Planet Telex

He groaned as he pulled on the ropes binding his wrists -- muscles already sore from useless struggling in the interrogation chair as the chip was put in his head. The knots were tight, so he did what he was trained to do in situations like this -- pulling the rope fibres against the edges of his draconic scales, to weaken them to the point where he could snap them. It wasn't a comfortable thing to do, as the rope was thick enough that his scales began to loosen, but after a few minutes he yanked hard enough for it to give way.
"Why rope?" He muttered as he rolled onto his back and sat up to untie his ankles. "Advanced enough to have FTL and fucking mind chips, but they still throw me in a cell tied up with goddamn rope."
The dragon sat there to catch his breath for a minute, looking over his tattered diplomatic uniform. Anything he had that might help him -- his communication device, his pocket knife, hell, even his belt -- had been confiscated by the Avians that captured him. He knew why he'd been grabbed, as the Agent in the Accord Special Operations happily filled him in, along with every single mistake he'd made covering his tracks, and how that then led to everyone working with him being picked up as well. He did spare a thought for the Avian double agents he'd recruited over the past few months, but decided to not wonder what had most likely happened to them. He had to get out, first.

The iron cell door was old and rusted, as if it were installed a hundred years previously. The dragon held onto the bars and gave it a hard rattle, the lock not giving way. Frustrated, he gave the metal plate containing the lock a kick, but it still held.
"Ugh!" He exclaimed, stepping back from it and leaning against the wall, holding his head. His vision had gradually started swimming as time went by, patterns dancing around his peripheral like his optic nerves were being played with. He wondered if this was the chip, or whether this was just a side effect of the pounding headache...
He had been told during the chip insertion that it usually takes an hour to become 'enabled'. That it took time for it to locate and override every neuron in his mind, and connect it up to the chip that would then selectively control their firing. The Agent didn't tell him what it felt like, but she had said he "deserved to discover that" on his own, before he was thrown into the cell.
"What is this thing doing to me..." Groaning, he leant back fully against the wall, closing his eyes as to not have to experience the garbled mess his vision was becoming. "Please stop..."
He didn't know what he was begging to -- the chip? -- but it was all he could do. He occasionally opened his eyes for a second, hoping that the chip gave him some mercy and halted its enveloping control over his vision. Every time he checked, it got blurrier and blurrier, as if his sight was driven by a broken cathode ray tube... until it suddenly, with a flash of white, seemed that the chip had stopped corrupting it.
He opened his eyes, which seemed to work as normal, and blinked with surprise as the cell door was slightly ajar. Not trusting it, as if the chip had somehow altered what he was seeing, he stepped forward and carefully grabbed onto a bar. It was exactly where his eyes told him it was, so he gave it a push, and let it swing open into the hallway of the underground prison. He could still trust what he saw, he thought, at least for the present moment.

The cells in the hall numbered at a half dozen, a block code and number painted on the concrete above them. "F-3", his read. He wondered for a moment how many could be locked down here like he was, but then realised that he shouldn't have been able to read what he just did. Despite his diplomatic role, he never learned the Accord's language and relied on translators -- the script was dense and complicated, and he could not even begin to vocalise many words of the Avian-developed spoken language -- yet he was able to understand it there, clear as if it were his own language.
"No, no..." He muttered, as he realised the chip was beginning to alter his mental processes. He knew he needed to stop it, somehow, before it got worse.
The cell block door was open, as if he wasn't expected to even get out of the ropes. He took the exit, taking him to a hallway connecting all the cell blocks together. It sounded like he was the only one here, and he decided he had no time to check for others he knew. If they'd been there for more than an hour, they most likely wouldn't be his friends anymore...

