Warner 24
Warner
Hugo Wolff looks almost nothing like his daughter.
He possesses none of her stark, colorless features.
His hair is streaked through with gray, but otherwise dark.
His eyes are brown. He’s of medium height and build.
His skin is fair but warmed by sun, roughened by age, and lined with time.
Where Rosabelle is a visual scream, Hugo is a murmur.
He resembles many people and no one at all, recalling nothing of his daughter save the slight tremor of his hands, clasped now around a mug of coffee.
His fear is palpable.
The tension in the room is a fourth person.
Hugo struggles to animate. “I don’t—As I said, I don’t know how much you’ve uncovered about Sebastian. But when I heard he was here—”
Hugo cuts himself off.
His grip tightens around his mug. The acrid scent of over-brewed coffee seems to rise and expand, so aggressive it’s almost pleasant.
Hugo takes a moment to stare into the artificial light of an artificial window in my office, the hue designed to mimic the color temperature of the sky—specific to the hour and season.
Right now, it emanates warm, late-afternoon sun, fading into dusk.
There are similar windows throughout every subterranean floor.
Ambient lamplight has begun to come on in the rooms, and this illumination will intensify as the sun sets altogether.
Remaining in sync with the outside world helps us retain sanity when spending long days underground.
Today, Castle is the one sitting at my desk.
He’s the one who speaks into the quiet, who studies Hugo with gentle fascination. “We’re still forming a complete picture of Sebastian,” Castle says. “Any pertinent details about the prisoner would be welcome. Was there something you wanted to share, Mr. Wolff?”
Hugo looks up at Castle, then at me, then back to Castle.
He wasn’t expecting another person in the room for this conversation, much less someone he doesn’t know.
But I’d intended to throw Hugo off course on purpose; I thought an unknown entity might sober him up, keep him on his guard long enough to speak without shutting down.
It’s been hard to get information out of Hugo lately.
He’s always been a little breakable, but he was never this broken. Perhaps it really was delusion that powered him through darkness; perhaps delusion had given Hugo hope, had allowed him to imagine his family was thriving somewhere on Ark Island.
The reality of meeting his daughter has nearly shattered him, and it’s been hard to watch.
I lean a shoulder against my office wall, considering him anew.
Hugo’s eyes are raw; a little red. He looks as if he hasn’t slept in a while.
His emotional state is unstable as usual, but there’s an additional, subtle complication: a frenetic undercurrent of apprehension.
In fact, he seems to be plagued by something more like agitation than grief.
My eyes narrow.
Something is scaring him, I realize.
This is new.
“I—I don’t know what the boy is like now,” Hugo finally says. “But I knew Sebastian’s parents. I knew his father better than his mother, of course. His mother was very close with my—with my wife—”
He abruptly ceases speaking, then looks away, blinking at the closest wall.
Castle’s confusion is loud; I can feel him resist the urge to turn in his seat and meet my eyes in accusation. I didn’t prepare him for what he was walking into.
It can take time to get used to Hugo.
I withheld details from Castle because I wanted his cold read on the situation.
I’ll often introduce complications when mining for new facets of emotive feedback.
In fact, I prefer conducting meetings as an observer.
It’s easier for me to analyze the minutiae of a person’s emotional mechanics when someone else is leading the interview or interrogation.
Gently, Castle clears his throat.
“So, you were close friends with Sebastian’s family,” he says to Hugo, attempting to reengage. “You knew each other well.”
“Yes,” Hugo says on a breath, coming back into his body.
He meets Castle’s eyes. “Yes, we were friends, in a manner of speaking. Sebastian was—Well, he was a child back then, but he and Rosabelle were inseparable whenever our families got together. I remember that.” He frowns, nearly losing himself again, then glances at me.
“As you know, sir, my memories are—are often unreliable—but there are certain things I can recall with startling clarity.”
“Your memories are often unreliable?” Castle echoes. “What does that mean?”
Hugo looks to me, hesitating.
I turn to Castle. “He can’t remember key sequences from the later half of his life.”
Castle raises his eyebrows.
“I woke up in a hospital several months after the revolution,” Hugo says to Castle. He almost manages a smile. “After The Reestablishment tried to kill me.”
Brief pause.
Flashes of uncategorized fear from Hugo.
A rush of skepticism from Castle.
