Click.

  He read text messages Kiley had sent to Chloe. The words were sharp, like a devotion of bullying remarks, nasty attacks designed to wound and diminish. Each phrase, read aloud in the dispassionate tone of the detective, seemed to hang in the air, thick with Kiley's hatred.

  "U think ur so great? Everyone laughs at u behind ur back. pathetic."

  "Why r u even trying? Just give up. Nobody wants u around."

  "Heard what happened. Not surprised tbh. U deserve it."

  "Don't bother showing up tomorrow. Nobody wants to see ur face."

  "Go cry about it, loser. See if anyone cares."

  "You're such a fake. Everyone knows it."

  "Wish you would just disappear."

  "Haha, look at you. Still a mess."

  "You're nothing. You'll never be anything."

  "Just stop. Stop talking, stop trying, just stop."

  When he finished reading, Malloway looked directly at Kiley, his gaze steady and piercing. "When I was in high school," he said, his voice now carrying a weary edge, "we might have been mean to people, sure. But this," he paused, gesturing vaguely towards the tablet, "this is next level. A real art you've mastered." The words weren't a compliment, but a cold, hard indictment of the deliberate cruelty in her messages.

  “That isn’t it,” he added.

  Click.

  A collage of photos from the classes Chloe and Kiley shared. Chloe caught mid-blink, her clothes circled in red with captions like “Thrift store much?” and “Nice socks, grandma.” Another click. An image of her lunch tray, with “mystery slop” written underneath. Then her handwriting on a notebook page, messy and uneven, zoomed in and posted with crying-laugh emojis.

  “I never posted those publicly!” Kiley snapped. “That was private stuff. Group chat jokes. You can’t use that—”

  Click.

  The final video loaded silently. Chloe is on the edge of the school’s backfield. Alone on a bench. Her head was down, arms wrapped around herself. Silent, but her shoulders shook. Her hair veiled her face, but even without sound, the sadness was unmistakable. Another student’s mocking laugh echoed faintly behind the camera.

  “That’s not what it looks like,” she said. Quieter now. “She was... being dramatic. She always cried about everything.”

  Kiley looked away. She flinched, whether from the impact of her own words read aloud or the detective's cutting assessment was unclear. Her slumped posture tensed, and her eyes, moments before filled with a tormented reflection of Chloe, now held a defensive glint. She wasn't going to accept his judgment, wasn't going to wear the mantle of the bully.

  She leaned forward slightly, her voice, when it came, a little hoarse but laced with a desperate need to shift the focus. She tried to flip it back onto Chloe, her words tumbling out in a rush to redirect the blame.

  "Yeah, well," she began, her hands unclenching slightly in her lap, "Chloe wasn't exactly innocent. She provoked people. She said things too, you know. It wasn't just me." It was an immediate, transparent attempt to muddy the waters, to paint Chloe not as a victim of relentless attacks, but as a participant, somehow deserving of the "art" Kiley had wielded.

  Malloway didn’t move. Just watched her.

  “You said she ran. That you didn’t push her. That she tripped” His voice had cooled. Just a notch. “But why would you be pushing her? Pushing her toward what? Kiley?”

  Kiley's eyes narrowed slightly at the detective's implication, her jaw setting with a defiant edge. "Push anyone? I would never touch that… girl," she scoffed, a little breathlessly. "I didn't push anyone. What are you even talking about? I have no idea what you're talking about."

  Her denial was quick, perhaps too quick, a knee-jerk reaction to the unspoken accusation hanging in the air. She shifted in her seat, her earlier slumped posture replaced by a rigid tension. The pressure of the interrogation, the weight of the detective's gaze, and the chilling presence of the evidence bag containing her phone seemed to converge on her.

  A flicker of panic, raw and childlike, crossed her face. "I... I want my dad," she stammered, her voice small despite the bravado of her denial. The request hung in the air, a plea for the safety net of parental protection. “He is rich you know. He can solve all of this.”

  Detective Malloway's expression remained unyielding. He leaned forward slightly, his voice low and firm, stripping away her attempt to retreat into adolescence. "You are an adult, Kiley," he stated, the simple words a stark reminder of her situation and her age. "You don't get mommy and daddy to save you right now." His words weren't unkind, but they were absolute. The time for childish defences was over. His gaze held hers, steady and unwavering. "I just want the truth."

  The demand was simple, and direct, and left no room for further denial or deflection.

  Kiley’s mouth opened, then shut. Her throat bobbed with a dry swallow. She looked toward the mirror again. Toward the blurred girl watching from the other side of the glass. But this time, the girl didn’t look defiant. She looked afraid. Because there was no one left to mirror but herself

  The silence thickened, slow and choking. Detective Malloway closed the laptop.

  “One moment,” he said.

  Detective Malloway rose from his chair, the scraping sound on the floor echoing in the sudden quiet. He gave Kiley one last, measured look, then turned and left the room. The door clicked shut behind him, leaving Kiley alone in the sterile space with her racing thoughts and the silent, accusatory mirror.

