Inherit the Wind

Emily throws her shoulder against the door, banging into a room where Hanna is tied to a chair and wired to a machine. She strikes out with her flashlight, bringing it down against the head of a blonde in a beige trench coat who tries to rush at her. She hears the casing crack with the force of the blow, and punches with her other hand, car keys splayed between her fingers. The woman’s face tears, and she yelps in pain. Emily elbows her in the face and she falls to the floor, then kicks Emily’s legs out from beneath her. Emily lands badly, twisting her ankle, as Hanna’s captor scrambles up and starts to run out of the room. Emily leaps up and tries to grab her before she makes it to the opposite door, grasping at anything she can reach, which turns out to be their tormentor’s hair. The synthetic blonde wig comes off in Emily’s hand, and the kidnapper sprints away down the corridor.

Emily turns her attention to Hanna, quickly untying her hands.

“Em-ah-leeee!” Hanna trills, sounding kind of drunk. “You’re here!” As if they’ve just run into each other at one of Noel’s parties.

Emily frowns, notices the syringe next to Hanna’s chair. She glances around the room, taking in the video camera and polygraph in the corner, and a bulletin board behind Hanna chock full of grainy black and white surveillance photos and time notations, a map of Rosewood and a blueprint of Radley.

“Are you okay?” Emily asks, her voice full of concern. She bends down and unties Hanna’s legs, takes a close look at the cut and purplish bruise on her temple.

“Peachy!” Hanna tells her. Her pupils are huge. She’s probably been drugged, Emily realizes. That or she has a major concussion.

“Can you walk?” Emily asks, helping Hanna to her feet. Hanna makes a dismissive noise, then takes a step and almost collapses onto Emily.

“Just wanted to hug you,” Hanna mutters, as Emily struggles to stay upright. “Can we go now?”

“Good idea,” Emily agrees, limping and half-dragging Hanna as she guides her friend’s swaying stumble footed progress out the door.

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Spencer can see her parents clinking glasses through the windows of the ballroom. It’s surreal to think that the victory party is still underway. Caleb careens wildly past the valet and around the side of the east side building, the most remote of the old hospital wings.

“Here,” Spencer says. It’s the first word she’s spoken to him in the past fifteen minutes. It was Mona who recognized where the picture of Hanna was taken. Mona who took charge and started texting the others to meet them. Spencer feels like she’s been shot through with novocain, as if her whole body is numb, even as her brain urges her into action.

The three of them rush out of the car and Spencer hurries towards the hidden door where the underground passage lets out. She’s five feet away when the door swings open, and Emily appears, heaving a bedraggled and bemused Hanna along beside her.

“Thank God,” Emily sighs. “Spencer, there’s a bunch of stuff back there, you need to see -”

Hanna’s head snaps up at the sound of Spencer’s name. She gazes at her friends and smiles vaguely. Mona and Caleb both move forward to try and support Hanna’s other shoulder. Hanna grimaces and sags harder against Emily. “I know you wanna kiss me,” she giggles.

The tension radiating off their rescue party is sharp enough to pierce Emily’s adrenaline rush.

“She’s drugged,” Emily explains urgently. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

“Caleb,” Mona snaps, “Go inside and find Ashley.”

“I’m not leaving her,” Caleb protests, shaking his head.

“Go,” Spencer says, in a tone of voice that sounds exactly like Melissa used to, ordering Spencer and her friends out of the house when she had a boyfriend over.

Caleb shoots one last anguished look at Hanna, then jogs quickly back towards the main doors.

Mona glares at Caleb’s retreating back, then carefully takes charge of Hanna. “We’re good,” she promises. She waves a hand at them dismissively, like she’s still one of Hanna’s maids on Homecoming Court. “Have your little sleuthing show and tell!”

Emily tugs Spencer’s arm, leading her back down the passageway.

“What happened at the church?”

“Nothing good,” Spencer says, tersely. “Are you hurt?”

“It’s my ankle,” Emily says, limping as fast as she can. “Sprained, not broken. I hope.”

Without Hanna hanging around her shoulders, it’s a quick trip back to the room where Hanna was being held.

“This ‘A’ is off their game,” Emily observes. “In the old days, this would have been cleared out two seconds after Hanna and I were out the door.”

