[hr][sup][h1][center][url=https://open.spotify.com/track/0asMwoxaKllA4Cm791LGOW?si=670dc32d01f34ea5][img]https://i.postimg.cc/3J6ZSdPg/rosiepostheader.jpg[/img][/url][/center][/h1][/sup][indent][sub][COLOR=#A7AFCB][B]LOCATION:[/B][color=2e2c2c].[/color][/COLOR] [I]new york city[/I] - [I]marquee skydeck[/I][/sub][sup][right][COLOR=#A7AFCB][b]016:[/b][/COLOR][color=2e2c2c].[/color] [I]still rolling[/I][/right][/sup][/indent][sub][hr][/sub][INDENT][sub][color=#A7AFCB][B]INTERACTIONS: [/B][color=2e2c2c].[/color][/COLOR] [I]officer jones[/I][/sub][sup][right][COLOR=#A7AFCB][b]MENTIONS:[/b][/COLOR][color=2e2c2c].[/color] [I]hayden[/I][/right][/sup][/indent]

[indent][indent][color=#808080]Margot didn’t notice the message at first. Her phone lay face down beside her glass, vibrating faintly against the lacquered wood, the sound swallowed by the low swell of conversations tangling with the dull, visceral throb of bass that still seemed to pulse in the air, even though the music had stopped who knows how long ago. She only became aware of it when the vibration came again, longer this time, insistent enough to pierce through the pleasant, alcohol-soft haze that blurred the edges of her perception.

She picked it up absently, expecting a notification, a tagged photo, maybe a flood of late-night messages from collaborators still riding the midnight high, posting their obligatory “new year, same me” selfies or whatever. 

Instead, she saw Eli’s name. Four messages. Sent in rapid succession.

Her thumb hovered for a moment before opening them, a faint smile tugging at the corner of her mouth out of habit. When Eli texted during an event, it was usually about scheduling adjustments or brand reminders. Given that this wasn’t that sort of thing, however, she imagined it was at best a gentle “don't forget to post something before midnight” nudge since he wasn’t exactly the type to message her for no good reason.

The smile vanished almost immediately.

[center][img]https://i.postimg.cc/FK0ph02N/text-message.jpg[/img][/center]

The warmth that had settled pleasantly in her cheeks cooled to something clammy, replaced by a thin, creeping alertness that didn't fully cut through the alcohol but instead curdled it into something queasy and unwelcome.

Police? Why would the police be here? 

Her gaze lifted, scanning the area with new eyes. Her brow furrowed in confusion rather than fear at first. The guests, far less than before, had reconfigured themselves into tighter clusters, holding their phones at chest level now, a furtive posture that suggested documentation rather than celebration. The staff moved differently, too; gone was their polished drift through the crowd, replaced by quick, purposeful strides and smiles that had been wiped clean from their faces. 

A uniform near the bar. Another near the bathrooms.

Oh. Right. 

She blinked, and memory returned in a jigsaw of sensory snapshots that included the scream that had cut through the countdown's aftermath like broken glass; music stopping mid-beat, leaving only the echo of feedback; and light rising too bright and too sudden, exposing the confusion on every face. People whispering. Someone saying “bathroom”. Someone else saying “ambulance”. She even remembered texting Eli earlier, her observations half-coherent and lubricated by the extra alcohol she’d drunk. Something vague about the police arriving and the party taking a strange turn.

Margot hadn't thought anything of it at the time. Why would she? Parties got weird all the time to the point it was practically a law of nature. Crowds spilled over, emotions ran high, and someone always said something reckless or made a scene. That was why she hadn't left when the commotion first started. It had felt like background noise; something happening adjacent to her evening rather than inside it.

But a bathroom being cordoned off with that yellow tape wasn't nothing.

People being redirected away from one side of the venue, their questions met with tight smiles and vague assurances. That wasn't nothing either.

And guests attempting to leave only to be politely intercepted by uniformed officers? Definitely not nothing.

Margot exhaled slowly, trying to steady herself. She mentally rehearsed neutral expressions the way she might before going live—calm, pleasant, unremarkable. Just another guest waiting things out. Just someone who happened to be here, nothing more.

She was so focused on composing her features that she barely registered the approaching footsteps. Only when a shadow fell across the table beside her did she startle.

[color=white]“Miss?”[/color] 

Margot looked up. 

A uniformed officer stood at a polite distance, posture straight but not aggressive, hands resting lightly on her belt. She offered Margot a professional smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. 

