Chapter 4
Rain pours on your soul
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            Helena sometimes had a hard time recognizing facial expressions, but this one was easy. Ariadne was angry. She was when she woke up alone in her cell, grunting through her headache and probably foggy brain, and even more when she understood where she was. Her possessions had been taken aside, all stored in a safe that only a few people could access and apparently Ariadne was also mad about this. Helena never stopped watching her since she knocked her out. After she was out, Helena had injected a drug more powerful but also much trickier to administer. The dosage had to be perfect if she wanted Ariadne to actually wake up again. An extraction team, already based in France, had helped her sneak the sedated body out of the abandoned shop and managed the travel arrangements. The flight back had gone without too much turbulence. The mission had been a success. When she returned to her HQ, Jude Kane had thanked her for the efficiency in completing the operation. Things were about to get back to normal.

The next morning, she learnt when entering the agency that Ariadne had been moved to the interrogation room. She picked up her pace until almost running through the semi-empty corridors as it was still early. She wouldn't have missed Ariadne's interrogation for the world, even the few first seconds. Why did nobody tell me about it? Okay, it may not be their fault, actually. Her phone was switched off because the battery died, just before boarding the plane. She had used a burner to communicate the latest information to her boss. Her usual cable was at the bottom of her suitcase and she only got home in the middle of the night. Before she had even had the strength to undress completely, she had collapsed from exhaustion. Of course, she had cursed herself for not thinking to charge it but the damage had already been done. And she'd had to run to get there on time because her usual alarm hadn't gone off.

She arrived a little out of breath but was surprised to see no one but Ariadne in the interrogation room. Was it already over ? Or did it just not start yet? The silence that emanated from the room where she was kept captive was icy.

"Why isn't anyone going in?" she asked Jude Kane, who was already there.

"It's better to wait, for now. She's nervous and angry, she won't say anything."

Helena wanted to know right then and there. She wanted to understand. Maybe there was nothing to understand and this, thought, felt even worse? Maybe was it just a mission she executed and that was it? Helena couldn't put her finger on what exactly bothered her with this scenario. She also had killed for her agency, missions like this weren't rare.

Finally able to watch Ariadne in a safe place, memories of their meeting flood over her again. If she closed her eyes, she could remember everything that went on that night. They eventually got out of the bathrooms and they got busy finding their target again in the crowd of fancy guests. They led him into the gardens outside and he followed them without flinching, sure that he was going to be the winner in the end – by the way he looked at both of them, Helena knew all he wanted was sex and this thought was shaking her entire being with disgust. The poison Ariadne had put in his glass was slow. Time had already passed when they were out of the ballroom and it had then taken them a walk through several rose bushes alleys before he collapsed on the dirt. Covered by the darkness of the night and barely half an hour after meeting, they were hiding a corpse together. How romantic, Helena thought and she let out a nose laugh that was far from joyful. She stood in silence, hidden behind the one-way glass of the interrogation room. It was strange to see Ariadne there, wrists held in handcuffs. Her fingers tapped on the table, a habit Helena recognised in herself.

She watched the other for maybe hours in complete silence before Kane came back in the room he left for a coffee break. The creak of the door didn't make her look away.

"Still nothing?" he asked, stirring a teaspoon in his favourite mug.

"No," Helena sighed.

Defeated, she sat down on the stool without taking her eyes off the suspect. Even if she couldn't physically see her, Helena knew she could feel her. As if she were reading her thoughts, Ariadne turned her head towards them at this moment.

"If you're watching me, O'Dwyer, know that you can go fuck yourself," she spat out the words looking directly at Helena. "I didn't kill him."

Even if Ariadne only saw her reflection in the glass, Helena could clearly see her and for the first time that day, she had to look away. She hadn't spoken another word since.

***

After noon, it was decided they would give it a go. Benji entered the room first. Jude Kane had instructed Helena to stay out of it. Other agents would ask Ariadne questions. Although he didn't say anything else about the forgotten lay off, he wanted to keep her in the background for the time being. It felt like a punishment, when her part of the deal had been honoured. Helena's heart was clenched in her chest, to a point it was almost hard to breathe.

