Time stops in an interrogation room.

Phil Anderson had lost track of time since the detectives had placed him inside the interrogation room and told him that they would be right back. There was, of course, no clock, and they had said they needed to see his cellphone, so he didn't even have that to occupy his time.

"What is this about?" Phil had asked, and the young black detective had paused before he closed the door. "Is Chris okay? I'm kind of freaking out here, so throw me a bone, man?"

The detective almost looked sorry for him.

"Chris is fine," he finally said. "If you can call 'under arrest for murdering his girlfriend' fine."

The detective had said something else and left, but Phil was beyond hearing at that point. It was as if he was underwater, all sound taking on a booming far-away quality, every movement slowed as if in a messed up form of slow motion. He dropped into his chair in a moment that took forever, that metaphorical punch in the gut taking all of the wind out of him, tears springing to his eyes and streaming down his face, unwanted and completely unstoppable.

Sara was dead.

Oh God, Sara was dead.

And Chris had known it was going to happen.

The initial panic and emotion had faded the longer he had waited. He had expected the detectives to return sooner rather than later to take advantage of his emotional state, but it was almost as if they had forgotten about him. There was no one barging in demanding that he tell them everything he knew about Chris, no demands to know what he knew about the case. The only person that came in was a uniformed officer with a soda and a bag of peanuts from the vending machine.

"Am I under arrest, officer?"

The young cops had just shrugged apologetically. "The detectives just need to talk to you. Hang tight and someone will be in to talk to you soon."

"What happens if I try to leave?"

"We'll probably have to place you under arrest and handcuff you to the table. Right now, they just need to ask you some questions. Trust me, man: it's much better this way."

So Phil had waited.

There were times he wondered what would have happened if he hadn't answered the door to his apartment. It had been past 1 AM so there was no reasonable expectation for him to be awake. It didn't matter that he had been awake; it was just not a thing that people did, knocking on someone's door in the middle of the night.

Phil had been scrolling through the games on his Xbox, not really in the mood to play anything. He had been worried sick about Chris all evening, and there was that uncomfortable feeling he was getting that everything was all wrong and there was nothing anyone could do to fix it. He had half-expected that it was Chris knocking, having lost his keys or something, and he was ready to have a yelling match with his friend and roommate. As far as Phil was concerned, Chris' blackouts had gotten much worse, and Chris needed to see his doctor to get something done. Instead of making him better, the Sosumi implant seemed to be making Chris' blackouts worse. Something needed to be done. It was getting downright scary.

It hadn't been Chris, though, so there had been no confrontation. Instead, it had been two uniformed officers telling him that he needed to come with them down to the station. Phil had stopped long enough to get his phone and send a text to Shelley to let her know where he had gone so she wouldn't worry. It wasn't right for her to come back to an empty apartment after her shift at the hospital.

"Did one of my guys get into a fight or something?" Phil had asked, but the officers had no answers for him, which was unusual and made Phil even more nervous. Officers had never come to his door before; it had always been a phone call in the middle of the night from one bandmate or the other telling him that he needed to get them out of jail.

It was one of the hazards of his job, which was technically described as "Band Manager" but ended up being more of a glorified babysitter. Booking appearances in different bars and making sure the shows were set up. He also made sure that they got paid and that the club owners didn't screw them over too much. Somehow it always ended up with someone calling in the middle of the night, and ninety percent of the time, they were in jail.

The problem was that Phil knew it instinctively that it wasn't about any of his bands. There was that sick feeling in the bottom of his stomach, that rush of bile in the back of his throat that was brought on by fear and expectation. Expectation because he already knew what had happened.

Phil Anderson had a secret, and he wasn't going to tell.

"I was at that Rock N' Roll restaurant in Dundas Square last night," Phil said to the older of the two detectives. The younger black guy excused himself, then Phil was alone with the one Phil was sure had introduced himself as Detective Morrow. At least he thought it was Morrow. In all of the excitement of getting picked up by the cops and brought to the detectives for questioning, plus with that sick feeling in his stomach, his ability to remember names was fleeting. It was hard to focus on anything, hard even to think, impossible to know how even to feel.

Even now with the detective in his face telling him that Sara was dead and that Chris had killed her, Phil didn't have a clue how to feel. He didn't want to break down into tears in front of the detective. That would just make him look guilty of something, right? His heart felt like someone was squeezing it too hard, and there were moments he felt the tears rush to his eyes, but he fought them back somehow and focused on breathing, focused on anything except the reality that sucked so hard goddamit.

There wasn't much emotion in his voice, and he knew he sounded tired more than anything else, but emotion wasn't a luxury he was allowing himself right at that moment. Sara was dead, and Chris had known it was going to happen. That was the only thing Phil knew for certain.

That was a lie: he also knew that Chris had protected him. He had changed again, just like the other times Phil had been present for and the next thing Phil had known, he was waking up on the floor with what felt like a concussion; his jaw ached from where Chris had punched him. There had been a yellow Post-It note on his chest, like the ones Chris had been compulsively writing on at the oddest moments. This particular note had told Phil to go to the Rock N' Roll Restaurant in Dundas Square. Chris hadn't been there of course.

Of course he hadn't. He had been across town watching Sara being murdered.

