It was one of those television shows where they interviewed various people. In the corner of the screen, white, legible letters glowed:

"Mark Muller. Chief Detective of the Organized Crime Department."

A man in a formal suit sat in the frame against the backdrop of a small office. He had neatly combed back black hair, piercing blue eyes, a slightly elongated face, and a short mustache that ran along his upper lip. The man strongly resembled a nineteenth-century detective; all he lacked was a top hat. Approximately thirty-five years old, he could be older or younger, as his stern, business-like facial features made it hard to guess his age accurately. He wore a jacket, a white shirt, a tie - nothing out of the ordinary. A small black microphone, often used for long interviews in various talk shows, peeked out from the collar of his jacket.

In the background, a small room cluttered with cabinets was visible, its space dominated by an immense amount of paperwork. Stacks of papers, assorted documents, folders, large notebooks, and bundles of sheets tied with string were everywhere. They spilled from shelves, jutted out from cabinets, and columns of paperwork rose from the floor; every available surface seemed to be covered.

Yet this was someone's workplace, and despite the overwhelming presence of documents, it had its own cozy feel and immediately set the right tone.

Behind the man, a neat, clean table stood out amidst the general chaos in the office. You involuntarily understand that it usually blends in with the cabinets, but this time, it had been specially cleaned. Now, a monitor stood in one corner and a neat stack of documents in the opposite.

The interview was in full swing.

"No one would be surprised if this was happening in the Lower City or somewhere else. But Khanksk…"

He sat with one leg crossed over the other and his hands clasped together on his knee. His gaze was as if he himself had returned to those times.

"This is not the place where people are used to such things. At first, no one even thought that those robberies were connected. Every city has this - petty theft, robberies, raids. So, no one paid much attention to what was happening when it all started. Another theft, another crime. They just didn't realize what would ultimately follow. You know how it is - something happens, and everyone hopes it will resolve by itself. But such things never resolve by themselves."

"And what happened?" The host's voice was female.

"You know it yourself, don't you?" He smiled sadly.

"We would like to hear it from you nonetheless," the woman insisted.

"A wave of violence," he fell silent as if remembering something. "Case six hundred and two... It's not something one wants to revisit, believe me. Khanksk may be a big city, but it's overly quiet. The rate of juvenile crime has always been low here. Two and a half percent, and that's just minor offenses, most of which were dismissed with lectures or fines. So, when everything spiraled out of control, when the series of robberies followed, no one could imagine who was behind it and how it would all end. What happened literally set the town on edge."

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"Nobody even suspected this?"

"What exactly could they suspect?" The man nodded. "Such things have always been the lot of the Lower City. That's where the juvenile crime rate is almost twenty percent. Maybe Chin-Zhui, too, but certainly not here. It was atypical for the city. Nobody knew what to do or how to deal with it; they lost too much time. We were sent to Khanksk from Chin-Zhui to help, but as you understand, the local police took it as an invasion of their territory, and they were not in a hurry to cooperate with us. Then it was too late. And now, it's the hot topic everyone wants to discuss."

"As we know, one was sixteen, the second seventeen, the third eighteen, and the fourth nineteen," the woman reminded him. "Many parents are worried that three of the gang members were still schoolchildren. There's no guarantee that others won't be drawn into such things in the future."

"Unlikely, although we can't rule it out. Minors are often brought into such things. However, it almost always involves children of a certain type. They're lured in with money, respect, understanding, and everything they lack in life."

"I gather they were lured into it as well?"

"Yes. The leader was nineteen," the man nodded. "One of the two adults in the group. He had been previously charged with theft and carjacking but somehow got off with probation. He was... a typical case of a lost child."

"A lost child?"

"His parents were alcoholics, and his father was abusive. The boy skipped school. He was constantly on the register as a troubled child. Children like these, if they don't find love and understanding at home, look for it on the streets - a typical picture of a lost child. So, it was not surprising that he chose such a path. Nobody else cared about him, even though we have agencies that are supposed to deal with these cases and get paid for it."

"Why wasn't he taken away from his family then?" the host inquired.

"Law," he shrugged. "Better to let the beaten, unsupervised children watch movies about gangsters, their criminal honor, clan, how cool it is to shoot others, smoke, curse and break the law, after which we get characters like these. So-called 'romance' of criminal life... We take away everyone except those who need to be taken."

"Now that you've brought up the subject, were there others from this contingent? Did others have predispositions to this?"

He sighed and, without getting up from his chair, reached for a folder lying on top of a stack of documents on a side table. He flipped through it, then looked back at the host, who was off-camera.

"Another one was eighteen years old, but still in the last grade of the sixth school. At least, she was supposed to be. As far as we know, she was a rare visitor to school. From a broken family. Her mother had passed away, only her father was left, but there was nothing serious against her. Violations: caught smoking in bathrooms and drinking alcohol in parks, but nothing more. There are many such children, so she didn't stand out much. The other two are from full, ordinary families. No police records, no violations, though not everything was as clean with them as one would hope."

"So, there were predispositions."

"Everyone has them, if you put it that way," the man shrugged and looked somewhere off-camera, where the host was presumably sitting. "I had predispositions. I was born in the poor districts of Chin-Zhui, where robberies were more frequent than police visits. And now I'm the chief detective of the Organized Crime Division. With them, based on what we had on them, things were different. At some point, something really pushed them to overcome their fear of the law."

"And what was it?"

"Their own beliefs and goals," he started flipping through the case file again, clearly showing the numbers: six hundred and two. "We could only get the local police to fully hand over the case when it was already too late to fix anything. All that was left for us when we finally got to it was to understand what had happened," a quiet sigh. "Four people. And a string of corpses behind them. At that time, we only knew their nicknames, but we couldn't find anyone anymore."

"Why not?"

The man looked at the host off-camera as if asking whether she was stupid. Still, he answered.

"For what the kids did, they don't forgive. Neither the houses nor the clans were particularly eager for us to get involved until everything was resolved."