His first words ripped that straw from me and crumpled it up, with such vigor I was sure I could hear a crunching sound.
"I've just a few questions to ask you," he said, in a surprisingly mild tone. "We've made sure that there are no recording devices in this room. We always make a careful check as a matter of routine, when we're forced to demand complete privacy during an interrogation of this sort. It's something we'd prefer not to do, but there are times—"
He shrugged, as if he'd made the point clear enough and resented the necessity of making it any plainer.
"When the internal security of the Colony is endangered," he went on impatiently, "we do not hesitate to invoke all of our authority. We have no choice. Too many people take it for granted that a privately owned combine is exceeding its authority when it undertakes police investigations not specifically authorized by its charter. They forget that such police powers are implicit in every charter which provides for the exercise of reasonable vigilance in the public domain. Safe-guarding the public, which Wendel Atomics serves, would not be possible if we did not exercise such authority."
How true that was I didn't have enough legal knowledge at my finger-tips to decide. But I was pretty sure it was a bald-faced lie. But just his use of the word "power" explained how he'd managed to get as close to me as he'd done, with no one within earshot to hear me if I burst my lungs shouting.
The kind of power the Board had given me the right to exercise superceded whatever display of authority Wendel Atomics had used to turn the hospital room into a prison cell. But who would know or make a move to save me—if the silver bird didn't get a chance to flap its wings on my uniform until they were pumping embalming fluid into my veins and making plans to lower me, with a ceremonial flourish, into a desert grave?
"There are a few things Wendel Atomics has a right to know," Glacial Stare was saying. "A legal right—make no mistake about that. I'd advise you not to lie to me. If you do—"
He shrugged again.
I said something then that surprised me, because I didn't think right at the moment I had that much defiance on tap.
"Shove it!" I said.