Duncan leaned back in the hard metal chair, glad his mostly-robotic body wouldn’t find it uncomfortable.  “Well?  Aren’t you going to ask anything?  This is an interrogation room, right?”

“It is.”

“So...”

The Director shrugged.  “We usually use it to interrogate smugglers.  You walked across the border with nothing but the clothes on your back.  Are you carrying contraband?”

“No.”

“Are you working with the Noche cartel?”

“Not as such.  They were aware I would be distracting you.”

The Director cursed, and gestured to one of his men, who hustled out of the room.  “Wonderful.  Well, I suppose the window was too small for anything major to get through.  I hope you got something useful in return.”

Duncan shrugged.  “Information on the border spell, and that the only place to cross safely was here.”

“Safely?” asked Carson, drawing a glare of irritation from the Director.

“She claimed that the border spell would cling to and drain power from any magical thing crossing the border.”

Carson frowned at that, and looked away as he considered the problem.  “Ah!  Yes, it would do that to thanatopic magic.  You would have been unaffected.”

“Figures.  Ah well, this works as well as anywhere to wait.”

“And just what do you figure you’re waiting for?” asked the Director.

“Moonrise on Thursday.”

“And you figure you’re just going to walk out the door then?”

Duncan smiled.  “Ask the CIA how that worked.”

“The CIA are idiots, too.”

Duncan considered his options.  Tossing the handcuffs to the Director would be satisfying, but it seemed likely to escalate the situation.  Not that there was much the Director could do, but... well, it wasn’t the time.  Yet.

“And you think your magic control protocol will work?”

“We’ve had practice on Cartel Noche’s various attempts to sneak past.  The cuffs aren’t the only thing we use.  The door and lock are both silvered, so you’re not getting out that way.

“And the wall?” asked Duncan, pointing to the back wall of the chamber.  He knew it faced north, the direction he wanted to go, and was reasonably sure it was an exterior wall.

The Director looked amused.  “Reinforced concrete thick enough to stop anything short of an anti-tank missile.  Good luck.”

Duncan smiled.  “Thank you.”

That got something close to a snarl before the Director schooled his expression.  “We’ll be asking the questions.”

“And what would you like to know?  I’m sure the FBI has a comprehensive file on me.  Don’t they, Agent Carson?”

“We have forwarded it, yes.”

“I read it,” snapped the Director.  “Lunacy.  The bit about the CN Tower was especially inventive.”

“What’s the tallest free-standing building in the world?” asked Duncan.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“The CN Tower was the world’s tallest free-standing structure from 1976 until last year, when it was surpassed by the Canton Tower in China, which in turn was surpassed by the Tokyo Skytree.  And yet, if you look at a list...”  Duncan looked to the FBI agent.

“It is exactly 100 meters taller than before, surpassing the Tokyo Skytree by enough to once again be the world’s tallest,” reported Carson.

“Propaganda and poppycock.”

Duncan shook his head.  “Fine.  Believe what you will for the next forty-six hours.”

The Director stomped out of the interrogation room, slamming the door behind him.

“You didn’t need to poke him,” chided Agent Carson.

“It was a boring conversation anyway.”

“Quoting Star Wars?  Really?”

Duncan grinned at him.  “Hey, you got the reference.  Do you think he would have?”

“Director Spence is good at his job.”

“Which is?”

“Manage the people that watch the border.  He’s a competent administrator.”

“Not much of an interrogator,” noted Duncan.

“He has people to do that for him.  If he thought there was anything to be gained by questioning you, there’d be someone here.”

Duncan glanced at the mirrored glass that took up much of one wall.  “Presumably someone’s at least watching.  Not recording, since we can talk about magic.”

“More grist for the mill.  So you really did restore the CN Tower?”

Duncan nodded.  “That’s not what should worry you.  You must have seen the reports on the various explosions that night.”

Agent Carson nodded.  “The official FBI report discounts certain outlandish claims, and figures the ghouls had weapons caches you managed to cook off.”

“All me.  Deuterium bombs, non-critical.  I’ve done a little research since then, and if I had to do it again, I’d use lithium as well.”

“Ah.  So you figure you can induce criticality?  How does that square with the privacy rule?”

“As long as nobody sees it forming...” Duncan said, and shrugged.  “I was very angry, and managed to persuade magic censorship that it wasn’t magic causing the light-show, it was physics.”

“Managed to persuade magic!” exclaimed Carson.  “The rules are hard rules.  Inviolable.”

“Some are.  Others have gotten a bit squishier of late.”

“Squishier?  How do you mean?”

Duncan summoned up a plastic figurine on the table in front of him, looking like a generic humanoid figure, faceless and blank.  “Used to be, when I tried to form a Disney character, it was impossible to get even close.  But now...”  The figurine shifted, became a very slightly off-model version of Mickey Mouse.  “See?  Nose is a bit too short, but...”

“Wait, what’s this about Disney characters?”

