A diplomat is found to be spying on the Accord, and is brought in for ‘questioning’. An Accord agent sees some use of them. Non-con mind control, enslavement, identity modification/erasure, physical violence, dystopian themes. ~2000 words.
"I will never understand your culture's featherbrained romanticisation with loanwords."
"It means, in short, someone who is not appreciated by the hosting society." The agent continues, ignoring the insult. "And you seem to be one such person, according to your file."
The captive hissed back, flicking his tongue in disgust. "I've done nothing wrong, and you know it. Besides, I have diplomatic immunity!"
"And we just warped a hundred and fifty capital cruisers into your home system. You think that matters anymore?"
The lizard went flush. "You... you're lying."
"Whether I'm lying or not, it doesn't matter." The agent kicked the interrogation seat back flat, the lizard trying to shield his eyes from the spotlight pointed right at his face. "What matters is if you are. What's your name, and your position?"
"Ugh... Salesh. Imperial Diplomatic Corps."
"No, no. Your actual position."
Salesh stayed silent.
"Fine, then." The agent replied, unholstering her datapad, and tapping away for a couple of seconds. "Let's try again. What's your actual position?"
"Special Agent, Imperial Intelligence." Salesh blurted out, pulling on his shackled wrists once he realised what he said, wanting to hold his mouth shut. "N-no! You're making me say things! It's not true!"
"Oh, is it not really true?"
Salesh turned his head to stare at the Accord agent, who had returned her focus to the datapad. "It's... it's true! I mean, no, no, it's... it's... ngghh, what are you doing to me?!"
"Just making it so you can't lie. Kind of sad that years of training can be turned off with the flip of a switch..."
Salesh's eyes went wide as he realised what had happened, and started frantically pulling on the shackles holding his wrists and ankles to the interrogation chair. "You put... you put one of those chips in me, didn't you?"
A hint of an avian smile could be just seen on the shadowed face of the Accord agent. "Maybe."
Salesh wasn't sure how they should feel about the spotlight shining right into their eyes. They by now couldn't see clearly, and their eyes were watering after being ordered to keep looking up, but it was keeping him warm in the otherwise cold and empty interrogation room. The agent had left by now, after a barrage of questions that he had no choice but to answer. He really didn't want to answer, as he knew that he'd just given away the identities of everyone in his cell... but, when he'd been grabbed and forced into an unmarked transport vehicle, he knew someone had already given them up. Who was it? He swore that he'd kill them himself if he found out who... not that it seemed like he'd have the chance, or that the Accord won't do it first.
"Good, we've verified what you've given us with the other captures. The Accord thanks you for your vital services in the efforts against your former empire." The Accord agent said as she returned.
"Former?" Salesh spat. "What, you think I'm working for you now?"
"Yes." The agent held up her datapad, which caused the lizard to shrink back a little. "We want your little spymaster."
"N-never. I don't care what you put in my head, I'll never bow to the Great Accord... the... the Great... no..." Salesh tried to force the words he wanted out, but they just kept on getting replaced by something else.
"Fine, if you need some convincing of the cost of not working with us..."
Salesh yelped as a piece of cloth was forced into his mouth, his body refusing to resist as he was gagged, silver tape wrapping around his snout to keep it shut around the muffling fabric. He struggled weakly, from hours of pulling on the shackles, and his blood temperature only kept up by the spotlight, trying to do something to help his position. Nothing could be done, however, as the agent prepared her subject. Alligator clips felt painful, but the shock through them was felt much more...
The warm sunlight was an improvement over the frost of the underground torture halls that he'd spent the past day in, but Salesh didn't feel any more comfortable in his skin. An Accord agent around every corner, civil monitoring drones fixing on him as they hovered past on their usual schedules... he couldn't move without his Accord handler, who he was to call 'Peregrine', knowing it. He rubbed his sore wrists, hoping her past treatment didn't show on him, and blow his cover.
"Civil Monitoring says your contact has arrived." The chip read out in his mind, the feeling of having a computerised voice in his head ordering him around quite disconcerting.
The public park, a long, thin rectangle of Avian habitat past, was where Salesh usually met with his spymaster. The strip of thick forest was large enough that they could enter in completely different places and make their way to each other outside of the civil monitoring drones usual paths, and cluttered enough with underbrush that hiding packages or notes was easy. He had left such a note earlier that day, one of the spymaster's runners checking for it. And now he was here.
"And what do I get out of this?" Salesh muttered to himself as he began down the forest trail, wondering if Peregrine would hear.
"You don't get put on the firing line." The chip replied, in its harsh, digitised Avian tone. "Yet, anyway."
He decided not to think on how long his usefulness will last, and just kept walking forward, down the path he always did. There was a park bench near the middle of the park, that he sat down on. He took a book from his pocket, a green fiction paperback, the usual "all OK" signal. He daren't bring the yellow one from his apartment, lest they asked the meaning of the colour, and he had to explain how it was a call for help...
