"Natalia honey, I can't even begin to imagine how hard this must be for you."

A soft, superficially mellow female voice came for the little girl in anomalous echoes of three.

"I'm very sorry about your sister, but we must go over the details to fully understand what happened. Now, you say you found your mother on the floor..."

The eerie reverberation in her ear abruptly began morphing into a shrill ringing screech, rattling every cell of her frail body. The social worker's soft words were drowning out in the excruciating loud noise. She couldn't help but latch her palms to her ears in a dire attempt to make it all stop.

"Natalia, are you alright?" The woman said with concern emanating in her tone, yet her voice never reached the nine year old, who kept wincing with her hands desperately blocking her ears.

"Natalia?"

She closed her eyes shut, wishing it would all just go away.

"Miss Meyers?"

The noise stopped at once.

"Miss Meyers?"

This time it was a deeper, distinctly masculine voice that sounded in the background. Her lids fluttered wearily open and it instantly dawned upon her where she was.

Deadbeat silence desolately blanketed the very air they all stood surrounded in.

Apart from all the insolent chatter coming from the corridors of the building, the day was doomed to bask in unbearable quietness.

"I think she's in shock."

Tahlia Meyers sat with her arms snaked around her knees, wild auburn hair sheathing most of the vicinity around her exposed blanched face. Her eyes were vacant, not even a single trace of unclouded emotion peeking through.

Her head was still whirling.

"Miss Meyers are you listening to me?" A rich brown-skinned pair of fingers snapped in front of her eyes, finally capturing her attention.

She blinked up, only to find the familiar face of Sergeant Randall hovering right by her seated figure.

"May I sit here?" He asked, motioning with a slight tilt of the head towards the little vacant space beside her on the limestone staircase she currently sat on, adjacent to the elevator.

She turned her gaze away, shrugging her shoulders with a negligible movement, as her eyes landed on a stray speck on a limestone tile.

The Sergeant swiveled to the officer on his right, "Start talking to the neighbors, and get Hernandez to check for CCTV footage."

Next thing Tahlia knew, Randall was taking a seat on the empty spot beside her.

"I thought the FBI was taking over the case." She mumbled as she continued to stare off into the obscure space, her voice oddly faint like a broken whisper.

"The police and the Feds are working together." Small lines appeared between his brows, forehead puckering, as he studied the face of the girl by his side.

"Are you okay? That is— was your Professor, I understand?"

A macabre flash of Turner's headless, scorched cadaver invaded her brain for a second. She flickered her lids quickly to purge the image of the severed head from her mind, cold irises staring straight into her soul.

Turner's aqua eyes, like her demeanor, had always been cold from the very beginning; but there was something so exceptionally frigid about death, that seemed to have harden them into spiritless marble orbs.

She simply nodded twice.

With lips pressed in a thin line, she finally looked at Randall's face, "Was Agent Gallagher following me this morning?"

Now it was the Sergeant's turn to look away, as he glanced to the other side hastily. "Yes," His fingers stroked his chin as he expelled a deep breath.

"The Bureau is exploring...other angles."

Her nails inadvertently dug into the flesh of her palms restlessly, "Am I a person of interest in this case?"

"You know I can't disclose details Miss Meyers."

Tahlia quietly gazed at the crowd that had started to gather behind the area sealed off with yellow caution tape in front of Turner's apartment.

The elevator chimed that very moment and flew open, out from where emerged a familiar woman. Detective Hernandez, Tahlia recalled.

"Boss, the ME is here." She announced from below, making Randall rise up from his seat immediately. "Excuse me," He said to Tahlia before beginning to descend down the stairs.

"Oh and stick around, we're gonna need your statement and Agent Gallagher probably has a few questions for you." He piped in quickly.

She chewed on her bottom lip feebly, even drawing some blood perhaps.

Tahlia could already tell it was going to be a long day.

And for the first time in what felt like ages, Tahlia wished for the night to fall sooner.

✴✴✴

It was only mighty late in the evening that Tahlia was able to get back home.

She was completely spent, mentally drained and physically exhausted.

She staggered into her room, almost missing her footing with how thrown she felt. Jace Montgomery followed suit wordlessly.

Although Agent Gallagher had offered to have an officer drop her back to the uni, there was no way she could, in good conscious, accept any help from the man who was quite possibly investigating and tailing her. Tahlia had felt terribly guilty about calling Jace to come pick her up, when she was all the way out there with his car in the first place. But Jace of course didn't have to be asked twice.

The car ride back home was bursting at the seams with unease.

Jace had clearly never been the biggest fan of Turner, perhaps owing it to how high-handed and rigid she had always been with her students. But even he had plummeted himself into atypical silence.

It's not everyday that someone you have grown accustomed to see day after day is found decapitated and burnt.

"I gotta use the bathroom." She announced to him in a low whisper, finding him seated all the way over on the corner of her bed, staring at the floor.

Stumbling into the bathroom, wasting no time all, Tahlia went straight for the sink. The feeling of cool water splashing all over her face did not, unfortunately for her, have the soothing effect that she'd desperately hoped it would. The water that drenched her face and dripped down her clavicle, refused to erase the sulphur-like stink of rotting flesh from her nostrils.

All Tahlia could see was Turner's lifeless gaze everywhere she looked; in the white tiles, in the crystal water, and even in the mirror.

Professor Turner had never quite seemed human— perpetually pristine and principled. Her cold aptitude was perhaps, what had piqued Tahlia's interest her classes in the first place. She simply loved how Turner didn't bullshit anyone.

Little did she know.

Tahlia could no longer discern what was real and what wasn't.

