The Starling Saviour

Chapter 23

'Do you have anything to say on-'

'How did you get-'

'What are your thoughts about-'

As we dragged Bellini and Delano out of the subway tunnels, we were surrounded by reporters and paparazzi pushing microphones into our faces and demanding our views on the ordeal. I tried to ignore them as we made our way to the police cars, not wanting to say a morsel.

'You've done more than I could ever ask of you, Aria,' Lance said in admiration as I shoved Bellini into the police car with Elliot. 'Was it only you four?'

'Yes,' I nodded, lying through my teeth.

I couldn't let the police know that Ted had been with us too. But now that Bellini and Delano would surely be questioned, they could just tell the SCPD what they saw.

---

The events of the next couple hours were rather tedious ones. We were taken into hospital as the nurses and doctors insisted that they cleaned me up and checked me to see if the poison had done any damage. Miraculously, it hadn't.

But remember, I'd survived much worse.

'How's the interrogation going?' I asked Helena as she met me at the hospital doors; she had already been discharged hours ago.

'Weird,' she answered hesitantly, as if she was trying to figure out some great wizardry. 'Its like the gang never... saw Ted.'

'Wait, so they're not turning him in?' I asked in utter bewilderment.

Something wasn't right.

'I know,' Helena commented, somehow agreeing with my thoughts. 'But they might not hold it off for much longer. They're bound to tell the SCPD some time.'

'I just hope they don't,' I muttered.

It was such a strange situation, yet I was glad of Bellini and Delano keeping quiet. But the real question was, for how long would it last?

'I'm going to go back to the SCPD to keep track they're both saying,' Helena announced, turning her body back towards the way out. 'You coming?'

'I guess I better see what they're really up to,' I said ironically, leaving the clinical prison behind.

---

We arrived at the scene just in time for the important questions. The questions that would truly reveal who was there that night.

'So, just the four members of our department were there?' Detective Hilton asked Bellini and Delano.

'Yes,' Bellini confirmed in a bored voice, as if he had heard the same question a million times.

'They had no help whatsoever?' Hilton pressed.

Bellini looked through the one-way mirror of the interrogation room as if he was looking at me straight in the eye, like he as doing me some sort of favour. Delano looked pained as he covered up Ted's assistance.

'No, Sir,' Bellini spouted sarcastically.

What was this? Bellini and Delano covering the truth up as a favour, or some greater power involved? He, and Delano, didn't seem the type of men to do something that wasn't to help themselves. They had to have a motive. They had to.

'That will be all for today,' Hilton nodded, frustrated.

Hilton knew that they were lying; he could just tell. Throughout my time working for the SCPD, I had noticed that Hilton was something of a master at reading people and finding the lies within the truth. And he knew that there was a fifth saviour. Maybe it was just because he doubted that two scientists, a nurse and an IT guy were capable of defeating a gang as powerful and domineering as the Culebras, or maybe it was because we were all lying through our teeth.