Questions Withholding, tag;; Eien Llewellyn & Marcus Mayhew

[Kegan Barnhart]

-- Exit Marcus --

The door came open and Kegan was met with a surprise. He knew that he was to get the lie detector ready but he didn't expect the other Councilman to bring in someone so violently. He had been preparing this machine for the better part of ten minutes when he'd gotten the word of what was to happen and he had the list of questions that were to be asked but he didn't know the person that he was questioning. The file had not been brought to him as asked. Kegan sighed and moved for the fallen man when Marcus left the room rather hastily. He never sat through the polygraph testing, finding it too "boring" to withstand. Kegan knelt down at Eien's side and reached for one of his arms, helping him up almost immediately with the apology in his voice. "I apologize for Marcus. He's always in a bit of a foul mood." If there was one person to make anyone comfortable it would have to be Kegan. Specialist Barnhart was a good soul and he always showed that despite the work that he did.

Dressed in a white button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the hem tucked into the waist of his black slacks he appeared just as any Specialist would. But instead he was always contradicted others when he dressed in casual clothing some of the time. It upset the other Council Members but he wasn't going to complain. He would wait for Eien to get up completely before speaking again, keeping his tone rather calm despite the situation that he knew he was going to have to put the other person through. "I'm Kegan...or Specialist Barnhart if you prefer formality." His ID badge was clear on the pocket of his shirt, revealing that he was another Councilman even if he didn't seem to appear as such.

"If you'll come with me this way we can get this over with as soon as possible." Kegan wanted to make sure that this young man made it out of the interrogation room and into society again. He hated condemning someone just for the sake of sadism on one of the Councilman's part and he didn't want to do it again. So he would help Eien to the chair, waiting to commence the test just to get it all over and done with.

Kegan hated being the bad guy.

[Eien Llewellyn]

"I apologize for Marcus…”

There was no apology for the actions Agent Mayhew followed through with, at least in Eien’ mind. He wanted to think that everyone had a heart, had a soul; everyone had the choice of becoming a cookie-cutter ECHELON baked good or becoming a human being. Even severely altered, that’s what they still were. They still had emotions that somehow drove them through with their daily routine. But not everyone, Eien had learned early on, had good emotions and intentions. Eien looked up toward the man, but his eyes did not get any higher than the badge on the man’s chest, seeing the Councilman’s appearance from the photo on there. His voice did not match the title, as the Council members were assumed to be just like the average Agent or Elite – only worse.

He twitched away from the man when he went to help Eien up, but only in a way that he wouldn’t hold on to the tender flesh on his upper arm. He was thankful for long sleeves, as that would cover the marks wonderfully. That is, if he got out of the room just fine. He nodded silently when the man spoke to him, the ECHELON Specialist now firmly on his own feet, albeit shakily. Tense muscles continued to give off his reclusive personality and he followed with the Councilman to the designated chair. When he sat down he moved his bag so it was settled firmly in his lap, the strap still wrapped around his neck and across his chest.

He folded his hands in his lap over the bag, his legs pressed together with his nervous demeanor. He turned his head to look at the machine, trying to calm himself in the process. He knew the machine; he knew how it worked. The three main components monitored the obvious human signs of emotion and a change in such. One monitored the heart, the other the respiratory system, and one more for the amount of sweat produced on the skin. Eien sighed softly, looking into his memory, reading through the instructions. He had built one, a long time ago, just for fun. He blinked then, bringing himself back to the present as he was being set-up.

”H-how is this going to go?” he asked, having never been through something like this under such conditions.

[Kegan Barnhart]

It made Kegan's heart ache to see someone so nervous around him. He knew it was partly because of Marcus but some were just twitchy by nature. It was no surprise that one more feared what he could do when the others were without a doubt cold and emotionless. Kegan, after helping Eien settle into the metal chair, went about strapping the connections on, pressing one of the small suctioned wires to the man's neck just over the artery there. Another was placed just inside of Eien's shirt, near the hollow of his throat after the clothing had been moved aside. The last was the wet strap for the forehead, the Velcro fixed after Kegan had taken those few sections to brush Eien's hair out of his face. He smiled a bit at Eien's question and spoke calmly, still showing he meant no harm even though his firearm was showing in the holster just to his left hip. "It's rather simple. I ask you questions, the machine takes the notes and readings, and then I let you go."