The attempt was unsuccessful. Hours passed with no question answered. The good cop, bad cop tactic had left Ariadne indifferent. It wasn't possible to extract any piece of information when the suspect stayed mute. The food and water they brought were left untouched.

"You should eat something," Benjamin said, pushing the plate towards her.

The thunder she threw at the agent with her eyes seemed to be enough for him to not push any further. The meal tray would have ended up on the floor.

Benji left the room shortly after, under Ariadne's deadly stare. It followed him until the door closed fully behind him in its characteristic metallic bang.

"She won't talk," he sighed, standing next to Helena.

His arms were crossed and his gaze focused on the woman on the other side of the glass. Helena didn't know Ariadne that well but she was sure of one thing : she was stubborn. If she had decided not to talk, she wouldn't. Not if they kept the interrogation legal. Helena was growing more impatient. She was quiet by nature and didn't usually get involved in interrogations unless she was invited to, focusing on other missions or paperwork. But her curiosity was getting the better of her and the simple fact that the woman being questioned was a long-standing acquaintance gave her the impression that she had been looking for answers for several years. Why did Helena care so much about this case? Would she be so moved if anyone else were sitting at Ariadne's place? Probably not. She looked down at her feet, trying to forget the silent woman in front of her.

***

Helena was still watching from afar, enduring without being able to do anything about the heavy silence that emanated from the interrogation room. She was busy filling in her overdue reports, the papers resting as best she could on her knees.

"I have two conditions." a voice rose.

There were some sudden gasps of surprise. Helena's eyes widened as she got up and stepped closer to the glass like it would allow her to see or hear better. Her heart was racing. After hours of waiting, the voice of Ariadne had raised and it felt like witnessing a miracle. Kane also awaited, his gaze as focused as hers on the enemy agent. Benji, at the other end of the table, encouraged Ariadne to continue.

"First, I want my photo back. The one that's in my jacket."

Helena didn't know what photography she was referring to but she watched as Kane sent another agent to pick up the vest and bring them without a word. His ability to communicate without speaking always fascinated Helena. She attached particular importance to words and tried to choose them carefully.

"Second, I'll only talk to Helena O'Dwyer."

This wasn't surprising her that much. She had imagined herself going into the room almost a hundred times in the last hours already. But from someone like Ariadne, not trusting anyone and keeping tabs on who she could talk to or not? It was strange.

The agent came back with the jacket and Jude Kane instructed him to search the pockets. There was a slit in the lining of the leather with just enough room to remove a piece of paper folded in four. He gave it to Helena who unfolded it. The picture was cut in two and where the tear had made the paper thinner and softer, the photo was the most damaged. It had been consumed by time and the rubbing of folds and fabric and the colours were a bit washed out and Helena understood how much it must mean to Ariadne if she kept it close to her heart every single day. She looked at the people in the photo. It seemed to be a family portrait, now cut in half to get rid of some people you wanted to forget about or hated. There were only two people left, a woman in her 30's and a baby. The woman looked so much like Ariadne it was easy to tell she was her mother or at least someone very close.

He let Helena pass. The door opened and everything was ten times brighter in there. The one-way glass was tinted and overall very dark so the contrast came as abrupt and almost painful to Helena. It never was pleasant to be in here but it was like every time she forgot until the next one.

It took a huge amount of effort to not Helena not to deviate her gaze form Ariadne's burning one as she closed the distance between the door and the table where two chairs were facing each other. She sat on the free one, the closest to the door. Ariadne's hands, attached by handcuffs, tapped on the metallic surface of the table.

"Here," she said, giving her the photo she had folded again.

She gently slid the photo at Ariadne's level and observed as the woman took with more delicacy than she had ever seen her do before. She raised her chin at Helena in what seemed to be a thankful gesture but her face was still stoic.

"Okay, we're going to start easy. What's your real name ?

" Stella." the woman said.

"No, your real name."

She looked at Helena with a smirk.

"If you want us to trust you, you need to be more cooperative."

"Laury. With a Y," she specified.

