#SaturdayScenes: Virtual Identity, Part 2
Though long gone, the zip ties still dug into her wrists. No matter how much Sandra rubbed at the pink bruises, she felt the hard plastic cutting off her circulation. No longer asleep, her hands still tingled from the onrush of blood.
And she was shivering.
The air conditioning in the interrogation room had to be hovering around sixty degrees, and they had stripped her of everything but her bra and panties. Or maybe it was her nerves that tingled and trembled.
Both of the above, she figured.
They’d brought her in here, cuffed her legs to a metal chair, sat her there, and told her not to move. Don’t you dare stand. They’d left her for… she didn’t know. Twenty, maybe thirty minutes?
Icing her. Isn’t that what they called it?
A hacker friend who’d gotten in trouble with the law said that’s what they did. They dropped you in a room — a black hole, he called it — and they let you think about it.
Oh, God. Is that what they thought? That she was a hacker? A terrorist, maybe? That she’d broken into some computer system?
She’d done nothing! Yeah, she knew some clever folks, the kind that stayed off-grid and dabbled in God knew what. But she took no part in their escapades. She had too much to lose, too much riding on the big debut of her game.
The door unlatched. Expecting men to come in, she covered up.
A woman stepped in. Her short brown hair flashed under the room’s lighting and bounced about an inch above her shoulders. Her shoulders glistened, too, covered with a shimmering sage green jacket, the sort mountaineers wear in snowy weather. She’d draped that over a white business blouse that tucked into blacker than black slacks.
The jacket got Sandra’s attention most of all. Well, that and the tall glass of water the woman held in one hand, swaying it a little here and there. Sandra licked her dry lips, fixating so much on the implied promise of moisture she almost missed the paper sack the woman held in her other hand.
“I’m cold,” Sandra said.
“Yes, I can see why.” The woman dropped the sack on her side of the table.
Sandra blinked at it. Clothes, maybe? She stared at it, wondering whether she should reach for it to look inside.
The woman sat. “I hate it how they do this.” She patted the bag. “And I’ve made provisions to remedy the dreadful situation. But first things first.”
Keeping the water glass aloft with her left hand, she reached into the bag and pulled out a tablet. She set it on the table. Sandra leaned forward to get a closer look. Gaudy red and yellow stickers caught her attention first. They lined the top of the display with acronyms she didn’t recognize.
“It’s quite safe,” the woman said. “Fully vetted electronics. The sort that won’t leak, spill, or record.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, exactly what I said.” She shrugged and smiled with condescension. “But you might stand a better chance at grasping the nuances. Technical wiz that you are.”
“I’m sorry.” Sandra swallowed and slumped back in her chair. “What’s this all about?”
“That’s what you’re going to tell us.” She raised the glass as if ready to make a toast…