The ride in the police car was silent apart from the police radio. In the time it took to get from the hotel to the police department’s headquarters, there were officers checking on a business alarm, responding to a possible domestic violence fight, and then arresting someone on a warrant. The transporting officer didn't try to communicate with me; he remained focused on driving. He was serious about using his turn signal, and I heard its clicks more often than I heard the radio. At four o’clock in the morning, it was too dark to see the officer’s face, to try to gather information from him about my situation. The glass separating us made it seem like we were miles apart, so I didn't even try to ask the officer questions. No one had told me what was happening. After escorting me out of the hotel, the SWAT officers had placed me in the officer’s car and shut the door to my freedom. The bars on the windows amplified that feeling.

It was uncomfortable in the back of the patrol vehicle. The seat was hard plastic and pressed the handcuffs further into my wrists. Nonetheless, I tried to not squirm. I was uncertain of who had occupied the seat before me, whether he had exposed abscesses or vomited all over it. My legs were bare, and the officers had not given me an opportunity to put on underwear. They had treated Jay and me like we were violent psychopaths who posed a threat to them. It was rather ridiculous. They were all burly men. Galileo had trained us to defend ourselves well, though even he could not teach us how to come out with a victory against seven people with rifles. Besides, he had also taught us to be sensible.

Physically, Jay was the bigger threat than I was. Over six feet tall, he had an American football cornerback’s body. Myself, I had never developed bulk. My gymnastics and aerial dancing had kept me limber and thin. The top of my head could barely reach the five-foot-three mark. Had I not been in the back of a patrol car, I would have laughed over the fact that a SWAT team had been sent to retrieve Jay and me.

After a short drive, we arrived at the police headquarters without incident. The car idled as the entrance gate opened with the prompting of the officer’s access card. He pulled into a secured parking lot filled with other police vehicles and different cars. Some of them had yellow tape wrapped around their bodies, marking them as evidence. The officer pulled into the parking space nearest to the building.

Just outside of the entrance doors, two people—a man and a woman—stood waiting for our arrival. They were in slacks and polos. Their belts featured badges and holstered firearms. The female’s dark brown hair was down and brushed her shoulders. In the light provided by the exterior lighting, I could see that she was of Hispanic ethnicity. The male was tall and lanky with an unruly beard.

It was the female who opened my door, and with a light tone, directed, "Let’s get you out of there. It can be a bit cramped." Compliantly, but awkwardly, I got out of the vehicle. The female was ready to grab my elbow to help stabilize me. I caught the concerned look she sent the patrol officer.

"She and the other one were found naked in bed," he explained. "Kowalski is supposed to be coming by with something more appropriate for her."

The female gave a nod, her facial expression remaining impassive. "Let’s get inside."

I was escorted to a small square room on the third floor. The room contained three chairs and a round table. After the female investigator patted me down, she removed the handcuffs and instructed me to sit in the lone chair furthest from the door. Compliant, I did as she instructed. I expected the questioning to start immediately. However, it didn’t, and I was left alone in the room—which was barren.

I was quickly aware of a camera installed in the front corner of the room. A computer-printed sign taped to the barren wall was quick to inform me that the room was being monitored through auditory and visual means. An officer was stationed outside in the hallway. He was not directly in my line of sight, though if I twisted to the left and leaned forward a bit, I could see him seated just outside my door with a black laptop on his lap. I knew I was not free to refuse all questioning and walk out of the building.

As I waited, my concern over being in trouble dissipated. The female investigator returned to the room with a small stack of my clothing and a pair of shoes. Being in my own clothing made me feel less overwhelmed.

After I had changed, the female investigator returned with a glass of water. She sat it before me and said, "I’m Victoria. I’m an investigator with the Denver Police Department. We’ll be starting soon, but if you need anything until then just ask for me, okay? Even if it is just to use the restroom." I nodded, barely able to swallow past the constriction in my throat. I felt a bit of hope. If they got me clothing, removed my restraints, and brought me water, I couldn’t be in too much trouble. Perhaps they wanted to question me as a witness.

There was not a clock in the room, so I was not aware of how long I waited. I tried to keep my fidgeting to the minimum, aware I was being monitored and analyzed. I strained my ears to hear conversations occurring outside of the room. Although there were a couple, the investigators were careful and spoke too softly. I couldn't decipher their hums. The waiting and anticipation were the worse parts during this time. Several times, people walked past my door as blurs of movement. Every time it happened, my heartbeat skipped. They were false alarms, and I would soon drop back into boredom.

