"The reason I talk to myself is because I'm the only one whose answers I accept."

- George Carlin

12:22 a.m

6 days earlier

'Vice' emblazoned the frosted glass window of the ajar front door of the office. Two columns of three desks lined the side of the room, facing a whiteboard which was scribbled with details of crimes that Adam Pearlman had been linked with, the deceased man's name appearing multiple times across the board as if written during a schizoids' madness.

But what bothered Tim the most was the shattered glass that shown the hallway outside and the bullet holes in the walls behind him. Pool of dried blood marked the ground, with one of the desk on the further end being smeared red with it. The bodies of the officers were nowhere to be seen, which lead him to believe that the second floor had been cleared of the dead. He remembered smelling and almost puking at the stench of death just days ago, and was surprised at how well he was already handling the current situation.

A lone revolver sat on the desk closest to the door. He walked by it on his way out and contemplated of taking it. Another idea came to him instead and he ransacked the drawers to find a shining brass police badge and a box of spare ammunition. He pocketed the bullets, holstered the gun in his belt and clipped the metal badge to his left pocket, where it could be seen even with his shirt tucked out and hiding the firearm. It was a flimsy disguise at best, as anyone who looked closer would realize the farce and that he was in fact, just a teenager. But he only needed it to get him as far as the evidence room. Any windows from then on would suffice as an escape.

He stepped out of Vice and into the empty hallway. Blood splattered the wall opposite the office, a single bullet lodged into the wall behind the red. He walked by it, focusing on the road before him, afraid that if he stopped to look back, he would be overwhelmed by the knowledge of the death that had happened before.

He made it to the stairs without any other disruption and could hear, even from the top of the steps, the crying of family over the ones lost. He thought of his father, and willed himself away from being mystified by the cries.

Taking a deep breathe, Tim took his steps down. The wailing got louder as he proceeded. He turned the corner at the first landing, and saw the spotless clean floor of the station lobby. Despite it, the image of the bloodbath days before still overlaid his vision, and he could clearly picture the positions of the blood and bodies.

Without knowing it, he had reached the bottom of the landing. A uniformed officer approached him, snapping him out of his trance.

“What are you doing here?” the man looked down and saw Tim's badge and added, “Detective?”

Off the tip of his tongue, Tim replied, “Phelps. Detective Phelps from Vice.”

“Ah, checking up on the Pearlman case I assume?”

“Yes. That's right. Just went up to look through some files.”

The officer looked Tim up and down, raising a brow of suspicion. “Forgive me but...you look a little young to be a detective.”

Quickly changing the subject, Tim said, “Sad what happened here.”

“What?”

“You know, the shooting?”

“Oh,” the officer replied as if he had just been slapped awake. He turned to look at the scene. “Terrible. We lost a lot of good people. I mean, my partner's in the hospital right now. One of the two survivors. It's just...bullshit, you know?”

“Yeah...” Tim replied. Though he did not want to be rude, he knew the longer he stood there, the higher was the chance of him being caught. “Listen, I need to get to the evidence locker.”

“Right,” the officer turned back. He looked over Tim's shoulder and towards the stairs down, indirectly pointing the way to Tim. “I'll leave you to it, detective.”

Tim bid farewell and the officer returned to comfort the grieving families. A group of coroners carried out bodies from the opposite end of the station, up from the stairs that led to the holding cells. Tim sighed at the sight and descended to the basement.

At the end of the stairs down, he was greeted by a sign and faced with a short hallway. To his right was the gun range and the equipments room. While to his left was a single door at the end of the corridor that led to the evidence room, which he headed towards. He was glad to see that the lock of the door had been blasted apart. Metal pellets on the ground indicated a shotgun was used.

He opened the door and was immediately greeted by the stench of rotting corpses. The room had stacks of cardboard boxes arranged onto metal grated shelves. Each two dozen boxes covered up most of the space in the cramp room. To the left of the entrance was a small room where the body of a woman, white eyed and slumped against the wall from a shot to the head, worked the caged counter in silence. In between the aisles were two lap technicians in bloodied coats that laid sprawled and unmoving in pools of their own blood. The door of the room had been closed for awhile, and the odour had coagulated in the air, enough to make him dizzy with vile just from standing.

