Barry and Bette vanished from the interrogation room in a crack of displaced air.
"Satsuki — scrub tonight's surveillance. Remove Bette, remove the Flash. The interrogation room footage needs to show the soldiers starting to drink partway through." Jude was already looking around the room, taking inventory. "We'll need some props."
"Where would alcohol come from in a military interrogation room?"
"I'll source a few cases."
"Very helpful of you."
Jude unstoppered the gourd at his hip and let the air do what it was going to do, then opened the system shop.
[Dry and Roasted (Immortal Delicacy)] Price: 90,000 asset points
The Immortal Wine obtained by upgrading the Lamb Brew. Each sip immediately restores 18% of current maximum health, then 6% per second for eight seconds — 66% total. Brew slots increase from one to two.
"Ask me where to find the tavern; a shepherd boy points toward the blossoming village on the hill."
The Thousand-Day Intoxication had been the tactical choice — purchased specifically for tonight.
[A Thousand Days of Intoxication (Divine Grade)] Price: 200,000 asset points
Each sip restores 60% of current maximum health. Three slots. As its name suggests: the aroma alone is enough to lay low even those accustomed to celestial drink. For a mortal, a single breath of its vapor is enough to bring on a sleep of a thousand days — peaceful, ageless, requiring neither food nor water.
"The gourd holds ten thousand years of elixir. Within its walls, sun and moon keep their own time. I drank my fill at the Peach Feast, and woke to find the bright moon unchanged — Jurōjin himself might envy this."
Jude couldn't drink this stuff directly. His training with the divine sake had been building his tolerance for months, but the Thousand-Day Intoxication was in a different category entirely. The most he could manage safely was to stay coherent in its presence — not absorb it, just weather it.
Which had been, as it turned out, exactly what the situation required.
When the soldiers had walked him into the interrogation room that evening, Jude had already made his plan. A direct approach — incapacitating them physically — would leave too clear a signature. If Eiling came back to find unconscious or injured soldiers, the questions would start immediately. He needed something that looked accidental. Something that looked like the soldiers had made a very bad decision entirely of their own accord.
He'd let the gourd's stopper open silently, whispered the activation command, and within about thirty seconds the celestial aroma had saturated the sealed room. The soldiers had been listing in their chairs before they fully understood what was happening. Within two minutes, the guards outside the door were down. The scent had drifted outward from there — diluting with distance, but still strong enough to leave anyone in the surrounding corridors pleasantly impaired.
That was why Bette had found the base so strangely permeable tonight. The closer to the interrogation room, the heavier the effect.
Now, with the room cleared of unauthorized visitors, Jude reopened the stopper — just enough to keep the soldiers under — and got to work.
He bought several cases of beer from the shop, cracked the cans, and carefully distributed the contents: some tipped into the mouths of sleeping soldiers (most of it went elsewhere, which was fine), some poured over clothes and furniture, some left to pool on the floor. The occasional spluttering cough or reflexive vomit from a half-conscious soldier was a bonus — authenticity he hadn't had to manufacture.
He plugged his nose and kept working.
The clothes came next. Satsuki had pointed out, correctly, that a genuine late-night interrogation room drinking session would involve various states of undress, and Jude was not in a position to argue with that logic. He stripped several soldiers of jackets and uniform tops, redistributed them across the floor, added the empty cans in overlapping clusters.
He stepped back and assessed.
Beer. Vomit. Shed clothing. Overturned furniture. The ambient sound of eight men snoring in various rhythms.
And himself, seated at the center of it all, with an empty can balanced loosely in one hand — because a man who had allegedly been up all night drinking with his captors should at least look the part.
"Done," he said.
"The scene registers as plausible," Satsuki confirmed, and began working through the surveillance timestamps.
Jude took out a disguise kit from the shop and started applying stage injuries — bruising patterns consistent with a rough interrogation, distributed across the right places. His advanced disguise skill was slightly rusty from disuse. He took his time. There was no rush.
General Eiling woke up well-rested, in good spirits, and came to the base in the morning with the anticipation of a man looking forward to the second act of something satisfying.
The first act had been taking Jude out of the CCPD. The second was going to be the look on his face after a sleepless night in military hands, followed by the personal satisfaction of finishing what the interrogation had started.
He walked down the corridor with purpose, noting the soldiers he passed with mild contempt — they looked worn out, which was appropriate for men who'd been working through the night. He arrived at the interrogation room door, saw both guards with their heads drooped and their eyes closed, and felt his good mood flicker.
He kicked them both to the ground with efficient displeasure and pushed open the door.
The smell hit him like a wall.
Beer, stale and spilled. Something worse underneath it. The particular atmosphere of a very bad party that had ended badly.
"Snkkkk—hrrrnn—"
The soundproofing had been containing it. Now, with the door open, the snoring rolled out like an audible fog. Eiling stood in the doorway and took in the full picture: soldiers face-down on every available surface, clothing scattered with no clear logic, empty cans covering the floor in a pattern that suggested either chaos or abstract art.
In the middle of all of it, Jude — who should have been, at minimum, significantly the worse for wear — was sitting in the center of the room. Upright. Unfazed. Eyes closed, breathing slow and even, with an empty beer can in his loosely curled hand.
He looked like a man who had attended a very enjoyable gathering and found a comfortable place to rest.
Eiling's blood pressure did something impressive.
"You absolute—"
"UP! ALL OF YOU! GET UP!"
He was already moving through the room, kicking sleeping soldiers awake with the focused fury of a man who has been denied something he was very much looking forward to. The soldiers lurched upright in various states of confusion, clutching their heads, blinking at the wreckage around them with the dawning horror of people who cannot fully account for the past several hours.
Jude went sideways off his chair from a kick, hit the floor, and received two follow-ups for good measure.
"Who authorized alcohol in my interrogation room! Which of you— look at this— look at the state of this—"
The soldiers stared at him, then at each other, then at the empty cans, then at themselves.
None of them had any answer that was going to help.
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