  Five minutes stretched into an eternity. Kiley was left to stew in the uncomfortable silence, the weight of the situation pressing down on her. Her earlier defiance began to crumble around the edges. The image of Chloe in the mirror was gone, it was just her, the detective's words about her "art" of bullying replayed in her mind, and the chilling reality of being alone, without her father to intervene, settled in. What did they know? What more could be on her phone? The possibilities, fueled by guilt and fear, spun in a dizzying, suffocating loop. She fidgeted in her seat, her hands twisting in her lap, the stillness of the room amplifying the frantic energy of her thoughts.

  Just as the silence felt unbearable, the door opened again, and Detective Malloway re-entered. He wasn't empty-handed, the laptop gone. In his grasp was an object that immediately drew Kiley's attention: an odd-looking black tablet. It wasn't a standard consumer tablet; it was thicker, perhaps with a more rugged design, and the screen was currently dark, giving it a smooth, obsidian appearance. He carried it with a deliberate, almost weighty air, and Kiley's eyes fixed on it, a new wave of apprehension washing over her.

  What was on that? The voice inside her head screamed. This was the first time that her dad didn’t get her out of trouble. Or that her looks didn’t shift people’s thoughts. Or all the normal tools she used to avoid problems, didn’t work. Nothing was.

  Malloway didn’t speak, just set the tablet gently on the table like it was something sacred, or maybe something dangerous.

  Kiley watched it with narrowed eyes. “What’s that?”

  Malloway tapped the screen. A new video opened, timestamped five hours before her time in this room. The clock still ticking.

  “You said there weren’t any videos or sound,” she said. Reading the label on the current black surface.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  School Bus – Internal Camera Footage.

  The angle was awkward, taken from the front corner near the driver. Another angle was facing in front of the bus, with a wide lens.

  Detective Malloway sat back down across the table from Kile. His expression remained calm, almost casual, a stark contrast to Kiley's mounting anxiety. He gestured towards the tablet.

  "You know, Kiley," he began, his voice still even, "for years now, the city's been putting cameras on all their buses. Legal issues, insurance claims, you name it. Just in case." He paused, letting the implication hang in the air for a moment before delivering the crucial piece of information, his gaze steady on hers. "And, well, I have to confess, I wasn't entirely honest earlier. There are videos."

  The weight of his admission, coupled with the silent presence of the tablet, landed heavily in the room. The casual way he revealed his lie and the existence of the footage amplified the sudden shift in the power dynamic. Kiley's attempt to deny and deflect now seemed flimsy, perhaps even foolish, in the face of concrete evidence. The "odd-looking black tablet" was no longer just an object; it was a potential witness, holding a silent recording of whatever had transpired.

  Malloway pressed play. There was Chloe on the sidewalk, she looked to be running, and Kiley could see herself, locked step behind her. Chloe’s shoulders were hunched beneath her hoodie, the straps of her backpack tugging awkwardly against her thin frame.

  Seconds later, Kiley appeared even closer. Kiley stood behind Chloe, her posture tall, and aggressive. Her lips moved: fast, sharp. No audio, but even in silence, the venom was visible in every jab of her finger and tilt of her chin.

  Chloe shook her head, trying to shrink away, but Kiley’s arm snapped forward, grabbing the strap of her backpack or maybe her shoulder. The footage was playing out so fast before them. It could have been a shove. It could have been more.

  Chloe stumbled. The camera angle didn’t catch the full fall, but her body dipped out of view and then came the sound. A shriek. The harsh, panicked screech of rubber tires. Gasps. The thud of movement. The driver yelled.

  The bus lurched in the footage, students jostling in their seats. The screen went black.

  Kiley’s face drained of colour. “She tripped. That doesn’t prove anything. I didn’t mean for—”

  Malloway didn’t press play again.

  He didn’t need to.

  “This was no accident, was it?” he asked, quiet as falling ash.

  Detective Malloway leaned back slightly in his chair, the odd black tablet still resting on the table between them. He wasn't finished outlining the extent of the evidence. "And it's not just the bus," he continued, his voice calm but carrying the weight of undeniable fact. "Even now, as we're sitting here, we're getting footage from the school cameras. The hallways, the entrance, outside." He paused, then added, "We're getting footage from the storefronts across the street too. People have cameras everywhere these days."

  His words painted a picture of an ever-tightening net of surveillance, capturing Kiley's movements and actions from multiple angles. He looked directly at her, his expression lacking judgment but full of a quiet certainty. "I don't need your confession, Kiley," he stated plainly, the words stripping away any remaining power her denial might have held. He tapped the tablet lightly with a fingertip. "It's clear as day." The implication was stark: the video evidence would tell the story, regardless of what Kiley said or didn't say. Her truth, or lack thereof, was becoming increasingly irrelevant.

  Kiley opened her mouth, and closed it. Her eyes darted toward the door, the mirror, the ceiling. Anywhere but the detective's face. Her fingers dug into her arms.

  “I didn’t... I didn’t push her off the edge,” she said. But her voice had lost all conviction.

  Malloway leaned in, folding his hands on the table. “You were her dark shadow. You followed her. You placed your hands on her. She is dead because of you.”

  And for the first time, Kiley didn’t answer.

