"Jake. Jake, you have to get off of the chair now," Deirdre says worriedly, prodding the boy's shoulder urgently. The child's expression shows that she is scared, but her steely tone of voice suggests that she is about to take whatever the Albino does to her. I can't help but admire her bravery.

Finally, Jake stirs. He stands abruptly and Deirdre slithers to the floor at the sudden, unexpected movement. The Voice forces me to laugh at the comical sight - comical if the viewer forgets that Jake's thoughts, memories have just been turned inside-out, causing his disassociation.

"Why would he pick you?" Nicole asks with contempt upon hearing my chuckles, looking down snootily at pathetic little me. I grin wordlessly and she growls in response, baring her sharpened teeth in what seems like a threat. I can tell that it in a show of strength she is used to displaying.

Jake strides over to me, still not registering Deirdre as she stands, wincing at being so rudely tossed to the floor. He helps me stand up, but I can tell he's not all here. His gaze is distant and broken and I understand with certain clarity what exactly the claw does.

Deirdre is not as strong as Jake. Her guilt is almost immediately dragged to the surface and her screams pierce the small room.

Deirdre, only slightly younger than she is now but still looking quite different, is shooting her family - the screams that are quickly cut off by gunshots make me feel sickeningly at home.

The holograms show her court case, from an angle underneath the table at which she is seated. She is driving a pin deep into her thigh to force tears, and people in the audience and jury alike are looking at her pityingly.

Then comes the moments when she decided to pull the trigger on each of her kills, focusing in on their faces, their lives...and finally getting caught by the government. It fades out as the girl sobs, huddled in a corner of a padded cell, her hair tangled and dirty. She looks utterly broken and painfully alone. I wonder if I looked like that when I got captured. I know for a fact that I didn't cry.

I remember that I laughed.

Jake has to carry Deirdre from the chair, just as Deirdre had to talk him out of his stupor. She, too, is too shellshocked to move.

Nicole is next. She walks nervously to the chair, her teeth likely unconsciously bared. Of course, scenes from her abusive past surface first. She alternates between screaming and grinding her teeth together, trying to suppress the rising guilt.

Her stepfather is kicking her tiny, prone form as her mother screams for him to stop, grabbing at his clothes. He ignores her, keeping up the steady rhythm, the only emotion on his face being the hatred in his eyes.

Her stepfather is reading her books of vampires, clearly meant for much older children, showing her gruesome pictures that make her squeeze her tiny eyes shut for a brief second in an attempt to purge the image from her memory. With every story, she leans further and further away from him.

Her stepfather is bending over her, running a file over her teeth as her chest heaves with suppressed sobs and tears stream down her cheeks and pool in her hair. Her limbs are tied to the chair on which she is seated, and they buck against their restraints.

Child-Nicole is cupping a hand over her mouth and slowly backs out of a dining room as her mother screams hysterically, "What did you do to my daughter?"

The now-preteen is bending over a woman on the street, messily collecting the blood flowing from a horrible bite in her neck in a glass jar. Glancing furtively around, she stands and shoves the bottle into her bag.

She is watching from the top of the stairs as her stepfather is dragged away by policemen and her mother sobs brokenly on the couch.

The projections show Nicole collecting blood from all her other victims. The smallest is a girl no more than eight. Nicole's eyes sparkle with tears as she collects the blood, but she does it anyway, driven by some unseen force.

Finally, it shows the vampiric girl being detained by armed forces, a muzzle being attached to her face that is so tight she screams from pain. And then the projections fade.

We all look at the real Nicole and find that her teeth slipped several times while she was grinding them together. Her lip is cut open, and the collar of her dress is bloodstained. Her head is bent forward, blood dripping onto her lap from her tongue, her face otherwise concealed by her tumbling brown hair. She is breathing heavily. The Albino pulls a rag out of a pocket in her dress and hands it over silently. Shakily, Nicole climbs to her feet and leaves the chair, pressing the cloth to her exterior wounds. Her cheeks are wet with tears.

Xavier's brave enough to volunteer to go next. He occasionally lets out short, gasping screams, but otherwise just shakes. I assume that means he doesn't regret his actions as much as the others do.

It shows him as a little boy, being beaten by his father.

It shows him, slightly older, trying to hide a large handgun under his coat and ducking down a dark alley, another hand in his pocket, where doubtless there are hidden drugs.

He is giving huge wads of money to his father, who smiles coldly and throws him a single five-dollar bill from the stack.

Thug-like men are whispering and laughing as he passes them, the jeers directed at him. He tries to hold his head high but the snickers grow louder. He lowers it, giving up on his macho attempt, and hurries through the crowd.

Xavier is hugging Nicole as she turns the lock on her bedroom door, blocking out her mother's sobs and shrieks of heartbroken accusal at her husband, Nicole's stepfather. From the context, I gather that Xavier was just finishing up his job with the man downstairs. Although the preteen is much younger than Nicole, he is somehow the one comforting her.

Finally, the scenes finish with Xavier gritting his teeth and beginning to saw off his own leg. Blood spurts, he screams, and the scene ends.

And now it is my turn. Jake carefully places me in the chair, views me with a sorrowful expression as if this is all somehow his fault, and returns to the others.

I close my eyes and wait tensely for whatever agony the others experienced. Even the Voice is nervous.

The Albino places the strange claw gently on my forehead, just as she did with the others. I open my eyes after a few seconds, confused as to why no holograms are yet appearing, and find the woman smiling knowingly at me. My eyes are suddenly forced shut by some unknown force and I begin tumbling into a dark, bottomless abyss.

I am thirteen years old, jolting awake in the middle of the night and opening my mouth to scream a horrific scream as I feel something worm deep into my brain. Then my mouth snaps shut, my face smooths, I lie down, and I fall back to sleep as if nothing happened.

I am standing outside a public restroom, fingering the handle of a rusty knife, tear tracks cutting paths down my dusty face, although my eyes now are dry. My clothes are torn, filthy, and I'm trembling, but not from fear. I am pushing back against an invisible force, and it is taking every mental and physical effort I possess. Finally, after a few more seconds of this silent battle, I snap into an eerily calm state, raising the knife and pushing my way into the restroom. As the screams begin, I shift to the next memory.

I am glancing down at my phone, coffee cup in hand, seeing the string of text messages and calls from various people - friends and family who have been seeing my face on the news in terrifying stories of gruesome murder. I create a group text with nobody but my immediate family and Mike and text, "Try to find me and I kill you all. Toodles." Then, I toss the phone into a garbage can and dump my coffee over it.

I am fourteen, and being shot multiple times in the legs as the bodies of three policemen around me continue to ooze blood, still cooling. I will later heal, but there will always be deep divots in my skin, and it will take months of intensive surgery to even allow me to walk again.

Then there is a man yanking on my hair, raising my face to his, and grinning evilly. I remember him from more recently - he was in charge of me at the prison. I nearly bit one of his fingers off once. "You're going to someplace where you can't hurt anyone," he whispers menacingly, clearly amused by his own power.

My eyes open leisurely and I shake my head slightly, as if I got some water in my ear. I don't understand what was supposed to be painful about the process - I felt nothing. It was incredibly apathetic, actually. After all, I've already lived through those memories. Why would remembering them cause me anything but boredom?

The group is gaping at me as I return, Jake carefully carrying me. Deirdre actually looks scared of me. Jake whispers, "How did you not scream?"

"Why would I?" I ask, confused as to what they felt so horrible about the process. "I felt the same as I always do.

Jake's face slackens with dual shock and sympathy as I glance back at the Albino. She smiles slightly - the gesture is directed solely at me - and announces, "Your data is gathered. You are free to go."