Present Day

***

She had a view of life that was dark and gloomy. It's what she's made of and would not change for the world. She was bored and she would play the game laid before her until all participants had exhausted their pawns, officials, or whatever.

Despite having her eyes closed and the room pitch black, she knew whoever entered her room was not a family member. She has spent most of her childhood days studying and picking every vibration her family's footsteps made, so with undoubted certainty, the person, or should she say people who were by then standing near the railing of her bed were strangers.

"Alyssa, are you awake?"

What a stupid question, she thought to herself. She always wondered why people deemed it necessary to ask something opposite to what was obvious. Hilarious.

"Look, the doctor said you're fine and though this is against our better judgment, we have to take you in and keep you inside the town's precinct."

Hilarious. Stupid. Comical. She played with various adjectives in her head before she snapped open her eyes, rose from her bed like a corpse-which in the process startled the two officers who were there and murmured, "My father made bail, didn't he?"

It took a moment for the officers to respond, and when they did, all she heard were murmurs of incomprehensible words. It was as if the two adults had suddenly forgotten the sounds of the alphabet or how to construct a sentence. They mumbled, and she hated when people mumbled. Talking was a natural thing, unless one was born without the ability to articulate.

"Was my brother informed?" she replied, already knowing what the answer would be. If they had, her brother would have been there, staring and yelling at the officers.

"Ye... Yes, he was."

"Lousy liars. What a meaningless existence it was to live their lives. They have chosen to serve the Tarika community for what? To obtain a few bucks a month? To be the receiver of the scraps from corrupt officials and follow their bidding like some dog on a leash?

"W-Well, that's it. We need you to come with us right this..."

"Officers, I'm not going anywhere without a guardian. I'm seventeen, well almost eighteen but still, I believe my guardian should be present. Don't you think so?" Alyssa interrupted.

"Alyssa, this is a small town. Everyone knows everyone. What's the point in having them here? We see no reason to..."

"Yes, you don't understand reason or logic. Perhaps, you're even incapable of independent thinking. One must spoon-feed you the answer so you wouldn't have to carry the burden of thought or..."

"Hey, we're not stupid."

"That's not what I mean, sir," Alyssa answered as she gazed at one of the officers whose hand was clutching the railings of the hospital bed. It was dark inside her room. If it weren't for the open door and the illumination from the fluorescent hallway, she wouldn't have perceived the silhouette of both men.

. "Well, it sounded like it. But enough of this. You're discharged and you're coming with us."

"Why?" Alyssa questioned. Though her tone held no resistance, something in the way she shifted her body from the middle of the bed to the side of it made both officers step back and be wary of her.

Officer Frank Langley had worked for the Tarika police department for nearly three decades, and in those years, he hadn't experienced anything that made him not want to continue being a cop. But at that moment, or should he say, from the moment seven kids went missing in their town, something inside him warned that trouble was brewing in the corners of his town. He wasn't a person who relied on instinct or believed in intangible evidence, but something wasn't right. It felt like an invisible and silent thunder was striking the very ground that Tarika stood on. He felt it in his gut for years but never said a word about it. Things would fix themselves. Pieces always found their matches, and mysteries had always unraveled themselves without so much as a lift of a finger from the authorities. Those were what he believed. However, when the kids were never found, his prerogatives and beliefs became comfortless narratives in a daunting manner. Yet, even if his insides had raged in the past four years, he remained silent.

Frank was lost in his self-monologues and only returned to reality when his partner, Blake Ferguson, landed a hand on his shoulder and murmured, "C'mon, let's get her to the precinct."

"May I ask who approved of this?"

"Approved of what?" Ferguson questioned as he eyed Alyssa. He knew the teen was a smartass. Even when she was a child, she had an arrogance that the adults in their town found questionable. Her father was too lenient with her, and if Ferguson had it his way, he'd slap some sense into the girl's head. But then again, he wasn't her father, and the only responsibility he should bear was to keep the people in their town protected. If someone were to ask whether he believed that Alyssa had anything to do with the murder, his answer would be yes. But he wouldn't go as far as believing that she had done it alone. There must have been someone behind her.

