April 10, 2045 - 11:10 PM

While Margo was busy attempting to heal Dottie's broken wings, Andrade was doing her best to contribute to the investigation herself.

Dottie was one of three girls they found who didn't need immediate medical attention. Another one of the girls was too traumatized to be speak, only gazing at the wall, waiting for the dawn of a new day. Mason immediately ordered therapy for her and contact with her family. That only left one more girl available for the interview.

Andrade believed the girl didn't need the PACER. She was easily the most stable of the girls they rescued, as she was the only one who wasn't crying or imprisoned in her own thoughts. In fact, she looked like a student ready to take on a dreaded exam, a balanced mix of anxiousness and vigilance. The girl was of Asian descent and had multiple scratches and injuries around her face, most of which were hidden by her long black hair. She wore a shirt that was clearly too big for her, as it had been provided to her at the last second by the Empaths. She waited at a table in the other room, wrapped in a blanket.

Andrade entered the room, the door automatically closing behind her. She tapped the side of her ThoughtControl piece so the lens hovered in front of her eye, and she took a seat in front of the girl. "Hello there," she greeted. "I'm Inspector Daniela Andrade. I work for Psychwatch and I'm here to help you. What is your name, honey?"

"Penelope Parker," the girl replied after a brief pause. "My friends call me Penny."

"Nice to meet you, Penny. Excuse me as I review your P3S data."

Accessing the SanityScan hanging in the corner, the data flashed across Andrade's lens:

Name: Penelope Meili Parker

Age: 16

Sex: Female

Status: Undiagnosed (dealing with low self-esteem; last reported seeing a counselor on 12/28/2044)

Threat Level 1 (Shows no sign of hostility. However, will take defensive action if the situation requires)

"According to the P3S, you've had access to Psychwatch's services before," Andrade explained. "Could you please tell me more about yourself? Where are you from? How'd you get into this situation?"

"Well..." Penny croaked, tugging the blanket toward her face. Despite her timidity, she was easily more composed in comparison to Dottie. "I was actually born in Los Angeles, but we had to move to Baltimore because of the wildfires."

Andrade winced. "Yeah, I've seen pictures of them. Never thought I'd ever see flames consume a city skyline like that. But I'm glad you and your family made it out safely."

"Thanks." Penny coughed. "But things didn't get better when I moved here to the East Coast. I was at a New Years Eve party with some of my friends. There was this one kid. Leon Maxwell. He's my age. I kinda liked him at first, but he became weirder the more I got to know him."

"How so?"

Penny coughed again. "He's a pervert. He always talked about pranking the school by filling its fire sprinklers with Wonderland Mist so he could have sex with as many girls as possible. It sounded like he was joking at first, but then he told me about this secret club out here in Philadelphia called the House of Pleasure."

Andrade nodded her head. "I've heard of plenty of these so-called 'neo-speakeasies' hidden in offline neighborhoods. But please continue."

"So Leon told me this House of Pleasure place was crazy as hell and lots of fun. Drugs, alcohol, music. But what he liked most were the robo-whores."

"Sentient prostitution, I presume," Andrade muttered. Her ThoughtControl took quick notes of the House's details described by Penny and sent them to the rest of her fellow officers. "So what happened next?"

A series of coughs burst from Penny's throat. She paused for a moment to regain control, her throat as dry as sandpaper.

"Atkinson, could you please bring this young lady a glass of water?" Andrade asked through her piece.

"Thank you, miss," Penny uttered in a scratchy voice.

"Are you feeling sick?"

"I don't think so. Just haven't drank water in a—" Penny was interrupted by another series of coughs. Andrade handed her a tissue, and the poor girl began hacking phlegm and blood into the soft piece of paper, dying it red.

"We'll get you to a doctor as soon as the interview is over. Or your parents, whoever you'd rather meet first."

The door at the edge of the room slid open and Nikki marched in, holding a glass of water. She placed it on the table beside Penny before walking back out of the room, refusing to say a word or even glance back at the other two.

"You'll have to excuse her," Andrade said. "She's incredibly shy."

"I am, too," Penny replied, taking a gulp of her water. "Guess that's why I let myself believe I'd be safe going in that truck with Leon and his friends."

Andrade raised an eyebrow. "Is that where everything went wrong?"

Penny quietly nodded, slouching into her chair so the blanket covered her mouth. "He was drunk that night. Or high. I don't remember. He asked me to go with him and a few friends to a party in Philadelphia. I just wanted to be noticed for once."

Search for P3S data on Leon Maxwell and his last location, Andrade reported through her piece.

"When we finally got to the House of Pleasure, I knew I made a huge mistake following him. I didn't realize the Sentients would be around my age. Some of them looked even younger. And hardly any of them wore clothes."

