Who: Jason Song, Vivian Yahni What: Interrogation When: (backdated) Monday, March 16 Where: Unknown Rating: PG Status: Complete
It seemed like Jason had sat in the same dark room for hours. The chains attached to the shackles around his wrists and ankles kept him from moving from the chair, not that he had any desire to wander the room. Aside from the table and the reflective glass of the observational window, there wasn't anything to it. They hadn't bothered to turn on the light. At least when he was grabbed from the street, he wasn't beaten into submission. He learned his lessons well from the first time. Around the time that the door opened, he was wondering if anyone had noticed his absence yet.
The dark was as useful in blinding a person as light itself, but marginally less painful. And if they were going to get anything out of him, Vivian needed her prisoner willing to cooperate. Preferably scared, too, but from what she saw in the sliver of light that burst in from the hallway before the door closed behind her, Jason Song was not as easy to scare as predicted.
Pity. They could've done without the effort this time around. She stayed close to the door, although the layout of the small interrogation room was simple to enough to remember. She was human too - she had the same faulty vision. She was prey to the same unease in the dark. But she was here to get answers too, and that took precedent over anything she felt or thought. Like a good cog in the machine, she stepped forward.
"Do you know why you're here?"
"No. Just like the last time this happened to me." Jason answered dryly, trying to look at the woman who entered the room. The fact she kept it dark made it even difficult, "it could be anything, couldn't it? You guys were able to make something out of nothing back into nothing again, so why is this any different? Other than not trying to beat me to death first."
The fact that he had been picked up before - in connection with a raid meant to clamp down on the HOS - wasn't lost on Vivian. She filed it away, not having been part of the decision-making process on that mission. If she had, she would've been able to tell Command that they were barking up the wrong tree. She knew where to find HOS, if she needed them.
"You have a history with the police. But I am not police, Mr Song. This is not downtown Seattle. You are not accused of spreading false information about the government and generating panic. Compared to this, those would be minor offenses."
"According to the police, all they have on me is an unpaid parking ticket," Jason clarified and wished he could cross his arms if they weren't shackled the way they were. "I don't think the police had anything to do with my arrest, but the people you work for. I also think that whatever you guys are accusing me of are as made up as the minor offenses. I haven't done anything."
It was an answer he could give honestly since she had already cleared him from the offenses he did commit. "Do you have any proof? Anything?"
She turned the lights on without warning, neon white flooding the room. She wanted to see his body language - it'd tell her more than words ever could - as she got down to business. "Did you help her?"
The lights were unexpected, and after an indefinite time sitting in the dark; painful. The blinding headache stopped the eyeroll he was in the midst of doing. He blinked the tears that formed in his eyes as they adjusted to the light of the room and tried to get a good look at the woman.
"Is that what this is about?" Jason exclaimed in exasperation, "I didn't help her, I never was able to reach her. I called the contact information I was given, she never got back to me. When the deadline passed, I left a report with the pairing office. What else was I supposed to do? There isn't a tutorial out there for people who get ditched."
Vivian looked to the mirror glass and restrained a smile. There would be a paper trail if he was telling the truth. By the time she was finished, they'd know. And if he wasn telling the truth, he'd be on his way back to the real world. Back to causing trouble for them. Not a happy thought, there.
"Your mother and sister were both recently paired, correct? This must be a stressful time." The man in the family, suddenly having to accept two strangers in the lives of his only living relatives. It was easy to infer anger. "It would be understandable how someone might use that as a reason to act in what he or she believes to be the right way at the time. Emotions cloud judgment. It happens."
Jason's jaw clentched subconsciously, he could tell she was baiting him and it was working. "They were paired. My sister was paired with a friend of mine and my mom was paired with one of my professors. I know they'll be taken care of. The only stressful thing that happened to me was I got beaten up and arrested for something I didn't do. I'm not a criminal."
"Then perhaps you should revise the company you keep," she suggested softly, her back to the mirror now because she didn't need to be read when she could read him instead. "We know enough about your brother in law. There is no debate on the degree of illegality involved in what he does. What interests me is how you've become involved. College student at the University of Washington. Decent GPA. Then your sister comes to Seattle. And then your mother. Was it the family reunion you expected? Additional members and all?"
"I didn't know they were moving to Seattle until after they moved. I didn't expect them to move, I thought they were happy in California." Jason sighed, "I didn't like that they were paired, but I'm glad they're paired with people I know I can trust. Dan runs a blog and a foundation that gives you guys bad press, as far as I know that isn't illegal. I go to school and I work, I don't have time for a lot of friends...or start trouble."
A tilt of the head. "Don't insult my intelligence, Mr Song. You and I both know what your friend does and what he's involved in. For your sake, I hope we won't find anything to suggest he's coopted your help." She pulled up the chair across from him and sat down, hands loosely joined. "Do you think it's possible your friend was involved in helping Ms Alden leave the country?"
"I'm not insulting your intelligence, I'm only telling you what I know. He has his website, but he did marry my sister after he was paired. You won't find anything on me, because there isn't anything." Jason said, wishing the woman wasn't trying so hard to fish for answers to suit whatever form of guilt she seemed to have and see that he was telling her the truth.
"I don't think it is possible he was involved in helping her. He didn't know her. I didn't know her. I was going to marry her anyway, like I was supposed to, why would my friend get in the way of something I wanted to do?"
