Secrets Are For Keeping

Chapter Forty-Five

I was pulled off of the chair, and felt my legs hit the cold ground. My arms were pulled behind me once again, but then I heard a voice, the doctor's, cut the inspectors off. "Really, I doubt she needs a zip tie, she looks like she's five seconds away from passing out."

The hands that had been holding my wrists together suddenly let go, and then they instead were grabbing me beneath my armpits, pulling me upright. My head lolled to the side as the guard tried to get me to stand on my own. My feet tried to find the ground, but they couldn't.

Then the lady appeared again, this time right in front of me. She was holding something in her hand, and I couldn't tell what it was until the lip of a plastic cup was pressed to my mouth and I felt cool water, or at least what I thought was water, I'd already figured out that they must've drugged me through the drink that the doctor had given me in the beginning, trickle down my throat.

"Just give it a second," the doctor ordered the inspectors, and I couldn't detect the hint of sarcasm that had been common in everything else she'd said.

The inspectors who were holding me seemed inclined to listen to everything the doctor was saying. They waited a couple minutes as the water travelled down my throat and into my stomach. The water made me immediately feel like throwing up, but then the nauseous feeling began to fade, and I felt my vision clear slightly. The inspectors began to pull me along, as the ill feeling I'd gotten from whatever they drugged me with began to go away slowly.

I was taken to my cell, where I found Kain sitting in the far corner, looking just as pained as he had when I'd been taken away. He stood up when he saw me stumbling towards the barred cell with two guards on either side of me.

Except when the barred cell opened I wasn't shoved inside. Instead, two of the other inspectors who had been walking with me walked into the cell and grabbed Kain with little trouble. He didn't even try to fight back against them; he just stared at me from across the room as they pulled out a zip tie and tied his hands behind his back. Then he was being pulled out of the room, and the two guards on either side of me turned around and started walking, leading the way to pull the two of us wherever they had already been planning on taking us.

My stomach was still turning and instead of total nausea, I now had a really bad headache.

I didn't really pay attention to where we were going until we arrived at a large metal door with nothing on it, which was unlike most of the other doors in the building that I'd seen. Even the door that I'd gone through to see the doctor had had a number and letter signature on it.

The door opened, and I almost vomited in my shock at what was behind it.

I took in the large gray room, with only a single light in the very center. It brightened up the entire light even so, and allowed me to notice everything, or more like everyone, else that was standing along the very edges of the room, their backs pressed up against walls. I didn't initially see the chains that hung from all of their wrists and connected to the ground next to the walls.

They were all students, that was the first thing that I could tell. Each one of them looked tired, worn down, and extremely depressed. Their faces mostly looked unhealthy and I wondered how long some of them had been in the prison-like place for. A girl looked like she could've been barely above the age of five, yet still had bony arms and legs that forced her to stay next to the wall.

And in the very middle of the room...where there were no chained up people to allow it to be obvious that he was the center of attention...was a boy with blue dyed hair who looked just as bad as the rest of them.

He was on his knees, his chains leading down to a spot in the center of the room, just like everyone else's. The only difference besides location was that his hands were in front of his body, and when he brought his hands up, it made it look like he was pleading to someone.

In front of him stood the familiar face of Mr. Neilson, standing among all the ruined people in his perfectly clean business attire with a bright smile on his face. The picture looked weird with him there, like someone had Photoshopped him into a photo trying to show devastation.

Kain and I were brought into the room and attached to our own chain as the blue haired guy in the center continued talking, ignoring our presence.

"I'm sorry...I'm so so sorry...I admit it...I did it, I stole the car because I wanted to leave. I stole the car," the boy sobbed loudly, and I only now was able to see the tears running down his cheeks, red eyes, and the way his body wanted to fold into itself. His voice was the only noise in the room and made it all the more noticeable. His crying hurt to watch, just like crying always did, and I wanted to look away because of how uncomfortable it made me. But I couldn't.

Words from before came back to me, trying to explain the scene set out in front of me. They wanted confessions. They had all the evidence, but they wanted to hurt people even further by forcing them to confess in front of everyone here, and right in front of Mr. Neilson. The satisfaction in Mr. Neilson's face as he watched the boy sobbing about what he'd done at his feet made it hard for me to look at Mr. Neilson without feeling anger striking up inside of me. What right did he think he had to force confessions out of people right in front of a crowd of other people to judge?

He was doing it on purpose, making an audience of all the students he had broken just to humiliate the boy further.

When the blue haired boy had finally finished speaking, and his tears began to subside, Mr. Neilson stepped forward, closer into the center of the room so he could be seen easily.

"Thank you," he announced, directing his words more to the audience than to the actual boy who had confessed. "Bring in the next one."

Inspectors walked into the room, black boots shining under the light, and took the boy off the chain. Then they pulled him up, and had to actually pull him out of the room with his feet dragging behind him.

The guards returned seconds later, with another girl, this one with deep red hair and freckles covering nearly her entire face. She fell down in place of the boy, and the guards chained her to the center. Watching her be forced into the room, I was able to get a good look at her face. There was fear, deadly fear in her eyes, and she tried to stand up in the center, but the chain wasn't actually long enough to allow her to. So just like the previous boy had, she kneeled down in front of Mr. Neilson.

She started speaking almost immediately. "I stole the money, okay? Please...please please please..."

Between my wanting to not hear or see what was happening, I was intrigued by the fact that she was begging Mr. Neilson something. What was she asking him for? He hadn't even threatened her yet and so it didn't make sense that she was already saying please like she couldn't say anything else but it.

But...but what if someone else had threatened her? What if that was really how the blue haired boy and the girl now were confessing? I couldn't visibly see anything that could force them to confess so urgently and the fact only supported my theory.

My eyes widened as the idea hit me, followed soon by the realization that I'd be going through this. I'd be up there next, and I'd be forced to stand in that same spot and admit everything.

Everything.

And it would be in front of Kain.

My entire perspective on the room changed. Maybe its only purpose wasn't just to be a room to hold all the confessions in. Maybe it was even more than that. No, I knew it was more than that, when I glanced once again at Mr. Neilson.

It was a room to insight fear.

They were trying to scare us into submission. They didn't just want to take away our privacy and our lives.

They wanted to take away every last bit of us that had been building up over the years. They wanted to humiliate and embarrass us, and take away our pride. They wanted to push as down as far as possible, so we would never even consider attempting to fight back.

They were trying to crush out any sense of rebellion before it even began.