“Sorry for springing all this on you like this.” I say, bringing the coffee cup to my lips, before remembering the last time and putting it down.

Trucy looks amused. “I didn’t spike it this time, you know.”

“You didn’t spike it last time, either. It was the sugar, right?”

“Well, did you put the sugar in again, my sweet Athena?”

I cough. “Beside the point.”

“Tsk-tsk.”

I stretch out on the sofa. The smoke from Trucy’s pipe fills the living room. Inhaling it is unavoidable. With each inhale, I somehow feel calmer. Mr. Hat is in the corner of the room, playing the piano. Another Mr. Hat just showed up, taking away my untouched cup of coffee. I think I hear a saxophone somewhere in the walls. Just faintly. Ever so faintly. The sky outside keeps changing color. Faster than it should, but slow enough to enjoy the view. This entire, giant mansion feels like it’s floating through space and time.

“Thanks.” I say. “I mean it.”

“Hey, if there’s one place a goon can’t chase you, it’s these hallways.”

“I believe it. Can’t even find my way to the bathroom. It’s like the walls are always shifting or something.”

She grins, lowering the round sunglasses. “Who says they’re not?”

“Maggey’s gonna get lost whenever she ends up waking up, is all I’m saying. Keep that in mind.” I point out. “How is the by the way?”

“Shaken up. Practically passed out the moment I showed her the bed.”

“I can imagine.”

“What’s going on, Athena?”

“I wish I knew. I really did.” My head shakes on its own. “Like, even forgetting the weird hitman dude. Where do I even stand on… any of the rest? I considered that Armstrong might’ve been, like… The Phantom. Perfectly hiding and mimicking emotions. It’d explain how he’d lie to me. At the same time, though, I don’t understand what the point of lying to me would be. Like, I’d find out something’s wrong EVENTUALLY, right? Is he just messing with me?”

“I mean, putting a corpse in your apartment feels like it has that… energy to it.” Trucy points out.

“I—I feel like there HAS to be a point to all this, though.”

“What’s the alternative, then? That Maggey’s lying?”

“I—I don’t know. I didn’t sense anything wrong there, either. At least, nothing telling me she’s flat-out lying. And, again, what would be the point?”

“Maybe she’s playing along with the transcript? If things didn’t happen the way it says it did, maybe everyone involved agreed to pretend like it did? After years and years, maybe Maggey started to take it as the truth. That’s why you didn’t sense any outright lies in her voice. You said Daddy was covered in blood. He never told me anything about that. It might’ve just been something so horrific that—”

“He was never the type to shy away from the truth. We both know that.”

“Maybe it was to protect someone?”

“Protect who?” I ask. “And surely, if you’re going to go out of your way to protect someone, it should be something more… believable! The only reason nobody’s looked into this is because everything in this stupid city gets filed and forgotten about, until someone else inevitably dies due to negligence. Negligence that could’ve been caught if someone – I don’t know – looked at the damn file!”

“You’re getting heated up again, Athena.”

“You gonna put me back in the endless room?”

She takes a drag. “Thinkin’ about it.”

I close my eyes. “I feel like an idiot, mindlessly stumbling around in the dark.”

“Isn’t that what most cases are like, though?”

“Yeah, and I don’t feel like any less of an idiot.” I press my knuckles against my temples. “Rrrargh! I hate it, Trucy! I hate all of it! I got into all this to try and help people, and now I’m practically the executioner! I hate the smartasses who come to my office every other week to try and bribe me, or complain, or threaten, and I hate that every single damn time I have to teach them the same damn lesson.”

“Athena—"

“And I hate that, when I go back to my apartment after a long day, it really IS well within the realm of possibility that there will be a dead corpse waiting for me!”

Trucy tumbles off her sofa. “You know,” she crawls over to me, “I don’t really understand why you keep doing this to yourself.”

“Someone has to, Trucy. Everyone else is dead. Your dad, Apollo, Mr. Edgeworth, Simon, Maya…” I cover my eyes. “It’s just me now. And the only way I… can have a fighting chance against this darkness is if I’m on the top of one of the forces. And the only force with the hierarchy is the Prosecutor’s Office and—”

She puts her hand on my cheek. “Athena. You’re just one person. We both know that the darkness will always come back, one way or another. You can’t just go out in the street and proclaim: ‘The Dark Age is over!’ because it never is, not really. Even the act of beating it is self-defeating because you ultimately show the world how broken and exploitable everything is to begin with. And that just makes people lose hope even more. It makes them numb. Even those that get angry eventually forget to be, and become no better than the numb ones. And everything being nice and numb is what lets the parasites walk back in and do it all over again.”

“I’m not giving up.”

“I’m not saying you should. Nor am I saying it’s completely meaningless. I’m saying it’s a fight you can never really win. And for some people that might be enough. For you, it might not be. You’ve done enough. Daddy would be proud.”

I sniff. “I’m not looking for his approval.”

“I know. I know, I just—”

I pull myself up, wiping my eyes. “What would he do? If he was here, what would your Dad do?”

“Oof. Kind of a tough question. I mean, he always did the best he could with this kind of stuff—”

“The case! I mean, the case. What would he do?”

“Uh. Think outside the box?”

“Right. Sure. Yeah. Well, let’s say the box has been torn open and we’ll need more concrete advice. Just a direction. Something.”

She smiles. “Shall I channel him?”

“Tch. Very funny.”

“He’d probably look over the Court Record and realize there’s a piece of evidence he still hasn’t used and shove it in someone’s face.”

“Right, sure, let me just press the big ‘Court Record’ button and—Wait.” I reach for my coat, pulling out the envelope with the transcript. “So far, with the exception of Furio Tigre, we can agree that most of the key players, if nothing else, all match up, right? By that logic, there might be one more person worth talking to. Two, actually. The first is the detective in charge of the case. Gumshoe, right?”

“Oh. I actually hadn’t thought of that. I think he’s… still alive. Somewhere. I’d have to look into it. I remember him moving away a little after the explosion.”

“Okay. Okay, there’s Gumshoe. He’ll tell us whether or not we’re dealing with a rabbit or duck here. Now, secondly… the first trial also had a prosecutor, right? They—They changed between them. The second one was some guy named Godot, but the first guy… who was the first guy? God, hang on, I don’t even have a bookmark for that first trial, there’s barely anything of it in here—Ah. There we go.”

Trucy glances over my shoulder. “Oh, yeah… That guy.”