Eclipse

REMEMBRANCE

ECLIPSE - CHAPTER 3:

The interrogation room at the county prison was not like it looked in movies.

There was no one-way mirror. No dramatic light swinging from the ceiling. It was just a small, cold room with cinder block walls painted pale green, a metal table bolted to the floor, two metal chairs, and a clock that ticked too loud. It smelled like disinfectant and old coffee.

Elena Blake had been waiting for eleven minutes.

She sat perfectly straight in her black tuxedo. Her legal pad was open in front of her, blank. Her pen was uncapped. Her phone was off. Her tie was straight. She had told the guard she did not want water. She did not want anything that would make her have to leave the room.

She was trying not to look at the door. She was trying to be a lawyer, not a fan.

The door buzzed and opened.

Marcus Hale walked in.

He was not in his white polo anymore. He was in an orange jumpsuit. It was too big for him. His hands were cuffed in front of him. His lip was still split from the fight with Dev yesterday. His hair was messy. There were dark circles under his eyes. He had not slept either.

For a second, Elena forgot how to breathe.

This was the man on her wall. The man on her milk carton. The man she had watched on a grainy YouTube video at nineteen years old singing in a bar with a broken string, and decided she wanted to be someone who never lost, like he never lost his voice.

Now he was five feet away, in chains.

The guard uncuffed one of his hands and cuffed it to the table. "You have thirty minutes," the guard said to Elena, then left.

The door locked.

Silence. The clock ticked.

Marcus looked at her. He looked confused. "You are my lawyer?"

Elena found her voice. She made it cold. Professional. The same voice she used to make CEOs cry on the stand.

"I am," she said. "My name is Elena Blake. I am twenty-five years old. I am lead counsel from Sterling & Cole. We represent Black Box Records, which means we represent Eclipse, which now means we represent you. I have won twenty-eight cases. I have lost zero. If you listen to me, we will make it twenty-nine and zero. Do you understand?"

Marcus stared at her tuxedo.

Elena said. "Now I need you to do something for me."

"What?"

"I need you to tell me everything," she said. She leaned forward slightly. "Not what happened last night. Everything. From the first day you met Kayden in kindergarten until he died. Every detail you can remember. Do not leave anything out. Do not try to make yourself look good. Just tell the truth."

Marcus laughed, a short, broken sound. "Kindergarten? You want kindergarten? I am being charged with murder and you want kindergarten?"

"I want to know who Kayden was to you before the world told you who he was," Elena said. "I want to know why you would never kill him. Or why you would. Start from kindergarten."

Marcus looked down at his cuffed hand. The metal clinked against the table.

"Okay," he said quietly. "Okay."

He started talking.

"We met in Mrs. Patterson's class. Kindergarten. I was five. He was five. He had this red backpack that was too big for him. He sat next to me because I was the only kid who did not laugh when he said his name was Kayden instead of Jayden. He was... he was loud even then. He had a guitar that was made of plastic. He brought it every day. The teacher would let him play during nap time."

Elena wrote. She did not look up. Met age 5. Red backpack. Plastic guitar.

"We stayed in the same school until middle school. In third grade, we started a band. It was me, him, and a kid named Tommy who played drums on a lunchbox. We called it The Fireflies. We were terrible."

A small smile, for the first time.

"In seventh grade, we met Dev. He was the new kid. He was angry all the time. He got into fights. But he could play real drums. His dad had a garage. We started practicing there. Kayden learned real guitar. I started singing because no one else wanted to. Then in ninth grade, Luca moved from Italy. He was twelve and he could already play better than all of us. He joined. That was Eclipse. We were fourteen, thirteen, and twelve. We played at school fairs. Weddings. Anywhere that would let us plug in."

He talked for a long time. Elena let him. She wrote down every name, every year. She was building a timeline in her head.

"Kayden was my second voice," Marcus said. "Everyone thought I was the leader because I was the lead singer. But Kayden was... he was the harmony. He knew when I was going to sing off key before I did. He would look at me on stage and I would know. We did not need to talk. We wrote every song together. Every single song on every album, we wrote in the same room. Even when we fought."

"What did you fight about?" Elena asked.

"Everything. Nothing. Music. Girls. Who got the bigger room on tour. He wanted to go solo last year. He told me. He said he had songs that did not sound like Eclipse. I told him to do it. I told him Eclipse would still be here. He got mad because I was not mad. He thought I did not care. I did care. I just... I knew he would come back."

He swallowed hard.

"Yesterday... we fought in rehearsal. All of us. Dev and me. Then Luca got hurt. Fell into the new portrait. Cut his elbow. Six stitches. Show canceled. I went home. I was... I was messed up. There were fans in my closet. Two girls. Security took them out. Then Kayden came. Mrs. Smith, my housekeeper, let him in. He brought burgers and fries. We ate on the floor. Like when we were kids. In my bedroom. We were laughing. We sang..."

He stopped.

"We sang the new song. The one we wrote. It was perfect how we had it a couple years ago... Then he sang his part. And my mum was always happy... Then we sang together. Then... then the sky went dark. Like really dark. Like an eclipse. And then..."

He shook his head.

