They guided me forward, firm hands at my elbows, steering me through the parted sea of faces.
I felt their stares like needles—curious, judgmental, hungry. Past the bar. Past the band. Past the place where I’d tried to bleed myself empty through music and motion.
The door opened.
Cold January air slammed into my face, sharp and unforgiving, stealing what little breath I had left.
Red and blue lights strobed against the pavement, against the dark windows of parked cars.
A black-and-white police van waited at the curb, rear doors yawning open like a mouth ready to swallow me whole.
I hesitated.
For half a second, I stood there, frozen between inside and out, between who I’d been an hour ago and whatever I was about to become.
A firm hand pressed between my shoulder blades.
“In,” an officer said, not unkindly, not gently either.
I climbed inside.
The door closed behind me with a hollow, final thud.
They didn’t slam it.
They didn’t need to.
The sound of it sealing shut was enough to tell me one thing with brutal clarity:
Whatever I’d been running from had finally caught up to me.
The ride was suffocatingly silent, broken only by the low crackle of the radio and the occasional burst of static that made my teeth ache.
The van bounced over potholes, metal scraping faintly against the road, and I sat on the hard bench, wrists sore from the cuffs, staring at the scuffed metal floor as if it might give me answers.
My mind kept replaying the last three minutes—how a routine night had turned into a nightmare, how reality could twist so violently in the span of a heartbeat.
I didn’t try to understand why I was being arrested. My head was too muddled for that, and I knew I would find out soon enough. Questions could wait.
We arrived at the LAPD station, and I was escorted inside without explanation.
They took me straight to a single holding cell and locked the door. I knew enough to keep quiet and wait until someone called for me.
The cell was bare: a concrete bench bolted to the wall, a flickering fluorescent light that buzzed constantly, and distant voices echoing through the corridor—someone shouting, someone else laughing, then silence again.
Time dragged. Minutes blurred into hours.
I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. Every second felt heavy, stretching on, pressing down on my chest.
Then a sharp voice cut through the stillness.
“Baranov. Interrogation room. Now.”
I followed the guard down the hall, every step echoing, each metallic clang of my cuffs a reminder of my imprisonment.
The room was small, institutional gray, walls that seemed to close in, dominated by a one-way mirror.
A metal table, bolted to the floor, reflected the harsh overhead light.