Why she would even commit such an atrocity, though, he'd never figure out. Why kill the kids? What was the motive? He and his coworkers speculated days ago that perhaps Alyssa was angered by those kids and she killed them. But that was reaching; even he knew that. She couldn't have done it and gotten away scratch-free, tackling seven kids her age, then hiding and disposing of their corpses. However, whenever Mr. Arigao, the science teacher at Tarika Elementary, explained that Alyssa was smart enough to perpetrate a crime like that with her inborn intelligence, his and his coworkers' doubts would go away. Leaving them believing that Alyssa was a murderer.

"It was the mayor's order," Frank answered.

Alyssa tilted her head to the side and stared both cops in the eye. She smiled, removed herself from the bed, walked over to the emergency button in her room, tapped on it, and said, "I'll go once I've spoken to my brother."

"What, so the two of you could cook up an escape plan?"

Alyssa instantly frowned and widened her eyes. With invisible daggers shooting out of her irises, she glared at Police Officer Ferguson.

"Look, Alyssa, we are taking you into custody because the mayor and the judge deemed you a flight risk, now that your brother is back in town."

So that's why, Alyssa thought to herself. What a bunch of ill-bred imbeciles, she mused.

"From now on, you're not allowed to be in contact with any of your family members," Frank added.

So that's how they want to play this, she cursed mentally. But despite the word wanting to escape her mouth, she answered the officer with a wicked smile. Without a word, she grabbed the cannula catheter attached to her arm and violently pulled it. Upon its release from her arm, blood spurted out. The IV post was also knocked down by her vicious act, causing a jump scare for the two officers before her.

Smiling to herself, Alyssa raised her bloody forearm and tucked a tendril of her loose hair behind her ear. She chuckled as both officers looked at her with petrified eyes.

"Don't worry, officers. I won't tell the nurses or the doctor that you both forced me out of the bed and grabbed me by my arm, which caused all this mess."

"What the hell are you..." Before Officer Ferguson managed to finish his sentence, the door to Alyssa's room, which was already ajar, opened wider. Two women in white uniforms stood frozen by the door as their eyes met Alyssa, who was by then on the floor, her face covered in blood, crying.

"What in the name of Mary's son happened here?" one of the nurses yelled.

"Hey, we had nothing to..." Officer Frank argued, but before he could continue with his explanation, Alyssa's brother, John, and Detective Howe appeared behind the nurses.

John's initial reaction was to run toward his sister, while Detective Howe remained behind the nurses. He watched carefully as John gathered his sister in his arms. Alyssa cried profusely in her brother's embrace. But her watery eyes and her head, which normally should have been buried on the shoulder of the person comforting her, were fixed on the two police officers who stood on the other side of the hospital bed. Alyssa was crying genuinely, not crocodile tears, but the way her eyes gazed at the cops beside the detective seemed to convey something more. It felt like she was mocking them, at least that's how the detective perceived the scene. Was he overthinking? Speculating too much? Howe couldn't be sure, but Alyssa's gaze was unsettling to watch.

"We had nothing to do with it!"

Detective Howe shifted his attention to Frank. He had met the man when he first came to Tarika. Frank was a good cop, lazy in some aspects, but still better compared to the others.

"She ripped that damn thing from her hand, all on her own."

Howe glanced at Ferguson. He never liked that one. The man had an air of arrogance about him that Howe found out of place. Normally, a policeman would act arrogantly when he had something to back it up. But Ferguson? He was a man who had nothing in him but days of lounging inside the police station and a belly filled with beer.

"I don't give a rat's ass what you people think. Get out of here!"

John's voice echoed inside the hospital room. He had his sister protectively held in his arms, and his eyes were fixed on the cops. If looks could kill, Howe would have become a witness to the murder of two police officers.

