Version 1.23.0

  Sam

  Wednesday, December 28th

  Fingerprints first. They pressed my fingers into the ink pad one by one, rolling them across the card with practiced efficiency. I watched it happen like it was happening to someone else.

  Photographs next. Front. Left side. Right side. The flash left spots in my vision that took too long to fade.

  Someone asked me questions. Name. Date of birth. Address. I answered, but the words felt disconnected from my mouth, like a bad dub in a foreign film.

  "She's got a dislocated shoulder," someone said. A woman's voice. Clinical. “Maybe a concussion."

  I looked down at my arm, hanging at an angle that didn't seem quite right. Huh. When had that happened?

  "Let's get her to medical."

  More walking. More fluorescent lights. A room with an examination table covered in paper that crinkled when I sat down. A man in scrubs who introduced himself as something...a name I immediately forgot.

  "Can you tell me what happened?" he asked, shining a light in my eyes.

  "I fell."

  "Looks like you hit your face pretty hard." He dabbed at my nose with gauze. The blood had dried to a crust. "Does this hurt?"

  Everything hurt. Nothing hurt. I couldn't tell the difference anymore.

  "I'm going to need to reset your shoulder," he said. "It's going to be uncomfortable. On three. One..."

  He didn't wait for three. There was a grinding pop, a flare of something that might have been pain, and then my arm was hanging normally again. I heard myself make a sound...a gasp, maybe, or a whimper.

  "There we go. You'll want to ice that. Keep it in a sling for a few days."

  A sling appeared. More paperwork. More walking. Then: a room. Metal table. Two chairs. A mirror on one wall that wasn't fooling anyone. They cuffed me to a ring on the table and left me there.

  * * *

  Time passed. I wasn't sure how much.

  The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, a constant low hum that worked its way into my skull and stayed there. The chair was uncomfortable. The cuffs bit into my wrists if I shifted wrong. The room smelled like industrial cleaner and old coffee.

  I stared at the mirror and tried not to think about anything at all. It didn't work. The thoughts came anyway, sliding in through the cracks no matter how hard I tried to keep them out. James Reilly is dead.

  I could still see his code unraveling. Still feel the moment when his pattern simply... stopped. Kate saw everything. Her face. The horror. The way she screamed my name.

  Scott… No. I couldn't think about Scott. Not yet. Not here. I focused on the buzzing lights instead. Counted the tiles in the ceiling. Traced the cracks in the concrete floor. Anything to keep the thoughts at bay.

  The door opened.

  * * *

  The first agent was a woman. Mid-forties, severe haircut, the kind of face that suggested she'd seen everything and been impressed by none of it. She sat down across from me without introducing herself and opened a folder.

  "Miss Marion. Let's start with the bank accounts."

  I looked at her. Through her. The code was there at the edges of my vision, shimmering faintly, but I didn't want to see it. Didn't want to see anything.

  "The unauthorized deposits totaling $28,220," she continued. "How did you accomplish those transfers?"

  "I didn't transfer anything."

  "The money had to come from somewhere."

  "It just... appeared."

  She made a note. "And the Holloway Corporation data breach? The files sent from CEO Greg Harrison's personal account?"

  "I thought he sent those."

  "You thought the CEO of a major corporation decided to send confidential files to every news outlet in the city."

  "People do strange things."

  Her pen scratched against the paper. "Miss Marion, I want to be very clear about something. Bank fraud is a federal offense. Computer fraud is a federal offense. The charges you're facing could result in decades of prison time."

  "Well," I heard myself say, "it's a good thing I didn't commit any crimes then."

  Something that might have been irritation flickered across her face. She made another note, closed the folder, and left without another word.

  * * *

  The second agent was younger. Male. Nervous energy barely contained behind a professional facade. He had a coffee stain on his tie and kept fidgeting with his pen.

  "Miss Marion." He sat down too quickly, nearly knocking the folder off the table. "I'm Agent James. I'd like to talk about your relationship with Agent Mitchell."

  Scott. There it was. The name I'd been avoiding.

  "What about it?"

  "How long have you known him?"

  "A few months."

  "And in that time, did you discuss your... activities with him?"

  "My activities."

  "The bank fraud. The hacking. The..." He consulted his notes. "The 'reality manipulation.'"

  The way he said it...with audible quotation marks, like it was a joke...made something twist in my chest. But I kept my face blank.

