Spy Classroom - Volume 6 - Chapter 1.1

Chapter 1

Interrogation

Underground, there was an interrogation room.

In the Fend Commonwealth’s capital, the Kashard Doll Workshop was a two-story building made out of strong, age-worn brick. The locals generally assumed that the target market for their dolls were rich overseas collectors. Anyone who spent twenty-four hours a day watching its entrances would have occasionally spotted strange men and women dressed in all black coming and going, but nobody actually had the time or inclination to waste that much attention on a boring old manufacturing studio.

In truth, though, that building was the headquarters for a spy team—a counterintelligence unit called Belias that belonged to the Fend Commonwealth’s CIM. Their mission was to neutralize any foreign agents who infiltrated Fend’s borders, and whenever they snatched up spies who meant the Commonwealth harm, Belias tortured them without mercy. After a few dozen hours of agony, their captives would invariably cough up intelligence on their homelands.

That evening, Belias had brought yet another spy to their interrogation room.

It was a tiny room not unlike a jail cell. It had no windows. The desk at its center was flanked on each side by a single wooden chair, and the other desk over in the corner was covered with writing implements. The air hung thick with that characteristically musty smell of the underground.

The captured spy was slumped back in her chair with her head hung low. Her hands were bound behind her back with a thick set of handcuffs.

“……………………I’m starvin’.”

Her voice was hoarse.

A set of footsteps clicked against the floor as someone entered the room.

“Hello, young lady.”

The newcomer was a tall woman wearing a black flared skirt covered in frills. There were dark bags under her eyes, and thanks to that and her eerily pale skin, she looked like she’d just stepped off the cover of a horror novel.

She was a witch. There was no other way to put it.

“My name is Amelie. Around here, I’m also known as Puppeteer.”

Amelie was Belias’s boss. Despite being a young twenty-seven-year-old, she held a vital role in defending her country’s national security. She sat down across from the captured spy. “Welcome to the Fend Commonwealth, young lady. We greet you with open arms.”

“………”

“Our nation has three methods by which it receives its visitors. For guests, we serve tea; for friends, we serve scones; and for enemies, we serve bullets straight to the forehead. The question is: Which one are you?”

“………”

The captured spy persisted in her silence.

There was still enough childishness left in her appearance to reasonably call her a girl. Her body was as lean as a beast’s, and the eyes peering out from beneath her short white hair were brimming with a fierce energy.

The girl’s name was “Pandemonium” Sybilla.

Sybilla’s expression was grave as she sat in the chilly interrogation room.

Amelie spoke, her voice empty of emotion. “My dear guest from the Din Republic, the interrogation begins now.”

The world was awash in pain.

Ten years had passed since the end of the Great War, the largest war in human history. Seeing its horrors had driven the world’s politicians to turn to spy work rather than military might as their preferred way of influencing other countries.

Lamplight was a spy team that fought on behalf of the Din Republic. It comprised eight former academy washouts, as well as “Bonfire” Klaus, the single strongest spy in the Republic.

That was the team Sybilla belonged to.

An hour before the interrogation began, Sybilla was running across the streets of Hurough, Fend’s capital. One AM had come and gone, and as the night deepened, the fog thickened as though to complement it. If she’d left the streetlights’ glow, she would barely have been able to see ten feet in front of her.

The Turko River flowed right through Hurough, and the road Sybilla was racing down, Fillade Street, ran right alongside it. It was a well-known tourist hot spot, and the street was lined with rows and rows of restaurants. The neat array of redbrick buildings next to each other made for a downright picturesque sight.

Sybilla ran beneath the streetlights with all her might, panting loudly. Eventually, she came to a stop in front of a high-end watch store with glazed windows that sat sandwiched between a pair of eateries.

The area was surrounded by DO NOT ENTER tape, and the nearby streetlight flickered on and off as though it was on the verge of giving up the ghost. With its light at her back, Sybilla stared into the store. Its showcases were broken, the floor was littered with shattered glass, and its numerous mirrors had been violently smashed and scattered about. On closer observation, there were some bullet holes in the wall as well. The store had been cleaned out of its watches, and the merchandise racks lay empty.

On its wall, there was a message written in red spray paint.

WE ARE AVENGERS FROM THE LAND OF IMMORTALS 

BURN HOT AND RAISE A GLASS TO RESURRECTION

Sybilla grinned, unable to contain her joy.

“Well, hey, what the hell? Lan, you’re really—”

For a moment, the light from the flickering streetlight behind her that had been illuminating the store vanished.

When it came back, there was a new figure in Sybilla’s field of view.

She heard a female voice. “Are you one of the Din Republic’s spies? My apologies, but we’re going to slaughter you.”

As Sybilla whirled around, there was a pair of loud roars—two gunshots, one after the other.

Bullets grazed her left cheek and right leg.

