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[sub][ [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4948716]Prev[/url] ] [color=ffff00]“[b]Prologue: Mojave Nights[/b], Part II”[/color]  [ Next ][/sub][/center]
[COLOR=ffff00][INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3]W E L L I N G T O N,  N E V A D A
[right]Sheriff's Office[/right] [/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][/COLOR]
[color=slategray][indent][indent]Captain Donovan Blake peered at the girl through the one-way glass of the interrogation room. Averting his gaze, he glanced upwards towards an old ceiling fan struggling to keep up with the heat. He grumbled as he pulled at the collar of his shirt the fabric sticking to his sweat drenched neck. The former collegiate football player still carried the build of a defensive lineman albeit having softened somewhat with age.  His dropping jowls and morose disposition had earned him the make-sure-he-wasn’t-looking-first nickname of Mastiff around the department. Standing next to him Trujillo thought it was an apt comparison.

For the past hour the Mastiff had grilled him and Reid over everything that they had seen. After their discovery in the desert, the department was abuzz with activity. Anyone that was in town on call or not was dragged into the office or sent out into the Desert to start collecting evidence. The boys at the county morgue had to enlist some biology students from the community college to help them deal with all the bodies. It all felt wrong to Trujillo as if he and Reid had disturbed some long unbroken code after all massacres don’t happen in small desert towns. Blake was insistent on getting everything under control again before the journalists started trying to bash the door in. He needed answers and without the girl he was going to get jack shit out of those.

Trujillo rubbed the gauze on his arm as he looked at her through the glass. She had woken in the truck on the road back and attacked the first thing she saw. Trujillo had dealt with unruly drunks before but none with actual claws. One of the sharp bastards had managed to slice through his forearm like roast beef before Reid was able to hit her with the taser they kept in the glovebox. She had handcuffs on now, but Trujillo wasn’t sure she wasn’t just tolerating them to keep up appearances.

“This is a shitshow Trujillo.” Blake stated as he paced the length of the window. “I got a dozen bodies in the morgue and a mutant killer in my interrogation room.” 

“To be fair sir,” Trujillo argued “they were the ones shooting at her.”

“And how do we know they weren’t doing so in self-defense? You saw the footage from New York and Star City, you know what those freaks can do.” Blake countered 

“With all due respect sir, I also saw a bunch of those “freaks” helping save everyone.”

“Your bleating fucking heart is going to be the end of you Trujillo,” Blake sighed before continuing “well if you are such the mutant lover, then you go in there and talk to her. I need a report on my desk before the spooks from Metahuman Affairs come knocking, or they will have all our heads.”

“Whatever you say boss” Trujillo replied trying his best not to roll his eyes.

 With the exchange over, Trujillo exited the room and turned left away from the interrogation room. Trujillo didn’t have kids, his libido was all but non-existent, but he did have a feisty old bastard of a cat and if living with cats had taught him anything was that food was the great equalizer. It didn’t matter how uncooperative you wanted to be everyone needed to eat. 

Calling the room that Trujillo entered a kitchen was an exercise in kindness. The rickety gas stove looked like it had stopped working a decade before he had signed up, and the sink pumped out rust more than it did water these days. Somehow though the kitchen still had a working refrigerator and microwave though and at the moment that was enough for Trujillo. He pulled a bottle of water and a half-empty carton of milk from the fridge stacking them alongside a pack of instant oatmeal he grabbed from a nearby cabinet. He tore open the oatmeal and dumped it into a bowl before splashing in the milk. Two and half minutes in the microwave later and the smell of cinnamon and maple syrup wafted its way into Trujillo’s nostrils. He took a scrap of paper towel to create a barrier between his hand and the hot contents and took the water bottle in the other.

Sergeant Reid’s familiar dower face guarded the interrogation room door. She took measured sips from a thermos its pale-yellow matching her hay colored hair. She had been standing watch since their return, despite offers of reprieve from some of their colleagues so that she could catch a few minutes of shut eye on the break room couch. Ever since the girl had attacked Trujillo in the truck, Reid had been more on edge than usual. Even now as he turned the corner to head down the hallway, Reid head perked up like some grazing animal listening from predators. The tension in her shoulders loosened and her expression softened as she realized it was just Trujillo.

“Didn’t you stuff your face when we got back?” She asked cocking her brow as she regarded the small meal that her partner had prepared.

