Summer lay on the bed in her cell, tossing and turning. She let out pained moans and whimpers as she writhed on the bed as though being assaulted by an unseen hand. Her exhaustion had taken her into a deep sleep, but her mind refused to lay idle. She was being tortured by her thoughts.
Inside her mind, she was back at the bar. She could remember beginning to feel light-headed. She had to steady herself on the pool table. The bar began to blur in and out of focus. She made her way towards the door, before her knees caved in completely and she fell against the wall. She felt someone positioning her arm over his shoulder and grabbing her around the waist, helping her up.
"Dillon?" She asked him, by now unable to look up to check.
"Sure thing gorgeous." The voice replied. "My name's whatever you want it to be."
This was the first time she had remembered this far into the evening. Normally everything blanked out when she was helped to her feet. The evening moved on a little.
She was helped into an apartment, and laid down on the bed. Someone, Dillon she presumed, carefully removed her jacket and threw it aside, before pulling off her shoes.
She looked around and smirked as she realised that this was not her quarters back at the Garage. She giggled slightly as she felt him sit on the bed next to her.
"You go us a hotel room?" She asked him.
"Actually this is my apartment." The voice replied.
"What are you talking about? You don't have an apartment." She muttered, beginning to sit up on the bed. She felt a hand on her shoulder, trying to push her back onto the bed. As she looked up, her vision cleared enough for her to realise it was not Dillon. It wasn't one of her friends at all. She squinted a little to get a better view, seeing that it was one of the guys from the bar.
"Just try to relax; we're going to have a good time." He told her.
"Don't touch me." She murmured, swiping his hand off. In her current state though, there was none of the usual power behind it. None of her usual speed or control, her limbs were barely responding to her commands at all.
"You weren't complaining when we brought you home." She heard another voice say. She looked around, and noticed that they were not alone. There were other people in the apartment.
"I'm leaving right now!" She stated, hauling herself off the bed. However, she very quickly found herself falling to the floor. Her legs wouldn't hold her weigh. Someone grabbed her and hauled her back onto the bed, at which she felt hands all over her. Hands were clamped around her forearms painfully and forced her backwards onto the bed.
"Just relax sweetheart, this'll all be over soon." One of the voices assured her. "If you just relax, you might just enjoy it."
Back in the cell, she muttered and let out a couple of small howls.
"NO!" She called out, still not coming out of her sleep. "Let go of me!"
Back in her mind, she remembered her anger rising as she realised that it was happening to her again. She could feel the hands groping her mercilessly. Warm breath, tinged with stale beer assailed her nose as one of them started kissing her face and neck. She struggled for all she was worth, one of her hands finally working its way free of the vice-like grip restraining her. She grabbed a handful of hair and hauled the first of her attackers off her.
The rest wasn't clear. Everything went by in a blur of attacks and screams. She had barely any control of her limbs, and so lashed out instinctively, landing attacks anywhere she could as her attackers tried in vain to restrain her. Eventually though, her assailants seemed to be fighting less. Despite everything, she was actually winning. Her mind blanked out again for a moment as she thrashed on her bed. She only saw one final image, her hand on the handle of a knife which had been rammed into one of her attackers.
She snapped upright on the bed, screaming, her eyes wide in horror and tears streaming down her face. She hadn't even noticed Mouse in the room.
"Summer, what's wrong?" She asked her cellmate, coming back to her side. She had come into the cell after her work assignment, finding her freaking out on the bed and tried to wake her up. She had jumped so far back as Summer terrified her with her scream that she had hit the back of her head on the opposite wall, but she didn't care. "You looked like you were having a nightmare..."
"I did it Mouse." Summer whispered, interrupting her in her hysteria. "I remember. My hand...the knife...I did it Mouse, I killed them!"
Mouse came to her side and held Summer to her chest warmly in her attempt to calm her down. Summer could only sit on the bed, weeping as she repeated a mantra.
"I killed them...I killed them..."
Dr. McIntyre turned an unhealthy shade of grey as Scott showed him the blood stains on the recycling chute. He had jumped to the obvious conclusion so quickly he hadn't done a thorough search, and so had missed a major piece of evidence in a murder trial. Scott gave him an annoyed look as he pulled out a cell phone and dialled the building superintendant.
"This is Scott Truman; I'm with the forensics team searching the apartment upstairs. I just wanted to know, when does the collection crew come for your recycling?" Scott asked him. "Thanks. Meet us in the basement recycling zone."
He flipped away his cell phone and got into Dr. McIntyre's face.