He couldn't let Eien go right away. He had to remember that Marcus needed to look over the results before that. And he was hoping silently that it wasn't hard for Eien to pass such a test. Clearing his throat he sat down as well, flipping the switch for the machine to start its scribbling on readings before he took up the board that had the questions on it, drawing a pen from his pocket to tally off marks as well as on the machine. He would have to be careful and watch lest something else happened and the machine messed up. He would start with a simple question. "Let's begin with basics. Please state your name."

He marked off the first question that was on there before he looked at the polygraph, waiting for that moment when Eien would speak. He didn't want to do this. He wanted to go back to his work on the DNA sequencing that still required his attention. That was his main job on the Council; overseeing the DNA rerouting and how it could be perfected. New Ariuns were born everyday in their city and in others, just the same as the rest of the cities around the world. And these new Ariuns always had a new encrypting of DNA in them in part thanks to Kegan. He looked up to Eien for a split second, waiting for the answer that he expected to come.

It should come soon, he thought.

[Eien Llewellyn]

Sticky things were put here and here, a strap wrapped around his forehead. Was it wet? He half expected to be electrocuted within the next few seconds, feeling as if he were in the chair of death. But there were no pressing questions, nothing overly intimidating. The Councilman was a Specialist himself, was he not? But not all Specialists were the same. If was rare for Eien to notice someone else as inert as he – hell, it was rare for him to notice anyone period. He was on his own most of the time, and other than his true work and his partner, he cared for nothing else except for the occasional satisfaction of relieving a headache or quieting the hunger rolling in his stomach. As if on cue, his stomach growled, and Eien felt its emptiness, almost bringing him to a nauseas state. He swallowed and waited for it to pass; it didn’t for a few moments.

The polygraph was for fluctuations in a person, right? So what if his readings were consistently radical, would that just be Eien being Eien? Maybe that would save him for the time being – he forbade the thought of needing to contemplate leaving the city from entering his mind. No, if he needed to do that he would never get the chance to even consider that. ECHELON had him right there, snuggly shut inside a room with another Council Member and doubtlessly with another, seemingly more sadistic one waiting outside. Eien couldn’t forget the AEON soldiers that were probably around as well.

"Let's begin with basics. Please state your name."

”Eien Llewellyn – Eien Emery Llewellyn,” he said, unsure if he should have stated his full name or not. Either way he had added it at the end, so he was good, right? The suspense kept him on edge, having literally no idea of where this would all go. He wanted to believe that the man near him truly wanted to get this over with as soon as possible, but Eien was not so trustworthy, not what with his first and most recent encounter with a council member.

[Kegan Barnhart]

The basic question was out of the way but he couldn't help the pain that he was going through emotionally from this. He wanted this young man to feel perfect and not disturbed at all. If he continued with the fast heart rate and breathing that he was going through he knew that the readings would be strange...and the rest of ECHELON's Council would probably rate him as a liability and force him to termination. Kegan didn't like watching people die and thus always voted against it. But they were always outnumbered by someone...a hidden someone. And still they didn't understand how the order was passed when there were only six of them.

Kegan marked something on the polygraph and continued, nodding his head in agreement to the question. That one was obviously true or the man wouldn't have corrected himself. He brought his eyes back to the paper before he spoke again, this time trying to make Eien feel a little more at ease. "What is your rank and classification?" That was simple enough to answer and if Eien couldn't then the test would have to be stopped and he'd have to be let go. Kegan thought he would have told that to the young man had it not been for the fact that they were being video monitored.

His eyes rose to the Specialist before him, studying his expression and eyes, watching the color and the flicker of eyelids if possible. He wanted to see everything that could come to him and he wanted to make sure that he didn't say something bad in the process. That was easier said than done of course. Kegan knew that others would answer in the way that best suited them and he was no exception.

