I think we're all mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better, and maybe not that much better after all.

DEUS EX MACHINA - CHAPTER 2

Sometimes I wonder if I should be the one doing this, sifting through the trash heaped in this room to find the answers. It's by no means a pleasant job. Some days make me want to abandon the oath I swore at the academy, to just beat these monsters to within an inch of their life for what they've done. They make it so easy for that desire to surface. Especially remorseless psychos like this one, I mused, taking in the wretched sight of the man across the table.

He'd been here the best part of seven weeks, and his appearance showed clear signs of imprisonment. The tattered rags splayed across his chest. His wiry hair stained with grey, greasy and falling over his soulless eyes. That intolerable smell emanating from him. All solid reminders of the punishment he'd been subjected to.

Punishment? In my opinion, he hadn't even begun to suffer. That's the main reason I keep this one alive. Not because of the oath I took. No, I'd long since decided my oath was worthless when dealing with this man. I revoked that oath the moment I'd failed to get him the death penalty. But my supervisor intervened, telling me we needed information. Reluctantly, I agreed to supply it, because it'd give me plenty of time to do what I most wanted.

I wanted to torture him until he broke. I want to make him feel the anguish of every single person he and his abomination have wronged. Make him cry with the knowledge that he may have plunged our entire region into a state of emergency. That creation of his was a violation of the natural order of things. And when my oath wavered, I traded it in for a new one; to not stop until I made him feel that pain.

But first I needed to get inside his head, and understand what he thought. So far, he'd adamantly told me I wouldn't understand. Indeed, thus far, I hadn't. I reckon it's time for a new angle.

"Does it have a name?" I asked, trying for a more sympathetic approach.

"When it was created, my child's designation was GXL-038—"

"Don't give me that designation crap," I growled, a tad frustrated by his continued refusal to answer a question directly. "When you talked about its power, you sounded proud of it," I explained, this time getting a reaction out of him. He bowed his head even further into his chest. A defensive sign. He hadn't been expecting me to pick on the tone of his voice. Oh how self-important a view he held of himself…

"When you're proud of something to the level you obviously are for your "child", you give it a name. I'm not stupid, I know how these things work. What was its name?" I pressed, satisfaction brimming at my lips as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat again. So far he'd been dictating the flow of the conversation, but now it was my turn to take the reins.

He stayed silent for several long seconds. I knew he was weighing up his options, the pros and cons of revealing that piece of information. Its name was personal to him, and he didn't want to share the privilege with anyone else. In the end, that belief all boiled down to a false sense of importance. He didn't want to tell me because he didn't see me worthy enough of basking in the bond that was their relationship. Or some high-and-mighty crap like that.

"Genesect," he finally said, his words thick with spite, like he was issuing a curse on me. He'd already cursed me, though. Me, along with every other living thing in the region when he made that monstrosity of his, this 'Genesect'.

"Genesect?" I repeated, my brow furrowed in concentration. After a moment of initial confusion, I realised that his self-importance was again a mitigating factor in something as simple as its name. Undoubtedly, it drew from 'genesis', meaning beginning, a clear indicator that he felt his "child's" creation could be compared to that of the universe's. So smug.

I knew from instinct that he wouldn't answer me if I tried to question him over this. A different approach was needed to elicit why he'd chosen that name. That information in of itself would provide a substantial insight as to his motivations and mindset concerning the creature.

"I take it the 'sect' in its name is taken from 'insect', hence its appearance, no?" I asked a few seconds later.

"Oh, how clever of you," he smirked, and I could see the yellowing teeth through his fringe as he cracked a smile. "But I'm afraid I'm not as self-important as you may think, officer."

"When did I say anything about self-importance?" I asked, folding my arms over my chest and staring at him with a raised eyebrow. He was clutching at straws, and I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of thinking he'd figured me out. That being said, I was surprised he'd jumped to that conclusion.

"Once again, I'm not stupid," he grumbled through parched lips. A flick of his head to part the fringe away from his eyes and he continued, locking eyes with my own. "You want to provoke me into a correction by stating a false assumption as close to fact. That's why you paused for so long; you were looking for a way to subtly insult my intelligence by concealing it within an innocent question, thereby provoking a response in defence of my intellect that would reveal some ulterior motive of mine.

"Unfortunately for you, your false assumption is in fact, correct," he explained. The interrogation room's light flickered for a moment, and I recoiled an inch at the sight of his eyes pulsing in the contrasting light. He looked positively demonic in that moment, like a zealot intent on reviving the devil himself. "My child's name was inspired by the process by which it was born, not by the ramifications of its birth. I created it from the genes of an extinct insect, hence its name being a portmanteau of those words; gene and insect. It is not, as you mistakenly believed, derived from genesis."

