“You seem to care about them a great deal.”
“Will you fucking answer me?”
I wet my lips and pulled free two pieces of paper from my file folder. “Rafe,” I told him, showing a printed photo of Rafe Creed’s intake picture and subsequent charges, “spent most of his time in the infirmary in the beginning. We moved him three times before we realized he was only getting beaten to a pulp because he was instigating the fights. Now, he’s in solitary.”
“Alone?” Kane asked hoarsely.
“That is what solitary is, Mr. Creed.”
He gripped the edge of the table. “Arden?”
I blew out a breath and flipped over the paper with Ms. Creed’s details. “Also in solitary at her facility due to lighting a guard on fire. Seems she got her hands on matches somehow.”
A snort escaped Kane. “He deserved it.”
I frowned. “Just like the cops she killed in her explosion at the NYPD?”
Kane’s eyes darkened. “First of all, I meant that the bastard deserved it because Arden rarely takes a life that doesn’t. I’m not saying she hasn’t fucked up in the past. We all have. But you should look into him. If I had to guess, he tried to touch her. As for the NYPD: Rafe and I were beaten by those officers. Rafe—fuck—they didn’t even get him an interpreter for hours. I told the fuckers he was deaf and incapable of speaking, and they just kept screaming at him to talk.”
“And that means they deserved to die?” I pushed.
He gritted his teeth. “It means it’s more complicated than a yes or no answer, agent.All of thisisn’t some tidy response I can give you. We’re all guilty. We all have blood on our hands, but we also weren’t really given a fucking chance totryto wipe them clean. Creed is a product. How can you not know that if Rafe told you about Viktor? We were manufactured to kill by a fucked up system that, by my count, you and the FBI have known about now for over a year. Us being behind bars? Nothing’s going to change that until we break out, and I can assure you that if you and your buddies don’t get off your asses and start looking intothe reasonwe’ve all done what we did, then Creed will kill again and again andagainuntil every last bastard of S.I.N. is dead.”
I drummed my fingers on the table. “Let’s slow down, Mr. Creed. What about your one and only visitor. Can you tell me about Florence Mayhew? She and your so-called Ravens haven’t been very cooperative either. Maybe if you could tell me how they’re involved, we can get all this sorted?”
But Kane had gone deadly still. His jaw tightened, his grip on the table white-knuckled. “Keep her name,” he said slowly, terrifyingly, “out of your fucking mouth.”
“Whose name? Florence’s?”
He slammed his fists on the table. “Fuck that bitch. I don’t want to talk about her or see her. If she comes here again, I want her fucking dismissed.”
“You’re in no position to make any demands. You also have nothing to worry about on that front. Visitation was officially revoked after your incident with Miss Mayhew.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “And Mr. Creed, due to your previous statement of a suicide attempt, acknowledgment of a possible breakout, and your continuing threats of violence, I will have to recommend you be moved to solitary with 24 hour surveillance.”
“Fucking fantastic,” he bit out and tugged at where his chains were clipped to the table. I swore they gave, that the ironbent.“I’m done anyway. Our story? Creed? Ravens? I’m not fucking telling it, agent. I refuse. There’s only one person that can do it well, and if they aren’t talking yet, then I’m not taking that away from them. So you can take your recorder and your fancy little notes and shove them up your goddamn—”
RECORDING ENDED.
?Arden?
PRESENT DAY - EIGHT YEARS AFTER THE EXPLOSION AT THE NYPD; TWENTY MINUTES AFTER MEETING WITH OFFICER MORRIS AT THE RAVEN TOWNHOUSE
I told you from the very beginning that I’m guilty. Blood stains my fucking soul at this point. I’m not proud of the lives I took. At all. Well, except maybe Halden’s. And those Buyers. And…yeah, I deserve to serve my sentence, but we all do—including S.I.N. Shit happened to Creed, but that didn’t give us the right to hurt anyone. Telling you our story, officer, was about being understood, not about making excuses. When all is said and done, you think you’ll have your criminal behind bars—and I also know you think that person will be Rafe Creed. Don’t worry, I’m taking you to him. I promised I would, but…I guess I’m asking for mercy, whatever degree you’ll give.