She could tell that she was under attack, and on reflex, she leaped to the side and drew her automatic. She tried to take advantage of her honed physical abilities to quickly return fire.

“Programme Number 8.”

Before she could, though, the female voice coldly rang out.

A pair of hammers emerged from the fog and smashed both of Sybilla’s shoulders in unison. She went flying backward, and right after she collapsed onto the ground, she felt something hard press against her forehead.

A gloomy, witchlike woman was pointing her gun straight at Sybilla.

“………”

There was nothing she could have done.

The woman wasn’t alone—Sybilla was completely surrounded. A group had shown up without a sound and blocked off all her escape routes. A man and a woman each wielding hammers were closing in on her from both sides, and another six people around them were training their guns on her. When she looked up, she spotted a man on the clock store’s roof drawing a bead on her as well. Each and every one of them was radiating hostility, and any of them could have destroyed one of her vitals in the space of a second.

“Or to be more precise—”

The first woman standing across from Sybilla with the automatic pistol glared at her.

“—if you disobey any of our orders, we’ll slaughter you on the spot.”

It was Amelie.

Her wide, flared skirt swayed as she continued holding her gun. She cast the slightest of glances backward and furrowed her brow in annoyance.

A light flickered amid the fog.

“What an uncouth streetlight, flashing on and off like that. Failing to provide a suitably hospitable environment for our guests besmirches our nation’s good name,” Amelie snapped. She pressed her gun against Sybilla’s forehead again. “By the way, young lady—how much training have you received on resisting torture?”

Sybilla had little choice but to give in to her threats.

As she thought back to the events leading up to her capture, Sybilla clenched her fists.

After Amelie came into the interrogation room, she unlocked Sybilla’s handcuffs. However, Sybilla didn’t feel at all liberated. The air was thick now with a palpable hostility, and she could tell that if she made even the slightest show of resistance, her life would end on the spot. The only other people in the room were Amelie and her secretary, but Sybilla could feel far more than two pairs of eyes on her.

A cold sweat trickled down her back.

This was her first time getting captured by another nation’s intelligence organization.

“………I’ve heard of you people,” Sybilla muttered. “My academy taught us that Fend’s got a load of top-notch counterintelligence teams. And I’ve heard the name Puppeteer, too. They say you’re an expert at exposing people.”

“You’re rather well informed.”

“I dunno ’bout that. The way I heard it, you’re supposed to be a guy in his thirties.”

“I’m the fourth to hold the name. In my nation, code names are something you inherit,” Amelie explained matter-of-factly. She glowered at Sybilla. “Now tell me, young lady. What were you doing at the watch store?”

She clearly had no interest in making small talk. All that time, her tone had never once changed or betrayed any sort of personal emotions. It made her seem almost robotic.

“………I was lookin’ for someone.” Sybilla bit her lip. “I wasn’t gonna do anything bad to the Commonwealth. Why would I? Din and Fend aren’t enemies or nothin’.”

“Indeed. Our nations have allied with each other to keep an eye on the Galgad Empire. Our relationship is built on cooperation.”

“Right? So—”

“But there is one thing you must remember, my dear guest.” Amelie stood up and grabbed Sybilla by her hair. “Friendship has no place in our world.”

She slammed Sybilla’s face into the desk.

“________!”

Sybilla’s nose was smashed, and she got a cut in her mouth that filled it with the taste of blood.

When she looked up in protest, she saw Amelie’s eyes burning with contempt.

Sybilla’s homeland, the Din Republic, was allied with the Fend Commonwealth.

When the Great War broke out, it divided the world in two. There were the Axis powers led by the Galgad Empire, and there were the Allied powers centered around the Fend Commonwealth and the Lylat Kingdom. As a nation that was invaded by Galgad, Din decided to side with the Allies, and by using espionage to steal intelligence from the Axis powers, they played a key role in securing the Allies’ victory.

Ever since, Din and Fend had enjoyed an alliance. And it wasn’t built from hollow words peddled by politicians, either. Behind the scenes, the two nations’ spies worked together to make sure Galgad didn’t get up to any funny business.

However, there was a lesson Sybilla’s academy had drilled into her over and over: Spies could work together, but they could never be friends. At the end of the day, spies only looked out for their own nations’ interests, and sometimes those interests were in conflict with those of their allies. Din was happy to feed intelligence about Galgad to Fend in order to keep the Empire in check, but they took care never to reveal their own information or goals.

Spies from different nations often entered into temporary alliances, but they were far from friends.

As such, they had no qualms about torturing their allies’ agents.

“Allow me to correct one misunderstanding.” Amelie let go of Sybilla’s head. “Your nation’s spy academies have it a bit wrong. Exposing people isn’t what we specialize in here. We’re very good at it, make no mistake, but our true forte lies elsewhere.”

