It should come as no surprise that after I was settled into the blank white room, I was left to stare at its meager furnishings for what seemed like hours.

I was seated in one of the most uncomfortable chairs I had ever encountered: hard metal and bolted to the floor.  In front of me squatted a table that had encountered the same punishment.

However, the chair across from me, the one I assumed my interrogator would sit in, was cushioned even though it was still bolted to the ground.

If I hadn't been so terrified of moving, of my actions giving me away, I would have had no qualms about making myself at home in that chair.

Fear was an entity greedily chewing away at my courage, so I remained in the hard chair, eyes fixed on the empty tabletop.

"Ilania," a male voice intoned from behind me, but I dared not to look around my shoulder to see who it was, "apprenticed to become an Archivist to Luther, daughter of a doctor and an architect."

He fell silent, and I swallowed hard, the sound seeming to echo in the room.

"All that you say is correct," I managed, once it was clear that he wasn't going to do anything else until I said something.

Heavy footsteps maneuvered their way over to the other chair, but I kept my sight fixed upon the table.  The Enforcer did not seem pleased with my lack of curiosity as he slammed a heavy metal box down on the table as hard as he could.

I just barely managed to keep myself from jumping entirely out of my skin and raised my eyes to meet the cruel hazel eyes of the man.

He smirked at my expression before settling himself comfortably into his chair.  "Is it also correct that you seem to get those you care for killed?"

Despite the fact that Matthew had warned me about this sort of unnerving questions, I struggled to keep my composure.  "I'm sure that whoever you got that information from believed it to be true."

"Whoever I got it from?  Why, Ilania, I formed that theory myself after looking through all your records.  Your mother and brother died because she delayed getting the vaccination, merely to indulge the whims of her elder child.  Now, we are at the matter of Luke, the nephew of your mentor and someone you've been seen with more frequently than would seem proper for two people of your ages."

I folded my trembling hands in my lap to disguise the reaction that still came with the mention of his name.  "His younger sister Meara and I went to school together."

"The two of you were never seen as close friends," the Enforcer retorted, a cruel light in his eyes as if he delighted torturing me.  "Besides, that excuse would make more sense if it had been Meara you had been wandering around with.  The fact that it was her older brother makes some wonder what exactly was going on behind the scenes."

"I know well the Laws," I said in as firm a voice as I could manage.  "Even if I had loved Luke, it could have never been."

He slapped a hand on the table, and I involuntarily flinched as if his blow had landed on me.  Pleased with the reaction that he invoked, he threw open the box and lifted out a familiar bundle.

My heart tried to leap out of my chest, banging frantically at my ribs.  Trying to hide that fact, I stared at the shimmering blue-green fabric with a growing sense of dread.

Perhaps this could be explained away easily, but if they had found our box...this would have gone much differently.

"It's a dress," I struggled to mask the slight panic in my voice by raising an eyebrow in question.  "I wasn't aware that Enforcement was now stealing dresses as evidence."

The Enforcer leaned closer.  "We know whose dress this was. All I would like to know is how it ended up stuffed under Luke's bed."

"I forgot to take it home," I remarked casually, spinning a story as I went and hoping that he'd get tangled in the web.  "Luke was like the brother I never had, and I had gone over to see if he could give me some boy advice.  I changed back into my normal clothes before I left and totally forgot to retrieve the dress from the floor.  He must have shoved it under his bed."

His eyes narrowed with suspicion, but he didn't call me out on it, choosing instead to draw another item out.

A screen.

"Do you understand what this is?"

I nodded; of course, I knew what it was after working in the Archives for four years.

The man fidgeted with it for a moment before turning it my way.

Luke.

I teased my bottom lip between my teeth as I drank in the sight of him, craving those images like he was lifesaving water.

Luke, who looked worse in the video than he had looked the day he died.  His hands were chained to the table in front of him, and a disembodied voice was shooting questions at him.

I admired the way that my husband dodged giving any useful information while seeming to answer the interrogator. 

After several minutes, the unseen Enforcer's fist shot into the frame, knocking Luke's head back against the chair.

I didn't stop my gasp in time, and my own interrogator caught onto it, grinning knowingly as he turned the screen back towards himself.

"Is there anything else you'd like to tell me after seeing that?" He asked, folding his hands on top of the table.

Refusing to let him have the satisfaction of breaking me, I raised my chin to stare him straight in those merciless eyes.  "I would have been proud to call Luke my brother, had we been related.  Nothing you show me or say will ever destroy what he taught me and the legacy that he left behind."

Something in my gaze must have convinced him that there was nothing left that he could force from my lips without formally accusing me of a crime.

The Enforcer studied me for a minute longer, and I carefully settled my mask of iron on my features while wrapping steel around the part of me that wanted to blurt out everything.

Finally, he released me from the interrogation, and I was able to breathe air freed from pent-up emotions and hidden memories.

Unknown to him, I stole back my mother's dress, wrapping the screen in the flowing fabric.

There was no way he could accuse me of taking it, as another Enforcer removed the chest and no one would ever find it in my possession.

They had tried to break me, to tame my rebellious spirit, with that interrogation and film.  They tried to make me want to die.

Despite the fact that I wondered what else they had done to Luke, what they would do to me if they found out what I was involved in, I had more reasons to live.

My heart longed to lay down this burden and rest beside my dead husband, but my mind knew that I must continue on to prevent this from ever happening again.

And unbeknownst to the Enforcer, he had handed me the first piece needed to take down everything that Cineres had come to represent.