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Agent Mitchell kept very detailed notes." The young agent leaned forward, trying for intensity and landing somewhere closer to constipated. "He documented everything you told him. Your claims about seeing 'code.' Your belief that you could alter reality." He paused. "Your 'leveling up.'"

  "Sounds like Agent Mitchell has quite an imagination. Where is he, he should be talking to me himself with these accusations."

  "Agent Mitchell is currently unavailable."

  "What does that mean, 'unavailable'?"

  "Miss Marion, the whereabouts of another federal agent shouldn't be your concern right now. Right now your concern should be about the charges you're being faced with."

  "You know, you're absolutely right, I'd like a lawyer."

  That stopped him. He blinked, pen frozen mid-fidget. "You're... requesting legal counsel?"

  "Isn't that my right?"

  More blinking. Then he gathered his folder, stood, and left.

  I sat in the silence and tried to feel something, anything, about what was happening. But there was only the buzzing of the lights and the distant echo of my own heartbeat.

  * * *

  The third agent was older. Grandfatherly, almost, with wire-rimmed glasses and a gentle voice that didn't match his eyes. Good cop, I realized. After two rounds of bad cop, they were trying a different approach.

  "Sam." He said my name like we were old friends. "Can I call you Sam?"

  "You can call me whatever you want."

  "Sam, I want to help you." He sat down slowly, folding his hands on the table. "I know you've been through a lot today. The arrest, the..." He paused delicately. "The incident with Officer Reilly. That must have been traumatic."

  The incident. Like it was a fender bender. Like a man hadn't died because I looked at him wrong.

  "I'm fine."

  "You don't have to be fine. It's okay to not be fine." He pushed a bottle of water across the table. "Here. You must be thirsty."

  I was. I hadn't realized until he mentioned it. I took the water, twisted off the cap, drank half of it in one long swallow.

  "There we go." He smiled. Warm. Practiced. "Now, Sam, I've been looking at your case, and I have to be honest with you. It's not looking good. The bank fraud charges alone could put you away for ten to fifteen years. Add in the computer crimes, the data breach, the..."

  "I didn't do any of that."

  "...potential charges related to Officer Reilly's death..."

  I went cold. "What?"

  "Well, nothing's been filed yet. The medical examiner is still determining cause of death. But he did die while you were resisting arrest." He spread his hands. "I'm not saying you did anything intentional. I'm sure it was just a tragic accident. But prosecutors love to pile on charges. And the public doesn't like the idea of a cop-killer. If the wrong pieces of data were given to the public, it'd certainly be hard for you to fix a reputation like that. However, given your impeccable record it stands to reason that you were coerced into allowing someone with a little more technical background access to work systems. And the prospect of catching a bigger fish makes it easier to get a plea deal."

  A plea deal. That's what this was about.

  "What kind of deal?"

  "Well, that depends on you." He leaned forward, grandfatherly warmth curdling into something sharper. "We know about the delusions, Sam. If you cooperate...tell us how you really did it, who else was involved, where the money came from, we can talk about reduced charges. It's very easy to paint a picture of a woman being taken advantage of by a large criminal organization when she's gone through something as emotional as you did. The 'leveling up' sounds like a psychiatric break. Like a scared bored woman who has read too many books and watched too many movies. Best case scenario without a plea deal you end up in a mental health facility."

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  "A mental health facility."

  "You've clearly been under a lot of stress. The delusions, the..."

  "I'm not delusional."

  "Of course not." He smiled again, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Just think about it, Sam. That's all I'm asking."

  He stood, patted my shoulder with his non-threatening grandfather hands, and left.

  I sat there and thought about it. Not about the plea deal. About the fact that they thought Officer Reilly's death was an accident. A coincidence. A medical emergency that happened to occur at the exact moment I was looking at his code. They didn't know. They couldn't know. There was no way to prove what I'd done... no evidence, no weapon, no explanation that fit within the bounds of what they understood about reality. That's what Scott had said right? There had been a thorough investigation and up until I handed him my journal he believed I hadn't done anything. But then he turned around and told his colleagues everything.

  Now, I had killed a man, and I was going to get away with it. The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it made me want to throw up.

  * * *

  The clock on the wall said 6:47 PM when the door opened again.

  I knew who it was before I looked up. Something about the way he moved, the weight of his presence in the room. Christopher Dyer. The man who'd pretended to be Scott's friend while setting a trap I'd walked straight into.