"Then I woke up. Morning. Blood. Everywhere. On my shirt. On my hands. Kayden on the floor. Not breathing. Cold. And Mrs. Smith screaming. And then police. And cameras. And I... I do not remember. I do not remember how he died. I swear I do not remember. I would never hurt him. He was my brother. He was my brother since I was five years old."

He was breathing hard now. His one free hand was shaking.

Elena stopped writing. She looked at him.

"You do not remember how he died?" she asked. Her voice was flat.

"No," Marcus said. "I swear on my life. On his life. I do not remember. One minute we were singing, next minute he was... he was gone. And there was blood on me. I do not know how."

Elena stared at him for a long second. Then she did something Marcus did not expect.

She closed her legal pad. She pushed her chair back. She stood up.

And she started to sing.

Not like Marcus. Not beautiful. Low, slow, rough, like a chant. Like a song men sing in a prison yard.

> *Ohhh, twenty-five years in a concrete box,

> No guitar, no light, no stage,

> Counting cracks on a concrete box,

> Ohhh, twenty-five years in a concrete box...*

Her voice echoed in the small green room. It was terrible. It was meant to be terrible.

Marcus stared at her, horrified. "What are you doing? What the hell are you doing?"

Elena stopped singing. She looked down at him, her face completely serious, her black tux making her look like an executioner.

"That," she said quietly, "is what you will be hearing every night for the next twenty-five years to life if you do not cooperate with me. That is the song they sing in Block C. I have had clients in there. They sing it when a new celebrity inmate comes in. They will sing it for you, Marcus Hale, the pop star who killed his best friend and cannot even remember why."

Marcus went pale. "You are trying to scare me?"

"I am trying to save your life," Elena said, sitting back down. She leaned forward, her elbows on the table. "You just told me a beautiful story about kindergarten and plastic guitars. The jury will love that story. But the prosecutor is going to stand up and say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, the defendant says he does not remember stabbing his best friend to death in his own bedroom after a day of violent fights.' And you know what the jury will hear? They will hear 'I did it and I am lying.'"

"I am not lying!" Marcus shouted, then caught himself, looking at the door.

"Then help me," Elena said. Her voice dropped. "You said the sky went dark. What do you mean?"

"I do not know! It was clear and then it was dark, like... like someone turned off the sun. Mrs. Smith had locked the door. Three locks. Front door, inner gate, outer gate. She always locks three times. No one could get in. No one could get out. Only me and Kayden were inside. And now he is dead and I have his blood on me."

Elena wrote that down. Sky went dark. Three locks. No entry/exit.

"Who has keys to your house?" she asked.

"Me. Mrs. Smith. And... Black Box has an emergency key."

"Who else knew Kayden was coming over?"

"No one. He just came. He brought food."

Elena tapped her pen against the pad. Her mind was racing. This was why she had never lost. She did not listen to the story. She listened to the holes in the story.

"Marcus, listen to me very carefully," she said. "You are going to be arraigned this afternoon. The whole world thinks you murdered Kayden Ross because you were jealous he was going solo. The police found you covered in his blood with the murder weapon between you. You have no memory of the night. That is the worst defense in the history of defenses."

He put his head in his hands. "I know."

"So we are not going to use that defense," Elena said.

He looked up. "What?"

"We are going to tell the truth, but we are going to tell it better," she said. She closed her legal pad. "You met Kayden when you were five years old. You were brothers for twenty-one years. You ate on the floor together the night he died and sang a song about not wanting to be a masterpiece. You woke up and found him dead. You did not kill him. Someone else did. And Mrs. Smith locked the door from the outside with three locks, which means whoever did it was either already inside the house, or had a key, or..."

She stood up.

"Or what?" Marcus asked.

"Or the locks do not matter because what happened was not supposed to be possible," she said.

Marcus frowned. "What does that mean?"

"It means I believe you do not remember," Elena said. She picked up her pad. She was done. "And it means whoever killed Kayden wanted you to take the fall for it. And they wanted it to happen on a night when you had already fought on camera, when Luca was in the hospital, when the whole world was already talking about Eclipse falling apart."

She walked to the door and knocked for the guard.

"Elena," Marcus said behind her. It was the first time he said her name.

She turned.

"Do you think I did it?" he asked. His voice was small. Like a five-year-old with a red backpack.

Elena looked at him. The man on her wall. The man only Ethan knew she loved. The man she had just threatened with a prison song.

She held his gaze.

"I think you sang off key on purpose yesterday to piss Dev off," she said. "I think you knew the lines all along. I think you are a terrible actor when you try to pretend you do not care. And I think you did not kill Kayden Ross."

Marcus's eyes filled with tears. He nodded, once.

The door buzzed open.

Elena walked out, her black tux disappearing down the grey hallway, leaving Marcus alone with the ticking clock and the echo of that prison song.

Outside, Mr. Cole was waiting. "How did it go?"

Elena did not answer immediately. She looked at her notes. Red backpack. Plastic guitar. Three locks. Sky went dark.

"He does not remember," she said. "And I believe him."

Mr. Cole sighed. "That is the worst defense."

"I know," Elena said. "That is why we are going to win."

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