Isaac never realized time could remain so still. Nothing existed outside his room at the moment. The year, the season, the day, the night, the temperature, every single human beyond these walls - none were real. Isaac’s entire life merely consisted of himself and the man pointing the gun at him from point-blank range.
Officer Connor took shallow breaths and his finger slid unsteadily across the pistol trigger. Isaac pondered his options. He didn’t yet possess spectacular bullet-dodging abilities. The second he activated his cultivation powers, Connor could merely shoot him. Even conventionally - the second Isaac lunged or dove, Connor could merely shoot him.
But Isaac still had one more avenue, unlikely as it may be. Connor had begun a conversation - Isaac decided to talk this way out of this one.
“It’s okay,” he said gently, trying to mimic Dan’s calm confidence. “Just put the gun down.”
Connor looked at the gun in surprise, as if he hadn’t been aware of it before this. “I need this for protection,” he mumbled. “They’re after me now. There’s nowhere for me to go.”
“Who’s after you?” Isaac asked, not wanting to agitate the officer yet still needing answers. “You’re okay. You can tell me. But what’s with the blood?”
Connor gave his lips a nervous lick, then stumbled backwards. He caught himself on Isaac’s bed, the coils making a nervous squeak below him. After a few deep breaths, he lowered the gun.
The trucker driver had been shot on the wrong side of the head. Officer Connor held a bloody pistol. Now that he was no longer in direct danger of being shot to death, Isaac decided to embolden his questions.
“Did you kill the truck driver?”
Connor dabbed at his face with Isaac’s blanket. His beard was a scraggly mess and his cheeks looked flushed. “I killed them all. Not the captured civilians, though. They told me to spare them. But the Naval Police guards, Sam, the truck driver, I killed all of them.” He cupped the pistol in his hands like it was a toy. “I used to be a marksman. I used to be somebody. Now I’m just somebody being used.”
The officer spoke in a hushed tone with slurred words. But Isaac knew he just dropped a bombshell. “Who told you to kill them?”
Connor let out an empty chuckle. “Don’t know. The people at the top. Restorationist, military…they might just be one and the same. Arcadia might just be one big ouroboros, constantly feeding on itself to its own detriment until there’s nothing left.”
Isaac took a step forward. He didn’t want to put the screws on someone clearly struggling, but he needed answers, and with Naval Police roaming the base, he needed answers fast. If Connor was on the run from them, they would investigate the cultivator cadet homes soon enough.
“I need you to be clear with me,” Isaac said firmly, “Otherwise I can’t help you.”
“You can’t help me,” Connor admitted. A look of abject despair appeared on his face. “It’s too late for that. I’m not even sure why I’m meeting with you. Perhaps I just needed to tell someone.”
Isaac went to one knee to speak at eye-level with the officer. “Then tell me.”
Connor swallowed and nodded. “I told you about my daughter in the past. She’s sick. Very sick. I couldn’t get enough help or pay from the military for the help she needed. ‘Course, my drinking problem or gambling debts didn’t help much either. I was in a bind, at the end of my rope. That’s when they appeared.”
“Who?”
Connor just shook his head. “I don’t know. Official-looking men, but I couldn’t tell who they were working for. They offered to clear my debts and even take my daughter to a medical facility. In exchange, I just had to do some favors for them.”
Isaac thought back to right before embarking on the Machigonne office raid, when Connor had passed by them in the halls. “After Squad 3 raided the Melusine, you gave the three of us random room inspections. But Squad 1, after their own similar raid, didn’t receive one. Nor did we get any inspections after Machigonne. You inspected us to look for Greg’s journal page, didn’t you? That was one of their favors.”
The officer could only nod. “I don’t know anything about your murdered brother or the secrets he discovered. All I knew is that you escaped the State Police in Patuxet with some evidence that needed to be recovered. We couldn’t just murder you, we needed to find the evidence first. And considering you’re under Naval protection now, that made things difficult.”
“That’s why Sam attacked me while I was away from the base,” Isaac realized with a gasp, remembering his first encounter with the assassin in the public park. “The State Police have to be working with the Restorationists.”
The puzzle was slowly coming together. But the crestfallen look on Connor’s face put a damper on things. “I hadn’t seen my daughter since I gave her to them. Every time I asked to see her, they always said one more favor, one more favor. This was the last one. Due to my rank, I have free access to the Naval Police brig. The official-looking men - they orchestrated bringing the driver to the brig for assistance with Sam. A load of bollocks. They put him in the right place at the right time so we could pin the murders on him.”
“Why the truck driver?” Isaac asked. It had to be connected to Machigonne, but he wasn’t sure how.
“I don’t know. But he was there. So were the guards. They were good guards, loyal men who believed in their duty. That’s why they needed to be killed as well - they weren’t sycophants and yes-men. I was told to shoot them all. And when I shoot, I don’t miss.”
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Isaac just felt like he was putting the puzzle together, but the murders had so many layers he struggled to keep everything in order. So, these official-looking men…I’ll call them the conspirators. The conspirators want the journal page exposing the State Police conspiracy back, so they must work for the State Police. At the same time, if they could employ Sam to get the journal page back, after he allegedly turned a new leaf and became a diehard Restorationist, then a Restorationist must have given him the order to attack me and retrieve the journal page.
If that’s the case, then it’s clear. The State Police and Restorationists are working together in some capacity.