“They’re incorporated into the rules of magic, their shapes are forbidden.  Even the new ones, like Pixar characters from a few years ago.  So, what can you tell me about Disney?”

Carson pulled out the chair opposite Duncan’s, and sat at the metal table.  His eyes stayed on the figurine.  Duncan had the figurine bow to him grandly, then changed it to the outfit from Fantasia’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice scene.  That drew a small smile.  “I think we know rather less than we need to about what old Walt was up to.  I trained with him, and he taught me everything I know about magic.  It appears he did not teach not everything he knew.”

“Lucky.  I’ve been flailing around blind for the past couple years.”

Carson shook his head.  “You’re this powerful after two years?  How the hell did that happen?”

“Fighting ghouls levels you up quickly.  Plus, I ran into the Moonstone.  Little rock about the size of my thumbnail, but a huge connection to the Moon.”

“Ah!  We’d wondered where that went.  Walt had enough pull to get one of the Apollo 11 rocks before the Apollo 12 disaster shut the program down.  He polished it up himself, did something to increase its connection to the Moon.   I never got to see it, but he talked about it a lot.  Said it had a mind of its own.  Figures it would find the right person in the end.”

Duncan laughed self-depreciatingly.  “The right person?  Me?  I’m just this engineer who was trying to do what was best for his family, and got in waaay over his head.”

“And took out... how many ghouls was it, again?”

“I lost count somewhere in the twenties.  Walt must have dealt with more.”

Carson nodded his agreement.  “Thing is, by the time he started dealing with them, he’d already trained up dozens like me.  We lost more than a few along the way.  So he never did what you did, especially not the first time.”

Duncan winced.  “I came awfully close to ending my ghoul-hunting career right there.  Gwen and Bunhill both helped in later fights.”

“Bunhill?  I don’t remember that name from the files.”

“Brunhilde took a new name after I healed her.”

Carson blinked.  “You healed a ghoul?  That’s possible?”

“Preferable, if you can manage it.  They have a wealth of knowledge about the solar magic era, before it faded as part of the transition to lunar magic.”

“Wait, wait, wait.  Nobody ever told me about solar magic, or transitions...”

“Magic didn’t just pop into being in the 60’s.”

“We figured it had to do with the Apollo disaster, that we’d stirred something up.  Walt never explicitly said so,” mused Carson.  “It’s possible he’d figured it out, but didn’t want to tell us.”

“What else wasn’t he telling you?  Look, your agency must have been digging into everything to do with Walt for decades.  Someone knows.”

Agent Carson looked like he wanted to argue the point, but then he slumped back in his chair.  “Damn.  You’re right.  We know the top tier is keeping more than a few secrets.  I suppose as a gesture of good faith I can see what I can shake loose.”

“Good faith?”

Carson smiled warmly at Duncan.  “I really, really do not want to get on your bad side.  Do you know where your family is being held?  I can try to get more information, plans, what have you.”

“A silver-protected building just outside the monorail track to the northwest.  Elias called it the most secure building on the site.”

Agent Carson cursed, then.  “I know of it.  Disney has... other guests, as well.  Hostages.”

“And you just let them?”

“I really need to talk to my boss about this.”

Agent Carson stood up, and mostly succeeded in leaving the room calmly.  Duncan did hear him start to run once the door had closed.

Duncan waited a while to see if anything further would happen.  When it seemed clear nothing would, he pinged Gwen and Mackie for updates.  They weren’t even aware he’d been arrested.  Mackie asked if he should push for the government to lodge another protest, but Duncan figured it wouldn’t help.  “I’m not going to be staying.”

Gwen inquired after Donna.  Duncan admitted she was faring poorly with all this, and that Dia was keeping her “sedated”.

“Be careful.  You won’t be able to do that once the full Moon is up,” cautioned Gwen.

“We know.”

After that, Duncan formed a few tiny crystal probes well away from the customs house where he was being held.  Nothing there reacted to them, but when he sent them over Disneyland, they were promptly shot down.  He sent another dozen in from various angles to map out the firing locations.

He then spent a significant amount of time forming a small aerostat – a motorized blimp that was completely mundane, so that when he withdrew the magic from it, it still worked.  He made sure to de-magic it thoroughly, then slowly sent it on its way to hover well above the park.  It was not engaged by the perimeter projectors.  Duncan suspected it hadn’t been detected at all.  It did let him watch the goings-on at the park, and the telescopic cameras gave him a good look at the firing platforms.  Only three had opened up, but there were twelve towers of similar design around the perimeter of the park, and three more closer to the castle.  Duncan flagged all of them as potential hazards.

He spent some time scanning the crowds, but did not spot his family.

He slept fitfully, thankful the robot body did not need a comfortable place to do so.

In the morning, he continued to watch the cameras.  Eventually he picked up a knot of security guards around a small party, and a closer look let him see blurry images of his children.  From what he could tell, they seemed happy and healthy.  Letting Donna see them helped calm her.  A little.