~Ash let her hands grapple for the painfully cold chair and heaved herself up into it, keeping her hands at her side instead of resting them on the table- a clear message of total distrust. I'm not going to point out that this isn't Tayn, she repeated in her head. I'm not going to acknowledge the fact that I know.
The abhorrent portrayal of her sister shifted through a myriad of papers behind the clipboard, then set it down and gave Ash what she thought to be the most unnerving grim smile she'd ever laid eyes upon. "Now, I'm just going to ask you a few simple questions, and we'll be all good to go, okay?"
By that tone of voice, they'll be anything but simple.
The... woman... nodded, taking Ash's silence as compliance, and set a photograph of a well-muscled, and, in Ash's opinion, shady man on the table. "Do you know who this is?"
Ash studied it for a moment more, her hand automatically reaching down to her pocket for a pen to chew on, then snapped it back up and shook her head furiously. "No," she answered hoarsely, then cleared her emotion-blocked throat and tried again. "No." After a moment's hesitation, she added cautiously, "Should I?"
The apparent shapeshifter said nothing, only jotted something down on her board and looked up again. Ash was forced to turn away from her direct stare- it was too scarring to see those unsettling eyes, devoid of any feeling, on her sister's face. "Then where were you last night?"
Ash gulped, knowing full well that her answer wouldn't come off as inauspicious. Tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, her mind declared. You don't know what kind of detectors they have around here. You know better. "I... was sleeping out on the streets."
The woman put down her pen, and glanced up at Ash through now-narrowing eyes. "You don't have a permanent residence?"
Ash bit down her lip, and began to curl a strand of charred hair around a left finger. "No, ma'am."
The woman immediately launched into a stream of writing, her pen swiveling so much it looked as if possessed. "I see. And did you consider the events surrounding your night normal?"
Ash had now accumulated so much hair around her finger that it seemed she had on a one-finger caramel glove. "Yes."
"Why?"
Why what? Why is sleeping out on the streets typical for me? Look at me and answer that yourself! "Because I've been lacking a permanent shelter for over five months now."
Instead of writing, the woman's eyes snapped to her face and remained there, as if scanning for a memory. Ash flinched, but she forced herself to remain facing forward- jumping away when someone looks at you isn't exactly beneficial for your guiltless cause. The impersonator kept searching Ash's face, seeming to evaluate her visage of brewing panic, then finally looked back to her notes. "I see," she muttered again, although her voice was strangely dulled, not flat- even more than before.
"What were the situations surrounding your detainment?"
Suddenly the walls seemed to be closing in with every heartbeat, and the lights lost even more weak illumination. Detainment.
I'm trapped again.
Her breath begging to come in panicked gaps, Ash slammed her hands down on the table to right her nerves. One would've expected the woman to jump, but she merely looked over her papers at the stressed girl with a glare of vague disgust.
"I had just seen a commotion," she started, her voice coming way too loud. She slapped her shaking hands over her mouth, and tried again. "And I went in the building. Upon finding... some old comrades... I tried to evaluate the situation and exactly what was occurring, but before I could even react, I was surrounding by officers." Her feet tapped against the floor, the resulting noise coming off more as a constant pounding that bounced off of the walls and reverberated deafening in the tiny room rather than a anxious tapping.
Her interrogator didn't even pause to look up, just continued her maniacal writing. The fringes of a grim played at her lips- Tayn's lips- and Ash's stomach turned, longing to vomit. "And do you know this man?" Her hand lashed out from beneath her clipboard to slap another photograph down in front of Ash, sending her skittering backwards and giving the jostled chair an opportunity to emit an earsplitting screech as it rubbed against the concrete floor. Ash winced, her sensitive hearing receiving the noise and gifting her the beginnings of a headache, before hesitantly leaning forward and observing the picture. "No."~