Not wanting to waste any more time than needed, Tim reached through the steel bars of the counter and grabbed the blood splattered logbook from the desk. He flipped through the pages, finding his name under the case code #139-HM. Aisle 13. Shelf 6. Box number 21.

He manoeuvred his way to the aisle. Down the shelves. Over a body. And to the empty spot that once housed box 21.

“What the hell?” Tim voiced out, feeling the air in front of him to make sure it was not some sort of dreamscape illusion.

From the end of the aisle came, “Looking for this?”

Tim turned to see the brown coated Detective Oliver Hardy standing with both diary and charred photo album in hand. Both pieces of evidence kept clean within clear plastic bags.

“Detective,” Tim voiced his surprised. “How did you know I was here?”

“Boy, I may not look like it, but I did earn my badge,” the man said, throwing the bag of books to Tim who caught them without problems. “After we heard the hospital got robbed of two walkie-talkies, I sort of figured that you'd make your way here for your stuff. Figured you would try to sneak in. Didn't think you'd succeed though,” he explained, looking at the stolen badge at Tim's pocket.

“Yeah, sorry about this,” Tim noted the badge himself. He looked around the place warily for signs of a trap. “Where's the other detective? The hot one.”

“She's at the hospital. A little too in over her head trying to catch you to think clearly,” Hardy said as he scratched his nose. Even his experience on the force had not prepared him fully for the smell of the room. “Obsessed, Julie. Her logic got twisted till she thinks you're behind all of this.”

“Am I?”

“I don't know,” he replied in earnest. “But I do know you are involved. And that means you at least have the power to do something about it.”

“You're involved too, detective.”

“Yeah,” he scratched his head, contemplating his position. “Not enough to do much for my partner.”

“And I am?” Tim replied, still not completely trusting of the detective. “I'm a kid. You two said so yourselves.”

“Maybe that's what we need right now. A mind that's not tied up by jobs, family, money, or duty. Someone whose sole goal is to stop this thing. Who can dedicate all their time and resource to it.”

“Like me?”

Oliver rubbed the shine of his badge. “I am a cop after all. There's are a few things I can't do. Like, steal a car, breaking and entering, stealing drugs, murder...”

“You're making me out to sound like a lunatic.”

“Your words, not mine,” Oliver said. Tim sighed. Oliver continued, “You should go.”

The teen nodded in stoic agreement and turned to leave with his prize, but stopped in his track to ask, “This is probably going to be the last time we meet under such amicable situations so let me ask you this. What if you're wrong? What if I fail?”

“Then we'll have to hope that there are other people out there trying as well. And if there isn't, then, given what's happening, it might be the end of the world.”

The grim news passed onto Tim like a car just fell on him. “So I'm the only thing that's standing between us and the apocalypse?” he chuckled at the thought. How outlandish the idea was that he, an ordinary teenager would be charged with the safety of mankind. “I'm just trying to save my friends here, not the world.”

“How's that working out for you?”

Tim thought back to Clay and his last promise to protect Stella. “Still working on it.”

“I've been on the force for a long time now. I've seen many people die,” Oliver started, looking up and down the shelves of evidence, then through to the corpse behind the aisle they stood, reminiscing on lives long lost. “If there's one thing that I learned, is that sacrifice can only happen when the people left behind decide to do something about the deaths.”

“What are you saying? That I'm not doing something to avenge Clay?”

“If that's what you're thinking, than you got the idea of sacrifice wrong. Clay gave up his life to give you a chance. Use his death. Step on his body if you must. Because your friend's dead.”

“I hope you have a point detective,” Tim said through gritted teeth. “Cause you're starting to piss me off a little.”

Oliver gave out a muffled chuckled, as if his hardened features were actually preventing his facial muscles from moving. “He's giving you a fighting chance. You have to use him. Don't push his memory aside to mourn later. Look at what he did now, and what he left behind. His spirit or whatever.”

Tim looked towards the detective, unspeaking. Absorbing the words into his hardened emotions.

“From what I know, Clay only cared about one thing. Saving his sister. That's what he left for you. His wish. Save his sister, and you'll also save us all.”