Officer Alvarado suppressed a yawn as she walked towards solitary confinement. There were ten solitary cells, each with thick soundproof walls and state-of-the-art locks. Nowhere was more secure in all of Arx. But, since solitary confinement was a torture worse than death, nobody had used the cells for anything more than storage for as long as most people could remember.
With one notable exception.
Olivia Hahn, also known as Phantasma, was locked in that block at the moment.
No one had spoken to her for the week since her imprisonment. No one had even seen her. Security cameras let them keep an eye on her, but Olivia had had no human contact for that time. The closest thing she'd gotten was the delivery of her meals. In other words, what Alvarado was doing right now.
She reached the door and took a breath before opening the slot beneath the door. Phantasma was dangerous, so everyone had been told very firmly that under no circumstances were they to try to see or speak with her. Alvarado was definitely terrified of losing her mind like some of the officers who'd been casualties of Olivia's first escape, but at the same time the poor woman was probably losing her mind.
When Alvarado pulled the old tray out from under the door, it was untouched. That was strange. Even if Ms. Hahn hadn't eaten everything, she usually ate at least something. Alvarado stared at the tray for a moment, trying to decide what to do.
It was against orders, but she took a breath and spoke up.
"Ms. Hahn? You haven't eaten anything. Is everything alright in there?"
No response. Even if the walls and door were meant to keep sound out, the tray flap was open. There should be no reason Ms. Hahn couldn't hear her. Alvarado didn't even hear movement on the other side of the door.
Alvarado hovered in indecision a bit longer.
"I'll take the old food back. Here's your next meal. Please eat something." She slid the tray under the door and headed for the kitchen with the leftovers.
It seemed like such a shame to put them to waste.
When Alvarado had disposed of the old tray, she headed to her superior. Or rather, her superior's superior. Lieutenant Collier was in charge of the prison today, and Alvarado wanted to ask her something in person.
"Lieutenant," Alvarado said as she entered the monitoring room.
"Officer," the lieutenant responded. "Is there something you needed that your sergeant couldn't help with?"
"Something like that." Alvarado suddenly felt self-conscious. Lieutenant Collier was a busy woman. "I was wondering if there's been any change with Ms. Hahn."
"No changes," Collier replied curtly.
"It's just..."
"Spit it out. Or get out."
"Sorry, ma'am. When I retrieved Ms. Hahn's tray just now, it was untouched. I know missing one meal won't harm her in the long run, but I thought it was something we should keep an eye on."
"What?" Collier turned with a frown on her face. "What did you say?"
"Ms. Hahn's food was untouched when I retrieved it..." Was Collier mad at Alvarado for reporting something so small?
"That's not right. Proctor, play the tape from when the tray was delivered this morning." The officer by the monitors nodded and quickly ran through a few commands on the computer.
Sure enough, security footage dated for that very morning showed Ms. Hahn eating roughly half the food on her tray.
"What?" Was Collier as confused as Alvarado?
"You see? That tray should have been obviously touched. Did you already dispose of it?" Collier asked.
"Yes, ma'am. I didn't think it was a big deal. I thought it would be something we'd keep an eye on."
"Proctor, I want that footage checked. Is there anything off about it?" Proctor frantically looked through the metadata before making a sound that sounded like a choke.
"Um, Lieutenant..." He glanced back at them, a look of terror on his face. "This video footage is four days old. It's been looped in, so we don't actually have eyes on the cell..."
"What?" Collier slammed her fist on the desk. "How could this happen?"
"I'll look into it!" Proctor started hurriedly clicking on things and typing.
"Have we been hacked?" Alvarado whispered. It seemed unthinkable, but...
"We can't have been! We have the best security in the entire city. There's no way anyone could get past our defenses, let alone without alerting us." Collier's face tightened.
"What do you need me to do, ma'am?"
"Who's your sergeant?"
"Rollins."
"Bring him in here! No, not just him. I want you to get all my sergeants in here, as well as Glass and McCarthy. They should be on duty today. I'll go report to Colonel Powers. I'll be back with orders as soon as I can."
"Ma'am!" Alvarado scrambled out of the room to carry out orders while Proctor continued looking through the computer systems.
An hour later, a bunch of bigwigs were gathered in a conference room. It had taken Alvarado a while to get everyone Collier had asked for and for some reason she herself was still here.
What did I do? I just noticed the food tray was full...
Alvarado was a relatively new officer, and had just been doing her best to manage her job without catching attention. Now she was about to come face to face with a colonel.
Except when Collier came into the room, she had both Colonel Powers and General Jordan with her.
This was a hell of a big deal now.
Proctor scuttled in behind them and Collier launched into things without missing a beat.
"We've lost eyes on Olivia Hahn. When this officer - sorry, what was your name?" Alvarado froze at being addressed, but Rollins saved her.
"Officer Isla Alvarado."
"Thank you, Rollins. Officer Alvarado was swapping out the food trays when she noticed that the old tray was untouched. Our security footage showed that the food should have been half-gone. After some quick digging, Officer Proctor realized that the footage was fake."
"Rather, it is old footage that has been fed into the camera to trick us," Proctor said. Despite the skittish look on his face, he spoke confidently.
"Have we been able to regain eyes on the cell?" General Jordan asked.
"Not yet. I've been doing everything I can, but I'm also concerned about who could have possibly snuck into our system without anyone noticing. I've been checking all the systems I can to make sure nothing else is compromised," Proctor said.
"Is anything else?"
"Not from what I can tell, but we'd need to send several people on it to really check everything. It's just too much for me to manage."
"Good work, Proctor," the general said, toying with the ends of his sleeves. Was that a nervous tick? Alvarado would have laughed if the situation wasn't so tense.
"Thank you, sir." Proctor went to sit down behind Sergeant Glass.
"Do we have any other information, Collier?" Colonel Powers asked.
"Not at the moment. I judged that based on Ms. Hahn's crimes and history, sending officers to check her cell would be too dangerous without proper precautions."
"Good call, though I fear that has to be our next step anyway. Can we call in the Third?" Powers glanced at the general.
"I hate asking Luis for help. He's got a big enough head as it is," General Jordan muttered. "But it looks like we don't have a choice. The Third Division has dealt with Ms. Hahn before, and they are trained to react to all kinds of emergencies. I'll send him a message that I need a squad. Beyond that, none of this information leaves this room until we know more. The last thing we need is someone taking advantage of this chaos."
"Sir!" The room saluted as the general left and Powers started giving orders.
How had she ended up here? Alvarado was back at the solitary cell with a squad of Third Division emergency responders. After using a camera through the bottom slot in the door to confirm that Ms. Hahn was still in there, they were going to go in and check on her. She tried to keep her hands from shaking as she keyed in the code to open the door. Proctor's voice came over the radio.
"Verify you're requesting entry, Alvarado."
"Yes, it's me. I'm here with the Third Division squad and we're requesting entry."
"Code is 4438. Punch it in, but don't press ENTER yet." She did as he said. "Perfect. Now on three, press ENTER. One, two, three."
The door slid open and Alvarado ducked to the side as the Third Division squad broke into the cell, rayguns at the ready. The sounds of their footsteps quickly stopped as Alvarado hid out of the way.
"Sergeant Chan, what do you see?" Proctor's voice echoed over the radio. Silence answered him for a couple moments until the sergeant ducked her head out.
"Alvarado, you might want to see this."
Alvarado timidly walked into the cell as Proctor kept asking for details. Olivia Hahn was on the ground near one wall, with two officers checking her vitals as a third trained her raygun on her. Finally one officer looked up and shook his head.
"She's dead."