Laury. The name resonated in her mind. It suited her. Helena had made loads of hypotheses on what could be her name. Sacha, Maxine or Frankie had felt right. She also had thought about Victoire – shortened into Vic, but Laury was it. It replaced Ariadne right away, like this new piece of information gave so much about her.

"Still don't have a last name?" she asked, her eyebrow raised.

Helena could remember how the blond was intransigent about not revealing too much information. She had claimed her real last name should remain secret forever and Helena could understand. Thousands of people could share the same first name but there was something personal and that connected you to your family and ancestors about this one. Helena thought she had known Laury during the few days that constitute the time they shared in the past. But she never knew so little about someone as she did about her.

"No, M. is fine."

"Okay, so... Laury M.," she said before noting the name on her paper sheet.

There was a pause where neither of them talked.

"Why not just blow up the whole building with Raymond Williams inside?"

"You still don't understand. I didn't do it."

"No, indeed, I don't understand. Why take the risk to get caught, just like you did, when he could have died discretely from the bombs?"

"Because it was a trap. I was framed, don't you get it ? I didn't cause the explosion nor stabbing him. He was already dead when I entered the room. Someone made that up for you or the police or whatever fucking authority service around to come and caught me doing something I didn't do."

"And you're expecting me to believe that?"

"Yes," she answered in what seemed total seriousness.

Helena got up and walked to the door. She whispered something to the agents posted outside and came back to the table less than a minute later with a tablet in hand.

"We found the CCTV of you planting the explosives," Helena said, sitting down.

The camera of the left wing had all burnt from the explosion but, luckily, the videos were already stored on the cloud of the hotel. Kal had been tasked to recover the videos the day before, while the two women were still in Paris. Apparently, it had been quite a complicated procedure to retrieve them, between the panic of the explosion and the staff's lack of confidence in letting anyone access their private files.

"What? No, that's impossible."

"You should have hacked their system and deleted the videos yourself apparently. They're intact."

Helena showed Laury the tablet she brought with her in the interrogation room and pressed 'play' on the sequence of Laury installing some cylindrical objects, already loaded on the device.

"Does this refresh your memory a bit?"

"No, that's impossible. Because it didn't happen. What the hell?"

Laury looked genuinely confused looking at the tracks but Helena knew too well not to interpret that as the truth. She could have had the same expression from the surprise of finding out she had fucked up her cover by not deleting all the traces behind her or she was just the admirable actress Helena knew she could be.

"That's not me. Well that's me but it wasn't that day. Look at the t-shirt I'm wearing, it was for another mission."

"Firstly, a t-shirt doesn't prove anything, you could have changed before. Secondly, this record is from, look at the date here," she pointed at the same time with her finger, "Wednesday 6th. The day of the explosion."

"Okay but listen to me, someone put this recording in the video surveillance security program to make me appear guilty. But it's an old video. Do you have any other videos from... I don't know... last week, to compare with?"

Her voice sounded unusually panicked or caught unawares.

"I'll do my research."

The chair's legs crunched against the tiled floor and Helena got out of the interrogation room without looking back at Laury and immediately went to her desk. If Laury was telling the truth, she had to, at least, figure it out.

***

Her back was aching. She was sitting cross-legged like she always did on her desk chair. The wrinkle between her brow had creased and her eyes felt dry like the Sahara desert, burning so much she had to blink them open in repetition. It was 3 am. The headquarters were silent, the corridors around were dark, nobody had passed by in the previous couple of hours. The roaming of Helena's computer was the only sound that could be heard alongside her breathing. Her eyes were focused on the screen, red and painful. It was late and the coffees she drank one after another made unfortunately nothing for her exhaustion except for making her want to hurry to the bathroom. But she couldn't and didn't move for hours. She had watched over and over again every tape since Laury arrival in The Palace Hotel two days ago. The image wasn't good, the colours were faded and the pixels made it look rough and uneasy for the eyes. The twelve-hours video she was watching for almost eight hours now went to its end – it had been playing 1.5 times faster. How she had been able to somehow stay focused was a plane mystery. Helena sighed, waiting for the screen to go to black and dive the room in deeper darkness. She had watched the entire thing and she hadn't caught any glitch or suspicious cut that could give Laury right. No, the footage was clean, no trick. She switched on the ceiling lights and slumped back in her chair.

