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꧁ 𝔸𝕕𝕒'𝕤 ℙ.𝕆.𝕍 ꧂

The police are ruthless. I can feel it in their movements, I can see it in their eyes. The way they wrestle our hands into the cuffs roughly, even though we aren't struggling. Their hand always at the trigger of their gun, twitching and itching to pull it. Their predatory eyes trained on ours, prying, wrenching our mind open and reading us, as if they are saying,  "I know what you are thinking. Don't hide it. You can't hide it. We can see all of you from here. We can see all of you." Maybe they were carved that way. Maybe they were born and trained and grown to save no one, to know no mercy, no spare nobody and to have no dignity. It was painted onto them. No eraser can remove paint. Their wrath is permanent.

We are frigid on the drive there. My heart is racing and I fear that even the police can hear it. I let it hammer against my chest and hope that it'll calm down in time. There won't be time. We arrive at the Zenith, which is now emptied of all workers, and it's swarming with police questioning the employees there. My hands are shaking so badly and I'm glad they're behind my back. The police would immediately suspect me if they saw what kind of state I was in. We pass security and enter the building, pushing past the huge crowd in the lobby. When we arrive at the elevator, Min is told to stay behind with her group of officers. I'm to go first. The police round me up and push me into the elevator, and as the doors close, I take the longest look at what could be the last friendly face I see. Min and I's eyes burn into each other as the elevator doors slowly shut, separating me from her. I could be dead in a minute flat, and she'd never know.

The cuffs are tighter this time, and the icy cold against my wrists are painful. I can control my breathing during the test, and even that'll be hard, but heaven knows if I can control my heart and blood pressure rate. I'll just imagine my innocence and hopefully I'll pass it. That's a very big thing to hope. I look around at the corridor and try to find comfort in something, anything, but all I can see around me are white walls, glass doors and a well-carpeted floor. There's not even something welcoming or warm to die to. When I reach the room, my hands can't stop trembling, it is too late to try and calm down now. Instead, I must figure out a way of escape. I'm staring at the windows. They're bolted tightly, and I doubt I can open them in time. The door locks behind me and guards aim their barrels at me. I go rigid and cold.

This time, the head officer doesn't ask them to lower their guns.

I breathe through my nose and let the cold run through my airways. I need to breathe. Breathe. Just breathe. My eye catches something in the corner of the room. A fire extinguisher. If only a fire happened now, but unlike story tales, the protagonists won't be saved by a sudden, unrealistic miracle. They die in real life. I'm brought to a small bathroom and told to wear a spirograph around my chest to measure my respiration rates. It's cold and I shiver slightly as I put my shirt over it and wrap a blood pressure cuff around my arm. Finally, I attach electrodes to my fingertips to measure my skin conductivity. When I go back to the desk, they plug my wires into a physiological recorder. They do a pre-test by asking me some warm up questions, then, the real test begins. "I don't care how near-perfect your score is," the officer says with a sense of finality in his tone, "even if you get one tiny point indicating you're guilty, we're putting a bullet through your head, we're not taking any chances." The lie detector tests back in the twenty first century were inaccurate, extremely hard to believe. Now we've advanced. Our lie detector tests are perfect to the point where nobody doubts them, they are always correct. Always accurate. I breathe in and out and the test begins.

"Miss Whitley, where were you on the night before the announcement?" I keep my eyes on the physiological recorder and answer truthfully, "In the Zenith, cleaning the building late at night, as usual." My rates don't go up, and it's because I was at the Zenith, but the questions to come would be the worrying ones. I watch the officer as he observes my results, gives a satisfied and scribbles something down onto his notepad. I notice a camera opposite me, recording me. I plaster a calm expression onto my face and steady my voice by giving a low hum, I'm ready to face the next questions. "Miss Whitley, what were you doing on that night?" I blur my eyesight, make my eyes unreadable, "Cleaning the security room, as I was assigned." The swish of an opening locker. The clanging thuds of crawling hands and knees in a vent.

I gulp. The memories are returning.

Swish. Clang. Thud.

It's all I can hear now. Filling my head and I feel fear leaking through my heart and trickling down my spine, down to my feet. The fear grows until my heart can almost no longer contain it. I can't let it burst. I mustn't let it burst.

My heart rate goes up a tiny bit.

The officer notices and hurriedly scribbles something down on his notepad again. He's more eager to find me guilty than not. It means a generous pay increase, a huge promotion, and a lifetime of praise. I need to make him reluctant to admit a lie: that I'm innocent. His voice is a tad bit excited as he asks the next question, "Miss Alexander, who were you with on this night?" I clench my toes and my voice, to my horror, comes out weak, puny and quiet, barely a whisper, "With my friend, Jade." You dragged her into this. I swallow hard and my throat burns. I feel the smallest beads of sweat form on my forehead. My heart is struggling to keep my overspilling, overflowing fear in. I can almost hear Min's voice. She's scared, and angry, oh very angry that you pulled her into this mess. The memory of her voice comes back.

Can you hear her voice, Ada? She's scared, and very, very angry.

My skin conductivity rises slightly.

Just as the bead of sweat trickles down to my eyebrow. The officer also notices this and tries to hide his glee as he scribbles whatever the hell he's scribbling onto his notepad. The guards step closer to me, tilting their guns higher. My hands are damp and my forehead is practically soaked. The guard asks one last question, and his tone has a hint of finality, almost as if he knew that he wouldn't need to question me anymore, "Miss Whitley, did you see anything suspicious that night?" The lock clicking on a door. The press of a button. The rushing back into the storage room.

Click. Press. Rush.

My heart can't contain the fear anymore. It bursts, and I let the fear rush out, onto my face where it is clearly visible now, into my blood stream, raising my blood pressure immediately, into my skin, pushing my skin conductivity upwards and provoking sweat, some remain in my heart and makes it pump harder than it ever has in my lifetime.

My psychical results all skyrocket.

Well, it never would have made a difference anyways if I amaze. And if I inspire. And if I awe.

And If I Impress.

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