Whuuum... whuuum... whuuum...

Chris Allman's implant was acting up again.

He could feel it in the back of his head, right at the base of his skull, but that wasn't what worried him. He was used to feeling the presence of the implant, despite the doctors at Sosumi assuring him that it was impossible for him to feel anything at all. The implant had become part of his existence, part of his body, and he knew that something was wrong with it since last night.

Since Sara had been murdered...

Chris felt the waves of grief build up in him again, constricting his chest and making it harder to breathe, to think dammit. He could still see the look on Sara's face as the life had drained away and she had realized at that moment that she was dead--

Chris closed his eyes tight and jerked away physically, as if he could escape the horror, the reality of what had happened, but it was embedded in his memory, and there would be no escape for him. Not while the love of his life was dead.

The chains of his handcuffs caught on the metal loop that was bolted to the table. The loop was designed to stop violent prisoners like him from trying to either escape or harm the detectives in the room. He tried to calm himself, but the tears were still hot in his eyes. He had thought there couldn't be any more tears left, but the grief and the memory were both still fresh, still so raw.

He had been locked inside the interrogation room for maybe an hour, or maybe longer. Time had become a massive concern for him since it had become so fractured last night, and he was having difficulty keeping his memories straight. He had the feeling he was losing pieces of time and may have actually been there for as much as six hours, but with no clock in the room, there was no way to tell. Every time the implant had started pulsing in the back of his head, sending what felt like a small but piercing electrical shock through his brain like a clenching fist. And every single time, what he remembered changed.

Whuuum... whuuum... whumm...

It was more of a feeling than a sound, and it started every time the implant was ready to sync wirelessly with the computers at the Sosumi Corporation.

Every five minutes and fifty-five seconds.

The door opened, and the tall black detective entered. He had introduced himself as Detective Duvel and had been the most persuasive to Chris so far. The other detective had just been mean, but Duvel had been all business. Except-- Chris had a memory of Detective Duvel slamming him into the side of a patrol car as he had handcuffed him. However, there was also a memory of a less violent arrest, and Chris was still trying to decide which reality was the right one. In any case, Detective Duvel had returned with a post-it note pad and the pen the Chris has asked for, which he now threw down onto the table.

"You ready to talk yet?" Detective Duvel asked.

Chris shook his head no, even as he picked up the pen and made sure he was able to write. It was tough, but he was able to hold the pad down with one hand and write with the other. Not perfect, but it would have to do. He stared at the paper instead of looking at the detective and somehow managed to force the words out, as terrible as they were.

"You still think I—" He steeled himself and managed to power through: "Still think I killed Sara?"

"You seem to have a lot on your mind," Detective Duvel said kindly as if he were some counsellor, and Chris wasn't currently chained to the table. "We're ready to listen whenever you want to talk."

Whuuum...

Chris braced himself for the wave of pain, trying to focus on what was real. Sara was dead, and he had seen it happen, but at that moment something else had happened, something impossible, and it was tearing his mind into pieces.

Whuuum...

Chris wondered what the detective would say if he told him the whole truth as he knew it? That he had seen Sara in the instant that she had died. And that he had been shot only a second later, a grazing shot across the back of neck right where the implant was located. Something had happened in that instant, a piercing pain deep in his brain that overrode everything, killed all thought, smothered all emotion and the sensation of falling forever as if he had jumped—

Whuuum...

No. He couldn't tell the detective any of that.

Chris began to write, slowly at first, but then picking up speed.

After a while, it had occurred to him that Detective Duvel had left the room.

Five minutes and fifty-five seconds.

***

"What the fuck was that?"

Detective Duvel was watching from the observation room when something glowed and then flashed blue on the back of Chris Allman's neck, causing the man to grimace in pain.

"Yeah... it's been doing that every six minutes or so," Detective Morrow said dismissively. "It's an implant he got about a year ago as part of a medical experiment with the Sosumi Corporation."

Duvel looked at his partner in surprise. The gruff man was in his fifties and looked every bit the stereotypical police detective from Central Casting. He had dazzling white hair, and his gut had only gotten more pronounced over the last few years even though he worked out regularly. He looked a little soft, but Duvel knew from experience that the man was made of solid muscle. His gruff exterior was only matched by his abrasive attitude; Duvel was surprised to learn that Morrow had gotten anything out of Allman at all.

"You talked to him without me?"

"I had to. He was in pain. Thought I would show a compassionate side."

Duvel was suspicious.

"Plus, people in general talk more when under duress?"

Morrow shrugged and grinned. "Yeah there's that too," he admitted. "He didn't tell me all of that, of course. Once he mentioned Sosumi, I did some digging and found some pretty interesting stuff. They were approved for a medical trial about a year ago, and Mister Allman there was one of the test subjects."

Duvel looked from Morrow back to Chris, who was still recovering from the effects from the malfunctioning implant. He seemed to shake it off and resumed writing on the Post-It notes.

"He let them put some kind of implant into the back of his head? And it does that?"

"I don't think it's supposed to do that," Morrow observed. "Otherwise, it would have been a very short experiment. Whoever shot at him might have caused a little bit of damage to the implant."

"You think that happened before or after he killed his girlfriend?"

"Who knows?" Morrow asked. "We have security footage of him at the scene with Miss Park, and they're clearly fighting. We get a report of multiple gunshots, and she ends up dead while that same footage shows him running away from the scene of the crime."

"Don't we want to know who shot him?

"Maybe Miss Park got a chance to defend herself. Forensics is still putting together a picture of what happened, but cases like this, you know as well as me that it's almost always the boyfriend or husband who did it."

"There's way too many maybes in that sentence for my liking," Duvel said.

"You don't think he's good for it?"

"I dunno," Duvel said thoughtfully. "There's something else going on here, and I'd really like to what it is."

"You see what that implant does to him?" Morrow pointed out. "He's restrained right now, but I bet you anything that if he was free, he might not even know what he was doing until it was done. It's messing with his head." Morrow shook his head. "Fact is that the girl is dead and he was right there with her. We don't need to know why he killed her. That's not our job."

"That's such bullshit, and you know it. Motive is half the case—"

"And the other half is us getting a confession. Then motive is right out the window and it's case closed. The crown can handle it after that. Allman hasn't asked for a lawyer yet, so he's still fair game."

Duvel nodded thoughtfully.

"We don't need another Martinez situation. That already put the department in a tough situation."

"Those idiots beat the confession outta Martinez. We aren't going to need to lay a finger on Mister Allman."

"Still though, we gotta be careful."

"The biggest difference you gotta look at here is that Martinez was innocent and confessed. Tell me something, Andre: does Chris Allman look like an innocent man to you?"

Both men looked in at Chris Allman for a long moment, lost in their own thoughts. Duvel still wasn't sure what was going on, but Morrow had always had good instincts about cases like this. It was simply that he had stopped caring about motive a long time ago. Why someone did something as horrible as killing another person never factored into the investigation and only ever came up at trial, assuming the perp had a decent lawyer involved. Most times, with a confession, a lengthy trial wasn't necessary. Looking at Chris Allman, all that Duvel could see was guilt, but this time more than anything, he really wanted to know why.

"What is he writing anyway?" Morrow asked after a moment of watching Chris Allman scribble on his notes.

"Maybe we got lucky, and it's that confession we're looking for."

"That will be a first," Morrow chuckled. "Did you get hold of Leaver?"

"Yeah, he's on his way over. Should be here in about twenty minutes."

"Wanna get in his good books again, we gotta get that confession."