I didn't realize Jay was in the same hallway, probably just a couple of rooms down, until I heard him yelling. "I refuse to talk to anyone about anything! There’s no way! Bria! Don’t talk to them! Don’t you dare say anything—"

"Come on, walk!" a commanding voice shouted over Jay’s.

"Bria! You don’t have to say anything! I promise I will get you out! Don’t talk to these fuckturds!" Jay’s voice faded as he was escorted out of the interrogation hallway. Just as it did, the officer who had been assigned to guard duty at my door abandoned his chair to stand just outside of my room’s threshold. His dark eyes, rimmed with bags, met mine for a second before he stared down the hall, no doubt at the spectacle Jay was causing. The officer’s hands were positioned over his firearm secured in the holster on his right hip and the pepper spray on his left. He could have remained in his chair. I was more sensible than my counterpart. Getting up and yelling at Jay would only result in more trouble than it was worth. I was hoping my compliancy would earn me a quick release.

My patience was rewarded a couple of minutes later when Victoria, who was now carrying a tablet and stack of papers, entered the room with a different male. Her companion lacked the police badge. He had combed his graying dark hair over to the side. There were thin-rimmed glasses hanging from his shirt collar. His suit jacket covered a belt and empty gun holster. His blue eyes analyzed me as if he was trying to pigeonhole me into a specific category.

Another male, this one another investigator in civilian clothing, entered the room with a fourth chair. He gave the chair to the other male, who sat down in it in the far corner. He leaned back into his chair and held his paper cup of coffee with both hands as if he would just be observing. The room became cramped with the four of us in it.

"Thank you for waiting," Victoria said, as if I had any choice in the matter. She looked a little more awake than when we had first met outside. "Before we get started, let’s get introduced to each other." Victoria’s hand directed my attention to the other investigator. "This is Will, my partner." Will raised a hand in a lackluster greeting—he did not appear to be too happy to be conducting this interview in the morning. Victoria moved onto the second male. "And this is Senior Agent Gabriel—he’s with Interpol. He’ll be sitting in with us as we conduct this interview."

My eyebrows shifted slightly, and I examined Gabriel with more interest. Due to how often we traveled around, Interpol had been the only law enforcement agency Galileo feared. Its powers were international, as opposed to national or county, which were easier to evade. Victoria brought my attention back to her when she inquired, "And how about you? What is your name?"

I swallowed. Jay’s screaming still haunted my thoughts. Taking a deep breath, I cooperated and provided them with my full name. "Briara Disraeli. I go by Bria, though."

"Can you spell that?" Victoria asked. She recorded the spelling on a form that I was too far away to read from where I was sitting. After I spelled my name, she asked for my birthday.

"December 21, 1995," I answered. This, too, was recorded on the paperwork.

"So that puts you at nineteen," Victoria confirmed. I nodded, still waiting for her to explain why we were in this crowded room together. When she finished recording my birthday on the form, Victoria looked up at me. "We brought you in here because we wanted to interview you about what happened yesterday. I know it is rather early right now, but it is important that you focus during this interview and answer as honestly as you can, so that if there is another dangerous situation out there that can hurt more people, we can take the appropriate action." Victoria rotated the form she had written my name and birthday on and slid it across the table to me, along with the pen. Her explanation sounded sensible.

I glanced down at the sheet and the image of the Denver Police badge positioned on the left corner of the page popped out at me. Next to it, was the heading: Denver Police Department Advisement of Rights. Below it, a bigger paragraph advised me I had been detained out of suspicion of committing a crime, and it was the police department's duty to investigate my involvement in that crime.

After she reviewed my rights with me, Victoria asked, "Do you want to talk to me?”

I took a deep breath, still hearing the echoes of Jay’s yelling. All three investigators wore impartial expressions as they waited for my answer. I could keep mum and not submit to the questioning. I feared the consequences if I resisted, however. It didn’t sound like Jay had been allowed to walk out as a free man when he had refused questioning. I wanted to quickly exonerate myself so I could leave and figure out how to get Jay out of law enforcement’s custody, and then figure out what to do then. We hadn’t even had the time to properly mourn Galileo. "Yes, I’ll talk to you," I told them.

