Bartok escorted Youri through the halls of the Central Building himself, his footsteps unhurried the entire way, as if the whole affair were routine rather than the interrogation of a man once counted among the empire's most dangerous enemies alive. Under Alan's orders, he was to be placed under interrogation — and interrogated he was. The room they brought him to was lined in gray paneling, strange shapes shifting and crawling across the walls in slow, deliberate patterns, as though the surfaces themselves were breathing, inhaling and exhaling in a rhythm just slightly out of sync with anything human. It was otherwise empty, save for a single table set in the middle of the room and two chairs positioned across from each other, bolted to the floor.
Bartok took the seat opposite him, folding his hands neatly on the table, a faint smile settling over his face as though this were the most pleasant conversation he'd had all week, maybe all month.
"So, Duke. There's a question sitting on everyone's mind right now, all the way up to people whose names you'd probably recognize immediately. Given your history with Altopereh, why would the sync suddenly fail like that? People have died just trying to coax one usable line of connection out of that thing — thirteen of them, if the reports I've read are accurate — and yet here you are, the one it specifically asked for, rejected the instant you actually showed up. You have to admit, that's a strange way for things to go."
Youri chuckled, the sound low and unhurried. "I don't suppose you're aware that those machines are alive. Conscious, even. And just like the rest of us, they're allowed to change their minds every now and then."
Bartok let out a short laugh, genuine enough. "That's fair enough. It's well documented at this point that the God Units possess something close to a conscience of their own. But even granting them that will, they're known to favor their chosen vessels — known to deliberately lower the toll the sync demands of a pilot, just to make themselves easier to wield." He leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table now. "Which brings the question back around to where it started. Why would Altopereh reject the one vessel that embodied the very core of what it is?"
Youri leaned back in his chair, gaze steady on Bartok, entirely unhurried. "Let's just say broken promises have a way of eating at you. One way or another, sooner or later."
Bartok leaned back as well, entirely unbothered by the tone. "Sure. I'll grant you that much. But what I'm actually asking is much simpler than that. Did you deliberately sever your own link to Altopereh?" His tone sharpened slightly, the pleasantness draining out of it by degrees. "And don't bother lying to me. This room is a living lie detector. Those shapes moving through the walls aren't decoration — I won't bore you with the mechanics of how it works, but the moment you lie, they'll stagger, visibly, unmistakably. Trust me when I tell you there are far less pleasant ways to get through this conversation, if you'd rather not cooperate with me."
Youri's expression darkened, his eyes locked on Bartok's without a trace of hesitation. "I can give you exactly one answer to that question, and it's a simple one. I no longer owe an explanation to you, or to anyone else in this godforsaken empire, and I never really did to begin with. So you're free to do whatever you like with that. These are your empire's problems to solve, not mine — and as the renegade everyone already thinks I am, let me make one thing very clear."
He raised his shackled hands in front of him, curled them slowly into a fist, and extended his middle finger with an easy, untroubled smile.
"Fuck off."
The shapes writhing through the walls surged violently the instant the sentence left his mouth — no flicker of doubt in them at all, nothing but total, unambiguous confirmation, as clean a reading as the room had likely ever produced. Bartok broke into loud, genuine laughter, shaking his head at what he'd just heard, the sound echoing oddly off the living walls around them. He drew a slow, deliberate breath to compose himself, the smile lingering on his face even after the laughter faded entirely.
"I suppose you leave me no choice, then." He said it almost cheerfully, as though the outcome pleased him more than it should have. "We'll have to do this the hard way."
He rose from his chair and made his way to the door, unhurried, taking his time in a way that felt deliberately unbothered by everything that had just happened. He paused there for one last look back at Youri.
"You know, there was a time we had our doubts — back when you disappeared, all those years ago, without so much as a trace to follow. I told myself the infamous Reaper couldn't possibly be fated to go out quietly like that, not after everything he'd survived up to that point. And it turns out I was right." His smile widened, something almost fond behind it, the closest thing to genuine warmth Youri had seen on his face the entire conversation. "You, sitting in this room right now, are proof of it. So thank you, Youri Kronos. Thank you for still being alive. You hid yourself so well, you very nearly had me doubting my own judgment — and I don't doubt my own judgment often."
The four men who'd escorted Youri into the interrogation room stepped back inside the moment Bartok left, filling the space he'd vacated with the same silent, practiced efficiency they'd shown from the start. His final order to them was short, delivered over his shoulder without breaking stride, and left no room for interpretation.
"Take him to Brownie. He'll get what we need out of him, one way or another."