This guy, who turned out to have the unlikely nickname of “Happy”, and the much more boring name of Jonathon Phillips, had wet himself some time during the questioning, which they all ignored. The smell, an acrid odor, permeated the room, but until backup arrived, all they could do was hide the man and keep him quiet. He just sat sobbing, not saying anything else now, so that wasn't too hard to do.
Gwen searched the seams of her gown and found that the side had split on the right, but it didn't gap enough to really show anything embarrassing. She didn't know if she could fix it, having never sewn anything before really, but maybe she could hire someone to do it. It would probably be best to learn how to do things like that herself, now that she was expected to wear clothes that weren't all cheap, vastly over-sized things from Target.
It took nearly an hour for backup to arrive, which didn't instill her with a sense of safety, knowing that the district house lay only about twenty minutes away. It took them way too long to get there, in her estimation. She hated to think about what would happen if a real emergency ever took place.
A vision of the entire unit having stopped for lunch hit her, everyone pulling out little lunch boxes and taking their tiny bites, chewing everything carefully, as they chatted about the emergency they had to attend to as soon as they were done, almost making her laugh out loud. A tiny chuckle escaped, making the man tied to the chair sob louder.
Peals found them, led into the room by Wilbur, the only one of them that looked young enough to fit in, able to blend with the students in front of the building. Well, Gwen looked young enough and Beth could probably pull it off too, being only in her mid-twenties. That however, would have required a woman to be standing alone, so the men had overruled it without even considering the option. The Constabulary, once there, made up for their lack of timeliness by showing a total disregard for personal rights, locking down the entire perimeter of the school, not letting anyone pass in or out at all.
Warrant? We don't need no stinking warrant! Gwen had to bite her lips this time. The stress of the situation must be getting to her, she thought, as the Constabulary rushed into position.
They found the students in various locations, two were in classes, based on their schedules, and since they were teaching those classes for professors, they actually turned out to be there. The last in the group they found in the secondary library, the one that covered historical texts and information.
Gwen and Bethany were tasked with bringing in this one, since it was the powerful magic user and the only girl in the group. Technically, Peals had ordered the Westmorland detective to take her in, but as Beth pointed out, she didn't have any particular fighting prowess.
“Sure, I could open up a rift in space, burning this part of the country to a cinder and poisoning the land for a thousand years to come, but... most of my other skills are in data collection and analysis.” Gwen stopped walking and stared at her friend. Beth grinned at her, face coming alive with a strange glee. “Sorry, just kidding with you there. National doesn't actually let those trained to rip space just walk around unattended. But I am a bit rusty on unarmed combat and I didn't think to bring any weapons...”
This made Gwen glare for a second before volunteering to go along with her, since it seemed to be part of her job, protecting Beth from physical harm, along with making sure the other woman ate on time and brushed her teeth. Peals had just nodded as if that had been his intent all along anyway.
As they walked over to the girl, who sat at a table surrounded by books, glasses hanging off of her nose, no makeup, and hair flying this way and that haphazardly, Gwen whispered to the other woman, “Let's see if we can do this quickly...”
She took the lead, approaching the girl first, since they all agreed she had a knack for these kinds of things. Everyone agreed but her of course. Gwen knew that it only looked like skill to others, when everything she'd done so far had really just been her pretending and playing make believe, using television and movies as a guidebook since she still had almost no context for anything here. Her heart started to pound in her chest, so she forced herself to relax as much as she could outwardly, just like a fight, she told herself. Stay calm and act, don't let the other people gain the initiative. When in doubt, hit things...
“Hello.” She tried to make her voice sound crisp, almost an English accent, like most of the other people around here. She'd made a point of practicing for the party, so might as well try it out now. “Would you be Emma Forster?”
The girl looked up, a weak smile on her pasty features.
“Yes... May I help you?”
Gwen took a deep breath and nodded letting it out in a big gust.
“Oh yes! We were told that we might be able to get some special tutoring from you? I have a lot to learn about all this...” She waved her right hand around the history library and realized it to be the truth. If she could read her way through this place she might even begin to have a small grasp on this world. Looking at everything closely, she wondered if the university let people not enrolled use their resources. Maybe she could ask the dean?
She moved toward the girl, holding out a hand as if to shake, knowing that given this girl's level of ability, she couldn't give her a chance to fight or cast spells or whatever they actually did here. Or teleport away, which seemed to be the go-to move of these people so far. She knew they had to touch the small silver spheres to do that, so if she could keep the girl's hands tied up like she had the last man's this might work.
The girl took her hand, shaking it professionally, not bothering to stand, being that they were both women.
“Oh? Well, I do have some passing knowledge of history, but who recommended me?” The voice sounded polite and pleased.