[color=white]“Officer Jones,”[/color] she said, producing a small notebook as identification rather than a badge flash. [color=white]“Sorry to interrupt your evening.”[/color]

[COLOR=#A7AFCB]“Oh,”[/color] Margot said automatically, straightening without meaning to. [COLOR=#A7AFCB]“Hi.”[/color]

[color=white]“We’re speaking with everyone still present,”[/color] Jones continued gently, her tone measured and reassuring in that specific way that suggested the speaker had delivered these exact words many times before. [color=white]“Just trying to establish a timeline for the evening. It shouldn’t take long.”[/color]

Margot nodded slowly—a fraction too slow to feel natural even to herself. The officer's words reached her clearly enough, but they seemed to arrive with a slight delay, as though travelling through water before settling into meaning. A timeline. The phrase echoed once, then twice, and then Eli's messages came roaring back into her awareness with sudden, electric clarity.

[i]Do NOT talk to police without representation.[/i]

Her stomach dropped.

Oh. Oh shit. This was exactly what he’d meant, hadn’t he?

For a brief, irrational second, she considered pretending she hadn't seen the messages at all. That if she ignored them hard enough, the situation might revert to something harmless and administrative. A misunderstanding. A formality. But the officer was still standing there, patient as furniture, pen poised above her notebook like a question mark given form.

Margot lifted her glass slightly between them, offering a small, apologetic smile that leaned hard into sheepish charm. The ice had mostly melted, diluting whatever remained of her drink into something pale and unappealing, but the gesture still served its purpose and should easily be understood. 

[COLOR=#A7AFCB]“I mean…”[/color] she began, her voice pitching light as if they were sharing an obvious truth rather than circling something she desperately wanted to avoid. [COLOR=#A7AFCB]“I don't actually know how much help I'd be.”[/color] She gave the glass a tiny, illustrative tilt, the amber liquid catching the overhead light and throwing a weak gleam across the table. [COLOR=#A7AFCB]“I've had a bit to drink, so my memory might not be… legally impressive.”[/color] The joke landed softly, and she felt irrationally hopeful that this might be enough. That the officer might smile, wave it off, move on to someone soberer and far more useful.

No such luck. 

Officer Jones's smile thinned, the kind of adjustment you only noticed if you were looking for it. And Margot was definitely looking. 

[color=white]“That's okay,”[/color] she said, her tone still even but now threaded with something firmer beneath the reassurance. Persistence, maybe. Or the particular patience of someone who'd heard every deflection before. [color=white]“Even impressions can be helpful. Did you notice anything unusual tonight? Before things quieted down?”[/color]

The question hung there, open and innocuous. It was the kind of question you were supposed to answer, designed to make cooperation feel like the natural response. Margot felt words rising in her throat before she could stop them, that reflexive urge to be agreeable and to smooth over awkwardness with narration. She'd practically built a brand on that instinct, on the ability to keep talking until everything felt comfortable and curated.

[i]Do not answer questions beyond name + ID.[/i]

She clamped down on the impulse, swallowing the half-formed response that had already begun assembling itself on her tongue.

[COLOR=#A7AFCB]“Well…”[/color] Margot began slowly, buying time more than offering an answer. Her gaze drifted past Officer Jones's shoulder toward the crowd, as if the memory might physically exist somewhere out there, waiting to be retrieved from the air. [COLOR=#A7AFCB]“I mean, it was a party. Loud. Busy. Hard to notice much else.”[/color] She heard herself speaking and hated how easily she could slip into pleasant narration mode, smoothing uncertainty into coherence. That was the danger, wasn't it? Offering an impression that became a statement that became evidence.

Her thumb brushed unconsciously against the edge of her phone, finding the cool metal of its frame like a worry stone.

[COLOR=#A7AFCB]“I remember the music stopping,”[/color] she added carefully. [COLOR=#A7AFCB]“And… someone screaming. I didn’t actually see what happened, though. Just heard people talking.”[/color] She paused, feeling the urge to prove she was helpful and good and not the kind of person who needed to worry about messages like Eli's. Instead, Margot drew a small breath and forced herself to stop.

Officer Jones nodded as she wrote, pen moving in small, efficient strokes across the page, loops and lines that Margot couldn't read but felt compelled to watch from where she sat anyway.

[color=white]“And roughly where were you before the countdown?”[/color] she asked, tone conversational as if the answer were a minor logistical detail rather than something being carefully slotted into a larger structure Margot couldn't yet see. Her pen hovered, waiting.

[COLOR=#A7AFCB]“Uh… near the bar, I think,”[/color] Margot replied.

The pen scratched again.

[color=white]“Were you alone?”[/color]

The question landed with apparent simplicity, and Margot almost laughed because the answer felt impossibly complicated now in retrospect. Alone how? Physically? Socially? Existentially? She tamped down the impulse toward spiralling and focused on the literal.