"Salesh, I must ask what made you request something today." The spymaster said in a hissed tone, quietly sitting down on the other side of the bench. "I thought you knew I was in sessions all day, we discussed this last week."
"Well..." Salesh replied, glancing over at the suited diplomat. "Something came up. Something that couldn't wait."
"And?"
Salesh tried to focus his mind on what he wanted to say. He was lost, but maybe the diplomat could get away. "The Accord, they're... they're... ngghh..."
"They're...? Spit it out."
"On... to... us..." Salesh forced out, before his mind started feeling like it was burning. The chip was not happy with his words. "Go!" He said, before the chip in his mind subdued him, causing him to buckle over and fall to the ground, not even putting his hands out to break the fall.
The diplomat looked around, panicked, and stood up to run, but by that time the Accord had already converged on the meeting place. Large avians, dressed in black and wearing body armour, encircled the pair of lizards, plasma rifles trained on the non-subdued target, shouting orders to not move. Salesh was left writhing on the ground in pain for his disobedience, the mind-blinding sensory overload remaining for what felt like an eternity. It only stopped when he felt himself thrown in the back of a vehicle, the white flashing in every one of his senses being replaced with a dull headache and muddled vision. He couldn't move -- his body ached just thinking about it -- but he could make out a Ministry uniformed Avian climbing up into the truck and closing the doors behind them.
"Untrustworthy lizards." She muttered, before giving the curled up spy a kick with her military boots, causing him to howl in pain. "Ought to have just shot you out there. If you weren't valuable as an exotic, I would have done it myself."
Salesh was too dazed to think what an 'exotic' was, and just stayed where he was. Not that his body let him do anything else.
The next few hours were a pained blur, the trip back to the Ministry being uncomfortable, and the rough-handling, handcuffing, and shoving of his poor, strained body being almost too much to take. The reapplied cloth gag and tape left him just groaning by the time he had been dragged to an empty, concrete cell, and forced inside. Salesh immediately buckled as the support of the two Accord soldiers went away, falling onto the hard floor, not even able to catch himself with his cuffed wrists. What grazes he'd sustained from writhing on the concrete path only got worse as the rough floor injured him further. Unable and unwilling to get up, there he lay, mind still tingling lightly from the 'punishment' the chip had given him. It had exhausted him to the point where he could almost pass out, if it weren't for his fear of Peregrine showing up. She didn't, at least for a while.
"Useless, absolutely useless to me." Peregrine said, the soldier accompanying her unlocking the cell as she spoke. "It was supposed to be a clean pick-up. We get who we want, we use you as a bargaining chip, you get traded for some of ours."
The cell door swung open, allowing Peregrine a step inside to give the dazed and aching lizard another kick to the stomach.
"You had to resist, like your training told you to do. You had to make things difficult. You couldn't just obey a simple set of instructions."
Salesh spat, trying to get it on Peregrine's boots, in a show of defiance. "And... what? You're just going to shoot me now? You... you'd have done it anyway, I know."
Peregrine gave him another kick, wiping off the lizard spit on his by now crumpled and torn diplomatic uniform. "No. You're going to be made an example of."
It was an interesting feeling, being drained of all control. Salesh was plenty used to the chair by now, shackles holding down his ankles and wrists down, and added straps meaning he could do nothing but squirm under them. However, this was purely physical -- it kept his body still, but not his mind. He would usually be plotting methods of escape, subversion, and distraction in a situation like this, but Peregrine made sure none of this was possible. The chip planted in the lizard's head was no longer just a surveillance tool, but now a method of outright total control. There was no longer the requirement to hide its effects from the otherwise un-tampered host, and operate at a bandwidth low enough that routine counter-surveillance scanning couldn't detect it, so Peregrine decided to flip all the virtual switches.
"You probably have more information of use to us, so let's see what's in that head of yours..." Peregrine said, knowing full well that the lizard was now beyond being able to consciously respond to her. She liked saying it anyway.
Re-living every memory he had would be distressing, if it weren't for the chip suppressing anything approaching free thought. But, as the chip asked, his mind delivered, replaying back everything he remembered for it to record, catelogue, and store. Every secret, mental note, and past experience there for Peregrine's inspection.
"I'll browse through this later..." She said as it finished transferring everything Salesh ever knew to Accord databanks. "Now, for an assignment."
Peregrine already knew where he would go. He'd end up as a trophy of her department in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, an Assistant of "exotic" origin, an example of the Accord's reach. It didn't matter that he came here himself, as nobody except her would ever know that. Every intelligence file on him, every form, every note that he ever existed inside the Accord's borders would be either destroyed, or redacted. The only thing that would remain is his serial, and his identifier.
Form 21-7B: Assignment of New Duties
Subject: 0000-0FC-4C5BA82A "Oscen"
Assignment: Assistant, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Sector C, 173rd Floor
Direct Report: Agent ██████████████ "Peregrine"
Cessation Date: N/A