"Yeah, we already checked your alibi," Detective Morrow said. "Seems rather convenient, don't you think? Your best friend is off murdering his girlfriend and you happen to have an alibi that places you in the middle of a room of people with cameras everywhere."

No, he knew that you'd be coming after me, so he wanted me safe, is what Phil wanted to answer. He had the thought that the white-haired detective was coming after him so aggressively because he had been sure that Phil had been involved somehow, and if he just asked the right question, Phil would break. That almost made Phil laugh. There were no right questions, not for the answers he had.

Instead, Phil shook his head and tried to focus on the present. He tried not to picture Chris locked up in an interrogation room similar to this one. Maybe even on the other side of the wall.

"Oh, come on!" he protested, "Even if I was in the middle of a police station at the time, you guys would still think it's suspicious."

"'Convenient' is the word I'd use."

"Chris didn't kill Sara."

"How can you be so positive about that?"

"Because I know him! If anything, he was trying to stop her from being murdered."

The detective gave him a look, and Phil grimaced, knowing he'd said the wrong thing. Dammit, why was it so hard to say the right thing to help his friend?

"So he knew this was going to happen?" Duvel said incredulously.

Phil stayed quiet.

Morrow lost his patience. He slammed his hands down on the table and leaned in close to Phil, way too close, close enough that Phil could smell his breath and the bitter sweat like onions coming off of the man.

Phil tried not to move back, but it was hard not to under that level of intensity. All at once, he wanted to tell Morrow everything, wanted to finally spill his guts and let all of the secrets out, but he knew that he would just sound like a complete crazy person. Even he had not fully believed it himself, but with Sara's murder, everything that had happened with Chris over the past year suddenly began to make sense. There was just no way to tell that to the detective without making Chris look guilty somehow.

Phil clenched his jaw and matched Morrow's intense glare.

"If someone was planning on killing Sara and you know something about it, then you need to tell me right now," Duvel threatened quietly. "Especially if it was Chris."

"It's hard to explain, but it wasn't Chris," Phil said. "Really."

"Go on then. Explain." Morrow countered. "Try me."

"I can't!"

Morrow's grip tightened on the edge of the desk, and he smiled a fake humourless plastic smile, the kind of smile that Phil would have described as "psychotic" if he had seen it on anyone else. On Detective Morrow it was simply disconcerting and gave Phil the impression that bad things were coming his way if he didn't answer the questions in the right way.

"How long have you guys known each other?" Morrow asked. "Ten? Twenty years? Around there?"

"Fifteen," Phil muttered. "He's one of my oldest friends."

The detective nodded thoughtfully, that discomforting smile still on his face.

"I've got friends just like that. We still hang out from time to time. I'd do anything for those guys, you know? So I get it. I get that you want to protect your friend. You want to help him. But the only way you can do that right now is to tell us everything you know."

"You really want to help Chris?" Phil asked hesitantly.

"Of course we do."

"Then let him go."

Morrow smirked. "You know we can't do that."

"Of course you can't. The sign outside says Homicide Department, which means that you guys investigate murders, find evidence and put the bad guys away. It's not to help guys like Chris, guys who are innocent."

Morrow smiled smugly. "In my experience, when the evidence points towards someone being guilty, or that they're hiding something, it's usually true."

"And what about when the evidence is telling you something else completely different?" Phil countered. "Is that when you go in for the confession?"

"Confession is good for the soul," Duvel said wryly. "A lot of guilty guys just can't wait to tell their side of the story, and a lot of the time, they've convinced themselves that they haven't actually done anything wrong. They could be standing there, gun in hand, dead body on the floor, and they're telling us, telling me that 'she shouldn't have slept with that dude', or maybe 'she shouldn't have talked back to him like that... whatever. It's always the other person's fault. So now I'm beginning to wonder who the other guy was that Sara shouldn't have slept with. I'm beginning to think that maybe he and Chris planned it... and you knew about it."

"Wait, what?"

"You said it yourself."

"Said what?" Phil knew he was panicking but was unable to stop himself. "All I said was that he didn't do it."

"And said with such certainty," Duvel said with a raised eyebrow. He smirked at Morrow, who only shrugged. "Maybe it was you, Phil."

"What?" Phil asked incredulously.

"You can tell us Phil," Duvel smirked.

"I already told you everything!" Phil almost got up then, the panic taking over, and why the hell were his hands shaking so much? He tried to steady himself and glared a challenge at Duvel. "What more do you want?"

Morrow slid in smoothly while Duvel turned and walked over to the two-way mirror on the far wall.

"Yeah, see, the thing is we think you're the one who pulled the trigger," Morrow said and crossed his arms. "So why don't you cut the crap and start over with how and when Chris approached you about killing Sara."

"You've got it all wrong—" Phil protested weakly.

"Camera is off," Duvel said casually.

In one movement, Morrow yanked Phil's chair away from under him. Phil reacted the only way he could, which is to say, not at all. He slammed his head hard into the desk and slumped to the floor, stunned, his limbs completely betraying him.

After a moment, he focused on the red face of Detective Morrow, looking down at him.

"Confession is good for the soul Phil," Morrow said flatly, no emotion in his voice. It was like he had done this hundreds of times before. "You have thirty seconds to tell me everything I want to hear."