He forced himself to ignore the persistent buzzing in his ears, most likely the side effect of the chip moving to those neurons next. He limped down the dimly-lit maze of hallways, desperately searching for some sort of signage or direction. The bare concrete floor and walls reminded him of building service-ways on his home planet -- but they all had lit exit signage, in case of emergency. The Accord clearly didn't care for the safety of anyone unfortunate enough to be on this level of the complex...
"Ah! Here we go..." He muttered as he saw a door with an accompanying sign beside it, the Accord insignia in the top left corner. Shuffling over to it, he read over the text for anything useful. "Level B23, Interrogation and Processing... Room 2030, Assistant Storage..."
The dragon shuddered at what that could possibly mean, and continued on down the hall, towards the next set of doors he could see in the seemingly endless hallway. The buzzing in his ears was getting worse, and he could sense the chip attempting to start feeding things to him by it -- milliseconds of attempted, broken synthesised voice played every so often, but not coherently or with any particular noticeable message yet. But it was surely a matter of time.

None of the doors he encountered had any sort of escape route before them. He had considered if the interrogation rooms he'd occasionally passed would have had something to help him, but he doubted it -- he'd be attempting surgery on himself at best, and encounter an Agent in the middle of torturing some other poor soul at worst. Maybe if he got upstairs, to the ground floor, he would be able to find someone -- anyone -- to help him...
Unlikely.
The dragon blinked as the words flashed in his vision, written in a glitchy digitised Avian script. "What's unlikely?" He asked, to the empty hallway.
Escape.
"You don't control me, yet." He snapped back, continuing to drag his sore self down the hallway, hoping for some form of service elevator at the end.
It is inevitable.
He ignored the words, growling at the infernal chip in his head. He was determined to prove it wrong, although he did have to admit any form of escape was unlikely.
You reach the ground floor. Then... what?
Looking away did nothing, as the words hovered right wherever he looked. "I tell everyone what you've done."
The Avians? They'll thank us. Your kind? You won't get to. You can't even speak that language anymore.
He went to growl an insult in his native language, but nothing came out. He tried to think of the sounds that made it up, but was drawing nothing but blanks. "Wha- hey! No! You can't do that!" The feeling of being unable to speak anything but Galactic Common was an uncomfortable one, the language far less expressive and more awkward than that of his own. He even found his internal monologue stripped of his own language, replaced with the Avian language that the chip had forced him to understand.
Turn around. You will not be harmed further if you surrender yourself.
"I'll just be turned into one of those mindless Assistants, if I do." He muttered, and pressed on.

A fuzzy feeling was pushing into his mind, making his brain feel like cotton. Thinking was hard, but he was determined not to stop doing it, hoping that using what seemed to remain uncorrupted in his mind would defend it from tampering. Even then, when he did finally reach the end of the hallway, and the elevator, it took a few seconds for him to remember which symbol meant "up".
The pairing process is much easier if you do not resist.
"Urrgh... I won't let you win..." He growled, pressing the up button repeatedly.
That elevator leads nowhere for you.
A small tinny ding played from the elevator speakers as the doors slid open to a thankfully empty car. The dragon quickly stepped in, locating the panel, and tried to figure out which would take him to the lobby of whatever building he was in. He couldn't read the Avian script anymore -- so he jabbed at one that was a few floors from the bottom, hoping it would take him at least closer.
You won't escape this building al
He blinked at the half-constructed words in his vision, the text cutting itself off once the doors closed.
SIGNAL LOST. Please re-enter Accord Central Communication range and notify your Processing Coordinator to continue.
"You're playing with me." He said, doubtful. But, looking down at the panel again, he found he was able to read the buttons again, hitting the ground floor one while he had a chance. Was it not controlling him anymore?
SIGNAL LOST. Please re-enter Accord Central Communication range and notify your Processing Coordinator to continue.
The words across his vision were annoying, but he felt like he could think again, so decided to count his lucky stars on the rest of the trip. Eventually, the doors opened.
Accord Central Communication link reacquired. Please notify your Processing Coordinator to continue.
He intended on doing no such thing. A quick look around the immediate lobby showed that it was dark and empty, allowing him to step out without worrying about being seen. From the lobby, he could see the wide-open reception area, administration desks facing several storeys of seamless windows and arching metal. Behind the windows were the blackness of the night sky, only lit up by the streetlamps on the road and the occasional window from a building. He was so close...