Her perfect professor was secretly a hybristophiliac, whose twisted secret may have drawn her to possibly aid an unhinged serial killer to break out of confinement and recommence his murder spree.

Who was the real Lauren Evangeline Turner?

But more importantly; How do you then know what is real?

It's as Tahlia's head racked with these questions wreaking havoc on her sanity, that a soft pounding came from outside. It took a second for her to realize that the knock wasn't on the bathroom door, but coming from outside her room. She walked to the door, gripping her fingers around the handle to swing it open, when a voice spoke.

"Is Tahlia in?"

Her heart dropped all the way to the pit of her stomach. Her hands recoiled from the steel handle, eyes wide.

"Now's not a good time Jax." It was Jace whose voice filled the space then.

Tahlia was feeling a whirlpool of emotions washing all over her body, all at once.

The last time Tahlia Meyers had seen Dean Jackson had been the day of her abduction from the campus. He had not once visited her in the hospital, nor had he come to see her after she moved back in and changed dorms, nothing at all.

At first Tahlia feared the worst, thinking that he had met a grim fate at the hands of a certain killer with an alarming interest in her; but when she got word of him being seen on campus and in classes regularly, she was left beyond confused. He wasn't taking her calls or answering her voice mails. It was only three weeks ago when Tahlia decided to text him to see if he wanted to meet her, and in response got a singular word: 'No,'

that she finally grasped he didn't want to see her anymore.

"Well I got something to say to her," She could hear the specks of sheer agitation building up in his voice, "It can't wait."

"I don't know man, should've thought of that before being a complete fucking asshole to her." Jace responded with an equally charged tone of incredulity.

"Man shut the fuck up, you don't know shit about me."

"Fuck, you know what?" She could practically envision the scoff etched on Jace's face in the moment, "It's kinda my fault. I should have told her what she was getting herself into in the first place."

Her ears instantly perked up. What is he talking about?

"Oh yeah, then why didn't you?"

Dean countered cockily,

"Oh that's right, it's because you're buying my shit on the regular. Speaking of which, your ass still owes me $80 for that molly you scored two fucking months ago."

Tahlia could wait no more, she yanked the door open hastily. With her lips parted, she peered at the door frame, weary eyes finding Dean immediately. "What's going on?" She turned to Jace, "What are you talking about?" She voiced suspiciously.

"Tal, I can—" Jace had merely begun, when he was cut off by Dean's smoky voice.

"Tahlia, I need to talk to you." He pressed, his hands in his pockets.

She glanced at him again, feeling an inkling of unbefitting anger swaddle her, "I have nothing to say to you."

"You have every right to be mad at me T, I understand. But hear me out, I need to explain myself."

"Explain what?" She spat vindictively, "That you shut me out when I needed you the most? Not a single call, not one single text? Yeah, no, I totally get it."

Dean took a step forward, gazing into her eyes intently, "I couldn't." His voice came out like a forced out whisper, "Not after I found out it had to do with.."

He opened his mouth, presumably to proceed elaborating on what he meant, when the phone in his hands went off obnoxiously.

He glanced at the number, cursing under his breath.

"Sorry, I need to take this." He announced quickly, turning around and exiting the room before Tahlia had a chance to say anything.

She raised a brow, sniggering cynically as she watched his figure disappear down the hallway, "Unbelievable."

She shut the door, locking it, swerving around towards Jace.

"What was that all about? 'I should have told her what she was getting into?' What is that supposed to mean Jace?"

He ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head, "You heard that, huh?"

She crossed her arms around her chest, looking at him expectantly.

"Well shit," He threw his hands in the air, sighing, "He sells drugs on the campus."

Tahlia's forehead furrowed, "What?" She sputtered slowly.

Multiple clear-as-day recollections of her mother snorting white lines hit her like a sack of bricks.

Then it was the dark flash of heroin being shot up her own arm, almost killing her that night, which struck like ominous lightning.

"Why didn't you tell me before?" She mumbled blankly, stuck in a daze as if.

"I- I couldn't snitch. But I tried to warn you, I told you he wasn't what he seemed."

A scoff of disbelief left Tahlia's lips, "You said he was a sleazebag. How is that—"

Tahlia's sentence died unfinished on her tongue, for the loud sounds of sirens ringing sliced the palpably thick air, right in half like a katana.

The expression on both Jace's and Tahlia's face contorted into that of pure befuddlement at the same time.

Instantly, they stalked over to the window, glimpsing at the scene unfolding outside.

Two police cars ceased right in front of her building, and out stepped two officers from each car.

She could clearly make out that one of them was Sergeant Randall himself, judging by his deep complexion and shaven head.

Tahlia's face went from confused to dumbfounded as the officers approached one familiar figure, down by the cars.

"What the fuck?" It was Jace who mumbled the words as they witnessesed the officers approach Dean Jackson. But it was only when one of them reached to put Dean into cuffs, that Tahlia's eyes went wide with comprehension of what was actually happening.

"Come on!" She quipped, darting away from the window, rushing out of the room with the speed of light, Jace by her side. The pair made their way down the stairs in a jiffy, Tahlia almost even clumsily losing her balance once, before they finally got outside.

"...You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can be or will be used against you in the court of law. You have the right to an attorney..."

Tahlia couldn't hear the rest of what the officer was saying. Along with the sound, the air too refused to move down her windpipes, it seemed.

She latched onto Jace's side for support, lacing an arm over his shoulders, as her world began rocking with the intensity of an earthquake.

Her eyes, in the haze, connected with the dark ones of Sergeant Randall, who too looked at her sympathetically for a split-second, before turning to Dean,

"Dean Jackson, you're under arrest for the murder of Lauren Turner."

✴✴✴

D.B. Woodside as Sergeant Randall