“Huh?”

“It lies in torture, dear guest.”

Amelie snapped her fingers.

A woman dressed in black wheeled over a series of carts from the back of the interrogation room. The trays were laden with machines and bladed instruments the likes of which Sybilla had never seen before. There was a chair covered in power cables and restraints, a peeler-like implement that looked perfect for carving away flesh, small bottles filled with ominously colored liquid…

Amelie ran her fingers almost lovingly across the electric chair. “Our nation excels in the sciences, and our torture technology is unrivaled. Spies from across the globe have sobbed and wept like newborns before me.”

“………”

“I don’t blame you for not knowing, though. Not a single person we’ve tortured has lived to tell the tale.”

The more implements that got wheeled into the room, the heavier the sight of them weighed. Each torture device seemed to suck a little more air out of the room than the last. When Sybilla glanced down by her feet, she spotted a series of dried bloodstains on the floor.

“I’m going to be direct,” Amelie said, moving the interrogation along. “What were you doing at the watch store?”

“…Lookin’ for someone. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Who? And to what end?”

“……………”

“If you’re not going to talk, you leave me no choice but to take a different tack.”

A thin smile spread across Amelie’s face as she held her palm out to the side.

The woman, ostensibly her subordinate, gently laid a butterfly knife atop it. Amelie unfolded its blade and demanded that Sybilla present her arm.

Sybilla didn’t like where things were going, but she was hardly in a position to refuse. She laid her left arm atop the desk.

The moment she did, Amelie grabbed it. “Now, this is a torture session. I’m going to cut your fingers off one by one, dear guest.”

A powerful thunk rang out.

Sybilla’s eyes went wide. “_____!”

Amelie had just swung the knife down at her fingers without a moment’s pause. The movement had been too fast to track, and the blade had carved deep into the desk’s surface.

“My apologies…,” Amelie said in that mechanical tone of hers.

Sybilla could do nothing but gawk at her, speechless.

“…my aim was a ninth of an inch off.”

The knife was stuck right between Sybilla’s ring and pinkie fingers. If she’d moved even a hair, she would have lost a digit.

“I promise to be more accurate next time. That was that last concession you get, young lady,” Amelie said emotionlessly. “Also, I expect you to give me your right arm. Based on the wear on your gun, you’re very clearly right-handed.”

“…………………”

Sybilla was sweating bullets. She knew that if she let her focus slip, her knees would start knocking from Amelie’s raw malice. That said, none of this was coming as a complete surprise. Her academy had told her about this, too.

All that awaited captured spies was inescapable despair.

They would cough up their information, and once they did, they would be killed. They could try to keep mum, but pain and drugs would wear away at their sanity, and eventually, they would break and give up any information they were asked for. In rare cases, they could survive by becoming double agents, but doing so just meant dying at the hands of their old comrades.

A mumble escaped Sybilla’s lips. “Fuck.”

She’d known all that in principle, but actually experiencing it was a whole different beast.

Her heart was pounding loudly.

“………I need water.”

“Hmm?” Amelie raised an eyebrow.

“I’m thirsty. It hurts to talk.”

Amelie snapped her fingers and had a decanter full of iced tea brought over. She expressionlessly took it, poured it into a glass with ice, and offered it to Sybilla. “Here you are, dear guest.”

Sybilla took the glass with her left hand.

With her right arm still firmly in Amelie’s grasp, she took a sip of the tea. “…‘Cloud Drift’ Lan.”

“Hmm?”

“That’s who I’m lookin’ for. She was on a team called Avian,” Sybilla said quietly. “Last month, everyone else on Avian died here in Fend. Cloud Drift was the only survivor, so we’re tryin’ to find her. But she’s gone missing.”

“………”

“It’s only been three weeks since it happened, but we can’t find hide or hair of her. I heard that there’d been gunshots at the watch shop on Fillade Street, so that’s why I went there. That’s my story.”

“………I see.” Amelie fixed her eerie eyes on Sybilla. “Why did you react the way you did, then? As I recall, the wall said, We are avengers from the land of immortals. When you saw that, you smiled.”

“’Cause it was Lan’s handwriting. We’re finally on her trail. Course I’m gonna smile.”

“What did the message mean?”

“Nothing. She was just screwin’ around. We actually…”

As the words left her mouth, Sybilla realized that she was saying more than she needed to. However, it was too late to take it back. Amelie had already tightened her grip on Sybilla’s arm to demand she finish the sentence.

“…knew ’em pretty well,” Sybilla admitted. “We didn’t know ’em for long, but we—Lamplight—ran into Avian a lot.”

It was true. Lamplight and Avian actually interacted quite a bit.

For the month following their return from Longchon, the two diametrically opposite teams—the band of washouts that was Lamplight and the band of elites that was Avian—spent what could well be described as a honeymoon together.