“New player, old game,” Spencer mutters, examining the bulletin board.

“Emily?” Aria’s voice echoes from the sewer tunnel.

“Aria!” Spencer shouts back.

Aria and Ezra appear in the doorway moments later. “Our tunnels dead ended,” Aria pants. “We followed you as fast as we could.”

“We found Hanna,” Emily tells them. “She’s okay.”

“Yeah,” Spencer says, sounding on edge. “Hanna’s fine.”

“That’s great news,” Ezra says. “And we found a lair?”

“We found something,” Spencer replies, grimly as she pockets the syringe. “They drugged her, probably sodium pentothal.”

“Is that a roofie?” Aria asks, picking up the blonde wig from the floor.

“Worse,” Spencer answers. “A truth serum.” She hands Emily the video camera, then detaches the polygraph wires and gives the machine to Ezra to carry as she motions for Aria to help her pull the bulletin board off the wall.

“Whoa,” Aria says as they heft it between them, revealing even more photos and records taped to the previously concealed part of the wall. The largest one, a glossy portrait sized shot directly in the center of the display, is Charlotte DiLaurentis in a red dress, her left leg kicked up like a movie star as she kisses Dr. Elliott Rollins.

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Alison stares at the ceiling of her room, counting the tiles for the twentieth time. She listens for the footsteps of the orderly, which should be passing by three minutes from now. She closes her eyes, evens out her breathing.

Emily will be back in the morning, she tells herself. She’s Emily.

Alison was standing in her yard, watching the four cars pull away. Everyone was leaving, their trunks full of suitcases and laptops and hope for the future, whatever big dreams that survived intact.

As Aria turned the corner, Alison vividly recalls peeling out of the parking lot of the Lost Woods resort, a wig on her head and terror in her heart. She still remembers the feeling of seeing Rosewood fade into the rearview mirror, getting smaller every minute, the point on the highway when it went from being home to being memories, a point on the map.

She pulled out her phone and sent a text.

>SOS. You forgot something. Come back.

Three minutes later, Emily was climbing out of her silver Toyota with a confused look on her face.

Alison ran down the steps and kissed her breathless, then led her back into the house. They didn’t make it upstairs, shedding their clothes across the expanse of the living room floor before tumbling naked onto the couch.

When they were done, she laid there, her head resting against Emily’s chest, listening to the steady beat of her heart.

“Don’t forget about me,” Alison said.

Emily smiled, a smile with the faint trace of her old shyness around the edges. “I won’t,” she promised.

Half an hour later, Alison watched her drive off. She kept her eyes on Emily’s brake lights as they slipped out of sight, headed for the highway.

Five years went by.

Emily never came back.

Alison jolts out of her reverie when she hears the orderly pass, his footsteps pausing outside her door. She counts to one thousand, hoping the plan is a go. She imagines all the parts clicking into place, like the gears on a clock. At exactly that moment, the bolt on her door slides open.

She’s out of bed and into the hallway in seconds, her slippers padding quietly on the tiles as she makes her way towards the records room. She says a silent prayer of thanks as she tries the door, finding it already unlocked.

She scans the shelves, pulling out the visitors logs for the last six months that Charlotte was here. She grabs her sister’s patient file, an accordion folder stuffed with sheafs of notes. She hesitates for a moment, then moves toward the employee files. She adds the one labeled Elliott Rollins, MD to the top of the pile.

She sneaks everything back to her room, stuffs it quickly underneath the mattress. Two minutes later, she hears the bolt on her door slip back into place. It’s done.

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In a darkened room of The Radley, a woman’s hand types a message into a Kik chat.

>Need more time.

The response comes almost immediately.

>You’ve already failed.

She types again.

>It wasn’t Hanna. But she gave me a lead. It’s solid.

In front of a bank of computers and monitors, her correspondent reads the words as they appear on the screen.

The unseen figure types back.

>Which one?

The answer appears. Interesting.

The chat window closes down. A few clicks, and an old photo of Aria Montgomery is displayed on the screen. Moments later, it’s printing. In color, the better to catch the pink streaks in her hair.

A black gloved hand reaches for a marker, scrawls a message in red block letters across Aria’s face: FAMILY MATTERS.