Vivian shrugged, unruffled by his vehement denials. "You tell me. How is it that you two knew each other before he married your sister?" The timeline didn't fit, of that much she was sure. The dates were all wrong.
"We met in a chatroom, about music," Jason answered quietly, the words weighing heavily on him even if he spoke the truth. Perhaps it was merely thinking of their relationship, and worrying over Dan possibly blaming Jason's arrest on him. "we chatted everyday. That's how we became friends. I spent so much time with school and work, he was the closest thing to a friend I had since moving here. Then we met in person..." Jason looked away and shrugged.
"Does that answer your question?"
No, but the looking away did. Why did he break eye-contact. Why did he shrug. What was it he didn't know. Or that she didn't.
"Still, it's quite the chance you had there. You meet a much older man in a chatroom and then he ends up marrying your sister." It could be chance or it could be a hacking. Hoffman had been linked to the House in the past. It could happen. "You were taken into custody briefly while you were at his home, correct?"
Jason declined to comment on the odds of Dan being paired with Jae-Mi, even though it was a coincidence he had a feeling he wouldn't be successful in convincing her that. "Yeah, I was at his place. We marathon movies on Saturdays."
"What kind of movies?" she pressed, curious. Trying to discern where the truth ended and the lies began. What could two men with such an age difference, with so different experiences and interests, possibly have in common?
"First we went through every Hitchcock movie ever made, and then whatever came in the mail through NetFlix." Jason shrugged again, trying to downplay the extent of the time the two spend together. "Usually mysteries."
Films weren't her speciality, but even if Hitchock had only made, say, fifty films in his lifetime, at two hours on average per film, that meant a hundred hours spent in each other's company. "You must get along like a house on fire." It wasn't a question. She had no doubt about that, but suddenly every other impression she'd built collapsed like a house of cards.
"You could say that," Jason nodded and smiled faintly. "We have a lot in common. What we don't have in common, balances out. He's my best friend. There's nothing suspicious about being friends with my brother-in-law, is there?" Falling in love with him was an entirely different matter.
"We've already established that his being your brother-in-law has no bearing on your relationship with him." The dates. Vivian narrowed her eyes. She was missing a puzzle piece. Something to make sense of this. "Aren't you uncomfortable, knowing that your sister is involved with a man so much older than she is?"
"No, before she was matched she was interested in someone even older than him." Jason answered and looked across the table at her, "Even if I didn't know about her being attracted to older men, I'm not uncomfortable about his age. I'm not uncomfortable about their relationship at all."
At all. For the only son of a very tight-knit family, he was incredibly relaxed about the whole thing. "Do you remember what you said about you relationship to Mr Hoffman when you were first brought in for questioning?" Vivian asked, measuring her words. It was a risky route to take.
"I had a concussion from when I had my head bashed into the floor, I don't remember much about that night," Jason said with a frown, "we're just friends. If they asked that's what I would have said."
Vivian smiled. "But it's not. You were, admittedly, less sure of yourself back then - probably due to the head injury - but you were also more candid."
Jason paled, he honestly couldn't remember the conversation he had with his interrogator, though there was a possibility that the woman was making it up. "I don't remember. I remember questions about computers and stuff I didn't understand, but I know I wouldn't say anything about what isn't there."
"I don't think you made anything up. I believe you were very scared then. But you aren't scared now and your responses vary wildly from one instance to the other." Vivian made sure to keep herself very still, make it sound very natural, as she added: "You claimed you were involved romantically with Mr Hoffman." If she was wrong, he'd deny it and she'd lose the upper hand. It was a risk.
"I wouldn't have said that," Jason answered quickly, doubts about what he might have said fading. While he may have been more candid about certain things, outing himself to strangers wasn't something he'd do, especially when scared. If he truly did, she would have to call him on it. "Is that what you think is going on?"
An arched eyebrow. She wasn't ready to back down. Not yet, at least. "Isn't it?" After all, he hadn't denied it, just claimed it was unlikely he'd have said it back then. There were too many variables. "You spend an inordinate amount of time together. Perhaps more so than your sister spends with him."
"It's true, we do spend a lot of time together. Even more than my sister. So?" Jason snapped, "That doesn't explain why I got ditched, does it? If-if I was gay and in a relationship with a man, it would make more sense if I ran not the other way around."
Vivian's fingers uncurled like claws. "One doesn't preclude the other. Besides, if you are in a relationship with a man, it would be incentive to the contrary. You'd have more of a reason than ever to stay." Not to mention his family. Not to mention school, work. His life.
Considering she was pressing the issue so hard, trying to get him to confess, leaned hard that she was bluffing about him admitting his relationship with Dan. "I'd stay for my family, they need me here. If I was in love with someone, man or woman, I'd stay faithful. I'd want them to stay faithful to me. I was planning on marrying her, I even filled out the paperwork. You've got it all wrong."
Vivian pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth and resisted the urge to click it, like she used to do when she was a girl, before she learned the value of silence. "I see." She didn't believe it anymore than she believed Jason Song was guilty of aiding and abetting Riley Alden. If he had, she might have succeeded in making it to Canada. Whatever his brushes with the law, he had connections with the House of Spades, albeit indirectly, and at a time like this, that was dangerous.
She rose wordlessly and turned to the one-way mirror. "He's all yours, Doctor." Jason Song was a footnote, as far as she was concerned, but he had to be managed. Contained. No more mistakes.