"Man cries, his tears dry up and run out. So he becomes a devil, reduced to a monster."


    - Kōta Hirano


    02:22 p.m


    6 days earlier


    Leaving behind the wailing and crying, Tim darted through the alley opposite the police station. He came up beside a trash can and stopped to ponder if he should discard the police badge he had stolen. He found no logical reasons to keep it any longer and threw it away.


    He fished out his two way radio and turned it on. “Stella, are you there?” but for the few long seconds, only static replied. “Stella?” he called out again, this time slightly worried.


    He clicked his tongue in frustration. “But aren''t they having some manpower issue right now?”


    XXX


    08:12 p.m


    6 days earlier


    She was not sure, but Detective Julliane Smith thought there were even more people in the hospital than the amount of the mob from earlier in the day. But unlike earlier, the group of civilians queued up neatly in a line in front of the medication counter, as an officer with a megaphone called out instructions.


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    She watched as one by one, the once near desperate and angered mob peacefully surrendered to conformity to cure their supposed ailments. She thought of her own condition, and wondered if it would reached a point where she would also want the help of the fictional medication.


    A woman who looked to be in her late forties, with rough brown hair and bags under her eyes that seemed to have sunk down to her bones, approached the detective.


    Jullie smiled back, “Think nothing of it. Besides, I don''t think this pandemic business is all that real.”


    From the line, a man stepped out and asked, “You''re saying someone did this to us?” his voice travelled far down the queue, and chatter erupted amongst them.


    Realizing her mistake in accidentally revealing case information, Julliane tried to assure the crowd, “We are currently investigating some of these supposed Sin killings and, though we can''t be sure yet, we do have a suspect,” suddenly, the rasp of the crowd toned to an ear shattering silence. She had somehow gathered everyone''s attention. “We um...the police force are currently on hand with this and are in midst of arresting the suspect, so there''s no need for you to worry.”


    A man from the crowd yelled, “Who is the suspect?”


    Another asked, “Is there anything we can do?


    Jullie continued to try to rest the crowd, but felt that any attempts were futile from then on. “We are appreciative of this community effort but the police will be able to handle this.”


    The woman in front of her ask, “But there must be something we can do?”


    A light flipped within Jullie''s mind. “Actually...” she began, unknowingly grinning.


    XXX


    12:13 a.m


    5 days earlier


    Though the blood had been cleaned and the body removed, Tim could not get the image of his father''s dead body out of his mind. Back in his own home, he stood at the doorway to his father''s room, looking in on the still surprisingly neat space, wondering picturing his Joseph''s corpse, a cut down his torso, lying unmoving on the bed.


    Sighing, he closed the door behind him and returned to the small living room table, where he and Stella had been combing through information from the library and Vashmir Commons'' journal for the better part of the day. The girl having stepped out to meet call her parents from a pay phone as all cellphones were down and only landlines were left working. The apartment would be the last place anyone would look, as it had was small, had no resources and was the scene of an earlier crime, making it the least logical place to hide.


    He sat back down, looking at his table of messy research which had so far, yielded no results. “Nothing,” he huffed, picking up Vashmir''s journal dejectedly, before unceremoniously dropping it back. He looked towards his father''s room and muttered, “Sorry dad.”


    No matter how many times he comped through it, the journal contained nothing more than Vashmir''s account of his weeks with Sin, degrading into undecipherable madness towards the last pages. He had even tried shading the hard cover backing for some hopeful indents from a perhaps missing page to no avail.


    The burnt photo album remained as it was, with only a few pictures still visible through the char and age, all of which depicted farms and barns and other photographs from Vashmir''s youth. Though the two had attempted to restore some of the photos, it was turning out to be a painstakingly slow process, having already ruined two photographs out of their seven attempts.


    Two vials of fentanyl and a couple of capped syringes laid on the corner of the table, making the scene looked slightly akin to that of a drug den. He had swiped the drug from the hospital in case he needed a quick way of falling asleep, though as the night dragged on, he was finding his fatigue increasingly making that plan obsolete. Clay''s bottle of Somnidin, which was given to Stella, was placed beside the rest of the pharmaceutical, which asked him if he would consider using it and missing out on a chance to learn more of the dream world in return for safety.


    As he contemplated on taking a pill and returning to his room for a nap, the front door opened and Stella came in on her crutches.


    Gently, she set her crutches against the wall and slowly lowered herself to sit beside him. “They are...quite pissed. They want me to come home.”


    Tim unveiled it to reveal the picture of him the police took during his first arrest. And in bold words below it was;


    WANTED


    Timothy Kleve


    Suspected bio-terrorist of Vashmir Pandemic


    Citizens arrest allowed


    Shocked, Tim stared at the wanted posters with eyes wide. “What is this?"