You'd rather interrogate Adder Adjutant alone

In the end, you remembered your foremost mission: to be suspicious of your allies. Despite their good work during your missions together, they'd given you plenty of reasons to be suspicious. Vaarvel was all too eager to get in a room together with the Adjutant and her motivations were, as always, nearly impossible to discern. Au Revoir, on the other hand, was sure to be too passionate about this particular captive; it would be a miracle of the Adjutant left the room uninjured. You told Goodbye you'd take the lead on the interrogation and that the other agents were dismissed for now.

"R-Really?" Au Revoir asked, instantly critical. Vaarvel, on the other hand, sat in silence, wearing a cool smirk. "Ciao, this bitch is dangerous and crafty. I don't know if you want to be in the room alone with her..."

"No, he's the right man for it. Adder Adjutant won't try anything with CEDIT security all around her. His insight for this interrogation is to be trusted," Goodbye informed the others, sticking up for you in a surprising show of boldness. "After all, the two of you are sure to hold personal grudges against the Adjutant, after hunting her down for so long. Ciao is comparatively impartial."

You nodded, agreeing with Goodbye's judgment.

"P-Plus, she might let her guard down if she thinks it's just him, with none of the Goodbye Girls!"

And there's the insult. You sighed, but nodded along. That might be a decent point.

Vaarvel chuckled, then looked up from her chair towards you. "Very well. Don't drop the ball, Ciao..."

Finally, the time had come: you arrived first to the interrogation room, finding Adder Adjutant waiting for you there with her hands together, handcuffed to the table in front of you. The interrogation room was a sterile gray color with no features apart from cameras recording in either corner and long, glass windows on either side, obviously advertising the intent to allow observers. You wouldn't be able to get away with a single bit of funny business; it felt as though all of CEDIT was watching this moment. Even Vaarvel would have a hard time pulling off a trick in these conditions.

The sour, Asian woman across from you regarded you with narrow eyes and a tight frown. In the place of her usual uniform, she wore a gray prisoner's garb, high-necked and mostly featureless apart from a row of buttons down the chest. Her features really were pretty boyish-- perfect for deceiving others as to her gender while under the guise of the leader of Adder. You took a certain satisfaction in having her here in front of you, deprived of that persona and as just an ordinary woman... if one highly talented in leading terrorists and practicing martial arts.

"Finally, you've come. You're here to have me spill my secrets, no doubt. I'm the highest value target you could have ever conceived of getting your hands on." She spoke the words evenly, sounding somehow in control of the situation despite the circumstances.

You knew too many women like this now to be thrown off your game by a terrorist who was merely well-spoken. You nodded, then took the seat across from her, straight-backed and official in your suit and tie. It was a blessed relief to be in a situation like this... so often, you found yourself doing insane field work or odd, sexual interrogations at the behest of your boss. Finally, this was a chance to just handle it properly, like an agent of CEDIT.

"The only problem is that I don't intend to answer a single one of your questions," the woman continued, staring blankly at you with her lips in a tight frown. "You're still beneath me."

You told the Adjutant she may be misunderstanding something. Torture was not something you could condone, but CEDIT technology had its ways of extracting answers, just as it had its ways of extracting her from the Palm of Royalty. You told her she should stop being so damn cocky and offer you some tips willingly, if she wanted her accommodations to remain comfortable and with a standard degree of privacy.

"It's hilarious how you still think you have so much time," the woman spoke, tilting her eyebrows up with a clownish smile you'd never seen before. It looked both out of place on her dour face and somehow eerie. "Is anyone else joining us today? Or have they already, in one of the other rooms?"

With a cold frown, you shook your head no, telling her it was just the two of you. This wasn't about Vaarvel or Au Revoir. This interrogation was just about the most wanted terrorist in the known world: Adder Adjutant, the elusive leader of the most troublesome terrorist organization.

At this, the woman lowered her eyebrows, seeming confused. "No one is coming? You're doing this yourself?" She looked increasingly perplexed as she processed that information. "Maybe I have more time than I thought..."

It sounded like she really was underestimating you without the presence of the other Goodbye Girls. You asked her if she planned to be forthcoming.

"I suppose I can be."