Andrade quietly nodded her head, but disgust filled her like rushing water.

"You could tell they weren't human. Their eyes were dead, like porcelain dolls. They only ever said what others wanted to hear. Do anything they wanted them to do." Penny paused, nearly choking on her next few words. "Leon wanted me to be just like them."

Andrade leaned forward. "What happened next?"

A single tear drifted down the girl's cheek. "He let them take me."

Still retaining her stoic demeanor, Andrade activated the lens of her ThoughtControl piece. Dozens of images of the ravaged corpses of the Bod-Modders flashed across her line of sight. Beside them appeared the bodies of the masked men they took out during the ambush. They still couldn't determine which group of lowlifes were the girls' true captors.

Until now.

"I was stuck with the Bod-Modders for the last four months with nineteen other girls. They took us to New Orleans where the largest black market Sentient manufacturers were located. They made four copies of me...and sent each of them to a different state."

"But we only found five of you. What happened to the rest?"

Penny looked down at the floor, slowly shaking her head.

"Oh..." Andrade concluded. "Do you know why they brought you back?"

Penny coughed again. "The Bod-Modder's leader said his boss couldn't manufacture anymore Sentients. So he sent us back here to Philadelphia, where he'd sell us back to the House of Pleasure."

"Fucking animal," Andrade muttered, but her straight-faced expression remained unbroken.

"Then the masked men came."

Activate the Psych Expressors, Andrade ordered subconsciously.

"Anyone who had a cybernetic enhancement of some kind was killed. My friend Dottie...she saw him cut off metal limbs with just a dagger, yet she couldn't help but fall for him. He was just like the Sentients, telling her everything she wanted to hear. Piecing a broken girl back together in his own sick way. He gave her a spark rose drenched in the blood of the people he killed. That made her happy. But I'm pretty sure it meant he was gonna kill the rest of us, too."

Andrade reached for Penny's hand with her own robotic one. "These men are nothing," she asserted. "If they need to wear masks to feel intimidating, then they've already proven their inferiority. And as a Psychwatch Neutralizer, I can assure you: we will be their downfall."

Penny didn't say anything else. She only nodded quietly. "How are you so calm after everything that's happened?" Andrade asked.

Penny gulped. "I'm used to it," she croaked. "I spent three weeks trapped in a bus because of the Red Riots when I was ten. I once lived in a neighborhood that went offline for two months and people broke into my house multiple times. Like I said, I'm used to the world going out of its way to hurt me."

"Definitely feels that way sometimes."

"What happened to your arm?"

Andrade glanced down at her artificial arm, her robotic fingers patting against the tabletop. "I was a stupid kid," she replied. "If I were Psychwatch, I wouldn't have given myself this second chance."

Penny let out another cough, shivering in her blanket.

"Just like Leon Maxwell, I found pleasure in vices. Heroin. Wonderland. Apaths. Sex with anyone who was willing to do it. I brought that lifestyle with me from Miami. One day someone tried to take that away from me. If it weren't for that one shot from a Subjugate-mode Fatemaker that took my arm, I would've stabbed one of my closest friends to death."

Penny refused to change her expression, much like the Psychwatch officer before her, but it was obvious the revelation horrified her.

"And it's good thing it was Psychwatch that found me. Unlike regular cops that see drug addicts as criminals, they treated me as a patient seeking a way to better myself. They put me through rehab, gave me this prosthetic arm, gained my full support, and now I'm one of them."

Penny still refused to even crack a small smile. Even though she grew warmer with comfort, her face was still trapped in that cold, stoic expression. Even without the Bod-Modders, those memories would keep her trapped in a new kind of prison.

"Now," Andrade declared, clasping her hands together, "let's get you home."

* * *

Several minutes later, Margo and Andrade stood in Mason's office. Holographic projections of the images generated by the Psych Expressors along with recordings of the interviews from both within the PACER and from Penny Parker's interview hovered in the air like surveillance footage. Holden sat near the doorway, operating the projections. While Andrade maintained her typical stoic expression and stature, Margo stood with a disheartened slouch, her gaze unmoving from the floor beneath her.

"Let's have a brief recap here," Mason ordered. "What have you gathered from your interviews? Andrade."

"The survivor is Penelope Meili Parker," Andrade spoke. "Sixteen-years-old, female, Chinese-American descent, undiagnosed. Baltimore resident. Went missing during a New Years Eve party after accompanying Leon Maxwell, another youth her age, to a neo-speakeasy known as the House of Pleasure. Parker reported spending the last four months in the captivity of the bio-hacker group, the Bod-Modders."

"Anything else to report?"

"Yes. She claims she was taken alongside nineteen other girls, but only five remained when we found them. She additionally claims her captors took her to New Orleans and created four Sentients based on her likeness, all of which were sold presumably to traffickers."

