it's ambiguously 1999. probably a s1/s2 hybrid.

Too bright, was Mariana's first thought upon waking up. The buzzing fluorescent lights meant she had to be in the basement storage room of her office, but why? She sat up, blinking, feeling an intense pounding at the back of her head. Pulling her hand away after touching it, wincing, Mariana saw that her fingers were covered in blood. She felt a panic rising in her chest and tried to stand up, to yell, but before she could get a word out she noticed that her pants were unzipped and her underwear pushed to the side. No, Mariana thought. Please, no, no no no no.

The walls felt like they were closing in, the ground unsteady. Mariana pushed herself to her feet, taking a shaky breath. She looked at her watch: 2:47. No one would be in the office for hours. She leaned against a wall of the storage room, then slid down until she was sitting on the floor, hugging her knees, completely numb. Then – darkness.

She stayed in this position until an intern found her the next morning, hunting for a box of paperwork that was certainly unlabeled, would take an hour to find, and would probably be entirely useless to the project anyway – it was probably just as useful as all the coffee runs and fixing the printer when it jammed; that is to say, negligible.

The intern reached to flip on the lights, only to realize that they were already flickering brightly. Upon hearing footsteps, Mariana blinked a bit and groaned softly.

"Oh my God, Mariana? Are you okay? What happened? Should I call the police? Who did this?" The questions came flying.

Mariana's head only flopped to the side, eyes fluttering shut again.

...

I had just settled in at the office and was digging around in my desk drawer for a pen when our intern Tori came tearing into the room, reaching for my phone. "Whoa, hon, where's the fire?" I asked, making a mental note to take Tori out for dinner sometime soon, or at least give her something a little more substantial to do.

But Tori was already dialing. "It's – it's Mariana – she – I need to call the police – I think she was attacked –"

"Where?" I stood up.

"Basement," Tori choked out just as the operator picked up on the other end.

I sprinted to the stairs. "Mariana! Mariana!"

She was unconscious when I saw her, bleeding from the back of her head, clothes awry. Disgust rose up in my throat. Please, not Mariana. The tears started to form even as a horrible thought crept into my mind. Don't let them think you're anything other than colleagues, I warned myself. They'll have too many questions, and you need this job. I hated myself for thinking it, and I hated even more that I had to.

Minutes later, the paramedics and two officers burst into the office.

"Special Victims Unit," one said. "I'm Detective Stabler; this is my partner, Detective Benson. Who made the 911 call?"

Tori raised her hand shakily. "I did," she whispered. I squeezed her shoulder.

"Okay, can you take a ride with me to the precinct and tell me what happened?" he asked, as the paramedics took Mariana out on a stretcher behind them.

She nodded.

The woman, Detective Benson, turned to the rest of us. "Would you all mind coming along as well?" she asked.

I looked at my colleagues. "Can we go along to the hospital?"

Detective Benson nodded. "We can do the interviews there," she agreed. "One of you ride along in the ambulance with me."

"Go," my colleagues said, gesturing to me. I didn't analyze this. She's your project partner, I repeated in my head, interspersed with please, God, and I'm so sorry and let her be okay.

I climbed into the back of the ambulance with Detective Benson and grasped Mariana's hand. "Please stay with me, baby," I pleaded, but Mariana didn't regain consciousness.

I think I lost myself for a moment, stroking Mariana's hand. Briefly, I saw Detective Benson's eyes register what was in front of her – taking in Mariana's masculine dress and short haircut, the look on my face, probably, and my lack of mention of a husband or boyfriend I needed to notify. She opened her mouth to say something, but I caught her eye and she closed it again.

"So you didn't see anything personally?" Detective Benson asked me.

"No, I'm sorry," I responded. "She normally arrives after I do, so I didn't think anything until Tori told me what she'd seen in the basement."

"And was she still here when you left the office last night?"

"Yeah," I said slowly. "She wanted to make sure that one of the polls we had put into the field had started off successfully."

She nodded. "So what is it that you do here, exactly?"

"We're a polling firm," I explained. "Mariana and I are the co-directors of the Manhattan office, and we poll different current events and political issues to see where people stand on them."

She nods. "Do you have any idea who would do something like this?"

I shook my head. "No. But, Detective Benson?" I took a deep breath. She won't mind, I thought. Especially if it helps us find the guy who did this.

She smiled a little. "Olivia."

Olivia. I thought briefly of the irony that people often mistook my own name for hers upon reading it quickly, before returning to the conversation.

"There was this interview –" I began, but the ambulance skidded to a stop and one of the paramedics yanked the doors open.

The next thing I knew, Olivia and I were running into the hospital behind Mariana on her stretcher.

Olivia and her partner, Elliot, sat with us in the waiting room asking about what had happened last night. Tori was crying, and I felt awful. The rest of my coworkers looked almost no better. After a bit, Olivia pulled me aside. "You mentioned an interview," she said quietly. "Can you tell me about that?"

I nodded. Here goes nothing. "Um, a couple of weeks ago Mariana and I put out a new poll, and she was interviewed on a local news station talking about it," I said.

"And someone got angry?" Olivia asked. "What was the poll?"

"It was about same-sex relationships in New York," I said. I saw a flicker in Olivia's eye, perhaps a confirmation that she'd been right – she wasn't, but I figured it wouldn't even matter if this got out -we'd be crucified in the press anyway. "Mariana said to me, 'Come on, it's not the 80's anymore. It's 1999. People are getting it.' She was always the optimistic one."

"So you think this was an attack on her sexuality," Olivia said. She paused, took a breath. "Mariana was gay, right?"

I nodded carefully, slowly. "After the poll came out, Mariana did the interview, and she talked about how 48% of New Yorkers now support homosexuality," I said. "She said it was an improvement from previous polls our company had done – that it was a real win for the community. I told her to be careful, but soon after the interview aired she started getting hate mail. At the office, at home…the news station got some too for having her on…I always told her that the world wasn't as nice as she thought it was but she really thought she could change their minds, you know?"

Olivia's eyes got big and watery. I momentarily wondered why – surely, she interviewed witnesses for more horrific cases than this one, as gut-wrenching as it was for me personally.

"We're going to need all of that mail," she said, catching herself and taking a quick breath.

"Of course," I said. "Whatever you need."

The detectives left, and my coworkers and I sat in stunned silence in the hospital waiting room. Tori got us all coffee, and the gesture almost made me cry again. She handed me mine, looking me straight in the eye.

"You know you're good for more than just coffee runs, right?" I said.

Tori smiled. "I know. It's okay. I promise."

I sipped my coffee, stomach still churning, and Tori kept an eye on me.

"Hey," she said slowly. "I know – I know I'm just an intern, and everything, but if you, you know, want to talk about it or anything…"

I nodded. "Thanks, Tori, that's…really sweet," I said, but suddenly one of the doctors reappeared in the room. He couldn't meet my gaze. I stood to meet him, Tori still by my side.

"Is she –" I couldn't finish the sentence.

"I'm really sorry," the doctor said, sounding sincere, but really he must say this kind of thing every day, "she didn't make it. The bleeding reached her brain, and…there wasn't anything we could do. I'm so sorry."

I squeezed my eyes shut and nodded. "Okay."

"Does she have any family you'd like me to notify?" the doctor asked.

I thought of her parents, who hadn't spoken to her since she'd come out, and shook my head, thinking of the irony of her own family's reaction coupled with her unending optimism about the world – about how some day, maybe someday soon – people would change.

And maybe she was right.

But not yet.