"You better hope for the sake of your career there's something left down there." He snapped as he left the room. "Stay here, as of right now you are NOT handling any of the evidence in this case!"
He arrived in the basement, finding the building superintendant there with a couple of soldiers. He came over to them, showing them his ID to confirm that he was the senior officer on the scene.
"Open it!" He demanded harshly, gesturing to the door to the recycling room. The building superintendant complied with the request, allowing them inside. Scott turned on the lights.
"Spread out!" He ordered the soldiers. "Wear gloves, bring me anything suspicious!"
"Kind of like this?" One of the soldiers answered, handing him a blood-stained plastic bag. Scott opened it, rummaging through the contents, finding a pair sneakers, black leather gloves, jeans and a black hoodie, all of them covered in blood. He put them back inside.
"Get this to the forensics lab!" He demanded, handing it to one of the soldiers. "Tell someone to test them. Oh, and if McIntyre goes within six feet of that evidence, you have my express orders to shoot him!"
He left the room, thinking about what he had found.
"This still doesn't make sense." He responded. "If the killer was wearing those clothes, and he escaped down the recycling chute, and then dumped the clothes, he still needs to escape the building."
"The only way in or out is through the reception hall." The building superintendant told him. "I think I'd have noticed a guy leaving the building bare-ass naked."
"Unless he found clothes elsewhere." Scott suggested, pointing out the laundry. "Has anyone reported having any clothes stolen?"
"All the time, but clothes go missing from the laundry all the time." He informed Scott. "We usually just log them in the lost property book. The military doesn't do anything about it anyway. They have more to worry about than a pair of missing jeans."
"Let me see the log book." Scott instructed him. "I need to know if any clothes went missing around then."
"One of the soldiers said you found something." Dr. McIntyre said in a panic as he arrived in the basement.
"Yes we did." Scott told him. "I'm still taking you off the case."
"You can't do that!" He shrieked in protest.
"Actually, I can." Scott informed him. "Your incompetence has already screwed up this case, and potentially ended up with an innocent woman going to prison. If I were you, I'd be looking for another career."
With that, he brushed past the forensics expert and left the building. Dillon was right in his suspicion all along. There was something suspicious about the way things had gone down. He couldn't prove it yet, but now he was sure that Summer had been set up.
Back at the prison, Mouse had managed to calm Summer down enough to get some kind of sense out of her, but she was still in shock. She couldn't stop shaking, and she was still staring into space. Mouse made sure none of the guards were watching, and pulled a small, plastic bottle out of her pillow case and handed it to Summer.
"This'll help your nerves." She told her. "It's not exactly brandy, but under the circumstances it's all I have."
Summer took a swig and started coughing loudly. It was incredibly warm in her throat, and it was very strong.
"What the hell is this?" Summer asked her.
"Orange juice and cleaning fluid fermented behind the heating units." She answered. "It's standard prison hooch. It tastes like crap but it takes the edge off when you've had a rough day."
"Thanks Mouse." She replied, handing it back gratefully after another swig. "I really appreciate it."
"You looked like you needed it." Mouse told her, stashing it back in her hiding place. "So you remembered what happened?"
"I remembered most of it." The former Yellow Ranger responded sadly. "I didn't know, but now I'm sure. It has to have been me."
"Summer, you didn't remember everything." Mouse reminded her. "There could be another explanation; you can't give up hope..."
"Like what?" Summer asked her. Mouse fell quiet and sat on her own bed wordlessly. As much as she wanted to reassure Summer that she was mistaken, but in truth she couldn't offer her another explanation. There didn't seem to be one.
"Look, you can't let this place get to you." Mouse told her softly. "It really changes people. You have to try and stay strong, to remember what makes you who you are. Otherwise, it'll drive you crazy."
Summer smiled a little as she sat on the bed. Mouse had helped her so much since she had arrived despite knowing little about her, only the crime she had committed, and yet in response, she knew almost nothing about Mouse. All she knew about her was that at some point before she came here she had been a librarian. She shifted a little on the bed.
"Mouse, I just have to ask." She began, considering the enigma of her cellmate. "You don't seem like the others in here..."
"How did I end up here?" Mouse completed her question. "Trust me, I've spent the last year and a half asking that myself."
"What did they send you here for?" Summer asked her. Mouse looked at her a little uncomfortably. "If you don't want to tell me..."
"No, it's alright." Mouse assured her. "I'm just not used to anyone taking an interest. I was sent here for fraud."
"Fraud?" Summer asked her. Mouse nodded.
"I was an assistant librarian in a high school on the other side of the dome." She informed the Yellow Ranger. "I loved the job. I got to see people in a controlled environment. I'm sure you've noticed I'm not exactly a people person."