"I di—"

"Why did you think I would name my child so, officer?" he continued, voice filling with an ominous undertone, as if the words he spoke weren't his. "Because it is the pinnacle of what humanity as a species can provide back to world? Because surely I must feel so proud of my child as to give it a name befitting its existence? Or maybe," his voice swelled, echoing off the steel walls of the room like an omniscient being, "because you, officer, feel the need to be validated by your actions as an enforcer of the law? You don't want to be right when you delve into my motivations and draw conclusions from them, attempting to pre-emptively surmise the answer to a question you haven't yet asked. You need to be right. You need that kind of validation. You—"

"That's enough!" I yelled, jumping to my feet and bringing my baton down upon his arms again with a loud crash. How dare he insinuate these kinds of things? I don't need validation or anything like it from this outcast!

He didn't so much as flinch at the force of my strike. Just sitting there, with those bastard eyes of his staring at the baton as it trembled in my shaking hands. I could hear his breathing change as he saw it, too. I silently cursed his entire existence in my head as I withdrew, stowing the baton back on my belt and falling back into my seat. Why am I letting him get the better of me like this?

"You shouldn't let your emotions interfere with your ridiculous sense of justice… officer," he muttered hollowly, as motionless as the table between us. I felt my jaw twitch involuntarily. No doubt he was trying to bait me into another attack. He'd been building to it this whole interrogation. But then a thought occurred to me.

Why? Why did he feel the need to provoke me? He was a deranged psychopath, but he still acted as if bound by logic and purpose. What was this purpose?

These questions spun like a centrifuge around my mind, until they all blurred into the same thought and brought me no closer to coherence. Several long seconds of silence crept in, the complete stasis of the room punctuated only by the overhead flickering of the room's light source. Each buzzing flicker brought with it a new, pervasive thought, yet minutes had passed before an acceptable thought presented itself.

He felt conflicted. Of that there was no doubt. Unmistakeable pride laced his words; I'd already come to that conclusion. His comments had always carried a second undertone with them, one at odds with that pride. The question now burning away at my mind was what that undertone was.

Sorrow? No, he'd never shown so much as a hint of it. He was proud of his creation's power, and although he did not relish the hundreds of deaths I'd brought to his attention, he was at most indifferent to them. Hatred? Again, no. I could tell from that same proud tone, and the way he spoke of it, that he was undyingly enamoured with it. Regret? That was ridiculous. He'd shown numerous times a complete lack of remorse or regret over what his creation had done.

But what about regret of inaction?

That question was something I'd dealt with many times during my occupation as a law enforcer. Of the dozens of hardened criminals and other scum of this earth I'd interrogated, not one had failed to reveal a decision they'd regretted. I'd come to learn that they all wished for a second chance to carry out their crimes, so as to alleviate the troubles they'd created for themselves. This man was no different, but I had to discover the decision that was the source of his regret.

"Why did you set it free?" I asked finally, my voice quiet from lack of use. An inward smirk roared up inside me as his face twitched momentarily. The expression was easily recognisable by the upwards flick of the corner of his nose. It was scorn.

Naturally, he refused me an answer.

But his silence told me so much more than that, and I could feel the fire of that advantage licking up from within me. Rather than sidetrack me with pointless chatter that detracted from my original question, he had outright boycotted my query.

At last, I'd found the open wound that was plaguing his mind.

"You didn't set it free, did you?" were my next words, and I spoke them with the utmost caution, not daring to betray the welling sense of victory brimming at my lips.

A grumbled response drifted to my ears from his downturned face, but otherwise he was as static as ever. I fought down a flare of frustration at the indecipherable answer. He'd just confessed a crucial answer, and yet I was still no closer to actually understanding the simple words that had escaped him. How I despised when this happened…

"What makes you say that?" he whispered, echoes of a sinister laugh at the corners of his mouth. I couldn't help but raise a surprised eyebrow. "Sorry to disappoint you, but your current predicament isn't Frankenstein transferred from literature to life."

"Then what is it?" I pressed sardonically, knowing his confidence and self-importance would run rampant in his words.

And so his laughter bubbled to the surface, a slow monotonic staccato that made my skin crawl with revulsion. He finally raised his head to look at me. His bulging, bloodshot eyes locked onto mine, grinning like his face had been carved into that expression by a near-sighted butcher. I met the crazed stare with unwavering steel in my own, even as my mind told me to eradicate both the look and the man himself.

"Just another thing completely outside of your control, corroding your authority out from beneath you," he answered, the cruel delight unmistakeable in his voice as his frenzied laughter began to crescendo. "And you cling so foolishly to the antidote, never realising that it is such, and never daring to believe that its administration is the only option you have left!"

Sorry it took so long for this second chapter to be written, but Crown took precedence until recently. That being said, I do hope you enjoyed this second chapter, since a lot of effort went into it.

Until next time, keep reading, and don't forget to review~