  "Miss Marion." He sat down across from me, taking his time, making sure I felt every second of the silence. "How are you holding up?"

  I didn't answer.

  "I have to admit, you've surprised me." He leaned back in his chair, studying me like I was a puzzle he was trying to solve. "Most people in your situation would be falling apart by now. Begging for lawyers, crying for their mothers, bargaining for deals. But you..." He tilted his head. "You're just sitting here. Calm as anything."

  I'm not calm, I wanted to say. I'm empty. There's a difference.

  “Well, my mom is a cockwomble. Trust me you wouldn’t cry for her either.”

  "We know about the bank accounts," Christopher continued. "We know about the Holloway leak. What we're trying to figure out is how a graphic designer with no criminal record and no apparent technical skills managed to pull off a series of sophisticated financial crimes without leaving a trace."

  Silence.

  "Your boyfriend, Agent Mitchell, he was very thorough in his documentation. But it seems like some things may have been scrubbed from his reports."

  The word hit like a slap. Boyfriend. Like he was taunting me.

  "He was pretty captivated by you. Your 'abilities.' Your 'progression.'" Christopher made air quotes with his fingers. "Fascinating stuff, really. Reads like something out of a bad science fiction novel."

  "If you have questions, you can ask my lawyer."

  "You haven't called one yet."

  He was right. I'd asked for a lawyer hours ago, and then... hadn't followed through. Hadn't done anything except sit here and wait for the next person to come in and accuse me of things I actually did.

  "I'm curious about something." Christopher leaned forward, close enough that I could smell his aftershave. Something expensive. Woody. "What did you do to Agent Mitchell."

  My throat closed.

  "Eight years as one of our top field agents and less than two months of knowing you and he seemed willing to become complicit in a massive cover-up. Did your cyber criminal organization threaten him? His family?"

  I stared at him incredulously, "What are you talking about?"

  "Oh, I think you know Sam. You may have fooled Scott, but I've been in this game a lot longer than him. You won't get away with this. We will uncover everything, and when we do, I hope, for your sake that you do wind up in that padded room, because federal prison is no place for an overly emotional graphic designer with a grudge over getting fired."

  An ember of rage ignited within me. I knew he was trying to get a rise out of me by calling me overly emotional. It wouldn't work. I tamped the ember out and fixed him with my coldest stare.

  "If you think I'm so guilty, find something. I dare you."

  "Mm." Christopher's eyes stayed fixed on mine. "You will regret those words."

  He stood, straightening his jacket. "We'll continue this tomorrow, Miss Marion. I'd suggest getting some sleep, but," He gestured at the room. “Well. Sleep tight."

  He paused at the door.

  "You know, the funny thing is, I think you really did have Agent Mitchell fooled."

  The door closed behind him.

  * * *

  They brought me food at some point. A sandwich, a bag of chips, a bottle of water. I ate mechanically, not tasting any of it.

  More agents came. More questions. The same questions, asked in different ways, by different people with different approaches. I gave them nothing. There was nothing to give.

  At some point they let me use the bathroom. A female agent stood outside the stall, listening. I washed my hands and looked at myself in the mirror and didn't recognize the woman looking back.

  She had my face. My hair. My eyes. But there was something wrong with her, something hollow behind the familiar features. Like someone had scooped out everything that made her human and left only the shell.

  Monster, I thought. You're a monster now.

  Back to the room. Back to the table. Back to the cuffs and the buzzing lights and the endless, grinding nothing of waiting.

  * * *

  Thursday, December 29th

  I didn't sleep. Couldn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Reilly's code unraveling.

  Instead, I sat in the interrogation room and watched the clock tick through the night. Midnight. One AM. Two. The building grew quiet around me, the constant bustle of the day fading into the muffled silence of a skeleton crew.

  I could escape, I realized. The thought came unbidden, floating up from somewhere deep.

  The code was everywhere. In the walls, the table, the cuffs around my wrists. I could see it now, could turn the vision off and on. I could reach out, like I had with the blanket, like I had with the bank accounts, like I had with...

  Like I had with Reilly. I could unlock the cuffs. Unlock the door. Walk out of here and disappear. And leave behind how many bodies? And then what? I wasn't a fugitive. I had no idea how people even found the dark web or criminals let alone how to survive as one myself.