“It’s not for me,” Trujillo explained as he closed the distance “its for our guest of honor.”

“She rips your arm open and you go and make her something to eat?” Reid responded as her eyes lingered for a moment too long on the gauze on his arm.

Trujillo shrugged.

“What can I say? I’m a masochist.”

 “Just be careful in there Wash.” 

“Is that an order sergeant?” 

“It’s whatever you fucking want it to be if it stops you from getting mauled.”

Reid slammed the door securely shut behind Trujillo as he entered the room with a loud thud. He stood at one end of a long and narrow space, like someone had thrown up a wall and door in a disused hallway and called it a new room. One wall was dominated by the smoky one-way glass that concealed the room that he and the Mastiff had been talking in minutes earlier. Across the way and pressed up against the opposite wall was a metal table with two chairs on either end. The girl occupied the chair at the far end her gaze fixated on the floor below her. Trujillo took the seat closer to the door laying out the food equidistant between the two of them.

Sitting there he couldn’t help but think about how [i]normal[/i] she looked. In his time working for the Sheriff’s department, he had dealt with a lot of runaways. Nestled right along the long I-95 between Reno and Las Vegas, there was a lot of folks that eaten alive by the casinos or the drugs or both. The neon-soaked allure washing away everything else including pesky things like putting food on the table for your kids. The smell was the same, the pungent odor of desert caked sweat that built up on the body after a week or more of not properly bathing. The same ragged and torn clothes and sunken features of somebody that didn’t know where their next meal was coming for. And at a quick glance, you could mistake the dried-up blood for dirt. 

It was hard to imagine how the girl standing in front of him caused all that death he and Reid had stumbled upon. The sting of protest in his wrapped-up arm as he rested his elbow on the table reminded him. She wasn’t’ just a normal runaway after all, she was a metahuman. He knew some people from school that ended up in Star City, folks with kids, jobs, and dreams, and some were in the ground now, others were still in the hospital, and those lucky enough to come out physically fine were still going to therapy to deal with the post-traumatic stress. But he didn’t see or hear about any girl with claws in those stories and it wasn’t in his belief to punish someone for something somebody else had done. 

“So,” Trujillo started leaning forward in his sat “are you going to talk now?”

Her gaze turned upward from the floor meeting his own. Her eyes were a dark green speckled with dark spots that echoed the ink-black of her hair. Trujillo’s [i]abuelita[/i] had always said the quickest way to judge somebody was from their eyes, as they were the only parts of the body that couldn’t lie. And the eyes he was looking at now were empty, dark endless circles. He’d seen killers, thieves, and rapists with more life in them, a deeper sense of humanity. He had to fight against the shiver that was building up at the base of his spine. Pushing his discomfort away he gestured towards the food on the table.

“That’s for you,” he explained. 

The girl looked at him and down at bowl of oatmeal and the bottle of water and back up at him again. In the span of a single blink the girl had pulled the two items over towards her. Her movements were spastic because of the handcuffs, but she still managed to move quicker than Trujillo ever could. On her first attempt she tried to use the spoon that Trujillo had provided, but her hands were bound in such a way that she couldn’t bring the spoon up to her face without spilling half of its contents.  Quickly she grew frustrated and tossed the spoon to the side sending it clattering against the one-way glass. 

For her second attempt, Trujillo watched in astonishment as she leaned over and dipped her hands directly into the still hot oatmeal using them to shovel the food into her mouth. If the girl felt the pain, she didn’t show it to him as she quickly devoured the meal with a ravenous hunger. As the oatmeal in the bowl diminished, she turned her attention to the water bottle. In a flash, the girl extended the sharp metal claws on one of her hands and used one of the sharp spears to puncture the plastic like it wasn’t even there, catching the water as it spilled out of the freshly made hole. She continued to chug the water bottle until it was empty. Trujillo watched wondering how long a girl had to go without eating to consume food at such a pace.  

“Around here they call me Corporal Trujillo,” he explained “what should I call you?”

The girl licked stray pieces of oatmeal from her fingers as she looked back up at him, almost like the food had made her forgot that he was there. The bright patches of pinkish skin where the hot food had scalded her already beginning to fade away back to their original healthy color. She looked at him for a long time, a question on her face, before she finally answered. She sounded young but there was a definite confidence about her.

“My name is Laura.” 

“Are you alone out here Laura?”

“I had a mother… but she isn’t here anymore.”

