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I tried to put on a brave face but my lip quivered and I lost it. I burst into tears. “I don’t know where they are.”
It was the truest word I’d said since I stepped in the station.
“All right,” Detective Wayans said, looking very uncomfortable.
To my surprise, Detective Verbiage was the one to offer a pack of tissues. He still didn’t say a word and kept on chewing.
“Thanks,” I said, blowing my nose. “You haven’t heard from any of them? At all? I was hoping I wasn’t the only one to have survived.”
“No,” Detective Wayans said. “No one else. Not yet, anyway. But I wouldn’t lose hope. You came out alive, after all.”
He consulted his notes and rifled through the papers. I sensed we were coming to the end. It was no bad thing. “Was there anything wrong with the minivan that you recall? Faulty brakes? Lights?”
“No. It was working perfectly.”
Detective Wayans tucked his notebook in his pocket. “Okay. I think we’re done. We don’t have any more questions for you today. Later, if we find a lead, can we contact you to follow up with questions?”
“Sure,” I said.
“We have your name, contact details, and address?”
“I gave them to the officer on duty at the front desk.”
“Good,” Detective Wayans said. “Listen, I don’t want you to lose hope. There’s always a chance one of your friends survived this crash alongside you. We didn’t expect you to turn up, so there’s no reason why they couldn’t either.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
“We’re going to arrange for a doctor to check you over, make sure you’re healthy enough to return home. If you are, is there anyone you would like us to call? A parent, maybe?”
“You could call my aunt,” I said. I gave them her number.
“Just sit tight. We’ll take things from here.”
The officers turned to leave.
“Wait,” I said. “I could use a cup of coffee. Some food, if you have any.”
“Of course. I’ll send in an officer right away.”
The officers left, leaving me alone in that sterile room. I glanced at the walls with my peripheral vision and wondered which one was fake. It was hard to tell.
I imagined them looking in at me now, asking each other what they thought. Would one notice something was up with my story? Amnesia had to be the most common excuse in the book. Would they have me followed? Why would they? It wasn’t like I had anything to gain by losing my friends.
Would they somehow guess I’d been abducted?
Unlikely. And they were going to have a very difficult time extracting that out of me.
At least this way, I wouldn’t be sent to an insane asylum. Anything had to be better than that.
My thoughts, as always, returned to him. Nighteko aboard his ship, only now he was alone, out there among the stars, forced to abduct alien species without a crew. I suppose he’d have to go out and find a new one, one that wouldn’t mutiny him for not taking child slaves.
“There’s a streak of honor in him,” Maisie had said. It felt like a lifetime ago. She was right. There was. But he’d still lied to me. How important was a streak compared to the total blackness of a man’s soul?
He lied to me because it was in his best interest. At least he followed through on one part of his promise: to bring me home.
I wondered how I would continue with my life without my friends to lean on and guide me. At least, I was now among my own species. That had to be better than whatever my friends were being put through, didn’t it?
Wherever they were.
