The remaining folder contained documents relating to the investigation into Abhas’s death, into the attack on their home in Surai. Reports filed by Hunters and policemen, eyewitness accounts and crime-scene analyses – things Ruban had seen a thousand different times on a thousand different cases. Things he worked with on a regular basis.

And yet, seeing this impersonal evaluation of the destruction of his own life twisted something deep in his gut, like tearing open an old wound. He wanted to run away, to never have to see any of it again. But his legs refused to move, his eyes refused to be torn away from the papers lying scattered before him, the only remnants of a life that was now nothing more than a distant dream.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“It was never completed,” Ashwin said abruptly, snapping Ruban out of his own head.

“What?”

“The investigation into your father’s death. Ruban, it was scrapped before it could reach a conclusion. Scrapped by order of the Director of the IAW,” the Aeriel said, pressing a finger to a paragraph in one of the papers lying around them.

His blood thundering in his veins, Ruban demanded: “Who recommended the scrapping?” even as his hand flew out to grab the piece of paper for himself.

There was a moment’s silence as Ashwin’s eyes roved over some of the other withered, yellowing documents in his hands. Then, he whispered in a voice that Ruban barely recognised – “Subhas Kinoh”.