There never seemed to be an end to the merry-go-round that Shau drug Brie on.
It didn't matter if it was the same day or another, the questions were eerily the same.
Brie would know. Even if she pretended that her questions, asked before elected and appointed officials for years for her news company, her questions really were variations of the same. Either hers or someone else's.
Almost like clockwork, Shau placed a picture on the table between them.
Asking for a lawyer was pointless; Brie doubted she would ever get a lawyer again, or even see one the day of her sentencing.
"Do you know who this is?"
Shau placed standard sized portrait on the table between them.
Brie picked the picture up, sighing. She saw the similarities between them now, her and Trey.
The coppery red skin – that was his mom, through and through – a blessing, as Trey put it, of God. A sign of God's touch on Gin, or something to that effect.
No, the things that she and Trey shared came from their father: their cheekbones, the shape of their noses, their eye color. Now, more and more, Brie saw herself in her younger brother. And more in her sisters.
She slid the photograph back.
"He's Lieutenant Trey Hodges, of Mars," she said.
"Do you remember when you first met him."
"Yes," Brie said, shifting so the bite of the handcuffs wasn't so bad on her skin.
"What did he say to you when you met him?"
Brie looked briefly to the window, knowing that on the other side of the one-way glass there had to be someone watching all this with interest.
"That he was my brother," Brie said.
There was more. A lot more.
(292)
YOU ARE READING
Seventeen Crimes
Science FictionOpen Novella Contest 2024 writing prompt #83: Earth's climate is becoming increasingly inhospitable. Humans have located another planet to live on, but there's not enough room on the spacecrafts for everyone. Who stays and who goes? One wrong questi...
