[LTC - Q16 - Llanic - AI] The Cost of Business

The Cost of Business

The old office had been repurposed, transformed into an improvised ARGOSec interrogation room without ever fully losing the feel of what it once was. A dusty ventilation fan rattled overhead. Late afternoon light poured through the tall orange-tinted window at the back of the room, casting long amber reflections across the skyline of Llanic beyond.

At the center sat the prisoner, cuffed to a heavy metal chair. Not bolted down—just heavy enough to stay put. His face was bruised badly now, one eye swollen nearly shut, dried blood dark along his collar.

Beside him, the younger ARGOSec officer scrolled uneasily through fragmented records on her datapad, headset pressed against one ear.

“Sir…” she said carefully, keeping her voice low. “This is highly irregular. No detention order, no transfer logs. According to central registry this man disappeared three days ago. The Flame is looking for him.”

The older officer paid her no attention.

Broad-shouldered and worn by years of hard service, he calmly removed his uniform jacket, then his kepi, folding both with almost ritual precision onto a nearby shelf. The prisoner watched him silently now, anger draining into visible fear.

“Sir,” the younger officer tried again, “maybe we should wait for formal authorization.”

The old officer stepped toward a storage cabinet. Inside rested a plain durasteel restraint rod. He picked it up slowly, testing the weight in one hand.

“Authorization?” he muttered. “Kid, he is with them! They don't get procedure!”

The prisoner jerked forward against the cuffs, teeth clenched!

The first strike punched him back. The sound echoed hard through the small office. The younger officer flinched. The old man leaned closer to the prisoner, voice low and controlled. “One name,” he said. “That’s all I need.”

Outside the orange window, the sun dipped lower over Llanic.

Sometime later...

Late afternoon light still filled the office, warm and golden through the tall orange glass overlooking Llanic’s endless towers. The room was clean now. Almost. The chair had been moved against the wall, its metal frame wiped spotless except for the dark stains soaked deep into the cracked leather padding—blood worked so thoroughly into the material it had become part of the chair’s patina. The younger ARGOSec officer stood alone beside it, staring silently out over the city.

The old officer had left nearly an hour earlier, shortly after checking the prisoner’s pulse one final time. There had been no dramatic confession. No hidden conspiracy unveiled. In the end, between broken groans and wet rasping breaths, the prisoner had managed only a single word - a name.

The young officer still replayed it in her head over and over, wondering whether it had been worth the cost of extracting it. A life. But what had it cost her? Behind her, the office felt hollow now. Sterile. Wrong. She looked down at the chair again. This had not been procedure. Not justice. Just violence wearing the uniform of necessity.

Far below, traffic moved through Llanic in endless streams while the last light of afternoon burned orange against the skyline.

///

Another FZ grunt bites the dust. 😉 I was almost pulling the plug on this build. I'm happy with the logo, and I really wanted to do a tall window like this, but it deserved a bit more love I think. Anyways, it serves the purpose of pushing the story on Llanic forward. The Flame has a collaborator/contact on Llanic that I'll be introducing soon.

Thanks for reading/watching.