Interrogating Otter

The pitch-black helicopter flew through the torrential rain, its rotors cleaving through the curtain of water.

Three people sat in the cabin. General Wang sat on one side, while Song He and Xiang Xiaotong sat opposite him, firmly strapped in.

Song He looked out the window but could see nothing. It was pitch-black. This area was uninhabited, without even a road—a godforsaken place where birds would not even shit.

"We brought three terrorists back from Europe. We accidentally killed one, but two are still alive." General Wang spoke up. "The two of them didn't hold out for long. They spilled everything."

As he spoke, General Wang took two sheets of information from his pocket and handed them to the master and disciple.

The two leaned together and examined the documents. One terrorist had red hair and the other blond hair. Their faces were pale, their eye sockets sunken, and their gloomy, morose gazes looked just like those of battle-scarred soldiers from a movie.

Their names were quite interesting. The red-haired one was called "Otter," and the blond-haired one was called "Porcupine." Neither was a proper name; they were simply animal names, without even a decent surname.

"Are those their real names? They sound like code names!" Song He asked doubtfully.

"You'll know when you ask them. There's definitely something fishy about their names. The truth behind them will astonish you." General Wang spoke.

"Are we there?" Xiang Xiaotong pointed out the window.

Song He saw nothing. General Wang raised his hand and glanced at his watch. "Dean Xiang has excellent night vision! You're exactly what we need for a flying carrier aircraft! We're landing soon!"

The helicopter flew on for a while longer before Song He vaguely saw some black squares embedded in the Gobi Desert. They seemed to be low buildings, with no lights on at all, completely swallowed by the rainy night like abandoned structures. Heaven knew how the teacher had spotted them from so far away.

When the buildings came into view below, the helicopter slowly descended.

The cabin door opened, and a soldier held up a large umbrella to receive them. Song He thanked him and followed him toward a nearby building.

The secret interrogation site where terrorists were detained had been just as he imagined: dark, bloody, foul-smelling, and desolate. But the moment he entered, he was stunned. He had the strange feeling that he had returned to the Brain Institute's Office Building.

The corridor was brightly lit, with white ceramic tile floors. Sweeping Robots silently moved back and forth, while lush green plants grew at intervals along the passage. The environment was so clean and bright that it was practically spotless.

General Wang led the master and disciple forward and took them by elevator down to the third basement level.

"Prepare yourselves mentally. Otter and Porcupine have each had one eyeball removed. It wasn't a violent interrogation method—the eyes that were removed were Electronic Eyes." General Wang spoke. "It might be a little disturbing."

The three stepped out of the elevator. Floor-to-ceiling glass windows lined both sides of the corridor, allowing them to see the interrogation rooms inside.

The interrogation room was empty except for a table. Behind it sat a red-haired man in prison clothes. It was unmistakably Otter.

"You two can go in and ask him whatever you like. Otter has been very cooperative." General Wang spoke.

The master and disciple exchanged a glance, then opened the door and went inside.

The room was dimly lit. Only a small lamp sat on the table, its light directed at Otter and illuminating his entire face. His skin was deathly pale, like that of a drowned corpse.

The moment Song He sat down, he understood the purpose of the lighting arrangement.

The interrogator was concealed in the darkness, while the subject's face was illuminated clearly. This made it easier for the interrogator to observe the subject's expression. Any unnatural movement of the facial muscles when he lied would be exposed without exception.

Otter looked listless. His left eyeball had been removed, and electronic components tangled with dark-red flesh filled the socket, making it especially horrifying. It looked as though one could see straight through his skull to his brain. His right eyelid drooped, and he seemed half-asleep.

There were translation earpieces on the table. The master and disciple put them on.

Otter's eyelids lifted slightly. He swayed his head and looked toward them, saying uncertainly:

"Who? Is someone there? Another round?"

"Put on the translation earpiece." Xiang Xiaotong spoke in English.

"Endless interrogations. I've already told you everything I can. I know you're trying to find inconsistencies in my testimony, but you won't find any, because my testimony is completely true."

Otter sighed. He raised a left hand shackled with an iron chain and felt around for the translation earpiece on the table. Struggling to bend his body and lower his head, he put it on.

"What country are you from? Where were you born?" Xiang Xiaotong asked.

"I don't know." Otter shook his head. "I have no nationality or identity. Whoever issues me documents determines who I am."

"Where did you grow up? Where were your parents from?" Song He immediately followed up.

"I have no parents. I'm a clone." Otter's words were astonishing. "The Second Hairy Country woman who gave birth to me through surrogacy was called Otter Mother by us. She was responsible for giving birth to all the Otters. When she gave birth to the eighth Otter, she died of massive hemorrhaging. I was only three at the time, so I have no impression of it. The other Otters told me."

The master and disciple exchanged a glance, both seeing horror in the other's eyes.

For decades, declarations opposing human cloning had been issued again and again by countries and organizations around the world. Signatures had been added repeatedly, and convention after convention had been drawn up. At this moment, they all turned to dust. A living clone was sitting before them, and his words suggested that he was not the only one.

Before the interrogators could ask further questions, Otter began describing the details on his own:

"The place where I was born was a training camp with the code name Zoo."

"We don't know where the training camp was located geographically, or what country it belonged to. There was a forest around the camp—a chaotic forest. The entire forest was filled with minefields, and supposedly there were machine-gun towers too."

"Every so often, someone would sneak out, get their leg blown off, and be carried back and displayed on the training grounds. We had to do corpse shuttle runs. We would sprint from the starting line to the unlucky bastard whose leg had been blown off, step on him, and then run back. We weren't allowed to stop until the unlucky bastard died. So we all stomped as hard as we could, jumping up and down on him."

"Once, an unlucky bastard whose leg had been blown off was carried onto the training grounds. When we ran over, he kept repeating that he had seen a kangaroo."

"A kangaroo?" Song He asked. "So you might have been in the Southern Hemisphere?"

"We discussed it when we went back and decided that wasn't the case." Otter spoke. "The kangaroo was just a smokescreen. The Zoo's director didn't want us to know where we were, so he put a kangaroo there to pretend we were in the Southern Hemisphere. Besides, no one else saw the kangaroo except that one person. We even suspected it was a hallucination he had before he was blown to death."

"If there had been lots of kangaroos nearby, the minefield would have been detonated every day. But there weren't any. As long as no one tried to escape, the nearby forest remained peaceful. No mines ever went off."

"Later, we learned some basic knowledge, which further proved that the Zoo wasn't in the Southern Hemisphere."

"What knowledge?" Song He asked.