She breathed a sigh and continued. "I graduated from the High School about a year before I started working there. I loved reading, and I had a real mind for administration, but I just couldn't face being shut up in an office all day. That's when the Chief Librarian, Dr. Wardle, suggested I take a job working with him."
"So what happened?" Summer asked her.
"He taught me a lot about computers and other things. He encouraged me to do a lot of online courses in my spare time." She replied fondly, remembering a happier time in her life. "Then one day the soldiers came for me. Funds had been embezzled from the education authority, and the traces led back to my online accounts. I was arrested and tried for the crime. The money disappeared before the trial was over, so they were convinced I had filtered it through dummy accounts and stashed it somewhere. I couldn't tell them where it was, and they thought I was lying, so they sentenced me to ten years."
"You didn't do it, did you?" Summer asked her. Mouse shook her head.
"I don't know who did, but it wasn't me." She replied. "If I had, I'd just have told them where the damn money was. If I had done that, I'd probably have been out by now!"
"How much are we talking about?" Summer asked her. "10 years seems a little steep."
"100,000 credits." Mouse responded. "I know a lot of people would take 10 years for a hundred grand, but I'm not one of them. There are times I don't know if I'll survive to get out of this place."
"So how do you survive?" Summer asked her, finding her mind drifting back to he own predicament. Mouse smiled at her, playing nervously with her tracking collar.
"Any way you can." She replied. At that point, a guard came into the cell, holding up a nightstick.
"Dinner service is in the mess hall." He reminded them. "Time to go ladies."
Scott arrived at the forensics lab, finding Sam examining the clothes from the recycling room. He had met her a few times when she came to the Garage to meet Flynn for their dates. She smiled as he came up to her.
"I'm glad to see you got this case." Scott told her. "Maybe now something will be done right."
"There were mistakes at the crime scene?" She asked him a little curiously.
"McIntyre managed to miss these clothes." Scott informed her. "He was pretty quick to stick to his initial findings."
"Well it doesn't surprise me that Dr. McIntyre screwed up." Sam told him, rolling her eyes. "He's as half-assed as they come."
"I thought he was your superior." Scott chuckled, seeing her friendly smile. He sat on her desk as she handed him a report.
"Only in salary and office size." She replied sarcastically. "Anyway, here are my findings. The clothes have blood samples from four different people on them."
"Let me guess, the three victims and Summer." Scott concluded. Sam nodded.
"You've got that right." She complimented him. "I'm sure you're not surprised to hear that they also match the blood stains inside the recycling chute."
"Sam, the next question I have to ask..."
"Is it possible only the bag of clothes was dropped down the chute?" She interrupted him. "Not a chance! The blood stains that drew your attention are all INSIDE the bag."
"So no blood would have ended up on the chute." Scott concluded.
"Well, not as much." Sam informed him. "My guess is that someone was wearing the clothes when they went down the chute."
"What clothes would they be pet?" Flynn asked his girlfriend as he arrived with Dillon and Ziggy.
"There was a fifth person in the apartment." Scott informed them. "He escaped down the recycling chute, that's why the door was still locked from the inside."
"Scott found his blood-stained clothes in the recycling room at the apartment block." Sam told her boyfriend, coming over to him and kissing his cheek.
"By any chance would these clothes include a black hoodie and a pair of pale blue jeans?" Flynn asked them.
"How did you know that?" Sam asked him. Flynn held up a copy of the tape they had made in the Garage.
"He was in the bar." Flynn explained. "I think it's time we compared notes."
Back at the prison, Summer sat self-consciously in the mess hall, eating her first meal. It was a fairly unappetising looking gloop of what she presumed was meant to be stew, though she wasn't certain. Other prisoners kept looking over in her direction and whispering. She hated this, she felt like a side-show. Some of them no doubt were looking for opportunities to settle a grudge, or to enhance their own reputation by taking out a Ranger. Others looked at her like she was insane, given her freak out in the cell earlier. The guard by the food trays cleared them onto the trolley and left to fetch the desert serving.
"Summer, Morris is coming over." Mouse warned her. Summer turned to face her. Morris' face was still badly bruised from the fight in the yard the night beforehand, and her nose was strapped up. She picked up Summer's food tray and dropped it on the floor.
"Thanks." Summer said sarcastically. "I was finished with that. It tasted like crap anyway."
"I heard you had a bad dream earlier." Morris taunted her. "The big, tough Ranger girl freaks out and screams at a little nightmare. Who'd have thought it?
