Aliyah walked down the hall to the meeting room where she was supposed to be meeting Grissom and the CSI team. This was her third week here and so far she had done nothing except lab work and the occasional robbery field work. 'Time for something a bit more interesting' she thought.
Grissom was standing at the front of the room when she entered, the others were seated. Aliyah smiled and sat down.
"Okay I assigned each of you some on-field work" Grissom said "Catherine, Wawrick and I will be working on the Dewmount case and Sara, Nick and Aliyah I've got you assigned to a rape case."
Nick looked at Aliyah to see a slight frown falter in Aliyah's expression. He caught her eye and she determinedly pulled an unconvincing smile on to her face.
'You expected this when you got the job' Aliyah thought to herself 'You can handle this, it has to come sooner or later' She walked down the hall to the interview room where Sara and the victim were. Nick was standing watching them through the glass, Aliyah joined him.
"I know this might be hard for you" said Sara gently to the victim, who looked about sixteen "but we need to find your attacker, could you tell me what happened?". The girl looked at Sara without any sign of emotion.
"She's in shock" muttered Nick next to her.
"I was walking home from a friends house" the girl said "it was about 10:30 at night, and when I got to the park this guy ran out at me, he pushed me down and kept hitting me. He jumped on top of me and…" The girl's voice trailed off. Aliyah saw pictures fly across her mind.
A man was holding a girl down
He was on top of her, his harsh and rapid breathing in her ear
The girl was screaming, the man kicked her again and again to stop her screaming
Aliyah felt tears burning behind her eyes, she slipped away hoping that nobody would notice. There was a meeting room across the hall that was barely used, she pushed open the door and sat down at the table. The pictures were still running across her mind. Aliyah put her head in her hands.
"Are you okay?" Aliyah turned around, it was Nick. She tried to smile but instead felt a tear trailing down her cheek, she wiped it away.
"It's hard doing this job sometimes" Nick said gently sitting next to her "but we all get through it, in the end we're helping people."
"Yeah, we are" said Aliyah with a half smile. Nick put his hand on her shoulder, "If you're okay, we should get back".