From the way she hesitated Trujillo could tell that wound was still fresh. He felt something in his heart break for her. In a small act of mercy, he got straight to the point. 

“What happened Laura? Out in the desert?”

The girl froze again looking down at hands caked with blood. Trujillo could see the muscles in her throat move as she swallowed a handful of air. Finally, she looked up at him and shrugged.

“I killed some people.”

 “Why?” Trujillo asked glancing towards the one-way glass

“I had to.” 

“You had to?” Trujillo asked leaning forward. 

“That’s right.”

“Can you explain why?”

The girl paused again as she observed Trujillo. He felt those dark endless eyes pick him apart, searching for something. A knot of anxiety began to form in his stomach he breathed out deeply trying to expel the childish fear that she was seeing something that he didn’t want to see. As he exhaled, he could of swore that there was a flash of disappointment across her face. She shook her head as she spoke.
“I don’t think I can Corporal Trujillo.”

The questioning continued like that for the rest of the hour. Trujillo would come forward with a feint and the girl would deflect with a well-timed riposte. With what little information the girl ended up providing Trujillo was able to gather very little. She had come from somewhere to the north, but she had been pursued along the way. She didn’t know how old she was and if he had to guess didn’t spend much time around people. He wrote all of this down in the notebook that he kept in his back pocket, and going over it once more, it looked more like the plot of a second-rate thriller that you would buy an airport than anything resembling reality. 

Trujillo would have wanted to ask more, but the Mastiff having listened to the whole interrogation from the adjoining room was eager to wash his hands of the whole affair. As far as the captain was concerned the girl had produced an admission of guilt about the killings, and that was enough for him. She was a dangerous mutant and a threat to public safety who had attempted to maul one of his officers. Following recently established guidelines he was to inform the Department of Metahuman Affairs and let them deal with her as they saw fit. All they had to do was wait a day for the transport vehicle to come and pick her up. After that it would be back to a much more palatable life of domestic abusers and serial rapists.

The captain wanted to toss her in the holding cell until tomorrow, but Trujillo was able to convince him otherwise on that at least. He just didn’t think it was right to punish a girl for acting in self-defense no matter how excessive the force she may have used. Instead they took the air mattress and extra sheets that they kept holed up in the supply closet and they blew it up in his and Reid’s office. The door locked from the outside and there would be a guard there stationed for the rest of the night and the window was alarmed and made out of reinforced glass, so if she tried to get out they would know, but it at least give her some semblance of privacy.

The last the corporal saw of her for the evening was when he gave her a change of clothes. The DMA guidelines for subject transfers were very strict and they were to gather up all evidence clothing included. As the girl used the shower to scrub away the blood, he went about trying to find new clothes for her. With Reid’s help he managed to scrounge up an extra-small dark blue sweatshirt embossed with the department seal and a matching pair of gym shorts. The type of stuff that the higher ups wanted them to pawn off to their family members in exchange for “charitable” donations and fundraisers. The girl looked surprised but thanked him none the less.

After that he went up to the front to type up his report since he could not use the computer in his office. He had to stifle a yawn as he went through the long process of checking every box and filling out every prompt. When he used to work at the port he had to fill out and go over shipping manifests for all the cargo haulers that came in, but even that didn’t compare to the level of bureaucratic nonsense that had to deal with in the department.  If he filled out even one section of the form wrong, the Mastiff made it sound like half of the government would be coming to chase him down. 

Somewhere around the sixth or seventh page the front door opened. Trujillo sighed before speaking rubbing at tired eyes as he did.
“How can I help you today…” His voice dying out quietly as he felt his heart leap into his throat.

A man with dark sunglasses, brown duster, and matching cowboy hat stood in the door. Flanking him on either side were two heavily armed men dressed in the same black combat armor as the ones that they had found in the desert.  The man with the duster sauntered forward to the desk taking broad, long steps as he did. He propped his arm up on the desk as he got close and it was at that moment that Trujillo noticed that it was made from metal, he could hear gears and pistons turning beneath the metal plating as he flexed his fingers. Smiling the man with the duster pushed his sunglasses atop his dirty-blond hair; his eyes the color of lapis. 

“Well partner,” the man started with an easy Texas drawl “my name is Pierce and I’m looking for somebody.”

Never breaking eye contact, Trujillo began to reach for the revolver at his hip.[/indent][/indent][/color]