The interrogation room in the Academy's security wing wasn't designed for comfort—it was designed for breaking people. Bare concrete walls, harsh fluorescent lighting that made skin look sickly, a metal table with restraint points, and chairs positioned to maximize psychological pressure. The temperature was deliberately kept cool enough to be uncomfortable but not cold enough to constitute torture by technical definition.
Alex Karots sat in one of those chairs, his wrists zip-tied to the armrests, his bluish-white eyes tracking the four women surrounding him with calculation that had long since abandoned his usual optimistic facade. That mask had shattered approximately three hours ago when Raven Zeus had stopped pretending to be the noble investigator and started being what she actually was: someone with anti-hero mentality who understood that information extraction sometimes required pain.
