If Only She Knew

37. The Killer in Chains

Two months ago...

She knew what she needed to do for now.

After speaking to the killer, the next thing she did was get into her car, near the entrance of the park, and drive home. Joseph welcomed her. He was home, but she somehow had hoped he wouldn't be, although only love could heal her then.

"Ari, you look tired," he told her immediately as they kissed right after she entered. She smiled sweetly. She didn't know what she was doing to him, and she hadn't noticed what she had been doing to them both, either.

Present time, London...

After Simon Taylor had been arrested, he had been taken right to the central London investigation quarters, where Ariana had been held previously. He was thinking of her, and he was aware he would have to face her and tell her the whole truth, soon. He didn't know what would happen to him, though. He knew that these policemen knew a lot about him and knew about the most precious thing to him, his mind-erasing powers, and he pondered about it and wondered if that was why they tied a black, thick, inescapable blindfold around his blue, controlling eyes. They thought his power worked through his eyes probably, and he smiled inwardly at that, because he still was harboring a wish to escape possible death and freed himself. He would have to lead them to believe that was indeed how his power worked, then catch them off guard and convince them to untie his hands. They didn't know his power worked through a touch of the hand on the forehead. His hands were handcuffed at his back, of course, and that was a problem, but he'd have to find a chance. Death wasn't what he feared but he knew he wouldn't be killed, because of his almost unique but certainly otherworldly power. He didn't want to end up being a lab-rat, experiment prisoner for the rest of his life. Getting arrested was a necessary step so all the truth could come out, but he'd have to disappear... and break Ariana's heart.

In the dark, he felt himself being led through cars, buildings and rooms. He sniffed the different smells, and tried to keep calm at the fact that he couldn't see and was made blind. His power burned in his hands, but he knew he'd bestow it dearly to those cops. That's how he finally ended up being made to sit down in a chair, in a privy interrogation room, watched by a few guards, with a keen investigator, one of London's best, across from him. He could smell them and their fear of him, because they knew he held that power. It was all over the news, and after Bernard Johnson's death, Johnson Electronics' painstaking research about the mind-erasing power came out, followed by the sundry chips filled produced by the company. Bernard had wanted to give himself and his most trusted allies that power, but he died early. Simon smiled slightly at the thought, no caring that the cops could see it. He himself had stolen a dozen of those chips from the company, before Bernard's death.

''Hm, hello, Mister Simon Taylor..." he heard a very deep, gruff voice of an old man. ''Or should I say Julien Stynes."

Simon kept himself collected. He had expected they got all the information that existed about him and his family, by now.

''I am mister Djimon Thompson, head investigatior presiding over the London quarters," the man said in an old, gruffy voice. What an odd name he had, Simon thought. "You are 25 years old, correct?"

The first question. His exact age. How odd. They could've actually asked him what his favorite color was.

"Yeah," is voice came out, delayed, to the darkness he couldn't see. He felt as if he was straying away from himself. He had never been so vulnerable.

"You were born in Big Bucharest to... Richard Stynes and miss Priscilla - that's all we know about her because your parents weren't wed, and when Mister Bernard Johnson sent troops to capture you and your family, she went missing."