The other inmates laughed at her, taking amusement in Summer's earlier suffering.
"Oh Dillon, Dillon!" Morris called out, imitating Summer's voice. "Who's Dillon? Your boyfriend?"
"That's none of your business!" Summer spat in her anger, beginning to get up to face her. At that point, three convicts grabbed her from behind and dragged her across the table, pinning her down. Morris leant over her, grabbing her hair.
"I had a husband before I came here." She stated. "Do you know how long it took him to send divorce papers? Four days!"
"Leave her alone!" Mouse yelled as she grabbed Morris, only to be shoved to the floor roughly.
"I'm in here for 12 years. You're in for life." Morris reminded her. "I'll bet your little Dillon's already found himself another little blonde piece to snuggle up to at night."
She pulled in closer to Summer, grabbing her face and forcing her to look into her eyes. She got a sick smile as she saw her tears.
"Your friends have probably forgotten you already. They might come to one or two visiting days, but how long do you really think they'll keep coming?" She asked her. "You're nothing Ranger Girl, It's time for you to face reality and live with it."
With that, the guard came back in, but quickly abandoned the desert trolley and came over with his night stick drawn. He tapped Morris on the shoulder.
"Break it up Morris." He warned her. Morris gestured to the others to release Summer and let her get up. "This little stunt just cost you desert."
"I don't like jello anyway." She snorted as she left the room under escort to return to her cell. Summer sat back at the table with her head in her hands as she thought about everything Morris had said to her. Mouse came over with two trays of Jello and put one down in front of Summer.
"Don't listen to her." Mouse advised her. "You need to hold onto anything you can in here. If this Dillon..."
"Why do I have to hold on Mouse?" Summer asked her in a cold, low voice. "What do I have to hold on for?"
"You need to keep hope..."
"That's just it Mouse, I don't have any damn hope!" Summer snapped at her cellmate. "My friends will forget me, Dillon will move on, if he hasn't done so already..."
"Summer, hope is all we have in here." Mouse told her. "It's what keeps me going..."
"Well that's the difference between you and me Mouse, you HAVE hope!" Summer yelled, dashing her tray off the table, spilling her desert on the floor. "8 and a half years from now, you're getting out of here. They'll take that collar off and you can go back to your life."
She gestured to her own tracking collar as her tars ran a little more freely.
"This is never coming off. The only way I'm getting out of here is in a box!" She screamed at her. "Maybe you should have just let Morris finish me off. She's right, I'm nothing."
With that, she got up and made her way back to her cell, mopping tears from her face as she went. She felt the pain in her heart so fiercely; she almost hoped it would be fatal just so it would end. Of course she knew that fate would not be so kind. Arriving in her cell, she quickly wrote a letter and sealed it in an envelope, before scribbling down the address of The Garage. As one of the guards passed on his rounds, she held it out between the bars.
"Could you put this in the mail?" She asked him. He nodded and took it from her, before making his way to Ronan's office. All the guards had been given strict orders to keep a close eye on her. Arriving in the office, he handed the letter to Ronan.
"She wants me to send that." He informed the Warden. "I thought you'd want to know."
"Well I suppose it's my duty to ensure she isn't saying anything she shouldn't." He replied, opening the envelope. He read the letter inside.
'Guys, this is the last letter I will ever send you.
I understand that I have let you all down and I know I can never make that up to you. I only hope that what I'm about to tell you will at least earn me some measure of forgiveness. I've remembered what happened that night. I am now under no doubt that I did kill them.
Please forward this as a confession to my crimes to the Justice Department. I know the families of the victims, much like you will never be able to forgive me for what I've done. I only hope that it can give them some measure of peace.
I wanted you all to know that I have accepted what I have done, and I acknowledge that this is where I deserve to be. It is for this reason that I know there is no point in me causing you or myself any further upset by reminding ourselves of my life before. I will instruct the Warden tomorrow that I am not going to accept any visitors, or mail from this point on. This is my life now; it's time I just accepted that.
I'm deeply sorry for any upset this causes, but I know you'll all move on and get over this eventually. Please just know that I love you all dearly and I hope that at some point you find happiness.
Goodbye,
Summer.'
Ronan got a sick smile on his face as he finished reading the letter. He addressed another envelope and sealed the letter inside, before handing it back to the guard.
"There's nothing in here that's sensitive." He told him. "Mail it with the rest of the outgoing mail."
"Yes sir." The guard replied as he left. Ronan reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of scotch, pouring himself a glass and leaning back into his chair with a satisfied grin. He had accomplished what he had set out to do from the moment she had entered his prison. He had broken her.