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CHAPTER ZERO, or forever hold your peace
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"LET'S TALK ABOUT LAST NIGHT."
Pristine white lights glared down at Alice, as if watching her. Judging her. There was concrete beneath her feet and stone walls on all four sides of her, the air was hot and tense inside the windowless room, a silence thicker than ice and deafeningly loud. After scanning the room for the fifth time since being placed in it, the Driscoll girl's eyes fell to her lap where her hands were folded. She laid them flat on her thighs, examining the skin at her fingertips. The very ends were bright red and bloody, she wouldn't be surprised if her fingerprints had been scratched off by the night's events, the young woman's eyes drifted from her hands to her forearm which was riddled with some pretty nasty cuts and bruises. Her bottom lip began to shake and tears built up in her waterline. Her entire body was aching, not only because of the psychical pain, but because of the trauma that was already beginning to settle like dust in her scattered mind.
Despite how horrendously cold she felt, Alice was no longer shivering, which she knew was a bad sign. In the back of her mind, she was screaming at herself to get up. To ask someone to turn off the fan, to get her a pair of clothes that weren't soaked in blood, to take her to a hospital so she could feel even a little bit better.
But she couldn't.
She was exhausted. She couldn't will herself to move, no matter how much a part of her wanted to, she couldn't even open her mouth to speak to the officer in front of her. All she could do was wonder. Wonder how long had it been since they were rescued, how she woukd possibly recover from this situation. The clock mounted on the wall hadn't moved once since she had been brought inside and Alice was also beginning to wonder if time was even moving anymore. She began to think that, maybe, it had frozen completely. The world had stopped turning, stopped rotating around the sun, stopped all movements of every living thing. Or maybe it was just her. She was the only thing in the world that had frozen.
When the officer spoke again, she bit her tongue which she was afraid might fall off if she spoke even one word.
A simple nod was all he received when he asked if she would answer his questions and she was not exactly sure why she did, because she also wasn't sure if she had it in her to talk about what happened to her in that very moment, but she also didn't have it in her to explain why she didn't want to talk and she knew he would ask if she declined. The brunette's vision went blurry as she stared blankly ahead, too busy trying not to break down to even hear the questions that he was asking her. The one thing she did hear, however, made that mission nearly impossible and before she knew it, tears were rolling down her cheeks and a sob was ripped from her throat.
"What happened to Ryan Ezrahler?"
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