"Any signs of trauma?"

"According to the Scan, very mild, to the point it's practically nonexistent. She mentioned enduring situations like this before, but she has total control over her emotions nonetheless. Apparently, she's a survivor of the Red Riots."

Mason nodded her head. "Impressive. Where is she now?"

"She's waiting outside. Officer Maslow is keeping her company until her parents arrive later tonight."

"But it's already gonna be midnight," Holden chimed in.

"An hour or two is nothing compared to the amount of months they've spent without their daughter," Andrade replied, turning back to the boy. And that was all it took to get him to return his focus to the projector.

"Good work, Andrade. Remind me to investigate Leon Maxwell's P3S data later. It could aid us in tracking down the location of the House of Pleasure."

"Thank you, Commissioner."

Mason turned to Margo. "Sandoval. Report please."

Margo's mind felt like it was back in the PACER, forced against her will to watch a broken young girl give in to the false charm of this masked man. This Multi Man none of them had yet to encounter. She felt like they had already lost the battle. Not because they lost someone, but rather because she knew Dottie wouldn't be the last of the opposition.

"Sandoval," Mason repeated more strictly. "I said report please."

Margo took a deep breath, refusing to look up from the floor. "Her name is Dottie Forrester," she delivered in a soft voice, unable to hide the empty spot where her hope came and went. "She's sixteen years old and lives in Boston. She suffers from social anxiety disorder and trauma-induced psychosis because we didn't save her sooner."

"Damn it, Sandoval," Andrade muttered. "Don't do that to yourself."

"Continue please," Mason ordered.

"She's disconnected from her friends and family, the latter possibly out of homophobic intentions due to her bisexuality. The Bod-Modders took her. Tried to do things no normal human being would ever think of doing. But you know what the worst part is?"

"Sandoval, don't let your emotions get the best of—"

"She's in love with the madman who murdered her captors."

Even the regularly composed Mason flashed a look of concern. Her eyes lifted toward the holographic images of the insidious art pieces generated by the Psych Expressors. One image was of the Multi Man standing in the dark, the darkness melting onto him like oil. His suit was a light shade of teal and the red Xs on his mask were bright, almost animated in appearance. In another picture, he didn't wear his blazer, instead revealing a vest and pure white sleeves aside from the areas around his gloves, which were drenched in bright red blood. He held a spark rose in his right hand, the ghostly white petals untarnished by the crimson blemishing his gloves. The amount of detail put into painting this stranger in a more attractive light only reflected the distorted mindset of the poor girl whose thoughts he occupied.

"Hybristophilia," Holden said in shock.

"Excuse me, Sanger?" Mason asked.

"Hybristophilia! That's what that girl has! The attraction to and sexual arousal by an individual who's committed criminal acts. And you could tell, too! She nearly climaxed during the simulations. Like the girls who fell in love with Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer and—"

"Sanger!" Mason shouted before clearing her throat. "That's enough."

"He's right," Margo added sheepishly. "He's got her wrapped around his finger. The last thing Dottie told me before the simulation ended was that she wanted to be with him."

"Well that's obviously never gonna happen," Mason growled. "Where is she?"

"She's waiting outside with Parker and Maslow," Andrade replied. "However, Maslow says Parker is willing to take care of her until her parents arrive."

Margo turned to Andrade. "She doesn't even want to see them," she said. "And from the way she described them, I don't think they want to see her either. There's only one other person in her world now besides herself, and he's a psychopath."

Mason was a sheet of ice beginning to crack. She'd continue to speak in her poised manner, but her patience was faltering. "This is not about what Miss Forrester wants," she said. "It's about what she needs. Now, the girl says she's from Boston, correct? The city is under the protection of the P3S, so she should have access to our other services in case her condition worsens. However, if she ends up bringing harm to herself or other people, then her decision to recover will no longer be her choice. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, ma'am," Holden replied, and Andrade nodded her head in agreement. It took Margo a few seconds longer, but she eventually nodded her head as well.

"Dismissed," Mason declared. "Check on the girls. Make sure they return home safely."

Holden deactivated the projector, and the holographic images vanished in a blink. He followed Margo and Andrade out of the office, getting one more glimpse of the Philadelphia skyline towering above them beyond the window. Carl sat beside Penny on a bench in the hallway, the blanket still wrapped around her. The two of them were laughing about something, and the officers were relieved to see she had a brighter future ahead of her.

Then they saw Dottie. She sat alone at another bench, the bloody spark rose resting in her hands. She had a smile that stretched from one ear to the other and she giggled quietly to herself as she stared into the flower's spellbinding petals.

Her screams as they pried the flower away from her haunted Margo for days to come.