How can my character get out of this Sadistic Choice?

So here's the situation: The Big Bad has captured the heroine and a group of her friends and is more than willing to kill them to get his way... except for the heroine, who has information that he needs. This information would ensure that the current phase of his world-conquering plan will suceed.

To get said information, he has his Mooks restrain the heroine and force her to watch as he uses a lethal Agony Beam to slowly and painfully kill her companions, one by one, until she tells him what he wants to know. One or two of her friends beg for mercy and plead with her to tell him, while the rest of them beg her not to say anything, because if he wins, they're all dead anyway. One of her friends has already been killed, so she's in really hot water now.

Of course, the heroine has always had a knack for taking third options and overcoming seemingly impossible odds out of sheer willpower, so I'm trying to figure out a way for her to resolve this situation without giving in while saving the remaining team members from death. There are certain factors to consider in context, but rather than try to limit the number of possible choices, I'd like to know how you guys would deal with this kind of scenario from a general perspective.

In other words, how would you resolve this without Deus ex Machina?

edited 6th Aug '11 2:20:08 PM by SpacemanStrife

Is there a reason she can't lie or tell a half-truth?

Why can't she just lie and buy some time?

I was ninja-ed!

edited 6th Aug '11 2:29:26 PM by OhSoIntoCats

First priority is to buy time. Second is to get out of the hopeless situation (pretend to cooperate, say information is at location X, say you need to come along to disarm the traps...basically, get some freedom of motion). Then you can more plausibly stage a fighting escape.

Mm... well... if I were to set up such a situation, she would probably cave and the bad guy would win. That's just because I'm a heartless bastard when it comes to fiction and I have a horrible obsession with deconstructing everything I touch in writing.

I take it this is not an option, however.

I would say The Cavalry, but that's more or less a Deus ex Machina here, so... I don't have anything, besides those two.

Edit: Lying has been proven as a bad option already by fiction, though: Star Wars (the original movie) and Knights Of The Old Republic both (let you, in the case of KOTOR) try it, and both show that if the villain isn't intentionally stupid, it doesn't work.

edited 6th Aug '11 3:29:05 PM by USAF713

"Proven by fiction"? There's something wrong with that phrase...

I take it to mean that, since we've seen fiction where the bad guy doesn't fall for it, readers will be less likely to accept it if he does.

In my own case, I would avoid this situation entirely, as if there's a situation where my characters can't get out of it without a Deus ex Machina, then, as with USAF above, they won't get out of it. As someone who generally prefers writing at least slightly happy endings, I would avoid writing myself into that situation in the first place. However, that doesn't sound like an option in your case, so... I don't know.

This. There are acceptable tropes for making it fair for the heroes (who are presumably not as powerful as the villains at first) to win, and then there's intentionally making the villain stupid so that the heroes can win. Really now, if the villain is any kind of competent (and he has an Agony Beam, so he sounds like he should at least have resources) he'll hook the MC on a lie-detector or bring in a psychic or something. Why would he take what she says at face value, and why would he, say, let her and her friends go, even if they answer?

Answer: Villain Ball. Villain Ball is an evil, evil trope. Don't play it straight, please.

But the problem is that it's so, so true. If we are speaking realistically, the villain wouldn't be using torture to get information out of the heroes because he would know that it would likely be inaccurate.

Not necessarily. A villain wouldn't be constrained in the same way as a government entity would be. He could easily utilize varying methods of low-level torture—not enough to kill, naturally—while checking the information as he goes. Plus, phlebotinum could easily be around to get information out of someone's head... provided they are sufficiently mentally weakened.

Besides that, he's only torturing the friends at this point. If he runs out of friends and the heroine hasn't talked, well, there's always torturing her, too. It's not the most efficient method, but it would do.

Michael Weston's chair-kicking would be my personally-preferred method of getting someone to talk, but, eh, to each their own...

edited 6th Aug '11 4:15:00 PM by USAF713

I don't know about that - does this "give us what you want or we'll torture your friends" thing even happen in real life? Torturing someone for information isn't very reliable, but that's not quite the same as this.

Edit: Argh, ninja'd.

edited 6th Aug '11 4:16:33 PM by nrjxll

Well, the thing is, the heroine is braver with her own life than the lives of others. She's more than willing to pull a Heroic Sacrifice out of selflessness, but the thought of others being sacrificed doesn't fly as easily for her.

As for the issue of why the villain doesn't use simpler means of extracting the information: Perhaps he already knows and is just taking out the trash while trying to see if he can break this unbreakable cutie. Best case scenario, she's pushed over the Despair Event Horizon and either loses the will to fight, or is left in a broken state where she's more corruptible or completely loses her idealism.

Of course, it's even more difficult to escape this situation if he plans to kill everyone in the first place, so maybe I'm better off using this as the tragic backstory of a Fallen Hero.

He tortures and kills all her friends and discovers to his horror (and messy and not-quite-quick-enough-to-avoid-being-agonising demise) that this was enough to tip her completely off the rails and push her Berserk Button.

That's a bingo!

(Seriously,though, I actually really like that idea... at least, more than the original...)

Or...

You can invoke Refuge in Audacity and Chandler's Law. But that would involve comedy, so, unless this is going to be a parody...

edited 7th Aug '11 4:50:02 AM by USAF713

Yeah, I like the idea of playing it for drama to create a Fallen Hero. The most realistic way to tackle it would be to have the former hero snap, give up on his ideals, and pursue revenge against the villains at any cost. By himself, he'd probably form a third faction and cooperate with the current heroes only if it serves to carry out his vengeance. He'd be more than willing to undermine their efforts to bring the villains to justice if it means that he'll get closer to killing them in cold blood.