Chapter 6 - THE INTERROGATION ROOM
6
The fluorescent lights of the federal holding facility interrogation room hummed with a sterile, high-pitched whine that seemed to drill directly into the skull. The room was windowless, its walls constructed of reinforced cinderblock painted a depressing shade of institutional grey. In the center sat a bolted-down stainless-steel table surrounded by two heavy metal chairs.
Ben sat unfettered in one of the chairs, his hands resting calmly on the table surface. His suit jacket had been removed, leaving him in a crisp white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms. He didn't look like a terrified prisoner awaiting trial; he looked like a predator waiting for his prey to walk into the trap.
The heavy steel door swung open with a metallic click.
Arthur Vance stepped into the room, looking significantly older than he had twenty-four hours ago. His tailored suit was wrinkled, his silver hair slightly disheveled, and the confident, untouchable aura that had defined him for decades had been entirely replaced by a desperate, cornered rage.
Arthur slammed a thick manila folder down onto the stainless-steel table with a deafening crash, leaning over the surface until his face was inches from Ben’s.
"You arrogant, reckless bastard," Arthur hissed, his voice trembling with suppressed fury. "Do you have any idea what you've done? The Attorney General’s office has already frozen three of our primary operational accounts, and the Senate committee has launched an immediate inquiry into the defense subsidies!"
Ben didn't flinch. He leaned back slowly in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankle, a cold, humorless smile playing on his lips.
"I told you, Arthur," Ben replied smoothly. "You should have stayed out of my house. You should have kept Karen on a shorter leash."
"Karen was a tool!" Arthur shouted, slamming his fist against the table, rattling the metal surface. "She was an operative trained to handle a specific objective—to secure the Vance Holdings intellectual property rights before your board voted on the international merger next month! She wasn't supposed to go rogue, she wasn't supposed to torture a ten-year-old child on camera, and she certainly wasn't supposed to leave a digital paper trail straight to my office!"
Ben’s eyes narrowed instantly, the amusement vanishing from his face, replaced by a dark, lethal intensity.
"So you admit it," Ben said softly, his voice dropping into a register so cold it made the air in the room feel glacial. "You ordered Karen to infiltrate my family. You ordered her to terrorize my daughter. And five years ago... you ordered the sabotage of Elena’s car."
Arthur froze. For a fraction of a second, a flash of raw panic crossed his face before he quickly masked it behind a wall of cold legal defiance.
"Elena was a liability," Arthur spat, straightening up and adjusting his jacket. "She discovered classified defense routing protocols that were vital to national security. Her death was an unfortunate necessity for the greater good of the intelligence apparatus."
"The greater good?" Ben stood up slowly from his chair, towering over his older brother. The sheer physical presence and quiet menace radiating from Ben made Arthur instinctively take a half-step backward toward the door. "You murdered the mother of my child to protect your own corrupt political slush fund, and you used a sociopathic operative to terrorize my little girl under my own roof. And you call that national security?"
Before Arthur could formulate a response, the heavy steel door of the interrogation room suddenly swung wide open.
Standing in the doorway wasn't a prison guard or a federal marshal. It was a tall, imposing woman in an immaculate charcoal-grey business suit, wearing a platinum lapel pin stamped with the official seal of the United States Department of Justice Inspector General.
"Director Vance," the woman said, her voice sharp, authoritative, and ringing with absolute finality. "You are currently speaking to a civilian under active federal investigation without legal representation or jurisdiction. Please step away from the witness."
Arthur spun around, his face turning the color of ash as he recognized the Inspector General. "Agent Miller... this is a classified internal matter—"
"This matter is no longer classified, Director," Agent Miller interrupted coldly, motioning to two armed federal security officers standing behind her in the hallway. "By order of the Special Federal Grand Jury, you are hereby placed under arrest for high treason, conspiracy to commit murder, and abuse of federal office."
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As the officers stepped forward and snapped heavy steel handcuffs onto Arthur’s wrists, Ben stood quietly by the stainless-steel table, watching his brother’s empire collapse in real-time.
But even as Arthur was dragged out of the room kicking and screaming about executive privilege, Ben knew the battle wasn't truly over. Because deep within the encrypted files he had decrypted from Arthur’s personal terminal lay one final, encrypted folder labeled The Omega Protocol—a file that hadn't been uploaded to the public networks yet, and one that contained a name Ben never expected to see.
