Jay slammed down onto the floor, writhing in pain. How could he not have seen that coming? It was more than obvious that suspect was about to turn around — the lowered shoulder, the tensed-up hand, and the darting eyes were all crystal clear indicators, yet Jay had missed it.

    Jay's world was now completely ablaze with white. He could not see. He could not hear. The ringing in his ears was a side effect of being so close to that device. Now he lied completely immobilized on the ground, helpless against the vibration of the floor caused by the stampedes that was happening all around them, helpless against the gunshots that cut through the curtain of ringing around his ears. A heavy blow struck his unmovable hand and kicked the laser knife away from him

    Shit. This situation was too familiar to him. He had spent years trying to forget about that night.

    The ringing began to fade around his ears. He could now hear his own shouts of pain as well as the cries from Michael, Alexandra, and Nicholas.

    He wouldn't mind himself getting killed in this incident. He didn't care about the dangers of death for a long time now. But, but they couldn't die. They were good people. They didn't do what he once did. They deserved a good complete life. That kid, Michael. He was just a young man who understood nothing about the real world. He still got the mind of an innocent kid.

    Images of a girl's face flashed in front of him. Long straight black hair fell down her shoulders and partially covered her attractive olive eyes. Who was that again? She looked familiar... She looked beautiful... She looked... Alive...

    There were more shoutings and screaming now.

    No. Not again. With a partially shocked brain, Jay was struggling to differentiate between reality and his imagination. Which voice was real? Déjà vu was hitting harder than ever.

    The blinding white light gradually faded into the red and blue lights of an empty bar. Rain was falling outside. He could hear footsteps. Rough, hard soles of combat boots were pressed hardly against the tile floor, generating a repulsive, screeching noise as broken glass shards were kicked across.

    "Jay! Can you hear me! We gotta leave." Was this Michael's voice? Or the man in the hallucination?

    Jay felt a pair of strong arms grabbing his arm and lifting him off the floor. He still couldn't see anything. His eyes were temporarily disabled by the flash. The only thing he could "see" was what his brain was willing to project.

    He fell back to the floor as the arms that grabbed him were suddenly knocked away. Then another pair of hands grabbed his face.

    "Jay! Stay with me! Listen, you need to get up..."

    Jay! Stay with me!

    Stay with me!

    Jay! Stay...

    The voice echoed in his head. Jay couldn't tell where it was coming from. Was it coming from outside his head or inside.

    No. Not that flashback again. He didn't want to remember. He spent a long time burying that memory deep inside him, into the deepest parts of his brain, where it would never be unearthed again. He managed to distort the pain into smiles, hatred into compassion. He forced a sense of optimism onto himself and stuck to it so much that he could now act without consciously thinking.

    Jay could open his eyes by a millimeter now. He saw blurred motion. The ceiling was spinning around as people dashed into and out of the room like bullets.

    Like bullets.

    This was all too familiar. The noises. The gunshots. The overall tensing urgency and fear in the atmosphere that were grasping for victims and suffocating them within the walls of their mentality.

    "Agent A-Amelia. We need immediate extraction. Jay is down. I repeat. Jay - Jay is down. Damn it. Alexandra is also injured! God damn it! Can you hear me Amelia? We need help for Alexandra and Jay."

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    That seemed to be Nicholas' voice. Even his voice now sounded panicked. Jay couldn't imagine what was going on. Actually he could. He could imagine it. Very, very well.

    We need immediate extraction. Jay is down. Can you hear me?

    Did it say Agent Amelia, or Agent Davenport.

    Agent Davenport. We need immediate extraction. I repeat, immediate extraction at the bar at Mort Street #202. 

    Nicholas' voice slowly warped to another voice in the background. This voice higher. The voice of a teenager.

    This is Oliver speaking. Jay is down.

    Oliver. Oliver Bird. The name rang a bell. Jay could mentally see a kid with blue eyes and short, sandy blond hair wearing a bright innocent smile. Jay could also vividly see the big bleeding gunshot wound on his chest. His smile immediately shrunk and disappeared. HIs eyes and nose were squeezed together in a blend of pain and terror as his mouth opened wide open to let out a scream.