Will and Gabriel looked astonished by my answer. However, Victoria kept her face neutral and nodded to the paper before me. "Great. Before we get started, can you initial each of the lines next to the advisements and then sign at the bottom just to confirm you are waiving your rights?" With trembling hands, I did as she requested, wondering if I was going to regret this. Victoria took back the paper and tucked it underneath the paper stack. She leaned back in her chair, more relaxed now that the administrative paperwork was completed. I kept my hands in my lap, my posture prim and proper. Unlike the investigator, I couldn’t relax until I knew what this was about. "So, Bria, tell us about yourself."

"What do you want to know?" I hesitated.

"Let's start off with what you do. You're nineteen, right? Are you in school?"

I nodded, cautious. "Yes. I go to Vanderbilt."

A couple sets of eyebrows shifted upwards. "That's a rather prestigious school, right? You must have some brains in you."

I gave a noncommittal, one-shoulder shrug. "I'm studying to become a doctor. I haven't quite figured out what discipline yet. I'm still in my undergrad, so I have a little bit of time at least."

"Do you live in Colorado?"

"No. Nashville."

"What brought you here, then?"

I took a deep breath, suddenly grateful that Galileo gave me an alibi. "I am an aerialist. They had a competition at Union Station yesterday that I competed in." I paused, waiting for Victoria to jump into questioning about the slaughter. Yet, interest sprung into her eyes, and she leaned slightly forward.

"I've heard of aerial dance. I can't exactly say I've actually seen any performances," Victoria confessed. "You light up when you talk about it, and there's passion in your voice."

"I guess I like to pretend I can fly," I responded.

Victoria gave me an amused look before asking, "How long have you been doing aerial dance?"

"About fifteen years, though it wasn’t something I could really dedicate myself to until my life finally settled down in Nashville."

"Settled down?" Victoria's head tilted in inquiry.

I nodded. "You want the whole story?"

"We have time."

"I'll give you the condensed version." I decided. "For the first eight years of my life, I was with my mother. She was a wanderer, and we were homeless. Not in the sense you are probably familiar with. My mother had the capability of traveling the world, so I grew up going from one country to the next with her. We were never really in the same city for more than a week. We could be in Rio de Janeiro on a Monday, and then on Friday, we'd be in Bucharest." The investigators' reactions were of the usual sort; I was used to telling my autography—it was a hit at college parties. There was always curious surprise. The Interpol agent was frowning, evaluating me. I went on to announce the twist to my childhood fairytale. "Then my mother was murdered when I was eight years old."

Victoria straightened from her forward lean. Whatever she suspected, this was not it. "Do you know by whom?"

I pressed my lips tightly together and shook my head. "No." I paused and assessed their reactions to my simple answer, which was usually enough to shut down subsequent questioning related to the subject. No one had been clever and brave enough to prompt me for more information, so I never had to lie. I let the omitted information be while Victoria and Will exchanged a quick glance. Gabriel simply took a sip of his coffee. He had a mask over his face that made it extremely difficult to read him.

I continued with the story Galileo had instilled in my head should I ever find myself in such a position. There was just enough truth in it that no one would ever suspect there was more to it. "After that, my mother's friend took care of me. For two years, he continued with my mother's nomadic ways, and raising me as such, until he determined that it wasn't fair to me. He thought it would be better if I had a stationary home, where I could go to school and live a normal life. Since I was already ten years old at that point, the only viable option was to put me in the system. I stayed in it for eight years."

Victoria was back to leaning in her chair; this time her arms were crossed. "What happened to him?"

"He continued to travel the world." I felt a flare of grief seize my chest; it took a couple of deep breaths to get past the constriction. “He'd drop in and check to see how I was doing. He actually came to the competition yesterday to support me."

"He sounds like he became a father figure to you."

I nodded in confirmation. "He did," I croaked.

Victoria's eyes filled with compassion as she deciphered my emotion. "He was one of the victims yesterday, wasn't he?" I gave her another nod. My arms crossed tightly over my chest with my hands cupping my elbows. My throat felt tight, and for moments, it was difficult to breathe. I blinked, feeling my eyes get teary. "Do you have anyone else?" Victoria wondered. "What about any other friends or boyfriends?"

I smiled grimly. "I had a boyfriend."

"Had?"

"He proposed before I came on this trip. I told him no."

