"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.

“Yes!” Stella finally answered, though sounding surprised with a sheepish groan. “I'm here. You got them?”

“I got them,” he replied. “Are you okay though? You sound tired.”

“Yeah, I was just taking a nap.”

“A nap?” he asked in concern. When they last met, Clay had said that The Father was jumping dreams and was going after The Brother's victims. He wondered if it could had the ability to go even further. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah. I was with Sister. Catching her up on stuff here.”

“No Father? No problems?”

“Yup, just like the last few dozen times I've slept,” she said, sounding slightly annoyed. “Can we get back to business?”

“Right. Do you know of a place we can meet? Maybe your place or something?”

“If you wanted to get romantic with me, you could have just asked.”

“Really?”

“No,” She replied flatly. “And my house is out of the question. Detective Smith managed to get an officer to stay watched there.”

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

“Well, she found a way.”

“Great. What now? I don't think the library is a good place to stay. Too public.”

“Wait,” Stella said, followed by a moment of silent thinking. Tim could practically see the cogs in her brains turning and churning out an answer. “I got just the place.”

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.

“Everyone, please form up in an orderly line,” the officer said, as more people began coming in through the door. “To collect your medication, provide any form of identification at the counter and you will be given one bottle of Somnidin. Be reminded that only one bottle is allowed per person.”

“Detective,” a male nurse came up to Jullie as she kept her eye on the crowd. “Thanks again for doing this. I have no idea how we would have handled the morning if you weren't there.”

“No need,” Jullie replied. “I'm just doing my job. By the way, have you seen my partner?”

“The big beefy guy? I haven't seen him since he left in the afternoon,” the nurse replied. “Have you tried calling?”

“Yes, but it seems the there's no signal it seems,” she patted the man on the shoulder, “Thanks for the help anyway,” and walked away towards the line of people.

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.

“Detective,” she said, pill bottle in hand. “Thank you for this. You've saved all our lives.”

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

“Really?” the woman replied in surprise. “You must be lucky to be one of those who doesn't have it then.”

“I'm sure there's a logical explanation to all this. And once the culprit is caught, I'm sure this thing will end.”

“Culprit?” the woman replied in confusion.

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?”

“Yeah,” a man said. “I don't want to sit back and wait to die like this!”

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.

“Hey Stel,” he greeted her. “How did it go with you parents?”

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.”

“I think you should,” he replied in earnest. “I don't want you to get hurt with me or anything.”

“Don't be stupid,” she reprimanded, “Besides, I'm not helping you. I'm making sure my brother's efforts to stop this wasn't a waste. Also, there's this...” from her back pocket, she pulled out a folded piece of paper and passed it to him.

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?"

“I think that female detective has managed to pin this on you.”

“There's no evidence or...anything! She has a hunch, and a bad one!” he exclaimed. “They can't do this!”

“Tim,” Stella started sympathetically. “She's afraid, and desperate. Everyone is. And I think you just became their blame.”