    "Agent Amelia. Jay is down. Alexandra is also injured."

    Nicholas' voice sounded a lot more frantic.

    Agent Davenport. Jay is down. Violet is also injured.

    Violet is also injured. She's... She's dying.

    That same girl materialized in front of Jay again. Long black hair. Olive eyes. She was now lying on the floor in front of Jay, breathing heavily as life slowly seeped out of her from the stab wound on her stomach. Jay recognized that kind of wound. That was... That was the type of most torturing wound aimed to bring the most pain to the victim before death. The person would not die of blood loss or heart stop. Instead, stomach acid would flow out of the punctured stomach and corrode away the other organs in the body until the system could no longer run. The victim would need to suffer fifteen most excruciating minutes in their life before they could be killed in a violent body shutdown. 

    Jay looked around. A dagger was on the table by his side. Blood was seeping down from the twenty centimeter blade, dripping slowly, droplet by droplet, on to the tile, leaving crimson flowers to blossom outwards. Weren't blooming flowers always a symbol of life?

    Violet! Who did this to you?

    Paralyzed on the floor, Jay could only speak out these words, hoping to catch Violet's last response. Jay would impose vengeance on the murderer — tear him to shreds — if he was to live out of this.

    As soon as Jay tried to say the words, he realized he couldn't speak. His mouth couldn't move at all as it had been taped together. The air he inhaled escaped his lungs before it could strike a note in his vocal pharynx.

    Agent Davenport! Jay and Violet are... Ahh! O-Oliver down.

    Violet's eyes were filled with sorrow and betrayal. She looked at Jay. Their eyes locked for a moment. Violet's eyes immediately lit aflame with rage and stared dead into Jay's soul, as if she could shoot jay with the sharp burning glare. Her eyes shifted towards the bloody dagger onto the table then back down to Jay. Her gaze was now cold and hard like a rock of ice — the killing look that a prosecutor would shoot towards the accused before the jury issued the final verdict, as if to break apart every single cover to drill down into the innermost darkness — only this time, the accused was Jay.

    "Jay! Are you with me, wake up!" This was Michael again.

    No, Michael. Leave me alone. I must explain to Violet. Jay begged in his mind. He didn't want to be pulled back to reality, not at this moment. This was his only chance to tell Violet the truth, to clear him off the guilt.

    No Violet. It wasn't me. I didn't do this. It was —

    Once again, Jay was incapable of voicing out the words. He could only look back towards Violet, but Violet now turned her eyes away. She refused to take a single glance at Jay now. Her nose twitched a little bit to express her intense disgust as her eyes refused to even face the direction of Jay.

    Violet. Listen to me! I didn't do this.

    No sound came out.

    Finally, Violet broke down in her final minutes. A small stream of tears fell down the side of her cheek. She closed her eyes, waiting for the denouement as her fast breathing slowed down more and more.

    Violet! No. Violet! Extraction will be here soon! Just stay there. Please, I beg you. Extraction is coming now. No! No! Stay with me!

    Jay gave up resisting. He stopped trying to speak or too stand up. When violet closed her eyes, did she understand? Did she cry still believing he betrayed her, or did she finally see that he was framed? It all didn't matter now. She was dead.

    Jay felt himself lifted off the ground by two men.

    "Nicholas, hold on to Jay's right while I got his left. We gotta get him out of here." That was Michael's voice.

    "Alexandra, can you still walk?" This was Nicholas.

    "Yes. The wound was on my arm." Alexandra said while panting hardly.

    Jay gradually opened his eyes. This time, he was certain that he was seeing the reality. The conference auditorium was now a completely disaster. It looked like a series of bombing just happened. There were bodies on the ground — unionists, technologists, security, students, and other unidentifiable bodies. Windows were shattered. The floor was blasted apart. All the furnitures were splintered and severed and shredded into pieces by plasma bullets, demolition explosives, and other unknown weapons.

    "Jay's awake!" Michael called out, "Thank god Jay's awake!"

    Michael and Nicholas set Jay down slowly. Jay grabbed onto the chair to stabilize himself, and gradually he moved his limbs. Yes, he could move now.

    "As you can see here, we've got ourselves in a big mess."