Dance Moms - Lorelei

Chapter 9 : Guinea Pig

There hasn't been such high profile transporting in the precinct for years. An ambulance brought in Chloe, strapped to a wheelchair, with four hospital guards armed with all necessary gear in case of the patient's outbreak.

To keep it discreet, Detective Kelly instructed the visitors to take the back entrance, with four of her own officers to greet them.

"Are all these necessary, Doctor?" Kelly couldn't help asking.

"I'm sorry, Detective. I'm responsible to take all measures to keep my patient in safety."

"Her safety? Or yours? Didn't she take down two of your guards?"

"Like I said, all measures of safety. It will be over soon." Arroway nodded with a hopeful smile.

* * *

Payton Pinkman was brought to the interrogation room, the officers set her on a chair and cuffed her hands to a bar mounted across the table. She was in her mid-twenties, tall with long dark hair. She took one look at the one-way mirror at the wall, behind it Christi shivered, as if those eyes saw right through the mirror and pierced into her heart.

"I always suspected you. Lorelei." the dark hair girl turned back to Chloe and smiled. "Miranda never listens to me. She's over her head with that Big Leader thing." she gestured a quote with her fingers.

"What is the antidote?" Chloe got to the point.

"Look at you." Payton smiled, waggling the cuffs on her own hands. "I don't know who's the prisoner here."

The dark hair girl leaned back casually, Chloe narrowed her eyes.

"There isn't! It's my own cocktail. I call it Purgatory." Payton smiled proudly like it was her baby. "And you are my guinea pig."

"All drugs have a cure!"

"Like cocaine? Or methamphetamine? Don't kid yourself. You're mine now!" Payton laughed.

She leaned forward under the light, casting a shadow over her own face. Chloe felt a chill at her back.

"Tell me, what did you see?" Payton stared into her eyes.

"What?"

"You should be seeing you pass, something you regret, or try to forget."

"I don't have anything to hide!" Chloe lied, her palms sweating.

"You saw your fear, didn't you?" Payton raised her eyebrows. "Tell me what they are, and maybe I can fix you."

"I'm not here to play your game. Give us the formula!"

The dark hair girl leaned back again, her eyes filled with intellect.

"How much do you know about memories?"

"That they recall the pass?"

"More than that. It determines a person's emotion. How a person remembers decided this person is happy or sad. If a person drills on a certain memory for too long, this person becomes narrow minded, becomes extreme." Payton paused to let Chloe digest.

"But it's human nature to drills on unhappy memories, because they don't think they'll forget the happy ones. When we made the drug..."

"We?"

"My father and I." Payton nodded proudly. "It was meant to balance a patient's emotions, tricking the brain into picking up memories buried deep, long forgotten, so as to balance a patient's emotion."

"And?"

"It back fired, because as it turned out, more people choose to hide their negative emotions rather than the positives."

"Negative?"

"Depression, abandon, guilt, failure, fear... etc. The human brain tends to lock them away like a defense mechanism, protecting the mind." Payton explained. "A victim who suffered extreme violence as a child, would often suffers partial memory lost. The brain does that to protect them."

"And the drug focused on them instead." Chloe said.

Forgotten numbers, losing at the National, disappointing her mother and friends...

"And they approved that?"

"Of course not. FDA banned the drug, we lost our job, and our license."

"And then what happened?"

"My father found a client, together we developed a formula that enhance negative emotion, to keep patients in a state of guilt, and would do anything to make up for their failure. Of course, when we call them patients, you call them..."

"Addicts." Chloe felt raged.

"Yes, they dwell on things they lost, mostly lost of love ones, of events that they regret, but I don't have to tell you that." Payton leaned forward again. "You've seen them, haven't you?"

"No I didn't!"

"You don't fool me! By time you started high-school, we've already studied hundreds of cases like you!" Payton grinning her teeth. "Your pupils are fixed, your breathing is racing, your lips are trembling. I bet your palms are sweating right now!"

Chloe made fists with her hands, trying to hide her weakness.

"Don't you see? It's trying to free you from your conscious, things that you've been holding back, things you were afraid to do that thought was right for yourself, chewing up your mind every time thinking 'what if?', just like the purgatory they described!"

Taking revenge on the team...

"You're wrong! I never thought that!" Chloe snapped back.

"That's your conscious speaking, but what about your subconscious?" Payton cocked her head. "Things you suppressed because of how you were raised, but everyone has a dark side, and the more you hide, the harder it comes back to bite you."

"I'll never lose control!"

"You wouldn't be in this chair if you could." Payton amused. "Your body is not in your control anymore, it's chasing its desires already, just like those girls in the church."

"You were using them!"

"Go ask them. How many of them chose to follow their desires, because their pathetic lives restricted them from their freedom, and my drug frees them!"

"You are twisting people's mind!"

"Pretty soon your subconscious will take over your body, and your mind."

My mind is driving me crazy. My body was trying to kill me!

"You are struggling. They all do." Payton smiled as if reading her thoughts. "But in the end they all embrace it."

"We're done here!" Chloe said firmly.