The Heroes We Weren't

Chapter 28 - The Wolf In Sheep's Clothing

If I was to tell the police that the man they worshipped was an evil overlord who had disrupted the sleep of others by following a mysterious recipe to destroy another world, I was sure to get myself locked up somewhere.

If I, on the other hand, was to tell them that the product they were consuming most likely contained a (surely) illegal amount of Opium, drugging its users without their consent, I was more likely to grab their attention.

Now, of course, Opium was not the only ingredient in the magical drink offered by the evil, and surely not the only reason for the citizens behavior - yet whatever strange mixture it was, there had to be something illegal about it.

Right?

I hurried up the stairs to Adam's place; if I was to go to the police with such a statement, then getting a second (or even third) opinion on the matter seemed like a good idea - And what better opinion than that of a detective?

Although, I was hoping that the two of us were still in a sometimes-we-talk-to-one-another kind of a friendship, after the Tanya-incident.

It wasn't Adam's eyes that met me as I pulled the door open to his apartment. It wasn't Miranda's or Ashanti's either.

His hair was still ruffled from the pillow, his shirt wrinkled.

"Good morning." Hyun-Soo smiled.

I didn't reply. Moved slowly. Reached my arms forward to carefully feel the texture of his shirt. Ran my finger over the buttons. Real. He was real and he was there.

"You're-" I stuttered. "You're awake."

He let out a calm laugh, brushed his hand over my hair.

"Then-" I raised my eyebrows. "Ripping the contract worked!"

It was never as easy as that.
Not in this world.

Hyun-Soo's smile faded. He gave a quick nod to the other room. On the other side of the kitchen, the office door stood open. The lights were off but the computer screen glowed. Adam must have come home already.

I slipped away from Hyun-Soo and walked through the other room; Miranda and Ashanti were cleaning up the glass from the broken TV screen.

"Adam?" I placed my hand against the doorframe.

The computer screen showed of the stolen recording, where the figure of M moved back and forth in the hallway as the video was played and paused, over and over.

Paused again. My gaze fell upon the fingers by the space bar. White gloves.

The chair creaked as the one in front of the computer had turned around to face me. Needless to say, it wasn't Adam.

M gazed back at me over the edge of his glasses, tired but allured. He had me in his grip; everything he had ever said to me, every meeting moment of ours had been but another finger of his closing around me – I was but a piece in his game of chess and we both knew it.

The words he had spoken to me as I had plead for him to wake Hope, do you remember them? 'Whenever I say jump, you, Soldier Number Three, will jump.'

He had now come to collect the debt.

"It's time to jump," M smirked, "Little Soldier."

I was one to keep my word - But seeing such a man invite himself to sit in the detective's chair, while speaking to me as if we knew each other, was something that irked me to the point of nothing but anger.

I turned on my heel, rushed out of the room, just to bump into Hyun-Soo half ways through the kitchen.

"'City," Hyun-Soo began, comforted, stopped, "he was the one who woke me up."