Cohost writing prompt: @spy-thief-assassin-who — Rebel who is annoyingly timid with your interrogation
I peer at the interrogator's cocked fist. "You don't wanna do it like that," I say solicitously. "You can break your thumb, hitting people with it inside your hand."
She freezes up for several whole seconds, half looks toward the two-way mirror that they've otherwise carefully treated like I won't know what it is.
Fuck knows what they teach people, in here.
The thing about the posthuman space expansion is that inevitably, some people reacted to its freedoms with stubborn refusal: I can be anything? Fuck no, RETVRN! And that's how you get these goddamn revanchist pockets, paranoid bugfuck little huddles convinced that the big bad Transhuman is out to get them.
She'd probably strike me as quite sweet, if not for the lunatic fash-cult thing. Waifish, out of her depth. She fumblingly re-closes her fist, thumb outside, arm held awkwardly as if she can't conceive of just putting it back down and giving up the pretense it's remotely threatening.
"First time?" I say, and give her the big soulful eyes. "It's okay, honey, we'll go at your pace, and we don't have to break out any of the weird toys unless you feel ready for them—"
Look, I've got my full citizen's complement of onboard medical tech. They could probably firing-squad me, if they rolled up one of their battleships to do it, but angrily opting out of the cutting edge inevitably leaves you behind it, yeah?
She looks a little queasy.