Perhaps killing Sam back in Machigonne would’ve been justice. But at the same time - the conspirators must’ve counted on his death there, or at least him escaping capture. But since I took him alive, they had to scramble before he revealed anything. They got the Naval Police to shut down the investigation into the Restorationists and take custody of Sam themselves. After that, they got Connor to kill honest members of the force who likely wouldn’t support the conspiracy, kill the truck driver to frame him, and last of all, kill Sam.
Isaac wondered what Sam looked like in his final moments. Without his sword, trapped in a metal cell, there was little he could do before Connor struck him down in a hail of bullets. Perhaps he felt at peace - there was no longer any risk of him exposing Restorationist secrets. But if Sam knew that the Restorationists were working with the State Police…Isaac wondered what his reaction would’ve been.
Before Isaac could ask about the assassin, Connor answered for him. “Sam was meditating in his cell when I got to him. He said nothing, and neither did I. He never even opened his eyes. But despite all the bullets that went through him, he still died sitting upright.”
Connor then chuckled again, a strong sense of futility mixed into his quiet laughter. “Seeing that made me realize something. Most likely - my daughter had died long ago, and they were just stringing me along. I was just a fish following bait. And now that I killed Sam and knew the secret of his death - there was no longer any reason to keep me alive, either. I’m living on borrowed time now.”
The room went silent after that. Isaac knew that Connor was likely a dead man walking at this point. Except…
“What if you helped me?” Isaac proposed.
Connor’s eyes barely looked up. “With what?”
“The same people who let your daughter die killed my brother,” Isaac told him, strength gathering in his voice. “If I can get you out of here, surely you can go into hiding right? You can help me on the outside. Do things I can’t do while I’m stuck here.”
Connor kept his eyes on the ground. “They’re everywhere, lad. No place to run from these people.”
“I know,” Isaac admitted. “The conspiracy’s far more entrenched than I thought.” He stood back up to full height and recalled the first time Connor inspected his room. Back then, Isaac felt so small - like a withering flower or something like that. Only bribery could save his own skin. But now - Isaac felt stronger, both physically and in his convictions, while the officer who once loomed larger now looked aged and tired.
Isaac extended a hand. “But we have to try, don’t we?”
That finally made Connor’s eyes look up. “Damn your charisma,” he muttered. “During these past few months, I never could quite recall my daughter’s face. Perhaps I felt ashamed of my decision to entrust her to those men. But once I realized today that I was going to die, I could see her face clearly again. I want to keep seeing her face.”
Connor planted a palm atop Isaac’s, feeling rough to the touch. Isaac hoisted the man to his feet. The officer had a new fire to his eyes now. Getting Connor out of here would be tough, of course, but both men believed they could do it, and that’s the first step of any successful plan.
There was no moonlight tonight, but once again, Isaac made an ally. Once again, Isaac clasped hands with a trusted comrade-
And then his wall exploded. The whole room shook as a steel rod, red sparks coursing through it, broke through the wall. Clouds of plaster and dust flew every which way, and the force of the whole thing knocked Isaac to the ground. As the dust settled, Isaac’s eyes widened with horror.
The steel rod completely decapitated Connor. The headless corpse had collapsed back onto Isaac’s bed, while the bearded face, frozen in shock, rested on the ground near Isaac’s closet. Isaac wiped the plaster off his face and struggled to his feet, keeping an arm braced against one of the still-standing walls. He looked down again; Connor’s face looked up at him, completely aghast, completely dead.
Another part of the broken wall collapsed as Henry Spinelli stepped through. He held the handle of the steel rod loosely in his hand, as if he hadn’t just killed a man with it. He noticed the shock in Isaac’s eyes and smiled. Rddhi coursed from his hand and into the rod; the rod suddenly shrunk in size. Its tip, which had been firmly planted into the opposite wall after piercing through Connor’s neck, now revealed itself; this was not a steel rod at all, but rather a common military-grade Ka-Bar knife. As Rddhi continued to rush through it, the knife returned to its normal size. Henry spun it in his hand, then pointed it at Isaac. Though there was a good distance between them, Isaac felt his blood run cold.
“Hypervolume Henry,” the officer said with a grin. “That’s me. With my Foundational Technique, I can control the length, width, and height of any object I choose to. I increased the length of this blade until it lopped the traitor’s head off.”
Isaac realized his back was pressed against a wall. How much did he hear of our conversation?
“Traitor?” Isaac asked, deciding to play dumb in case Henry heard anything.
“Turns out the rumor mill was a little wrong,” Henry admitted. “The truck driver committed those murders, sure. But your friend Connor there allowed the driver inside. They were working together all along.”
That directly contradicted what Connor just said. But when it came to trusting Connor or the psychopath who just tore his head off, Isaac decided to trust the former. But still, he kept his best poker face on. “Why kill him right away? Couldn’t he have given you information?”
“He helped kill my buddies at the brig,” Henry answered. “So I delivered justice. Sometimes, justice is death.”
He’s…he’s lying, right? Isaac couldn’t tell anymore. It seemed like the entire world was arrayed against him now, and Isaac was trapped in a corner. One wrong move, and Henry might lop his head off, too. Surely all the destruction must’ve attracted the attention of someone, right?
“How’d you find Connor here?” Isaac asked, stalling for time until someone arrived.
“I have a |Bloodhound|,” Henry answered. Indeed, there was someone outside the apartment - a few of them, actually. More officers stood on the walkway, the same ones with Henry at the brig earlier that night, the same ones with him during the confrontation between Cartwright and Stockham the other day. Henry’s own personal goon squad, most likely.
“My turn to ask a question,” Henry began. Red sparks ran through the Ka-Bar. “Did Connor tell you anything just now?”