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Will muttered a sympathetic ouch as Victoria blinked over how personal this had gotten and my level of compliancy. In his corner, Gabriel's eyebrows shifted upwards—it was one of the only signs I had gotten from him that he was even listening. "Why would you do that?" Victoria exclaimed.

"We are still young," I sighed. "He still has several years of schooling left—he aspires to become a biochemist, and I haven't even started my residency to become a doctor yet. We met when I was a freshman; I feel like we haven't even scratched the surface of who the other person is yet."

"How did you two meet?" Victoria was genuinely curious.

"How do any college sweethearts meet?" I questioned in return. "He was a TA in my Intro to Biology class. I knew who he was from classroom discussion. Yet, he always seemed so stonewalled and unapproachable in class—he didn't like it very much when my friend, Skye, made me laugh so much during a lab when she started using a pig's intestine as a puppet to put on a show. Then, a couple of months into freshman year, Skye and I went to a college party. We got a little too drunk at the party and decided to return to our dorm. By a little too drunk, I mean that I was crawling in the hallway, and then Skye got lost and couldn't remember where her dorm was. We ended up on the boys' floor somehow, and Xavi happened to be patrolling that floor that night. He got Skye home and then proceeded to walk me back to mine. I was more lucid at that point, and we started to talk. We sat on the hill outside of my dorm talking until dawn. We've been inseparable ever since. He even chose to complete his graduate program at the university so he didn't have to leave me."

I smiled sadly. When Galileo had originally placed me in Nashville, I had been livid. I hadn't wanted a normal life. I was whisked away by the spontaneity of the vagabond life. Yet, as the years passed, I began to appreciate the normal memories I started to accumulate. Sometimes, it was difficult for me to simply drop everything in my normal life to attend to Galileo's missions. I argued with Galileo when he demanded I fly to Dubai to complete another one of his assignments the night of Skye's sixteenth birthday party. I was fortunate Skye forgave me for missing that event.

"That's rather romantic," Victoria commented. As if Victoria could tell where my mind ventured off to, she asked about Skye. "It sounds like you and Skye have been friends for a while."

"She was my first friend in Nashville."

"And she got into Vanderbilt, too?"

"Yes. You should have seen us in the weeks leading up to the SATs. We were extremely stressed out," I said with humor in my tone.

"I remember when I took mine; I think I had three different study guides," Victoria commiserated. She picked up the pen and started to fidget with it. "How does Jay fit into all of this? You haven't mentioned him once, and yet, you were found with him earlier this morning."

My hands twitched in my lap, and I was grateful that none of the investigators could see the involuntary movement. My voice did not betray my emotion as I explained, "Jay was Galileo's ward before I even came along. Jay was quite rebellious when he was younger—"

"You don't say," Will muttered underneath his breath.

"—and got himself shipped off to the disciplinary school Galileo teaching at. Galileo was the only professor there who Jay would remotely listen to." I continued as if I hadn’t heard Will's sarcasm. "When Galileo left his teaching position to take care of me, Jay refused to stay at the school. So Galileo allowed him to come with us. He traveled with us for those two years." That was the superficial truth. There was more to it, including Kit, Galileo's nephew, though I wasn't about to bring up Kit's memory and be interrogated about him. For those two years, it was Galileo traveling with three children. It was two full years of training and development as Galileo sculpted us into the agents he needed.

"And the school allowed that?" Victoria inquired, surprised.

I shrugged. "I don't know all the particulars." Victoria sucked her bottom lip in, and I knew she would be doing some investigatory work on her own. She wouldn’t find anything.

"After the two years of traveling the world, did Galileo put Jay in a group home with you in Nashville?"

I shook my head. "No. Jay was placed in Phoenix."

"Why separate you?" Victoria inquired.

"You'd have to ask Galileo," I sighed. "Maybe he thought Phoenix would be more fitting for Jay to succeed. It's a lot more laid back than other places."

"Is Jay going to school, too?"

Victoria's question brought an amused smile to my face, and I had to hold back a snort. "He dropped out in junior year of high school; he only made it a year before he gave the entire system the middle finger. They tried to keep him in the group home and quickly learned it was a losing battle," I declared. "Jay does what he wants."

"Then how is he occupying his time now?"

"He's working at a gym as a personal trainer. It grounds him."

"Did he also come up to support you at your competition?"

"He did," I responded carefully.