"Hey, your sister," Frank began, but he was interrupted when Alyssa said, "They wanted to take me into custody. They said I'm a flight risk now that you're here. They said I'm not allowed to have any contact with my family members." Alyssa stifled a cry as she spoke. Her voice sounded weak, as though she had no hope left in her. Howe couldn't help but frown at that. The way she looked at the police officers and the tone of her voice didn't match. She sounded weak, yet her eyes were sharp and undeniably challenging the cops. But of course, her brother failed to see that. Howe did, and it further unnerved him.

"You can't be serious. My father made bail, and she..."

"She is a flight risk," Ferguson yelled, interrupting John.

John let go of his sister, sat her on the bed, and allowed the nurses, who by then were beside them, to clean her wounds. He then walked toward the police officers and, using his pointer finger, poked Ferguson's chest. "You are not taking my sister anywhere."

"Huh, what's the point in keeping her free? She'd be locked up after the trial anyway," Ferguson chided.

A punch, delivered with lightning speed, was the response to Ferguson's remark. He fell swiftly onto the tiled floor, and just as John attempted to throw another punch, his hand was restrained by Detective Howe and Frank.

"Don't add trouble to trouble," Howe whispered to John as the man struggled against them.

"Calm down, man. I understand how you feel, but come on, don't get yourself locked up too," Frank added.

"I'll go with them."

Every man inside the room fell silent when Alyssa's voice rang loud and clear. "You don't have to," Detective Howe instantly replied.

The four men, one on the floor and three others standing with their hands intertwined, watched with wide eyes as Alyssa left the side of the nurse and walked towards them. She laid a hand on her brother's shoulder, and that was enough to calm him down. Removing himself from Detective Howe and Frank's side, John moved closer to his sister and looked at her with questioning eyes.

"John, don't do anything stupid. But I do want you to call Mom and Dad. I'll join these two officers and let them take me to the precinct. I believe..." Alyssa turned to Detective Howe before she continued, "I'll be safe with Detective Howe watching over me there."

John's body trembled with uncertainty. He knew his sister would still be safe even without him constantly watching over her. She possessed a terrifying courage that he never quite understood, but it often unsettled him. He worried for her safety, yet in the back of his mind, he was afraid that the ignorance of the people surrounding them would cause Alyssa to channel that courage into something else. He knew his sister better than anyone.

"Yeah, better stay out of it, John," Ferguson mocked.

John swiftly turned his head to the side and gazed at the man he had recently punched. Blood was oozing out of his injured lip. Ferguson stared back at John with a smug look on his face, and that made him clench his fist, feeling the urge to strike again. But when he felt his sister wrap her hand around his, he managed to calm down.

"It's okay, John. Call Mom and Dad."

After a few minutes, the nurses had finished tending to the wounded lip of the police officer, and the injury on Alyssa's arm was cleaned and covered with gauze. The police officers guided Alyssa out of her room, with Detective Howe trailing behind them. John was left inside the hospital room, gathering his sister's belongings. As he watched from the window, seeing Police Officer Ferguson shove his sister into the back seat of the police car, something in him warned that his sister was truly ready to retaliate. If someone were to ask how she would do it with her person locked up behind bars, John could only answer with one thing: having Alyssa in the police station was the last thing they would have wanted. Those men, with their guns and their ignorance, would soon find themselves praying they had the mental strength to withstand their new occupant.

***

Alyssa sighed, her gaze flickering over the endless stream of trees that seemed to follow the police car she was in. Soon, they arrived at the front gates of the police station, and Alyssa found herself and Detective Howe sitting side by side in a stationary car. The two officers who had accompanied them exited, leaving Alyssa and the detective alone with a warning that they would return once they had notified the head of the police. Why they had done such a thing instead of directly taking her inside the building was a mystery to Alyssa, but a mystery she didn't care about. The vehicle remained still, as subtle as a freshly popped zit, but just as unwelcome.

She shifted in her seat and looked to her side, smiling when Detective Howe frowned at her.

"Tell me, Detective, when are the reporters you asked to come going to arrive?"

Howe's frown deepened. He narrowed his eyes and then answered, "How did you know I called them?"