131 Waking Up To Blinding Light
When Altair regained consciousness she found herself in a familiar situation. She was, once again, restrained to furniture. However, this case was quite a bit different than the first time she arrived in the Empire.
For starters, she didn't see who had hit her with the thing that knocked her unconscious. Although, after she felt her light headed before everything went black, she suddenly remembered what that dart did as if it came to her along with the overwhelming feeling of drowsiness. So, she now knew that someone had incapacitated her for an unknown reason.
There was a blinding light shining right on her face when she opened her tired eyes. The light made it impossible to see anything in her surroundings. She found her hands tied to the back of an uncomfortable chair that she was sitting on. Her legs also seemed to be tied to the legs of the chair as well. She was tied tightly to the chair as well and could feel the metal bars digging into her back just by sitting. However, she was completely unable to adjust her sitting position.
The air in the room was stale and nobody said anything to her the moment she woke up. It was very quiet in the room but she could hear the sounds of someone moving around while trying to keep their movement silent, mostly because whoever was doing so accidently kicked something and ended up muttering a soft curse. This told Altair that there were people around her and they had something to do with her situation. Since there were people in the room, even though she couldn't see them, it caused her to be oddly calm about her situation.
But Altair had little to no idea why she was tied up the way she was. She attempted to look around the room but the light in her face provided too much of a difference to the rest of the room so she couldn't see anything else. This caused her to frown deeply.
Since she could escape at any time with her Teleportation Magic, she decided to wait to see what these people were after. After all, she doubted they knew much about her. In fact, since she had no idea how much time had passed since she was last in the Empire, she suspected that it was completely by random chance that these people had been in the same place as her. The building she went to before was completely caked with dust after all, so it had to have been a long time. She just didn't know how long.
Altair could hear a door close and wondered if it was about time someone did something.
Sure enough, the light was moved out of her face and pointed down towards the area before her. It revealed a rectangular metal table that was completely filthy with stains from unknown sources. The table even wobbled slightly when the man before her slammed his hand down on it loudly after he revealed himself and the table. He appeared to be a middle aged man of about 206 cm in height. Some of his dark hair was graying slightly at the edges and his face was covered in day old stubble. He was openly glaring at Altair but his eyes contained more of a piercing look than anything close to hate.
He spoke in a gruff voice as he abruptly asked, "What is your name?"
Altair's brow rose slightly towards this. 'So, I was right. It was probably by chance.' She didn't want to give this stranger her real name or the name the Marnithok family had given her. She had knowledge of how kidnappings worked in her world, so if this was such a case here than giving her real name would be a bad idea. Of course, she had no proof that this situation was a kidnapping. Still, she decided to err on the side of caution as she replied, "Allie."
The man waited for a moment before he asked, "Surname?"
Altair shook her head, "Don't have one."
The man frowned deeply at this. Everyone in the Empire had a surname so he immediately understood that the name given to him was probably a fake name. Even orphans would take the name of orphanage until they chose a surname for themselves.
He took a deep breath before he asked in an aggressive tone, "What were you doing in that building?"
Altair blinked at him before she replied, "I was seeing if there was any food."
The man slammed his hand down on the table and roared at her without warning, "Don't lie! We have a recording that you were calling out to someone called 'Number One'! Who is Number One!?"
Altair did her best to shrug her shoulders, "I don't know. That's what he was called."
The man narrowed his eyes as she stood from his chair. "Fine, since you don't want to be honest about that then we'll come back to it." He turned around and walked off into the darkness. The light from above was still messing with Altair's eyes even though it wasn't in her face anymore. She still couldn't see what was happening outside the radius of light.
After a few long moments he came back to the table with some paper in his hand and asked in a neutral tone, "The device that you people used, where is it?"
Altair tilted her head to the side in obvious confusion. Her expression painted a clear "what are you even talking about" picture over her head. She even asked, "What Device?"
All of it caused the man's own expression to turn ugly as he threw the papers in his hand on the table before Altair and shouted, "You cannot hide from this question!"
Altair looked down at the two papers that landed before her on the table. Both of them were nearly identical. Both had, what appeared to be, trees on the bottom of it from a birds eye view. On both pictures, the amount of trees visible varied as a massive sphere of some blue object hung over the rest of the picture. It was like the blue was swallowing up everything else.
She had no idea what she was looking at. She thought that someone had dropped a bunch of blue paint over most of both of the pictures and she was supposed to tell them what the pictures were representing. She was completely lost as she asked, "What's this?"
The man plastered a smug look on his face as he proudly stated, "These images were taken by a starship above the building we found you in. As you can see from them, there was a massive energy spike detected that was centered on the building we found you in." He straightened up from leaning over the table and continued, "The amount of energy that was found to have suddenly appeared in that building is equivalent to eight hundred and forty million units. That's enough power to give every person on Ordin Prime, the capital of the Ordin Empire and all of its space stations and Starships enough power to continue operating with no difficulties for forty years! It can even keep the Great Shield of Ardin powered along with it and there would still be plenty left over to spare!
He slammed his hands down on the table again, "It appeared not just once, but twice! Where is the device that caused it?!"
He was at his wits ends when it happened the first time. Such a random burst of energy occurred on Ordin Prime, right under their noses. When they sent teams to investigate they found the building habited by several people of unknown affiliation. Their scans had shown that they couldn't detect anything below ground, which meant that it was either an extremely advanced facility that managed to get made right under their noses on the capital of Ordin Prime. That facility was capable of making some kind of device that could generate enough energy that the Empire was worried it could break the planet apart.
The Empire was naturally startled and in a panic when it happened the first time. Since they knew nothing about it and the land it was on wasn't owned by anyone except the Empire, they swiftly sent in a team to find out anything they could. They had even authorized the use of Juggernaut androids to make sure the job was done.
They went in without hesitating and eliminated all targets that resisted. They were confident they could gain access to the underground facility even without their help. The targets were reduced to ash from the destabilizing beams of the Juggernaut androids. But they couldn't get access to the basement, no matter where they looked or what they scanned. They had nothing to go on.
It was like there was no underground facility there. They were at a loss.
And then, the energy spike happened a second time while they were monitoring the building for anyone coming or going. Since they had isolated the building from all connections outside, they were surprised it took so long for the people there to do something since their contact with the outside was cut off. They also weren't expecting them to do whatever it was that they did in the first place. It absolutely terrified them into thinking that they were about to lose their homeworld.
And then Altair had appeared in the building. They don't know how she came up to the surface but they did know one thing for sure: she was involved in whatever they were doing that was causing so much energy to be released. Since she was their only lead to get down into the facility that was underground, they captured her. She was acting completely oblivious to the situation outside and they were surprised it was a child who came out.
In all cases, it was a problem of national security so they needed to know what was happening.
Altair looked at the picture in confusion for a moment before she flatly replied, "What device?" while looking up at the man. She had a vague feeling that the energy was caused by her Teleportation Magic. It seemed that it was caused in the area she left from and the area she arrived at.
The man's expression soured at her question, "Don't play dumb! If there's no device then what caused that massive amount of energy?!" He slammed his hand on the table again, causing it to shake.
Thinking back to how Renald had acted when Altair tried to tell him about her Teleportation Magic, Altair shook her head disappointingly. She then replied, "You wouldn't believe me even if I told you."