  The thought made bile rise in my throat. I forced it down, forced my eyes open, forced myself to keep looking at the clock.

  3:17 AM. 3:18. 3:19.

  I wasn't going to hurt anyone else. I wasn't going to use these abilities again, not ever, not if it meant… The door opened.

  I looked up, expecting another agent. Another round of questions. It was Christopher. He looked smug, like he'd been waiting for me to break. Waiting to reveal his trump card.

  In his hands, he carried a leather-bound journal with gold embossing on the cover. DEFINITELY NOT EVIL PLANS.

  My heart stopped. He hadn't just told them everything. He'd given them my journal. I thought about my entries pertaining to Scott and my cheeks flushed and my ears burned with shame and embarrassment.

  "Good morning, Miss Marion." Christopher sat down across from me, placing the journal on the table between us. "I trust you slept well."

  I couldn't answer. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't do anything except stare at the journal, my journal, my private thoughts, my careful documentation of everything I was becoming. At times over the past two months it was my only friend. My confidant. And now it was being held like evidence to my undoing. Which, I supposed, it was.

  "Interesting reading." Christopher flipped open the cover, paging through with exaggerated casualness. "October 4th. 'Something is wrong with me. I can see things. Patterns in the air, like static on an old television.' Sound familiar?"

  I said nothing.

  "October 5th. 'LEVEL UP. I don't know what that means, but the noise filled my mind like a video game notification. I think I'm losing my mind.'" He looked up at me. "That was after you were in the ER, yes?”

  Still nothing.

  "October 8th. 'The money appeared in my account. I didn't transfer it. I just... changed the numbers. Like editing a document.'" He turned another page. "'Level 3. I can do more now. See deeper. I'm afraid of what I'm becoming.'"

  Each word was a knife, slicing through the numbness I'd wrapped around myself. My words. My fears. Read aloud in this sterile room by a man who had no right to them.

  "'Nov 25. I really like Scott. If anyone can forgive me for everything I've done I think it could be him. Maybe he will understand all of it. Maybe he won't look at me with the same hatred as I'm sure Kate has for me. After all, I ruined people's lives by trying to stop Greg. All of those people out of jobs because I needed petty revenge on him and on Daniel...' For someone who claims to have committed no crimes you sure have a vivid imagination Miss Marion."

  "Where did you get that." My voice came out rough, cracked.

  "Oh this? This was collected as evidence. Evidence in a federal investigation." Christopher closed the journal and slid it across the table toward me. "But I want to give you a chance to explain. In your own words. What is this, Sam? Some kind of elaborate roleplay? A shared delusion you and Agent Mitchell cooked up together? Or..." He leaned forward. "Or do you actually believe you can see 'the code of reality' and alter it at will?"

  I stared at the journal. My journal. Sitting there on the table between us.

  "Because I have to tell you," Christopher continued, "from where I'm sitting, it looks like the ravings of a disturbed mind. Delusions of grandeur. Magical thinking taken to an extreme." He tapped the journal's cover. "This is the evidence of a woman who's lost touch with reality. And no jury in the world is going to believe that you actually have superpowers."

  Something cracked inside me. Not the numbness, that had been eroding all night. Something deeper. Something that had been holding me together since the moment Reilly fell.

  "You think I'm delusional."

  "I think you need help. Serious psychological help. And I think if you cooperate; if you tell us the truth about how you really committed these crimes, who committed these crimes, we can make sure you get that help instead of spending the next twenty years in a federal prison."

  I looked at the journal. At the gold embossing. At the evidence that could destroy me.

  And I thought about what I could do. What I had done. What I was capable of.

  "You want the truth?" I said.

  "That's all I've ever wanted."

  I reached out not with my hands, but with something deeper. Something that had been growing inside me for weeks, fed by fear and grief and the desperate need to survive. The code was there, as it always was now. The journal's code. Its history. Every word I'd written, every page I'd filled, every moment I'd documented.

  And I erased it.

  It was harder than anything I'd done before. Not just changing what was, but reaching back into what had been. The ink, the impressions on the paper, the digital photographs they'd taken, the scans they'd made. All of it connected by invisible threads of information, and I pulled on those threads and unmade them.

  The pain hit like a spike through my temple. I felt blood drip from my nose, tasted copper on my lips. But I didn't stop. I couldn't stop. Not until...

  The pages went blank.

  Christopher was still talking, saying something about cooperation and reduced sentences. He hadn't noticed yet. Hadn't looked down.

