Lost

Chapter 85: "Interrogations"

"How did it go?" he asked.

Salma shrugged, her frown deepening.

"They wanted me to identify the man who had pushed me into the room. I never saw his face,"

Dean frowned. It had not gone unnoticed by him that Salma avoided talking about her assailant.

"And?" He urged.

"And they asked about the other guys involved in the attack but I was blindfolded once inside the room, so I didn't have much information for them," Salma finished, hoping he would not ask about the events on the roof when her blindfold had finally come off, both literally and figuratively.

Dean scowled at the obvious lie but didn't say anything. Like James and Asim, Dean could not figure out why Salma was covering up for Zayn. While Asim thought it was the agent's underhanded tactics and James thought she felt threatened by Zayn himself, Dean disagreed with both. He knew Asim's reason was more plausible but he was sure there was something more to it than her just getting scared by the agent's blackmail.

Salma passed by the disciplinary committee chambers on her way out, reminding her of the hearing for the disciplinary action against Zayn. She was scheduled to present her account of his misconduct in the lab a day after the attack. However, knocked out by trauma and cold, Salma's absence was excused. She had found out just that morning that Zayn had managed to clear his name with his reputation barely scratched.

The committee had ruled his misconduct out as an unintentional, unfortunate mishap. Zayn was only to pay funds to restock the damaged specimens. A major case in point quoted in his favor was that apparently he was one of the chief sponsors of a project that provided scholarships to needy students and funded their research. Salma was baffled.

He had to be some sorts of a millionaire to pump that kind of money into the education system. Where did an arts student land his hands on that kind of sums? The sort of unexplained and undisclosed power he wielded sometimes scared her. Who was he? Why was he getting out of tight spots so easily? Was she becoming party to a system that was rearing a monster that could never be questioned or held accountable no matter what he did?

A gust of cold wind hit them when they stepped out of the building. The campus grounds were covered in pure white. The tall trees had shed their leaves and were now loaded with snow. The grounds were deserted; students either gone home for holidays or preferring to stay indoors to avoid the freezing temperatures.

Dean turned the collars of his coat up against the cold. Salma saw a figure heading towards the cars. She realized it was the agent.

Was Zayn really just a friend that she protected? Or was there another reason staring at her in the face but she was too blind to see it?

"Wait for me," Salma mumbled to Dean and before he could reply, she rushed towards the agent. "Alex!"

The agent turned around with a smile.

"Finally remembered my name, did you?"

'What was all that?" Salma demanded.

"Interrogation," she replied. Salma wasn't humored. "A controlled interrogation."

"You mean structured lies." Salma returned. "You just allowed him to walk scot-free again, because of - wait, what was it? Oh yes, because I pushed him too hard?"

"And didn't you?"

Salma's mouth hung open. Was the agent really pinning her getting assaulted by Zayn on her now?

"When you think of everything that went down that night, and knowing him the way you do, aren't you convinced he doesn't deserve what might come to him if he's --"