Neither was this man attached to a machine that was older in concept than ECHELON itself. How they still had the information for it was beyond him...but he figured it was better left unquestioned.

[Eien Llewellyn]

He wondered how long the generic questions would last. He figured there would be a few of them, but how many were needed until it was assumed they had a good reading of Eien’s natural behavior in answering the questions? From an outsider’s view, no matter what the answer would be to any question, he would seem guilty in a sense. He was nervous – he wanted to know what they were truly questioning him about. The anticipation was getting to him more than the thought of facing the test when it came to being asked about what he was truly doing in his spare time.

Eien sighed shortly and softly when the next question was asked, his eyes closing, taking a second to register his thoughts. ”Rank l-level five a-and class A,” he said, his appearance hardly a hair different than how he had been before. How often was he asked for that information? With his memory, searching for something that was not widely used, or personally that important, was something disregarded on a daily basis. He didn’t even like the ranks and titles and such given to him – he liked to know people for who they were, not for who they were known or considered to be.

This was, of course, assuming the anti-social man wanted to get to know someone in the first place.

He could feel the Councilman’s eyes burn on his skin, staring at him, looking for any differences in his stature. Eien kept his sapphire orbs moving around, as he had been, looking from the edge of the walls to his hands, to the hems of his bag, to even the clipboard that the other man held. He heard the needles of the machine next to him move rapidly with his current conditions. He was still waiting for the nausea to pass, but he knew it wouldn’t until he ate something. He wouldn’t get a chance to do that until he left, and even then he’d feel too upset to move much after collapsing in his chair.

[Kegan Barnhart]

The needles moved again and again and Kegan could not track them, his eyes going back to Eien from that moment forward. He wanted to see the change in expression even if it felt like it was going to make him sick. He thought about what he was doing for a moment and then set the clipboard down, watching Eien in that moment. Kegan had written some of the questions and he was going to ask those ones before any others. "Specialist Llewellyn...do you know where the files containing the Washington Zodiun Safehouse are located?" Perhaps bombarding him with questions was the best course of action at this point. He wanted to make the Specialist feel safe and secure in the paranoid and erratic state that he was in at the moment. That was better than nothing for the moment and he knew he wanted to see this man out alive.

"Did you know that Agent Dimitri Mishkov, your partner, is up for review by the Council?" That meant did he know that Dimitri was on the edge of being subject to summary liquidation? He wanted to get the answers as quickly as possible just so Marcus would come back and get it over with. He wanted to claim that he thought Eien was clean and that he was free to go but that would be an understatement. There were too many anomalies with this situation and lest Kegan wanted to die he had to do something about it right then and there.

"What does Dimitri do in his spare time?" He'd said the agent's name on purpose just to see what emotional response he'd get from it. Every now and then his eyes would glance to the machine, finding it easy to read what was happening over what was going through someone else and their mind. Kegan wasn't a mind-reader, after all. It was best to keep his thoughts to what was going on in those last minutes of the questions being asked.

"Did you know we found a picture of you in his desk?"

[Eien Llewellyn]

And so then the real questions started to come through. The first one was more than expected – his paranoia had subconsciously prepared him for that one, he figured. The files were the first things the Specialist had assumed the Council knew of. ”They-they’re in the secure files in the ECHELON database… aa-although the last time I went through them they were only preliminary and the location o-of the safe weren’t confirmed. That was uh – forty-six days ago,” he answered the first question. Longer questions required him to speed up the pace of his words, only so he’d get the point across. He was still twitchy, knowing that they had only just begun.

”…up for review by the Council?"

”Concerning the fact that the only i-interactions I encounter with or-or in relation to the Council invariably involves myself and not others, no, I did not know,” at least he was able to say something of the truth. He felt as if his speech had remained the same, his heart still pounding in his ears. His eyes began to hurt and he felt almost dizzy, his stomach gnawing at him with a light tumble. He wished he had eaten that sandwich earlier, and listened to his partner, rather than put it off until later.

