Your Move

Chapter 4 - Truth Can Hurt

"Hi Isabelle, I'm Linda. We're arranging a safe place for you to live. I promise it'll be a million times better than Miss Kemp's place!"

She saw my eyes darting to her tablet, and I could tell she sensed my fear. She reassured me, "Don't worry sweetie, this is just a regular tablet that I carry around. It won't do anything to you, I promise!"

I relaxed by a miniscule amount, not quite ready to trust her just yet.

"I'm going to ask you a few quick questions, which will hopefully help us put her in jail for a long time. Are you ready to be a good little helper and answer some questions?"

I pointed nervously at the pacifier in my mouth that had been my companion for the past few days.

She smiled and quickly deflated and removed it, biting her lower lip as she did so.

I ran my tongue over my teeth, happy to have the restricting pacifier out of my mouth.

"You looked so cute sucking on it, it's a shame that we have to take it out. I'll give it right back to you as soon as we're done, but we do need to hear your testimony." She cooed. "Do you know what that big word means? Test-i-mon-y?"

I bit my own lip to stop myself from rolling my eyes at her. Instead, I answered with a more civilized but curt, "Yes."

"My goodness, you're not just a cute face! Now, if you could tell me eeeverything that happened while you were under Miss Kemp's care for the record, it would help our case significantly. Whenever you're ready."

I sighed, disinclined to go over everything again in my mind.

"Umm don't you need to start recording or something?" I hadn't seen her do anything like that yet.

"Oh my, what a big girl! The room's wired up for sound, sweetie, everything you say will be recorded."

Over the course of the next hour, I told her, to the best of my ability, everything that had transpired in the past few days in graphic detail.

When I finished giving my statement, Linda sighed and commented, "That sounds terrible, I'm sorry you went through that sweetie."

I nodded in agreement.

"Though you can rest assured that we'll put her away for a long time. I've got plenty of evidence now. It's all very strong. The physical stuff we found at the scene along with some video footage an anonymous tipper sent us fully corroborates your testimony." She said almost to herself.

"Do you want anything before we transfer you? A baba maybe?"

I scowled at her suggestion. Did she think I was retarded or something?

"Something to drink and an explanation of what this place is and how I got here when I died, please? And why I'm dressed and being treated like I'm two?"

"Sure thing honeybun. Here's some apple juice for you; drink up while I explain everything to you," Linda said as she brought me a giant sippy cup of it from a fridge sunk into a wall.

I gave her a pointed look for her term of endearment, but started drinking. I was thirsty enough to not care about the drinkware, having had nothing all morning. The sippyness of the cup still begged the question of why I was being treated like a toddler though, and I stared at Linda expectantly.

"Let's start with your first question. The reason you didn't die was because the United Nations beamed you here just before you were going to," she explained.

"We didn't want you to die at such a young age, so when you were helplessly drowning to a certain death they used some very advanced technology to bring you here. Miss Kemp was then supposed to take care of you, but she didn't do that very well, now did she? We got an anonymous tip and now you're here."