"Hi, sweetheart."

She looked up from her screen and saw Aubrey's face.

"Aubrey Bishop!" exclaimed Helena, practically jumping to stand and hug her friend. "What are you doing here ? How was your mission ? You should be home with your man and your shower and your fabulous bed."

"Yeah, yeah, don't worry, I'm heading home asap. Just had to submit my last report to Kane's office. I thought dropping coffee on my way would be nice, Benji told me you were still here."

Helena's glance widened in surprise and joy when Aubrey lent her the said coffee.

"Thanks, you're my hero. Say "hi" for me. And have your best sleep."

"Will do, see you soon, honey." Aubrey toned, waving goodbye with her hand before disappearing in the corridor.

Helena sipped her coffee. The liquid was still super hot. She usually drank it with milk and no sugar but as she was awake for twenty-one hours straight now, a strong black coffee was her better option. Audrey was an angel. There weren't any words in the world that could describe how much she carried this girl in her heart.

She placed the cup on the desk and waited for the drink to cool down a little but the side of her left hand grazed the keyboard doing so and the video restarted itself.

"Crap!"

Different. That's when it clicked. Helena had looked for multiple angles, had replayed some passages but never the last and first image had been side by side. The agent typed intentionally on her keyboard this time to go back to the last scene then the first one. Laury was right, something had changed. But how could it be possible as there was no cut? The carpets had slightly changed colour, the wall behind seemed farther and the door had a different number from the one on the very first image.

"She told us the truth," she whispered to herself.

She went back to the very beginning and looked at the video twice more, using the cursor to speed the footage. The changes weren't big and didn't occur at the same time. Even when switching between the middle of the video to its end, it was hard to notice anything different. It was like two videos were superposed but in a time line so huge, it was unnoticeable. Everything had shifted so slowly that nobody would have seen it.

"Got it! That's absolute genius!"

***

She had to wait until the next morning to announce the news to Laury, Kane had advised her not to do anything without them through text. He wanted to be here to see and hear their next exchanges. It had given her time to sleep a few hours in the resting room, to change t-shirts – she always had a spare set of clothes ready, and to walk to the closest bakery to pick up some breakfast.

Helena sat, two printed photos in hand. With a slowness that seemed to annoy Laury, she positioned the sheets of papers side by side, perfectly aligned, on the table. Laury didn't wait for her to talk and grabbed the pictures to look at them closer.

"They're not the same." declared Laury, like it was evidence.

"Exactly. You were right, the video we were given was erroneous. Hijacked, even."

Helena proceeded to explain the video trick to Laury.

"Told you."

Helena didn't like the smug look on Laury's face. Despite the tiredness that she could see in the dark circles under her eyes, Laury still managed to be her usual condescending self.

"That doesn't make you innocent, though," Helena warned her.

"Why do you want me to be guilty so badly? Would you feel better about yourself? Knowing you tried to kill a murderer? Let me tell you, sweetheart, I killed more men you could count on your fingers, all pieces of shit, but I didn't kill this one."

There was nothing sweet or gentle in her words and in the way she spoke. Every word came harsh and biting, and there was something dangerous in the look of defiance that shone in her grey eyes.

"Well, you're not a very talkative suspect, so we have to make our own truths about you. Maybe if you told me exactly what happened from the very beginning and that what you said was one hundred percent true, maybe," she accentuated the last word "we will start to think about it. But believe me, every single piece of information will be checked multiple times, so don't try to fool us. I want to know every detail."

Laury stared at Helena with an intensity that made her shiver.

"Where do I start ?"

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Author's note

This was a very long chapter (3550+ words) ! Thank you for reading it and supporting this story !
I'm sorry this was a first draft but I was very busy with my final exams...
Hope you still liked it ! If so, don't forget to share your love by voting and commenting, your remarks are always welcomed :)
Chapter 5 should come tomorrow