They Call Me the Coroner | Top Gun: Maverick

I'm Sick of Suffering

~~Jasper~~

Mitchell frowns from behind the table he's chained to. "You're the pizza guy Tesha was so upset with that day at the beach, aren't you?"

"I'm not really a pizza guy." I tighten my expression.

"Really?" He smirks and takes in the room. "No kidding."

It's a normal interrogation room. One way window, camera, table, two chairs, two men, one handcuffed and one not.

The only think missing is the good cop.

"So, where is she?" He smiles.

I sit across from him and fold my hands in my lap, leaning back. "In a room a couple hundred feet down the hall."

"Is she alright?"

"That depends on how you mean. Physically? She's beat up from her plane crash. Concussion. On the verge of hypothermia when we found her. Her torso almost looks as if she'd been through a shredder. Face is all busted up too. She should heal fine. We have good doctors here."

His breathing quickens as he stares at me and my nonchalant explanation of a woman brutally mangled.

Honestly, I've found that if you think about something too much, it tends to affect you. Mostly, adversely. So I try not to think about things that bother me.

Tesha ripped to pieces...bothers me.

"Mentally? Well, in the past thirty minutes she's been conscious, she has managed to annihilate a big flat screen TV and an expensive antique radio - no telling what else - and has practically screamed her lungs into oblivion."

I stop short. Tesha screaming...bothers me.

"I don't really have the authority or knowledge to give you insight to her spiritual status-"

"You ramble when you're nervous." He raises a brow with a frown. "Or guilty."

"I had an energy drink earlier. Caffeine makes me chatty."

"Those things will kill you, you know." He frowns harder.

"So, I've been told. But 500 drinks later and I'm still here." I smile, my stomach churning at how messed up I am, trying to make jokes when I helped a woman go practically insane a few rooms down.

Can I... scream now?

He glares at me and any trace of kindness in his face is gone. It makes me uneasy. Angry, even. I want him to stop looking at me like that.

His eyes advert to his wrist and I exhale a breath I didn't know I was holding.

"What is this place? What are...you?"

I stare at him a long moment with a fake smile on my face. What am I?

Not who.

What.

It's here that I realize one of the most important things of my very short life.

I don't know.

I've dedicated my life, my precious breathing moments, my integrity, my soul...to something I don't even know.

After three years, I don't know what this place is, what they do here, or what I'm doing here. I thought I did. But I don't think I'll ever completely know or fully understand. But I do know something for sure.

I know they will kill and con anyone into doing it for them to keep their hands as clean as possible, legally speaking.

It's not a single person at work here. Not even organizations.