Circuit City

Chapter 3

"So...Miss Tesseth, how are you?" A friendly male voice echoed out through the loudspeaker in front of the black glass that I was currently trying to peer into. Not sure where I was supposed to look I just decided to stare right ahead while laying my shaking hands flat on the gray table, the handcuffs creating a soft scrambling sound as they made contact with the hard surface.

"I'm good, how are you?" my thin voice answered back unsurely to the man behind the microphone. A low chuckle echoed in the room, making me glance back up at the dark green speakers in the roof and then at the cyan colored walls around me.

"I'm good thank you. Can we offer you anything, water perhaps?"

I shook my head tiredly and looked down at my hands. My once pale skin was now an odd shade of brown from the mud of the night before and there was dried dirt under my chipped nails.

I grimaced. My appetite was non-existing at the moment, anything I'd put inside my mouth would surely just go back out again.

"Then let us get right into it," the modulated voice stated behind the reflective glass. "Yesterday we received a call of a girl lying unconscious in the park downtown of Humport. We arrive at the scene to find you with bruises all over your body and fresh blood on your clothes, all signs estimated to have appeared from a recent struggle. Body temperature is below one of a living persons' and no pulse to register whatsoever so you are declared dead on arrival."

Not quite knowing how to respond or even react, I nod quietly.

"However," the man shots out, " the only dates we have of you is your name so a few hours later one of my guys arrives at the hospital to try and work out some information about your identity, before the autopsy, but finds out instead that you are miraculously alive and kickin'. And there are absolutely no signs of that in our CI service. In fact, you are not even registered in our identity center anymore."

When he doesn't get an answer from me he continued slowly, "The chip is, as you know, planted inside your heart at birth and it connects to your spinal nerves through electrodes as you grow, making it impossible to take out. It is supposed to serve as your second lifeline in case of emergency and it is what makes you a citizen of this country."

Still unsure of what to say, I noded again and a small buzz echoed in the room as the microphone was turned on for the sixth time.

"We replaced the old ID-card system with it to ensure the safety of our citizens and it contains all of your identification documents, registering every single movement and heartbeat of the individual. Yet.... here you stand and not a single dot appears in our system."

"I didn't take it out myself if that is what you think. And even if I did, why would I beat myself up in the process? It doesn't make any sense,"I muttered irritably back.

"No, you couldn't," the police officer concurred. "The pain would've been unbearable. Not to mention the fact that you could die since it is supposed to be impossible to take out."

I felt my forehead crease as I frowned for the sixth time today.

"The tests results came back from the medical checkup and we found a relevant amount of a toxic substance in your mouth that traces back to the time of your attack. A soporific drug that stresses your thyroid glands enough to make an extreme drop in body temperature. You're lucky you survived without any severe damages in your organs." The officer took a small breath before finally stating, "Someone did it for you and I'd like to know why."

"Trust me, so would I. The guy was apparently part of some underground gang. Dr. Coghner knew him and he told me that he had done it by mistake." I paused, only now registering that he'd said 'for you', not 'to you'.