"Have you two been intimate before?" The question caused a rush of blood to my face and neck, and almost tore apart my aplomb. I hadn't been expecting it. I fidgeted and stalled by collecting my hair and pulling it over one shoulder as I searched for a suitable answer. "You two were found in a bed together, naked, this morning. I assume I made the appropriate conclusion?" Victoria inquired.

I bit my lip before answering more tersely than I wanted, "No, we haven't had sex before last night.

"Why last night?"

It felt like my cheeks were on fire as I fought to control my emotions. The chair was suddenly uncomfortable. I wanted to shift to find better positioning. I remained still, as I didn't want it to be taken as squirming. "I wanted to be comforted."

"Because of the proposal you rejected and thus the probable ending of your two-year relationship?"

"No, because of the slaughter I found myself surviving yesterday," I snapped. My eyes flashed with my anger. "It was a bit traumatizing. Jay is my oldest friend, and I turned to him for comfort. Maybe even for a distraction."

Victoria paused before refocusing her questions and returning to something that had raised her curiosity. "What happened to your mother? You said she was murdered when you were eight, right? Do you know anything about that?"

I hesitated, uncertain of how much to tell the investigators. After years of being told to keep quiet about it, I was reluctant to fill these strangers in on that part of my life; I hadn't even told Xavier or Skye about it. All they knew was that my mother had died. It was getting too close to the secrets I knew better than to tell. Finally, I settled with, "She was investigating something. Unfortunately, it got her killed."

"What was she investigating?"

"I don’t know." I shook my head with a shrug. "She never told me."

Victoria nodded. "I can understand that. You were eight years old after all. If it was something dangerous, she probably would have wanted you to remain ignorant for your own safety." The female investigator paused, tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, and did a one-hundred-eighty rotation in her questioning. It started to turn more confrontational. The investigator was done laughing with me, trying to build rapport with me.

"You have done well in establishing an alibi for yourself, Bria. On the surface, you have it all. You have the documents to prove it as well. You have the physical identification. Your school transcripts and social media accounts were all easy enough to locate. You are truly enchanting to watch as an aerialist, and I loved watching the videos you posted to your accounts. If we were in the business of stopping our investigation there, you would be fine." Victoria paused to analyze my expression.

I pursed my lips, waiting for her to continue. There was nothing in my expression for her to analyze. My posture was immaculate, and I had kept my hands positioned in my lap during the interview. I had been polite, dignified, and answered her every question up to this point. Had I had any control of the time of the interview, I would have been able to present myself in a nice outfit and with my hair confined to a prim and proper bun, instead of wearing a t-shirt and tousled hair.

"It’s time to drop the façade, though." Victoria didn't sound all that welcoming with that confrontational tone she had acquired. "Did you know we found several identification documents in your hotel room—passports, IDs, social security cards? All with different names. Same picture, though. Yours. There’s Briara Disraeli, and then there are the others. Gabriella Clark. Illyana Suter. Amara Forrest. Lily Feleppa. Chiara Allen."

I kept my expression neutral, unwilling to comment—verbally or nonverbally—on all my aliases forged by Galileo for the many different assignments he had sent me on. Fortunately, Victoria was not searching for a response, not yet. She was still building the foundation for a more potent question. "We ran all these names through Tennessee’s Department of Motor Vehicles, as well as the other forty-nine states. We couldn't find an official hit anywhere despite the physical ID cards. This tells me that they were forged."

I remained quiet. "However, in our quest to identify you, Interpol was gracious enough to search through their records. This is what we located." Victoria turned her stack of papers towards me.

After she removed the coversheet, I saw that the top page featured a screenshot from a security camera in an airport. I immediately recognized myself in normal attire standing at the airport security podium, waiting for the officer to verify my identification using one of the forged cards. It had been taken a couple of months ago, when we had been flying to Helsinki from Warsaw. "The flight manifest for that particular flight you were on had you listed as Samantha Keller."

Victoria moved this photo to the left side of the stack to reveal the next photo. This one was captured from a street camera. The image had been zoomed in to focus on a female entering the Storting Building in Oslo a little under twenty-four hours later after the first photo. Like the first photo, I immediately recognized myself, even though I had donned a blonde wig and gray pantsuit with pink accents. I remembered the mission. Galileo had wanted me to enter the government building to request records on a Zane Konstantinos. Victoria did not have anything to say about this picture and instead set it to the right of the stack.