"What does Dimitri do in his spare time?"

Eien’s eyes squinted and they flickered to the Councilman before resuming their random track around the room. He was slightly surprised that the questions had suddenly turned from being about him to being about his partner. ”Agent Mishkov has his own life, a-and that’s none of my concern u-unless he wants to share it with me, which he doesn’t, s-so I don’t know. That’s something you’ll have to ask him yourself.” Really, there was little that he could’ve said anyway. The Specialist, aside from the occasional dinner meal, didn’t spend much time with the Agent outside of work hours. Sure, he wished that were different now, but nonetheless, it wasn’t.

"Did you know we found a picture of you in his desk?"

”Wha-what? No, I didn’t know that,” his eyebrows came together this time and he couldn’t mask the confusion. Well, the question was utterly random in Eien’s eyes, and he couldn’t fully understand what was so important about it. ”Why w-would he have a picture of me?” Why was it important?

[Kegan Barnhart]

He'd expected the files to be where they were to be but he hadn't seen them. Even with his own two eyes they had been gone. Not to mention he had wanted to check through them himself but the Councilman that was in charge of the Specialists was rather particular in his information running. That was just how life got sometimes and Kegan had to accept that. He smiled a bit softly to himself before nodding, listening to the second answer that was given. It wasn't Eien's place to know what Dimitri did in his spare time and he had answered it right. Clearing his throat Kegan got comfortable again, crossing his legs before folding his hands in his lap, listening to what Eien had to say now.

He didn't know that Dimitri had that image?

Kegan moved forward now, resting his elbows on his knees with his hands folded between them. He was intrigued as to the reaction and he wanted to press further, using that steel-trap mind of his to remember almost every word. He wanted to see if Eien was going to change demeanor and so far he had seen nothing but a reaction of surprise in that question. "We were hoping you could tell us. Why would Dimitri have it in his desk of all places? That seems out of place doesn't it?" The DNA Sequencer was emotionless through all of this, his eyes steady and trained on Eien.

There were the finer points to life and secrets that one had to remember. They all had their own and they all had the perfect opportunity to use such a device as a weapon against the rest of the world. It was harder to see the end when the beginning wasn't even in sight, right? Secrets led to that and Kegan was going to pry to the furthest of his ability. "Marcus caught you two hugging in the Main Entrance, Eien."

[Eien Llewellyn]

”… That seems out of place doesn't it?"

“Well, yeah,” he told the Councilman, ”I don’t even r-recall him taking a photograph of me, so I-I don’t see how he would have obtained it, other than taking it without my knowledge.” But even the blonde-haired man didn’t have an answer for all of that – he didn’t know why Dimitri had a picture of him, or even what the picture was of. He wanted to think about it more, but his better judgment finally won over him. He couldn’t let himself drown in the mind-flipping anomaly that was his inner feelings. No, that just wouldn’t do.


"Marcus caught you two hugging in the Main Entrance, Eien."

He couldn’t say he wasn’t surprised. Eien looked up at the councilman and almost sneered, but instead his expression was of confusion. ”You make it sound like a c-crime for someone to hug their friend goodbye,” he told him. He had done too much then, and he knew. Maybe now he was using the reclusive personality ECHELON knew him to possess like a crutch. The Specialist didn’t get out much, and never had any relations. All he had was his friendship with his co-worker. Maybe ECHELON didn’t understand that because it was too cold-blooded to even consider the possibility that it was essential for even the weakest of the weak to have friends.

”I-I mean.. I just didn’t like the way Agent Mayhew sounded when he told Agent Mishkov that another ECHELON Agent and an AEON E-elite needed aid…. A-actually he had asked me to go but Agent Mishkov had insisted he go.” He wondered if the Councilman knew that – didn’t they talk to each other or something of the sort? It would seem to Eien that they were slightly disorganized if that were the case. Honestly, the Council had more pressing issues to deal with than Eien’s personal life which seemed to be a web of confusion and uncertainty.

Dimitri was his friend – that’s what he told himself. He let his doubt of further involvement sink in. If there were ever a time when he’d believe it, it would have to be now, when it would count.