Such a strange answer... You asked her to begin with some basics. You wanted her name and her history. The identity of Adder Adjutant had always been a huge question mark for CEDIT... It was finally time to see past the curtain.

"My name is Huizhong Shi. You won't find much about it; nobody's called me that for a long time. Before I was Adder Adjutant, my codename was Snakeskin. I was a talented deception artist... sound familiar?" The woman gave a wry smile, folding her hands one over another as she continued to speak plainly and easily. "I am the current Adder Adjutant, appointed because facelessness and deception is exactly what we needed from the leader. You understand, right? I'm a figurehead. I'm not the lady who comes up with our ideas or organizes our global operations."

You had always suspected as much, although it was discouraging to hear that straight from the mouth of the Adjutant. Still, the words from a serpent have been known to be misleading, even when truthful. You questioned what her real role was. Outside of the appearance on the Palm of Royalty, the only time she'd ever been seen by the public was when she put out a message to claim some sort of terrorist activity. Why did she break tradition and appear just that one time?

The Adjutant smirked. "Puzzle it out yourself."

An annoying answer, but you attempted to do just that. What was Adder Adjutant-- Huizhong Shi-- doing aboard the ship that day? Did it have something to do with Nora? Something to do with Bound Blood? You ventured a guess: her presence had been required, as she was the highest member of Adder, to make sure Adder had a way to keep the various terrorists in line.

"Ridiculous. There are many other operatives of Adder who could have handled that," she scoffed. "I'm under no obligation to give you the answers."

You reminded her that she was, growing increasingly frustrated.

"Fair enough," she chuckled. "I'd say... somebody high up in Adder, with real power, wanted you to get the idea that you'd apprehended Adder Adjutant. They wanted you to think we were in disarray."

That did make sense. Even as the situation became clearer, other parts became more confusing. You questioned her: why would she give you this info?

"I'm no longer Adder Adjutant. In prison, I'll just be Huizhong. What does she have to gain from keeping secrets any longer?" the slender woman answered with a question, shrugging her narrow shoulders. "One way or another, it's over for me. I'll either rot in prison as an unknown or I'll be killed by one of the many CEDIT agents with comeuppance to get against me. My days are numbered. Perhaps it just entertains me to let somebody else know that capturing me changes nothing."

You wanted to reassure her that no harm would come to her in CEDIT custody, and you did, but the promise felt hollow coming out of your mouth. After all, one of the chief people who probably wanted her dead was Au Revoir. Whether it was her or someone else, Adder Adjutant would probably die in your custody. However, you couldn't change any of your decisions based on that fact. She'd sealed her own fate many times over. She had no one to blame but herself.

"Sure." Once again, she sounded as though she had no stake in it. "Ah, I pity you. All you've acquired in your conquest is useless little Huizhong... There are so many more interesting things your own allies could tell you, if only you could chain them to a table like this."

You spent a while longer interrogating her, but as her interest lessened, the usefulness of her answers did too. When the time for a break finally came, you yielded your time to other agents designated as interrogation specialists, who entered the room carrying files and briefcases. You wondered if they'd have better luck than you did... While the information you'd been granted had been interesting, her words stuck in your craw. First off, it sounded like you hadn't handicapped Adder nearly as hard as you intended by removing their supposed "leader." Secondly, she had a point... what would it be like to read Vaarvel's thoughts and know everything she was thinking? How much could you learn if you could see into their histories as agents, before and after becoming Goodbye Girls?

It drove home the point: your mission, granted to you by Goodbye, was far from over.

Vaarvel met you later, placing one hand on her hip and wearing her usual smile, which seemed somehow more annoying than usual given what you'd been told during the interrogation. "Are you disappointed, thinking you failed, Nathaniel? On the contrary... I'd say you did quite well. Goodbye will be pleased to learn this crucial information. Even if it de-confirms what we thought we knew about Adder, it's vital that we learned it. I don't think the Adjutant would have opened up to Au Revoir or me the way she did you... In this case, excluding me was the right choice." You couldn't tell if she was genuinely reassuring you or just picking on you. "Hm hm hm... If Adder has no true charismatic leader, maybe we've been overestimating them all along."

You hoped you could believe that...