This part of the building had much friendlier signage. Bathrooms and locker rooms for staff were available on this floor, and he followed the signage. He passed through a few unlocked staff-only doors and empty cubicle-filled offices to get there, but nobody was working late, and there wasn't any security response -- nor security cameras, from what he could tell.
"I had better clean myself up if I'm going to get to a spaceport without raising alarm..." He muttered to himself, opening every locker he could, until he finally found an Accord uniform that looked like it would fit him. He stripped off his tattered diplomatic uniform and shoved it into the locker, out of sight. By the time anyone found it, he hoped that he'd be off-world.
"Ugh, Avian clothes..." He wriggled into the replacement, quietly cursing the lack of clothing that he'd consider masculine, and just putting up with the form-fitting garment. It was a black "dress" that went down to just above the knees, luckily with buttons at the back that fit his tail. He could only guess that were originally meant for tail-feathered Avians, although he didn't remember seeing any Avians with protruding tail feathers here... "Fine. It'll do."
He followed the signs out and back down the hall, all pointing to the exit. It was a different way than he went before, but the signs did say 'exit', not 'lobby'... hopefully an off-street emergency exit.
"You've got this, Vermilion..." He muttered, rushing down the hallways, ignoring the pain in his exhausted body. He wouldn't rest until he got out of this damned building -- and before long, there was a set of two swinging doors that said "EXIT". "Yes, finally..." He said, bringing his shoulder up to barge through them.

Peregrine looked up from her datapad as the dragon slammed open the interrogation room door and collapsed on the ground.
"Well. Didn't expect you so soon." She remarked, standing from her chair, and motioning to the pair of Accord soldiers to pick him up from the floor.
"Ngh... wha- hey!" The dragon weakly squirmed in the grip of the soldiers, unable to use his actual strength to get free. "Where... where's the... exit..."
"Just relax." Peregrine said as the dragon was dumped into the interrogation chair and fully restrained. "Coming back to reality like that will cause some disorientation."
"You... no, no, not you..." Vermilion said, eyes widening as he realised who the Agent standing there was. "That, no... I was escaping! I had a disguise, and the chip stopped, and..." He uselessly tried to pull his paws free from the straps in desperation. "I was so close!"
"Yes, well. It's too bad that it was all in your head." Peregrine said, sitting back down in her chair, facing him. "You two are relieved. Go get some dinner." She motioned to the soldiers, who nodded, saluted, and promptly left her alone with the captive.
"What do you... what do you mean?" Vermilion asked, still quite disoriented. "I..."
"You entered the elevator car. The chip disconnected when it closed, didn't it?"
"Yes, it... it lost connection... but..."
"When that elevator door closed is when your reality ended."
Vermilion's eyes went wider and he began struggling in the chair again. "N-no! I... I escaped!"
"You escaped the cell, which I unlocked when you weren't paying attention. You went right to where we wanted you to go." Peregrine grinned at her captive. "You pressed the floor button, the doors closed, your reality ended. Everything from then on, we created."
"But... the lobby... the offices..." Vermilion said, in part disbelief and half horror. "I opened doors, I felt opening them!"
"The lobby, the offices, they were all just storage rooms. You never looked too closely at anything in there, did you? Just the signs."
"The changing rooms! I... I..." He looked down, whimpering when the black dress he was expecting was in fact a muted grey. An Assistant's uniform. "But... I didn't put this on!"
"Yes, you did. They were really changing rooms, but on the Assistant living floors. Luckily, you didn't barrel into anyone in your haze. Or, for that matter, collide with an Assistant."
"But... I..."
"Tell me." Peregrine said with a smile. "Do you remember seeing any buttons on any other uniform, in the months you've lived here? No, you don't. That is a custom uniform, just for your form. Well, for your tail, anyway."
Vermilion whined and looked away. "So... so... this was all just... a trick?"
"Yes, yes it was. You had no chance of escape. Your fate was sealed the moment we made the incision."
"I... I..." Vermilion looked down at his uniform, and couldn't help but feel dread over what it signified. "What... what happens now?"
"I hoped you were going to ask that." Peregrine stood, and pulled an instrument trolley into Vermilion's view. He dared not look what was on it. "Commencing interrogation number I-002. Subject is former Tarnash Empire Diplomat ░▓▒▒▓░ ▓░▒▒▓░░, reassigned as 00D5-C41-B9941B0H 'Vermilion'. Questions begin."