Chapter 18 - How to Make a Teenager Cry

The general direction of his plan was quite simple: he simply had to manifest and attract. There was no need to go around chasing his captors when he could simply wait for them to come, after all.

In short, he was going to stay happily in his cell with his ten-day supply of food and simply wait for them to come in and try to drag him out. He was aware that memory wipes would require him to be brought to an Interface, and that someone had to physically bring him there. Whether it was Glasses, or Io, or someone else wasn't a given.

He would also need to figure out how to get them to spill those answers. Asking questions didn't cut it, and he had decided that, unlike the Gravts, he wasn't a big fan of using memory-altering methods. That really only left some level of violence and torture, because asking Uari to be merciful was akin to asking Iria to stop asking questions: useless and disappointing.

He snacked on another can of beans—he might be developing some kind of unhealthy attachment towards beans—as he waited and planned, positioning himself behind the door of the cell. He was in the middle of considering whether he should open a new can when the door began to grate open.

"What-"

A body stepped forward into the room, and Uari's hand shot out from behind the door to pull them further inward. They stumbled, falling flat on the ground, and he threw a round device outside.

He slammed the door shut, the god-awful screeching sound echoing across the hallway outside, and cracked the lustre he had taped to the lock of the door.

Lustre was, after all, light. It took a significant amount of condensed light to make anything work, and lustres made impressive weapons not only because of their lightness and adaptability but also because the release of that light from its condensed state was incredibly exothermic. The lustre sizzled, and the door lock began to melt.

Uari wasted no time, spinning right around to kick the body on the ground as he was beginning to scramble up, golden hair a mess. Io landed none-too-gently on the mattress, the uneven material causing some amount of trouble as he attempted to stand again.

Oh, now he felt guilty about the violence he was committing on a veritable teenager, especially one who seemed to treasure him, but he needed answers. He knelt, holding Io down with one knee, and reluctantly turned down the intensity of the sonic ring before discharging it directly into the back of his head. The user manual said that should have been enough to overwhelm and knock out an adult. For his own safety, he discharged it twice and prayed it wouldn't cause permanent mental damage to a child.

Io went still. Uari didn't trust that; a strong (expensive) set of nylon ropes was then used to tie Io up. Unlike Glasses, however, Old Uari seemed to be paranoid, and he didn't feel settled until every limb and finger of Io's was properly tied up.

He was lucky enough that the person who'd come was Io and not Glasses; the latter seemed harder to crack and had been the one holding Io back during their earlier conversation. On the downside, he found himself quite unwilling to use violence, so he was definitely limited in the methods he could use to convince this not-quite-adult.

When Io awoke, he found himself tied up, unconventionally, on an uncomfortable mattress. Uari wasn't within his sight, but he could feel his presence behind. "I didn't realise you were a pervert."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Uari feigned ignorance as he squatted behind his unwilling victim. "At any rate, we're going to do things my way this time."

"They'll just come and get me."

"Oh, I'm sure," Uari said as a muffled shout permeated from beyond the door: "What the f—where did all these fish come from?!"

Uari couldn't see Io's face, but he could feel the silence growing heavier by the second; pleased, he reached out and scraped a finger over Io's bare sole.

A jerk, and a shriek; ah, he got it on the first try! Wonderful.

"You wanna give me answers, or…?"

"You really think your dumb little touch is gonna get me to—ah!" Uari held Io's foot steadily in his lap and continued to brush his fingers lightly over the sensitive skin of his sole. Io was trying to jerk his foot away, but the way Io had tied him up didn't give him any leverage or momentum to do anything other than wiggle, so despite his best efforts Io remained captured and shrieking.

"Alright!" He paused momentarily to allow Io to catch his breath. "Let's start again. What do the Gravts want?"

"I'm never gonna tell—ah! No! Please!" Uari's fingers were relentless; he switched between one finger and several, and frequently provided pseudo-pauses to lull Io into a sense of safety. He knew it would transition into dread very quickly, and Io's intermittent shrieking was turning into desperate screeching.

"What. Do. The. Gravts. Want. Io?" He didn't let up this time, gleefully tickling Io's left foot until the teenager was near sobbing. "C'mon."

"We—we just want to go home!" The jerking was starting to get quite violent. Uari doubled down and used his own legs to hold him down.

"Home? Like to your previous universe?" Uari finally let go of his feet. It hadn't taken long to break Io; he supposed it might have been because the youth had limited experience with coercion.

"Yes, yes!" Io was breathing heavily, lying belly-down on the mattress with his face turned to the side to avoid suffocating. He might have been crying a little; Uari focused on getting answers instead of feeling useless pangs of guilt.

"Why? Do you not like it here?"

"We all want to go home! Y-you wanted to go home the most, so much you set up the Gravts! You collected us and told us we could all go home!"

Io really was crying now, and Uari felt just a little bit like a soggy sack of shit. Io had cracked very quickly; it was unlikely that he had ever been subjected to this kind of treatment, and judging from the way the words were spilling from his mouth, it also seemed like he had been under an immense amount of pressure.