were still in the 'honeymoon period' of the Angie route, where the two of them would act lovey-dovey and carefree before the other shoe drops and kickstarts the melodrama.

That sounded nice on paper, but it didn't bring me any closer to the answer to this simple question: what's the second shoe in this tortured allegory? And how was I supposed to avoid it, or better yet, avoid dropping it myself by accident, if I had no idea what it was about. Was the main plot supposed to be about the Celestial civil war? Deus's return? The conflict between the Federation and the Assembly? Or heaven forbid, that love-triangle crap Judy theorized? Hell, as far as I knew, it could've been all of the above, at the same time, with little green space aliens on top!

"To think I would live to see the day when I'd miss the simplicity of Fred's faux-sentai shenanigans…" I grumbled while massaging my temples, and with a deep breath, I lurched back onto my feet and undid the Leoformer's transformation so that I was back to the simple white ensemble I usually wrote in private.

Rolling my shoulders, I turned towards the bedroom and raised my voice.

"What's the time?"

There was a bit of a commotion on the other side, no doubt Rinne looking for her phone, and then she called back, saying, "It's half past three."

"I guess I'll get going then," I told her, and once she let out a grunt I interpreted as acknowledgement, I closed my eyes, and focused on the dock-district hideout. We put it off until now, waiting for him to recover a bit, but I had a feeling it was only a question of time before the runaway train of our life started picking up speed again, so it was high-time we finally got around to interrogate our dear old Uncle Percy.