The next picture was of me sitting at a bar in Oslo. This time, short black hair framed my face while my short black dress revealed a lot of my cleavage. I was captured turned towards a guy in a business suit. I remembered he had been quite flirtatious that night, and the picture reflected that. I had fended off his advances while trying to get him to inadvertently tell me where the location to the Crescent was. Jay and I had come up with theories as to what the Crescent was on the flight. His favorite theory was that it was a speakeasy. However, we never did get to learn what it was. As soon as I got the pertinent information for Galileo, he fled for the night, leaving us with orders to remain in the hotel and relax until our flights back to the states.

"So what? You’re questioning me about the number of times I change my appearance?" I attempted to redirect the investigators’ attention elsewhere. Fear gripped my gut. What had those Scandinavian missions been for? Were they the reason why I was sitting here right now? If so, the investigators would not learn much at all. I was as oblivious as they were.

"We’ll get to that," Victoria stated. With the three pictures of my three different appearances in the span of thirty-six hours sitting before me, Victoria went on to say, "I love to change my appearance as much as the next girl, but I think you hold the record. It made us curious about you. We started to dive in deep to determine your true identity. You know what we found out?" I gave her a blank stare, already knowing what she was going to say. "You do not exist. Yes, you have your school records and social media accounts. Yet, there are not any birth or social security records, no national identity cards, for any of your aliases. You have done something that is quite impossible to do in this era. You have mingled with the general population—you've flown on planes!—and yet, there isn’t any official record that you exist anywhere in the world. How is that possible?"

I shrugged again, keeping my face neutral. My tone was just as neutral. "I don't know."

Feeling like she was not getting anywhere with this line of questioning, Victoria moved on to the next set of questions after she exchanged glances with the Interpol agent. Gabriel gestured for her to continue. Sighing, Victoria gathered up the screenshots and set them aside. She returned to sitting fully back in her chair and folding her hands in her lap. "Let’s talk about yesterday at Union Station. What do you remember of the massacre?”

"Nothing," I declared.

"Nothing?" she repeated, blinking.

"No. I was walking across the hall to meet Galileo, who was by the coffee shop, after I returned from the bathroom. In one moment, everything was fine. In the next... it was not. The attack happened and... Galileo was dead. I knew it the moment I saw him." I choked on a sob.

"In that moment between when you say everything was fine and when it wasn’t, did you feel like you had lost any time?" This time, it was Will who posed the question. He was peering at me with narrowed eyes. He leaned forward so that his folded arms and upper chest were resting against the table.

"No," I uttered softly. "It was like I put my left foot forward and everything was normal. When I swung my right foot forward, everything had changed. Just in the span of a millisecond. I don’t have any recollection of the attack." I knew I sounded absurd, that my answers implied that the impossible had happened. It was a phenomenon that couldn't be explained.

"Are you certain you don’t remember anything? We have reason to believe that a weapon that can harness electricity may be involved."

For moments, I froze, remembering how it had felt when I regained consciousness after the attack. It seemed like my skin was crackling with electricity. I forced myself to take a deep breath. "I’m certain."

Will and Victoria exchanged another, highly significant look. I felt like they had dropped a loose noose around my neck and were gradually tightening it. Would it come to the point where I had unknowingly signed my own execution warrant if I failed to exercise my right to remain silent? At the beginning, I was certain that if I cooperated and answered all their questions, they would come to see that I was innocent of whatever crime they were investigating. Now, I was gradually becoming aware that they knew something about the attack that I didn’t know. It was my own ignorance tightening the noose around my throat. I took another deep breath just to remind myself that I had my full ability to breathe, and the noose was only figurative. The tension made my spine rigid. I glanced at Gabriel, only to catch him staring at me. I forced myself to meet his stare. Evaluative suspicion resided in his blue eyes. He refused to be intimidated by my eye contact and instead, it was me that looked away first.

Victoria picked up the tablet, typed in a quick numerical passcode, and activated one of the tablet’s apps. When she pointed the screen at me, I saw she had pulled up video footage from one of the cameras in Union Station. It was paused on a screenshot showing people walking and lingering around the hall, telling me that the footage was before the attack. The hall didn't look like that now.

"Hit play," Victoria requested.