  She just stared at her reflection on the black screen.

  And the girl in the mirror didn’t blink.

  The silence grew heavy again: different now. Not the cold stillness of restraint, but the slow crumble of a wall that had taken years to build. Kiley's foot tapped under the table. Her arms were folded too tightly like she could hold something in if she just squeezed hard enough. But it was already leaking through.

  “She always made me feel…” Kiley started the words caught somewhere between anger and grief. “Like I was wrong. Like I was the problem. Like I was the mean one.”

  Malloway said nothing.

  “I mean, yeah, I said stuff. But she, she never fought back. Never yelled. Never even looked at me when I said the worst things.” Her eyes flicked up, wide, shimmering now. “You know how frustrating that is? To be trying so hard to tear someone down and they don’t even flinch?”

  Her voice cracked.

  “I was supposed to be better than her. Prettier. Funnier. People liked me. They followed me.” She let out a bitter breath. “But somehow she made me feel invisible. Just by being there. Quiet, pathetic, Chloe.”

  She swallowed hard, her shoulders trembling.

  “I liked it. The way they laughed at my jokes. The way she'd look down when I passed her in the hall. Like she was already bracing for the hit.”

  The mask cracked further, the sharp edge of confession slipping out between gasps.

  “She made me feel powerful. I thought that meant I was powerful. I didn’t know…” Kiley trailed off, biting her lip hard.

  Malloway waited. He always waited. That was his gift. And Kiley couldn’t stop now.

  “She looked at me like I wasn’t even real,” she said, barely louder than a whisper. “Like I didn’t matter.”

  Her voice rose, caught somewhere between defiance and desperation.

  “But I did matter. I do.”

  Her fists slammed against the edge of the table, just once, a hollow sound that echoed off the sterile walls.

  “I just wanted her to see me. To stop pretending she didn’t care. To cry, to scream—something.” Her breathing was ragged now. “But all she ever did was shrink and flinch and disappear. Until she did.”

  Her eyes met Malloway’s.

  And for a flicker of a moment, she looked like a child. Not a bully. Not a villain. Just a girl, furious with herself for how much she liked being the monster. “I didn’t want her to die,” she whispered, tears breaking free now. “But I wanted to break her. I wanted her to hurt.”

  She looked back toward the mirror again, and this time her reflection didn’t look like power. It looked like something hollow. Something unravelling. And she couldn’t stop crying, real tears this time, not an act like before.

  Kiley said nothing more.

  The video still glowed from the tablet screen, frozen on Chloe’s face. Her face was half-turned, eyes wide, just before everything changed. That single frame held more than all the words Kiley had tried to twist, dodge, or bury. She stared at it, unmoving.

  Detective Malloway stood slowly, the chair legs scraping against the floor. He didn’t say goodbye. Didn’t offer comfort or judgment. Just collected the folder, the tablet, and walked out, the door clicking shut behind him.

  The room was quiet again.

  Except now the clock and the ticking. It was final. Sealed. Kiley sat alone, her hands limp in her lap, the metal chair pressing cold against her spine. Each second thudded like a drumbeat in her skull.

  She looked again at the glass, at her image for the first time, taking herself in. Seeing the reality of a scared, lonely and unhappy girl. Not crying. Not speaking. Just existing, in that single, terrible moment.

  And for the first time in her life, Kiley was no longer the most important person in the room.

  And Chloe? Chloe wasn’t gone. Not really. Not if the nightmares kept coming.

  The door to the interrogation room opened once more, and a new figure entered, commanding immediate attention. She was, in Kiley's estimation, the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. It wasn't just striking features; there was an aura about her, a perfect, almost ethereal quality that seemed out of place in the drab room. Had Chloe been there, a jolt of recognition, perhaps even pain, might have gone through her. Chloe would have seen a mirror image of the goddess who had rejected her. The Goddess was there, a figure of unattainable perfection who had, rejected Chloe’s soul.

  The woman moved with a grace that suggested confidence and authority. She was dressed impeccably, her presence a stark contrast to Kiley's dishevelled state and the detective's worn practicality. She introduced herself as a lawyer, her voice smooth and self-assured.

  She didn't waste time with pleasantries. Turning her intense gaze towards Kiley, she spoke, and her words were entirely unexpected, a sharp swerve from the grim reality of the interrogation. "Kiley," she began, her voice low and compelling, "I have a deal for you."

  She leaned forward slightly, her expression serious but with a hint of something else. Opportunity, perhaps, or even allure. "You're in a difficult situation," she acknowledged, glancing briefly at the door Detective Malloway had left through. "But you have something powerful people need."

  Kiley, still reeling from the detective's revelations and her fear, could only stare at this stunning woman offering her a lifeline. The lawyer continued, her words painting a picture far removed from the cold reality of her predicament.

  "I can get you out of all this trouble. Completely." She paused, letting the weight of that promise settle. Then came the truly bizarre turn. "Has Kiley ever thought of being a hero? An adventurer?"

  The questions hung in the air, surreal and utterly out of place, yet delivered with an unnerving sincerity by the most beautiful woman Kiley had ever encountered.