The Wicked Ones

10. No, unfortunately you can't have coffee as you are being interrogated

Asterin's eyes were fixed on the body. How could Orion have done something like that ? Being an addict and a probable cult member was one thing, but this massacre was a something else entirely. She heard the footsteps of someone rushing through the corridor. She straightened herself and took a deep breath, her emotionless mask sliding back on.

"Dear god..."

Asterin turned towards Lis and not trusting her hands not to tremble, stuffed them into her coat pockets.

"Forensics team is on their way," she said stepping over the body, a cold shiver crawling up her back as she did so, and heading next to Lis. "There was a bag of the same drug as the first time. And the perturbed patient was in fact, Orion Black," she almost spat out the name.

Asterin's hands clenched into fists in her pockets. Her eyes were scanning her friend's. She forced out a breath and her fists relaxed. "That makes him a suspect. I am filing in an arrest warrant."

Asterin walked around Lis and started to make her way towards the entrance.

Blythe softly blocked her friend at the door, arm spread across her path, fingers gently wrapped around her shoulder, without pushing the physical contact too much. There was no need to make her friend even more uncomfortable than she already was.

"Asterin. Don't. Don't go out there. Give yourself a few minutes."

A humorless laugh escaped Black's lips. A few minutes with the corpse of the man her brother had gruesomely murdered ? Besides she needed to do something concrete, keep her mind occupied and her thoughts away from what she was witnessing.

"I am not sure we have a few minutes. Who knows what he is doing out there ?"

"If there's one thing I've learned from doing this job for years now, it's that your emotional state can cloud your judgement. You could be the best detective this planet has seen and still get sidetracked. We don't yet know if your brother did it. He is a suspect, we will treat him as such. And right now, you need to sit down, deal with that fact and proceed to rationalise things. Last time I checked, I was the prime detective on this case. I won't have you work with me in this state. There's an empty room at the end of the corridor, you're going to go in there, sit and talk to someone, whether it be me or someone else. That's an order."

Asterin's jaw tightened. She stared at her friend for a few seconds before sighing.

"Five minutes," she said before heading to the empty room.

Blythe followed her friend closely and closed the door behind them, luckily the room was quite clean so that part would not bother Asterin. It seemed it was a nurse resting room, there a few chairs, an old couch, a table, a mini fridge and a sink. The whole decor was minimalistic to say the least, but the clean atmosphere could make you forget about the wallpaper scraping at the ends and the large stain of coffee on the table's linoleum. After making sure her friend was properly sat down Lis grabbed a water bottle out of the fridge and handed it to Black. Then, she nodded, encouraging the other to start speaking. Unsure of what to do, Asterin started fiddling with the bottle. She did not know how to act in these situations. She had always loathed them. The feeling of vulnerability, of powerlessness. Of course she knew Lis would never do anything to hurt her, but still. She hated not being in control.

"Well. What am I supposed to say ?"

"Anything you want. From insulting your brother to crying your heart out."

Elisabeth sat next to her friend but refrained from hugging her or putting a hand on her shoulder, knowing it was always better to let Black take the first step.