[Kegan Barnhart]

Rather than keep to the questions that he'd listed for himself as well as ones from the other Council members Kegan was trying to get through to Eien better than what he'd been ordered to before. He folded his hands in his lap now as he watched the machine graph out the pulse rate of the person before him. This Specialist was smart in many ways and he didn't want to cross him in that regard. Their DNA programming wasn't set like the future would be, especially with the conditioning factor that ECHELON wanted thrown into the mix. He cleared his throat as he heard Eien finish his replies. Those were good answers, with a few questions at the same time. "We know that Agent Mishkov has his ways of getting things, but we don't know why he'd want a picture of you either." It was meant to unnerve him now.

Kegan turned back to the clipboard, thinking over what Eien had mentioned of Marcus. No one liked that Agent but he was closer to being the head of the Council, right under Donovan Price. That was just a fluke and he would rather have seen a Zodiun leader under command of ECHELON than Mayhew. Imagine what he might have done after that? He sighed and spoke then, his lips parting a bit beforehand to show his detestation for Mayhew. "He doesn't like Agent Mishkov...but then again...many of us don't. I'm not one of them, thankfully. I think you two are doing a fine job."

He switched off the machine and folded his hands in his lap again, leaning towards Eien, smiling a bit in the process. He was going to release the straps in a moment but he first wanted to get his point across. "I'm going to let you go on the premise that you've done nothing wrong. In which case I know that you haven't." With that he undid the strap that was around Eien's head, removing the monitor cords shortly afterward. Keeping to his standing position he slid his hands into his pockets, trying to think of what Marcus was going to say. They had no right, truly, to detain Specialist Llewellyn for more than necessary.

"You look tired...so I suggest going home and getting some sleep." And that was that. He held out a hand, pointing with it towards the door. "It's unlocked. Just go ahead and take the elevator back up to floor level." Kegan wasn't going to do more than he needed to, and that included packing up the machine with the readings at the same time. He had to get back to the lab just to ensure that the jobs of his Specialists were getting done. But for a last word he turned to Eien, keeping that soft smile at the same time. "You have a good day now."

[Eien Llewellyn]

He watched the councilman’s movements as best he could, for the moment his thoughts and their effects on his body still monitored by the machine that was surely older than any standing building in the world, older than ECHELON itself. But while he sat there, if he were to be thankful for anything in the situation, it would be that Marcus was not in the room or worse the one interrogating him. He had doubts that the councilman would use the same, rather mellow methods that Kegan used. While things said to him and asked of him inside the room certainly did get the Specialist worked up, the young man’s demeanor was no different than it would be without the straps and inking needles.

Though his frail body was still tense, it was visibly more relaxed than it was before. Muscles let go slightly because he was no longer monitored by the machine, though still under a watchful eye. Eien didn’t know which he would have preferred; the average advantages of interrogation without the technology did not really apply to Eien, whom was only capable of handling so much pressure. He wouldn’t give up the information he knew, but his unease was always easy to read with sensitive matters. Sapphire eyes followed the Councilman’s movements as the straps were removed, his hand recoiling against the bag in his lap. Only half of him believed that the man truly thought the Specialist, and his partner, had done nothing wrong. That was the part that wanted to get everything over with, finish whatever mission was pending, make sure innocents did not die, and just sleep. Eien’s stomach knotted and groaned once more; he needed to eat that sandwich.

"You have a good day now."

”Yeah, y-you too…” he said softly, standing up now, finally no longer feeling restrained by the machine, free to think for himself without fear of how his body would react to the involuntary thoughts. With his bag still across his chest, he slid one hand in his pocket, the other holding on to the connection between his bag and the strap. He knew he couldn’t go home; Dimitri was going to need him sometime soon, and he just needed to hear the man’s voice. It was one step closer to knowing that he would be just fine after all of this. Walking through the unlocked door, the blond man kept his head down, though on occasion lifted his face to look ahead of him, to the elevator. From there he’d go to his office, just like originally planned.