[COLOR=#A7AFCB]“No, I mean, there were people around me, of course. It was packed. But I wasn’t talking to anyone, if that’s what you mean, so I was alone by the time everything… stopped.”[/color] The word felt inadequate for what had happened. Stopped. As if someone had simply pressed pause on the evening rather than whatever had actually occurred behind that yellow tape.

Officer Jones nodded again, accepting that without comment, her face remaining a careful blank. Margot found herself searching it for clues anyway, some indication of whether her answers were landing as normal or suspicious or somewhere in between.

[color=white]“And you heard the scream from there?”[/color]

[COLOR=#A7AFCB]“Yes.”[/color] The word came easier this time. [COLOR=#A7AFCB]“I didn’t see anything. Just… heard it. Everyone did, I think.”[/color]

Jones paused her writing.

[color=white]“Did you go toward the bathrooms after that?”[/color]

The question landed lightly, but Margot felt her shoulders tense anyway.

[COLOR=#A7AFCB]“No,”[/color] she said quickly, then softened it so it didn't sound defensive. The last thing she needed was to seem like she was hiding something. [COLOR=#A7AFCB]“No, I stayed where I was. People were already crowding that direction.”[/color] Which was true. She remembered the surge of bodies, the way the crowd had seemed to contract toward the back hallway like a single organism responding to stimulus. She'd watched it happen from her spot by the bar, frozen in place while others moved. [COLOR=#A7AFCB]“I figured whoever was handling it would handle it. You know? I didn't want to be in the way.”[/color]

The pen scratched again. Margot watched it move, trying to read meaning into the shapes it left behind. Then, Officer Jones nodded once, apparently satisfied, though Margot noticed she didn't immediately move on. Instead, the officer adjusted her stance slightly, weight shifting onto one leg as she reviewed what she'd written. The gesture suggested settling in, not moving away, a subtle indication that this conversation wasn't as close to ending as Margot had hoped.

[color=white]“You said you were alone by the bar when everything stopped,”[/color] Jones began, her tone still conversational. [color=white]“Can you describe who you were talking to before that? Just in case we need to verify some of the timelines.”[/color]

Margot hesitated. 

[COLOR=#A7AFCB]“Um…”[/color]

She’d already answered so many questions, way more than she honestly should have. Each response felt small on its own, harmless, but together they formed something larger she could no longer see the edges of. Additionally…

Her gaze drifted briefly toward the crowd, as if Hayden might still be visible somewhere among the shifting bodies, the uniforms, the watchful conversations that had replaced the night's earlier carelessness. She didn't see him, but the search gave her a moment to think and to weigh something she hadn't expected to feel: the strange urge to protect a stranger. To return the favour. To prevent his name from ending up in a notebook, especially because of her.

[COLOR=#A7AFCB]“Just… someone I met tonight,”[/color] Margot said finally, carefully neutral. [COLOR=#A7AFCB]“We were just talking. Nothing important.”[/color]

Officer Jones' pen paused mid-stroke, her gaze lifting from her notebook to meet her own. 

[color=white]“Just talking, huh?”[/color] she echoed mildly. [color=white]“That's good. It's always nice to meet new people at parties, isn't it?”[/color] 

The pen moved again. 

[color=white]“And you said you don't remember his name? That's okay. Can you describe him? Height, build, what he was wearing? Anything like that would help jog the memory.”[/color]

Margot blinked. The question slid past her at first—normal, procedural, the kind of follow-up that made sense in context—until something in it snagged. Caught. Refused to move forward.

She replayed the last thirty seconds in her head, searching for the moment she'd said it aloud. She'd said “someone.” She'd said “we.” She'd been careful, she thought, to keep it vague. 

A faint crease formed between her brows.

[COLOR=#A7AFCB]“…I didn’t say it was a guy,”[/color] she said slowly, the realization arriving even as the words left her mouth.

Jones froze. It was the barest hiccup in her professional composure, but it was long enough for Margot to see it. 

[color=white]“Right,”[/color] she said, closing her notebook halfway. [color=white]“Okay. I should probably explain. I’m still pretty new at this, and I think I skipped a step trying to be efficient.”[/color] 

She reached into her pocket and withdrew a small digital recorder. The overhead lights glanced off its surface as she held it up, and Margot felt her stomach drop before she consciously understood why.

[color=white]“We recovered this from the victim involved in the incident tonight,”[/color] Jones continued. [color=white]“She appears to have been interviewing guests throughout the evening.”[/color]

A small click. Static crackled softly, that hiss of empty tape giving way to recording. And then voices emerged, one in particular at first, a woman's voice, warm and professionally curious.

