Time/Date: TC1853.01.19 (Late Afternoon)
Location: Metropolitan Police Station - 4th Ring, Interrogation Room Three
Lieutenant Lyra Veyne let the silence stretch. Two hours into this interrogation, she'd learned that Selene Lin needed these pauses—needed time to construct her justifications, to rebuild the walls that kept falling apart under the weight of seventeen years of guilt.
But there was something else Veyne had noticed. Something that didn't quite fit the pattern of a calculating conspirator.
Selene believed her own lies.
Not all of them. The Amber Kiss—that had been deliberate cruelty, coldly planned. The years of abuse—calculated punishment for a child who represented everything Selene had lost. But the baby swap itself? That crude, impulsive crime that had somehow remained hidden for nearly two decades?
There was something almost... religious... in the way Selene spoke about it.
