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8:09 AM, MAY 28TH, 1987
RENVALE POLICE INTERROGATION ROOM 01
The room is compact.
Sterile might be another, more fitting word—four grey walls, a stainless steel table, three fold-out chairs—two facing the singular across the table. One door, no shelves and no windows, only a double-sided mirror, and a single security camera to record everything that is happening in this room.
In short, it was bland, with no personality or sense of any outside world. Perfect for its purpose. And it serves that purpose very, very well.
In the chair facing the other two was a teenage girl, arms crossed and a scowl on her face. Her dark brown hair is tied up in a ponytail, but several strands are escaping it and hanging loosely around her face, and the ponytail itself looks like it's going to fall out at any second. Her denim jacket is more distressed than it should be and the right sleeve is torn at the hem. There is blood and something darker on it, spotted on her shoes and staining her shirt and jeans. It might have been sprayed across her face, but looks like it has been scrubbed away—but there are some stubborn spots left, and red shadows are imprinted on her skin. And there's a look in her eyes, like she's seen something, looked right at it and clawed her way to freedom kicking and screaming and was halfway tempted to drag it down with her—though by the blood on her clothes, it seems like she might have done that when she'd fought her way to stay alive.
The girl looks like she'd been through hell and back. Not something one expects of a teenage girl who'd just graduated yesterday and had a promising future ahead of her.
The door opens and the girl's head jerks up as two men enter—one with a gruff face and bushy moustache and like he's already done with the case, the other clean-shaven and younger, a smile on his face as if meant to calm the girl.
It doesn't. The girl's face looks like she wonders if she would ever be calm again. If she could look at shadows again without the shadows reaching back for her, with claws and fangs hidden inside them to tear her throat out.
GRUFF POLICE OFFICER
Emelia Torres.
He and his colleague sit down in the chairs. In his hands is a file folder—of what they'd learned so far about last night, the evidence they gathered for this case.
The girl looks at them. Her eyes narrow and her mouth twists to the side.