My finger was trembling when I brought it up to the middle of the screen and pressed the right triangle. It took seconds for the video to start playing. From the timestamp in the bottom left of the screen, I discovered that the footage captured yesterday morning around eleven-thirty. The camera was pointed in the direction of the Terminal Bar. With horror, I realized that it had a very good view of the aisle Jay and I had walked down as we had tried to leave the premises. I watched as people milled around and started searching in between them for some sign of the men Galileo had been meeting. The bystanders slowly consumed coffee and tea as they sat in leather chairs and enjoyed the ambiance. Just to the edge of the camera view, I could see the outliers of the audience observing the aerial performances. An older woman with graying blonde hair was walking across the floor and pulling a suitcase behind her, heading for the trains. Everything looked so innocent underneath the Saturday morning sunlight. The bright tulips in the interior pots added a pop of festive spring color to the hall’s ambience.

I knew exactly where to look to see Jay and me enter the camera's view. Our pace was quick and intentional. I saw the moment when I tripped, and Jay caught me. My shoulder blade throbbed from the reminder of the intense pain I had felt around that time. Jay managed to stabilize me. It was right there when I lost consciousness. I thought the camera would jump to the conclusion of the attack, as that was what I remembered.

The camera had continued recording, even if I hadn't been aware of what was occurring around me.

I could only stare at the video in horror as I witnessed what I did not remember.

Somehow, someway, a burst of what appeared to be lightning erupted from me. Due to the intensity of it, I could not see if its origin point was my core or my hands. One thing was certain: it definitely came from me. Its first victim was Jay. The moment the silver current touched Jay, Jay was sent flying backwards until he collided with one of the white pillars in the hall. The back of his head snapped against it. I released a horrified gasp as I saw him fall forward onto the ground, where he did not move. I wished that was the end of it, and that he was my only victim.

The video continued to play. My body exerted more of that current, and it struck the first bystanders down without giving them a fighting chance. Then the lightning faded as fire and water erupted from me, causing destruction of both life and property. The camera picture shook as a large crack traveled from the building’s foundation, up the wall, and shattered parts of the ceiling. A large ravine divided the floor. I saw blood and body parts splatter over surfaces. Meanwhile, the surviving bystanders were fleeing towards the nearest exits. Some of them were unfortunate victims of my blasts. They went down without ever getting up.

Unable to stomach watching the massacre any longer, I jabbed at the middle of the screen multiple times, trying to get the video to stop.

I was uncertain of my expression as I glanced up at the grim-faced investigators, who were focused on me and my body language. Galileo’s lessons on composure and compartmentalizing had not prepare me for this, for what I had seen myself doing in the video. I was horrified, and then in disbelief and denial. There had to be some explanation. It had to be those men Galileo had met with. Or maybe the compass I had been holding. I didn’t remember killing so many people, so it couldn't have been me. I couldn't be Galileo’s murderer. No. Absolutely not. I was not a murderer. I had never felt the need to kill, whether out of lust or violence or self-preservation.

"Did that jolt your memory a little?" Victoria pried, breaking the silence in the room.

I struggled to find even an inkling of memory of the attack. My brain remained insistent that I was not present for it. I shook my head.

"Do you recognize the weapon you used?"

Confused, I blinked multiple times in rapid succession. The camera had been so far above me that a weapon hadn’t been clear—if I even had one. Where had I gotten weapons powerful enough to cause a massacre? "No," I whispered. Fear became tangled up in the confusion, along with the realization that if I was the suspect of mass murder, they would not let me walk out of here a free woman, even if I cooperated. They had video evidence that I was the perpetrator. I was not innocent. Feeling trapped, I sought the only comfort I had. "Where’s Jay?" I blurted out.

"Jay has been arrested under the suspicion of being your accomplice," Victoria informed me after a second.

I stared at the tablet, its screen still paused on me in the middle of the attack. Heart thumping fiercely in my chest, I looked up at them. "I don’t want to answer any more questions," I whispered.

Those were the powerful words I needed to get the investigators to leave the room. In their place, two uniformed officers entered the room. I followed all their orders as one of them restrained me in the handcuffs again before escorting me out to a cop car. I didn’t dare ask them what was happening now. I didn't need it voiced out into the universe. My freedom was being stolen from me. For a good reason. I was a murderer. I had seen it with my own eyes. I had murdered the only person who had the power and intellect to get me out of the predicament I found myself in. I had taken down my peer, my confident, with me. It didn’t matter that there was so much I didn't know. I knew enough about the American criminal justice system to know I would never be a free woman again.