Gwen pulled her forward with her right hand hard, hitting her on the chin with her left fist at an angle to the jaw, rocking the smaller woman's head back. At that angle, about forty degrees off of straight on, the neck didn't have any supporting muscles to absorb the blow, so the woman, girl really, being only about nineteen, dropped to the ground from her chair, small spasms running through her body.
“Got her! We got her! We need to secure her immediately!” Bethany yelled, causing a half dozen uniformed men to run into the room. They searched the girl's belongings, but couldn't find anything that looked magical or radiative in nature on her or in her bag. Gwen looked at the searchers and wondered how they knew if something looked radiative. Did it glow to them or something, like the radium dials on those old watches that gave people cancer?
“Maybe she can teleport, teletransport, herself without anything? I mean, if she's supposed to be so powerful?” Gwen put forward, not really knowing if it would even be possible.
Bethany nodded, but hesitantly.
“Not... likely, but possible. Some of my brothers and sisters can do it, but it takes years of conditioning... Still, we need to bind against it and anything else she might come up with. We need some Null-radiatives over here!” Beth didn't turn or look away from the girl as she yelled.
A large man in a dark blue uniform brought over a pair of manacles, thick heavy chains with cuffs that would have looked at home in a dungeon, covered with silver symbols and giving off a faint greenish glow that surprised her. These were the first thing she'd noticed that really looked like magic to her. Other things may have been operating on magic somehow, it felt like just a slightly different kind of technology to her in the main, but this looked like something from a movie. Arcane symbols and all. It would have been a cool effect if the situation wasn't so worrying.
He fastened the girl's hands together in front of her and handed Bethany the key, which looked strange, being round and having stiff, bristle-like projections of different lengths all over the end of it. This item went into her pocket immediately.
Bethany and Detective Chuan rode with Gwen back to the district house, Wilbur having been detailed to ride in the back of the wagon with the two men, both of whom had been found with teletransport spheres. The girl rode in a different wagon, with a trained constable that specialized in dealing with magical hazards. He wore a red uniform, almost a deep burgundy in color, but plain, with no metal buttons or other markings and a simple cloth hat. Bethany explained to her that some metals took radiative effects extremely well, even attracting them, so people in that field took pains not to carry any on them at all times, at least when on duty.
For all that it still felt ponderously slow to her, James had them back to the office nearly twenty minutes faster than the other, larger, vehicles. Apparently the little white lorrie was this world's version of a sports car, Gwen realized.
“Beth, can you interview the girl, Forster, telepathically if she has those things on? The Null-radiatives?”
“Oh, sure. That's not a problem. Telepathy being the second strongest human ability, after healing. Magical powers themselves are all weaker, even though the effects can look strong, it's deceptive. In my work state I can punch right through such things – Null-radiatives – even if they were on me. All the Westmorlands can. Of course, other than rifting, exploding as I think you called it, most of our abilities stick to the strongest natural ones, then we're specifically conditioned to particular sub-classifications. So intuition, telepathy, healing and teletransport. Even rifting is just a specialized version of teletransport, though that's not strictly supposed to be known, so don't go telling everyone...”
Detective Chuan nodded so Gwen did the same. She certainly didn't want the wrong people to know how to blow up the world, so it wouldn't be too hard to keep secret. Bethany probably shouldn't go around telling people, even ones like her that couldn't use the information, just in case, right? What if she mentioned it by mistake to the wrong type of person without knowing it? After all, Gwen wouldn't do it on purpose, but did she really know who to trust or not here yet?
When everyone arrived, Peals asked Bethany and Gwen to aid in the interrogation of the woman, repeating something similar to what Wilbur had said earlier, that it was her collar, so her interview. Gwen figured the man just didn't want to beat a confession out of a young girl. Fair enough given the culture here, Gwen thought. He wiped his bald head with a handkerchief pulled from his vest pocket. The stocky, older man led them to a small room just next to the telestator she'd seen before, that held nothing but a chair with the woman in it. She'd regained consciousness, and sat, without her glasses, crying softly.
When she saw Gwen come into the room, she cringed.
“Please don't hurt me.” It came out as a moan rather than a scream.
Motioning Beth to stand next to the captive, Gwen explained things to the girl clearly, keeping her voice soft and sounding a little menacing she knew, like the villain from a kids movie.
“That really depends on you... This is Constabulary Detective Westmorland. I don't know if you understand what that really means, but she's going to listen to your thoughts while I ask you some questions. If you try to hide anything from her, anything at all, I'll be forced to hurt you, do you understand? I don't want to hurt you, but we can't afford to have anything hidden from our investigation right now. On the good side,” Gwen held her hand out toward Bethany again.
“This is Constabulary Detective Westmorland. If you tell the truth, we'll also know that, so nothing messy will have to be done. Alright? Do you understand the situation? All you have to do here is tell the whole truth...”