 
[center][i][color=#6a5acd]"I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but I think your perspective would be interesting. You’ve been streaming for… what, a few years now? And you’ve seen the industry change pretty dramatically."[/color]

[color=#a7afcb]"I… I don’t really have one yet and…"[/color][/i][/center]

Jones stopped the playback.

[color=white]“Your name came up on this recording,”[/color] Jones said. [color=white]“I, uh… googled it. Just so I knew who I was talking to.”[/color] She offered a small shrug. 

Officer Jones tilted her head slightly, studying her with what seemed like renewed interest now that the cat was out of the bag. The earlier professional distance had shrunk, replaced by something more focused and much more personal. [color=white]“So you're Rosie, the streamer, right?”[/color] she said, pulling her notebook fully open again to flip to an earlier page. She scanned whatever she'd written there, then looked up. [color=white]“I saw her near the bathroom live-streaming from her phone.”[/color] A pause. [color=white]“Looks like someone here recognized you before I did.”[/color] 

Margot stared at the recorder a moment longer than was comfortable, her own voice still echoing faintly in her memory even after the playback had stopped. It sounded smaller than she remembered. Unsure. Almost apologetic. She'd been caught off guard by the questions, hadn't she?

But that wasn't what mattered now. What mattered was the word Jones had used. The word that had slid past in the explanation but now lodged itself in Margot's consciousness like a splinter.

[i]Victim[/i]. 

Not guest. Not reporter. Not the woman from earlier, the one with the recorder and the curious smile and the seemingly endless supply of questions.

Victim.

Something cold slid down her spine, cutting cleanly through what remained of the alcohol warmth in her system. The scream. The lights coming up. The music dying mid-beat. The bathroom cordoned off.

Someone hadn’t just gotten sick.

Someone hadn't just had too much to drink or fallen or needed medical attention.

Someone had died. 

The woman with the recorder. The woman who'd interviewed her, who'd asked about streaming and the industry and what it was like to build a career online. That woman was now a [i]victim[/i], and her recorder had been recovered, and Margot's voice was on it, and Officer Jones had googled her, and none of this was casual or coincidental or [i]anything[/i] close to the ordinary evening she'd been pretending this was.

[i]Say you want counsel present[/i]. 

Eli's message blazed through her mind with renewed urgency, the words practically incandescent against the darkness of her panic. She'd already said so much. Already answered so many questions. Already offered details and descriptions and timelines that she had no business offering without someone there to tell her what was safe and what wasn't.

Margot swallowed. Her throat felt dry, constricted, as if the words she needed to say were physically difficult to produce.

[color=#a7afcb]“I…”[/color] she started, then stopped, forcing herself to slow down. To breathe. To think instead of react. Her voice was on that recorder.  Her words. Her unguarded responses to a woman who was now dead. [color=#a7afcb]“Officer Jones, I…I think I’d feel more comfortable having representation present before I answer anything else.”[/color]

Jones's expression shifted to something that looked like respect. Or acknowledgment, at least. The recognition that the dynamic had changed.

[color=white]“Of course,”[/color] she said, and her voice carried none of the pressure Margot had braced for. No sigh of frustration, no pointed glance suggesting this was unnecessary. Just simple, straightforward acceptance. [color=white]“That's absolutely your right. I should have mentioned it during my questioning, honestly.”[/color] She reached into her pocket again, this time producing a card—crisp white, professionally printed, bearing the official seal of the police department. [color=white]“This is the direct line to the precinct. When you have representation, have them call this number. We'll coordinate statements properly.”[/color]

Margot took the card. Her fingers trembled slightly, but she hoped Jones didn't notice.

Jones tucked her notebook away, the recorder following into her pocket. [color=white]“You’ll likely be cleared to leave shortly,”[/color] she added, her tone matter-of-fact. [color=white]“Either way, we’ll be in touch.”[/color]

And then she was gone before Margot could respond. If there was even a response to give.

Margot sat alone at the table once more, the card now clutched in her hand, its edges digging slightly into her palm. Her phone lay dark and silent beside her, an inert slab of glass and metal that suddenly seemed incapable of the connection she desperately needed. She reached for it anyway, and the word victim echoed again in her mind as she unlocked the screen, a single syllable that had somehow multiplied, filling every available space in her consciousness.

Her thumb found Eli's name through muscle memory alone.

[quote]They have a recording of me talking to the victim. I asked for a lawyer. Call me [i]now[/i], please.[/quote]
She sent it before she could second-guess herself, then set the phone face-up on the table and watched it like it might explode, like it might save her, like it might do something other than sit there, dark and silent. At the same time, everything she thought she understood about tonight rearranged itself into something she didn't recognize at all.[/color][/indent][/indent]