PART 2: THE ECHO OF INNOCENCE
The silence that followed Salomé’s words was not empty; it was heavy, suffocating, and charged with a sudden, electric tension. The air in the visiting room seemed to thin, leaving everyone—the guards, the director, and the trembling man in orange—gasping for the next breath.
All eyes shifted, as if pulled by an invisible magnetic force, to the handbag slung over the shoulder of the social worker, Martha Vance.
Martha was a woman who had spent fifteen years in the system. She was known for her efficiency, her stern demeanor, and her unwavering adherence to protocol. But in that heartbeat, the mask of the seasoned professional disintegrated. Her face didn’t just turn pale; it turned a sickly, translucent grey. Her hand, which had been idly checking her phone moments before, flew to the strap of her bag, her knuckles whitening.
“She’s… she’s confused,” Martha stammered, her voice pitching an octave higher than normal. “The trauma of the execution, the stress of the environment… Colonel, you can’t possibly listen to the delusions of a grieving child.”
But Colonel Bernard was no longer looking at the file on his desk. He was looking at Martha’s eyes. He had spent three decades reading the tells of liars—the twitch of a lip, the dilation of a pupil, the desperate way a guilty person tries to occupy space. Martha Vance was radiating guilt like a heatwave.
“Step back from the girl, Martha,” Bernard said, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous rumble.
“I have rights!” Martha cried, her voice cracking. “You need a warrant to search my personal property! This is harassment!”
“In this prison, under the shadow of a death warrant that may have been signed in blood and lies,” Bernard replied, stepping through the heavy steel door into the visiting room, “I am the law. Hand it over. Now.”
The Unraveling
The guards, sensing the shift in the atmosphere, moved with clinical precision. They didn’t need to be told twice. One moved to secure Julien, who was still trembling on the floor, while the other two blocked Martha’s exit.
The younger guard, the one who had lowered his eyes earlier, reached out. Martha didn’t give up the bag easily. She scrambled back, a primal snarl escaping her lips, but she was trapped. The guard firmly unhooked the strap from her shoulder.
The bag was placed on the cold metal table, right next to Julien’s chained wrists.
Colonel Bernard put on a pair of latex gloves. The room was so quiet that the snap of the rubber against his wrists sounded like a gunshot. He began to empty the contents.
A leather wallet.
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