[Lauchenoiria]

Terrified or Terrorist?

Seahaven Central Police Station, Butterfly Island

Jae Chung looked through the two-way mirror at the sobbing teenager. She had been one of those arrested in the seized provincial government building, found hiding in a cupboard on her own, shaking. Unlike the others, who had all yelled insults at the police detaining them, this one had merely started wailing and muttering incoherent phrases. The others hadn’t told them anything useful in questioning, but this one hadn’t been able to form sentences yet. She seemed to be calming down a little, so Chung entered the room.

The teenager looked up with frightened, wide eyes. Her wrists were handcuffed to the table but she was clutching her hands together so tightly that Chung worried she was going to draw blood with her nails by mistake. Her eyes were extremely red from crying and the top of her shirt was damp from the tears. She looked as if she expected a Kerlian torturer to enter the room and interrogate her, not like a terrorist. Chung found herself feeling sorry for the girl.

“Anca Vilaseca? My name is Jae Chung, I’m here to ask you a few questions. This interview is being recorded for monitoring purposes. Do you think you can answer a couple of questions?” Chung asked gently.

Anca nodded and sniffed, a tear still running down her cheek. Chung handed her a tissue, allowing her to blow her nose before she continued.

“How did you become involved with the Warriors of Our Earth, Anca?”

“I was… I used to go to school climate protests and there were WOE people there recruiting people and they told me that this was the best way to get climate action and I came here and they said it would be fine and we’d just get fines and I don’t want to go to prison please, please don’t send me to prison, I’m so sorry!”

Anca began to cry again, holding her head in her hands and wailing, utterly bawling her eyes out in fear. Chung suddenly felt a pang in her heart for this poor girl; who’d clearly been manipulated into doing something she didn’t understand. This was not the kind of scary terrorist that the media were currently starting to make out members of this group to be. This was a frightened teenager who didn’t know what she was doing.

“Anca,” Jae said gently, passing her another tissue. “Anca, I know you didn’t mean to cause any harm to anyone. Please help us, if you can help us to find out what else the Warriors are planning then we can help you. People died in Xiomera, Anca. I know you don’t want people to die, so help us, yes?”

She sniffed loudly once more, then nodded quickly.

“Are you sure you don’t want us to call the lawyer’s number on the card you had when you were arrested, Anca?”

“No! The WOE lawyers, they’ll just tell me not to tell you anything and to make a big fuss at a trial to get media attention. That’s what they do!”

Chung could easily believe it, she’d seen trials of activists before. “Okay, Anca. Would you like a public defender? You’re 18 so you don’t need a guardian but I think it might help you to talk to a lawyer, hm?”

“Okay,” Anca leaned down to wipe some snot from her nose.

Jae Chung took some keys out of her pocked and unlocked the handcuffs on Anca’s wrists. The teenager was no threat to anyone and she felt bad. The girl needed a lawyer, she needed someone to talk to who she wasn’t terrified of. She patted the girl on the shoulder and left a packet of tissues on the table, then left the interrogation room, closing the door and then leaning against the wall and taking some deep breaths.

“Chung? Are you okay?” said one of the other counter-terrorism officers who was temporarily working out of this building as he passed.

“This is not right, Alvaro,” she shook her head. “That girl is a kid. A scared kid. These people aren’t terrorists; I’m beginning to think the opposition is right about Alvarez. Shuell says jump and we ask how high. It’s wrong.”

“You’re exaggerating, Jae, as always. That one just fell in with the wrong crowd. We can drop the charges against her, but the others, one of them just told me that he wished more Xiomerans had died on Manauia Island. You’re too soft for this line of work, Jae. Who got you involved in this? Thingmy from the Annatown battle, that’s right.”

“Yasin Zaunq,” Jae Chung almost whispered. “He died at the hands of the Gonhogians in Annatown, gave me the USB to deliver to Sonja Alvarez.”

“Zaunq, that was it. You should’ve just found someone to stick the contents of that online, let the whole world know about Auroras, y’know?”

“It was heavily encrypted. It took a week to decrypt.”

“Yeah, yeah. Well, I better get back to the interrogations, the terrorists are not letting up with their conspiracy theories. Shuell this, Manauia that. I don’t think they wanted to go to the talks to make peace, I think they wanted to assassinate Calhualyana. See ya, Jae.”

Alvaro sauntered off down the corridor, Chung watching as he departed. I think you’re the conspiracy theorist, Alvaro she thought to herself as he left. She sighed, and turned back towards the offices to call a lawyer for Anca.