Because it hurts. Itstillhurts. It will always hurt. At the end of the day, I’m as human as you, and I do tell myself sometimes,Well if they were in my shoes, they would get it. They’d seeeverything I did, all the lives I took, but they’d also know why.You’ve seen the footage, and now you have these recordings, and again—I don’t expect absolution. I hope…fuck. Here I go hoping again, but I need you to know that at the end of the day, we’re still just kids at heart, bleeding out, begging for someone to hear us screaming, just once.
It’s a lot to ask. I know it is. Up until you agreed to let me take you to Rafe, to make these recordings, I’m sure you lived a relatively normal life. You may have seen shit like I’ve told you in the news, but it’s always been distant, right? This far removed thing that you were sad over and have empathy for but still a thing you really couldn’t do anything about, and now…you can, officer. Rafe’s confessions were never given to the public, but I know there isn’t an officer at the NYPD who didn’t read them. Am I wrong? No. I know I’m not. You read them. You know. And the footage? You saw that too, right? I mean, the entire world saw that after Mick released it.
But that was eight years ago, so let me ask you this: why am I still bleeding, still screaming for someone to hear me? Why am I having to record these confessions and bargain with you just to be heard? There’s so much proof. So. Much. Fucking. Proof. And you want to tell me the system isn’t broken? That you’re justdoing your job? You dare to say that to my face whenIwas put in cuffs for eight years, separated from the only family I hadagain, while S.I.N. continued to thrive?
The world was outraged. They demanded I be given a public trial, that they be given the truth after that thumb drive, and do you know what your precious system did? They threw me in solitary as a mass terrorist, and I had to pick a death corner again. One corner to due myself in if I couldn’t hold out, and the only thing that kept me from doing so was bribing the guard covering my cell. He fucked me, and for every use of my body, I was given information on whether my family was alive. I justsuccumbed to the only thing I’d ever had to offer—myself. I had to beg again:Please don’t. I have money. Get me a way to communicate with the outside, and I’ll have it wired.He raped me, got me a cellphone, and took my money. A simple transaction, I guess, at that point in my life. Twenty-one years old at the time, carving lines into the wall of my prison, counting the days again, counting always. Waiting, officer. I was still waiting on hope to buck up and give me a fighting chance.
So yeah, I’ve got this gun to your head now, and we’re going to go get Rafe, and if I choose to shoot you, just know I take full responsibility but that the system is fucked. Only the guilty have something to hide. Don't you realize that? They're withholding evidence because it's the force, the feds, the fucking politicians—everycorner of this world is crawling with Buyers. The only thing bigger than them is the public. I can assure you, if the Ravens hadn't hacked in and distributed that footage, it would've been buried with the rest of it. Too many important people with very deep pockets were unmasked in that footage, and if I had to guess, not a single one of them has spent the last eight years rotting in a cell like I did.
I get it. You want to preach to me because you still believe in good, butIbelieve in good too, just not in the same way. I believe in wronged people making right, because that seems to be the only way shit gets done. Do I want to live in a world where kids don't have to be raped for someone's greed to be wiped out? Of course, but we don't live in that world. We live in a world where I've been sent to kill people with badges, suits, and all kinds of things our system claims is armor against 'bad' and 'injustice', when in reality, the very people buying me wore those things too. We're all just biting each others' heads off, trying to make something of ourselves—even if it's evil—as if this world is only big enough for one. I'm trying, officer, to believe the world is much bigger than that. It might not seem like it with the prisonbreak and the murders, but exactly how far was I meant to be pushed andstillremain a Doll?
I refuse. I will not be silent.
It all connects back, you know? It’s not all bad. Nothing ever is. I get that. But the bad sometimes is really fucking bad, and I’m tired. Aren’t you? Don’t you just want to see it all…burn?