“You’re sure it was an attempted murder?” Castle asks him. “If you can’t remember the details?”
“Yes,” says Hugo. Agitation seems to swarm him. “I can’t remember why it happened, but I can remember—I—I remember that I was tortured, for several hours, before they left me for dead. I still remember most of that.”
I exhale lightly. “Hugo had been found comatose on the street outside an old apartment building in unregulated territory. He’d been thrown off a balcony, his back broken, presumed dead.”
Castle experiences a wave of shock.
“It’s remarkable he survived the fall,” I add.
“His body sustained substantial trauma and was discovered with comprehensive evidence of abuse. Despite our best efforts, he spent six months in a coma.” I send Hugo a bracing look.
“He’s made an astonishing recovery, but sustained semipermanent damage to his brain. ”
Hugo nods at me, grateful for the assist. “My memories have gotten stronger over the years,” he explains to Castle, “but I’ve never been able to remember what happened to precipitate the attempt on my life.
I only know that it bears all the hallmarks of an expulsion from the upper echelons of The Reestablishment.
When I woke up, my life as I knew it had been taken from me.
I’d never meant to—I’d never have intentionally abandoned my family—”
He cuts himself off again.
I avert my eyes, bracing against the emotional load of Hugo’s self-recrimination. His hatred of himself is so severe it leaves me nauseous. It’s hard to keep his self-loathing separate from my own. Occasionally, I need hours to recalibrate.
“I’d never meant to abandon my family,” Hugo says again, quieter this time. His stare is fixed on the far wall. “Clara was so young.”
Castle looks from me to Hugo. “Who’s Clara?”
“My daughter,” Hugo whispers.
Castle’s confusion multiplies. “I thought her name was Rosabelle.”
“Yes,” says Hugo, still staring into the distance. “That’s right. Rosabelle.”
Castle turns fully in his seat to look at me now, his confusion melding with frustration and pity. I’m relieved to have his emotional input in the room; it helps dilute Hugo’s darkness. Though it’s also been fascinating to watch Castle’s sympathy for Hugo rise in tandem with irritation.
Irritation toward Hugo; irritation toward me.
He presses his lips together. “Would you care to translate all this, Mr. Warner?”
I force a grim smile. “He has two daughters. Clara is younger than Rosabelle by seven years.”
Hugo hums in agreement. “Two boys in between,” he says, his gaze still distant. “Both stillborn.”
My body absorbs this badly.
I feel Castle look at me; I feel the upsurge in his concern.
Hugo, meanwhile, has gone somewhere in his mind. His eyes are unfocused and his voice is strange when he says, “Every birth was so silent. Rosa and Clara never made a sound, either. Not at first.”
I go painfully still.
Castle clears his throat.
“I’m so sorry for your losses,” he says to Hugo, and I sense his sincerity; his swell of grief. “I also lost my boys.”
“Did you?” Hugo turns suddenly to face Castle, his eyes a little wild. “Did you really?”
Castle receives this intensity with a spark of shock. Still, he keeps his expression implacable, clasping his hands atop the desk. “Yes,” he says.
Hugo continues to stare at him.
“Mr. Wolff,” says Castle, sitting forward, “you were once loyal to The Reestablishment. You never willingly walked away. You enjoyed many privileges and strong relationships with members of The Reestablishment elite, and you were forced out for reasons you can’t recall.
You only remember waking up months later into a new world. ” He pauses. “Is that correct?”
“Without my family,” he says urgently. “I woke up without my family. I woke up and everything had changed. They’d taken my wife and children. They’d taken my mind—”
Hugo stops speaking.
His mouth remains open a moment, but no sound comes out. There’s another tense beat before he continues.
“Yes, I was loyal to the regime for many years. But I don’t know what happened before they tried to kill me. I think I might’ve”—he frowns—“I think I did willingly walk away. For years I’ve been trying to remember, trying to understand whether there’d been a tipping point. But I—”
Hugo goes silent again, his mouth closing.
He turns his eyes to his hands, still clenched around his cooling coffee mug.
Castle casts me a speaking glance, and I feel the severity of his skepticism. I’m not surprised by his reaction. He’s wondering what many others have asked me over the years:
Why do you trust him?
But Hugo Wolff was once chief commander and regent of Sector 52.