Azazel

Chapter 3

Detective Jae-Hyun Kim rested against a doorway in the dimly lit precinct corridor, his eyelids heavy with fatigue from yet another restless night. The backdrop buzzed with the low murmur of workplace gossip, broken occasionally by the sound of phones ringing or keyboards clattering. The day appeared to be typical until he noticed something peculiar from the opposite side of the room.

An elderly woman living on the streets was hunched over on a metal chair next to the holding area's entrance. Her pallid complexion was accompanied by layers of ill-fitting apparel that she had probably scavenged from the streets. She was one of the several anonymous spirits that went through the system that Jae-Hyun had previously observed. She had been discovered confused and lost near the riverbed earlier that morning and had been brought in.

He was observing her from a distance now, and something didn't seem right. She was not fidgeting in the typical restless way; instead, her head was thrown back against the wall, her lips slightly open. Her respiration was faint and erratic, and her chest barely moved at all. The atmosphere surrounding her felt strange, eerily still.

The first person to notice was a patrol officer called Lashawn Cruz, who was just a few years old. He stepped closer to the woman, his look changing from pleasant curiosity to concern. He knelt down and gave her a quick shoulder shake, but she made no move to react. Cruz's face tensed with urgency as his hand rushed to her wrist, searching for a pulse.

"Hey, I think she's overdosed!" Cruz shouted to no one in particular, his voice cutting through the usual precinct noise.

Jae-Hyun strained as she observed the action from a few feet away. While the surrounding officers hurried to respond, Cruz stayed composed and swiftly reached into his pocket to take out a little nasal spray, which was Narcan. Kneeling next to her, he quickly injected the opioid reversal medication into her nose while cocking her head back a little.

The time passed slowly, and the atmosphere was thick with expectation. Cruz leaned in to check her breathing, feeling her pulse with his fingers once more. Jae-Hyun could sense the nervousness mounting in the room, cops watching from their workstations, their conversations now reduced to whispers.

The woman's chest rose in a swift, deep breath after what seemed like an eternity. Her eyelids flickered open, glazed and unable to focus, but her respiration resumed. The officers let out a collective sigh of relief, yet the tension persisted. Cruz remained by her side, whispering to her as she slowly came to, dazed but still breathing.

Jae-Hyun remained where he was. His gaze stayed on the picture, but thoughts were far away, burdened by a well-known sense of powerlessness. This was nothing new to him. He'd seen it much too often. People just like her, lost, abandoned, and ensnared in the fatal clutches of addiction, populated the streets. They drifted in and out of the precinct, revived, only to return again when the city's shadows swallowed them whole.

As the commotion died down, Jae-Hyun finally turned away, his mind already moving to his own case, knowing that for every life saved, countless others would continue to slip through the cracks. He went straight to his office, desiring a quick nap on the desk.

A thick, choking fog enveloped the barren wasteland, stretching endlessly beneath a sky the color of ash. Ziggurats of bone and stone jutted out from the earth, their surfaces etched with ancient symbols that pulsed with an eerie, sickly glow. Above, twisted forms slithered through the clouds, their grotesque shapes barely visible, like monstrous shadows moving just out of sight. Zephyrs of wind carried distant whispers, unintelligible but filled with menace, as if the land itself was trying to communicate in a forgotten tongue. Everywhere Jae-Hyun looked, the landscape was desolate, void of life, but alive with an unnatural, malevolent energy. Looming on the horizon, a scapegoat stood, its many eyes fixed on him, unblinking, as though waiting for him to approach.