  "...and I really do think we can work something out, if you're willing to..."

  He gave me a disgusted expression and hollered to someone unseen to bring in the tissues.

  "You must be getting desperate," I said, "if you're trying to plant evidence."

  He stopped, turned from the opening door he was shouting at, and blinked. "What?"

  "That journal." I nodded at it. "I doubt there's anything even in there. You're going to what, fill the pages with confessions while you hold me illegally with a concussion?"

  Christopher grabbed the journal and smirked as he flipped absently through the journal prepared to read me another passage. I watched his face change then. Watched the confusion bloom into disbelief, then denial, then something that looked almost like fear.

  "That's not..." He flipped backward through the pages all the way toward the beginning. Empty. All of them. "This isn't possible. I read it. I just read it. You heard me read it."

  "I heard you making up a pretty intricate tale."

  "No." He was on his feet now, checking his phone. "No, no, no. What the fuck is going on."

  He looked at me in confusion and flipped open my file. Polaroids of the journal falling out over the table and floor. And each one of them was just a picture of blank pages. The officer he'd called to brought in the tissues and tried to hand them to Christopher. He knocked the tissues out of the officer's hand and screamed. "What is this? Disappearing ink? How large is this operation? Are the local police involved? How did you replace the photos? You know what- I have digital copies I've already emailed over..." He desperately opened his phone again and after scrolling for a minute he stood, wide eyed and gaping at me. "What is this. What have you done?"

  "Careful Chris. Your delusions appear to be making you overly emotional" I hissed the last two words throwing them back in his face.

  "You fucking bitch." He slammed his hands on the table, hard enough to make the metal ring. "I READ it. I read every word. The levels. The code. The..." He broke off, staring at me with wild eyes. "What did you do? WHAT DID YOU DO?"

  "I didn't do anything. I'm cuffed to a table, and in a sling remember?"

  He got in my face, close enough that I could see the blood vessels in the whites of his eyes. "I don't know how you did this, but I am going to figure it out. And when I do..."

  "Sir." The door had opened. Another agent stood there, looking uncomfortable. "Sir, we need to talk. Outside."

  Christopher didn't move. His breath was hot on my face, his body rigid with barely contained fury.

  "Dyer. Now."

  He pulled back slowly. Deliberately. His eyes never leaving mine.

  "This isn't over," he said.

  "I don't know what you mean."

  He left. The door closed. And I sat there in the buzzing silence, blood still dripping from my nose, trying to understand what I'd just done.

  Not the erasure, I understood that, at least in the abstract. I'd reached deeper than I'd ever reached before, and I'd changed something fundamental about the journal's existence.

  But there was something else. Something I'd glimpsed in that moment of reaching.

  Layers. That was the only word for it. The code I usually saw, was just the top. I thought I'd been seeing underneath everything but... under the code there was more. Older code. Compressed. Like sediment at the bottom of an ocean.

  And in that sediment, just for a moment, I'd seen something. A pattern I didn't make. Someone else's work. It felt ancient and intricate and vast. Someone had been here before. Long, long ago. Someone who could see what I could see. Do what I could do.

  And deeper still, deeper than the old patterns, deeper than the ancient code... I felt it. I could feel that something was watching. Not hostile. Not friendly. Just... aware. It had noticed me. I sat very still and tried not to think about what that meant.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, the door opened again. It wasn't Christopher this time. It was a woman I hadn't seen before, a local officer this time. She smiled at me sadly and picked up the tissues off of the floor. She handed them to me.

  "Miss Marion." She unlocked my cuffs. "You're free to go."

  I stared at her. "What?"

  "Turns out the feds don't have any evidence." She paused, as if searching for the right word. "The chief called in and spoke with their boss. I don't think they'll be bothering you again ma'am."

  "Just like that."

  "Just like that." She looked apologetic. "Your personal effects will be returned at the front desk. On behalf of the department we are truly sorry. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you need anything in the future. We may have some follow up questions for you down the road."

  I stood on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else. The room swayed slightly, then steadied.

  "Miss Marion." The officer's voice stopped me at the door. "If there is anything you're hiding you can tell us and we can help."

  I looked back at her. At the interrogation room where I'd spent the worst night of my life. At the table where I'd erased the evidence of everything I was becoming.

  "There's nothing to hide," I said.

  And I walked out.