Jason Narayanan did not get off at his stop as he had intended, instead getting off at an interchange and jumping onto another train, eventually getting off at one of the many stations within the Central Business District before catching a bus that goes to a rather remote region of Singapore, where even the newest office buildings look like they’ve been around for half a century and where street lights were not as plenty as they are in other places, a complete contrast to what is on the other side of the same street: Malls, nightclubs, hotels and other entertainment venues, bustling with life unlike the side at which Jason was standing at now.

Appearances can be deceiving, though: Jason was actually on the safe side of what Singaporeans today like to refer to as the “Yin Yang Gate”. The ‘ulu’, or “Yin” side actually leads to a nice neighbourhood surrounded by office complexes, while the brighter, more colourful side, the so-called “Yang”, was a haven for rich tourists, party animals and two of Singapore’s most infamous gangs: The Lizards, a mixed-race gang heavily involved in drug-running and fencing stolen goods, and the Singapore branch of the Hung Kwai, one of the newest triads from Hong Kong.

There was a reason Jason had decided to pay this place a visit. After Xiaoye told him over the phone about this Theodore Stone fellow being identified by their witness Inna with a seventy-five percent certainty, he began doing some background checks on their newest suspect on his own. At first, everything seemed normal: Theodore Stone had a degree in accounting, quite active on social media, all the usual stuff. Then Jason hit a snag which turned out to be a clue.

First of all, Theodore Stone’s Australian citizenship was obtained twelve years ago, meaning that before that, he was a citizen of another country. Secondly, he stopped being active on social media last year, around the same time as the scandal involving HJP Incorporated supposedly conducting an unauthorized, illegal human clinical test of one of their products, and although he did not set his account to private, one of his contacts did, a woman named Linda Carson, and surprisingly, one of the deceased from the illegal clinical test was a nurse from one of Australia’s biggest hospitals who somehow happened to have the same name and appearance as the named person.

This warrants the question: How did a dead woman’s account get set to private? There were two answers to it: Either a family member had access to the account, or someone else did. Although, if a grieving family member were to have access to the deceased’s account, there was a higher chance that they would have it deactivated, not set to private

A further, more invasive check on Theodore’s social media history, going all the way back to eight years ago, revealed one more startling information regarding the chief auditor of MedaPharm’s Singapore Branch: He had a three-year-stint as an auxiliary police officer, working weekend security at a hospital. The same hospital that the deceased Linda Carson worked at.

Coincidences after coincidences. Either the gods were trying to tell Jason something, or Theodore Stone, if he really was the culprit, was walking through a corridor made of dishwashing detergent. No one could slip up so badly and so many times, it was like a badly-written detective fiction.

Or maybe Jason and everyone else were really living in a badly-written detective fiction, albeit also a very dangerous one...

Snapping back to reality, Jason made his way into the buildings behind him. Not far from where he got off was a hawker centre, and one of the stall owners was a rather interesting fellow named Gao Zhen Bin, alias “Mi Huan (蜜獾)”, the Mandarin name for honey badgers. During the end days of World War Three and the years following the war’s resolution, Mi Huan was infamous for being the most ferocious fighter of the Bak Lung Ga triad, having never lost a fight in his life. So fierce was he that he had been summoned to Hong Kong to assist the main branch of the Bak Lung Ga on several occasions, but his generosity and the fact that he had saved police officers from ambushes by rival gangs in the past also earned him the law’s grudging respect. His accumulated wounds from various fights, including three while in prison for robbery, finally forced him into retirement three years ago, and even then, he survived three more revenge stabbings and a vampire attack, all of which ended with him hurting his assailant so badly that the ambulances have to prioritize them instead of him, and his response to this was to laugh it off.

Mi Huan had an odd friendship with Jason that started when both men were on opposite sides of the law: Jason was one of the few officers to treat him politely and professionally even when arresting him, never acting as though he was better than Mi Huan. This earned Jason the triad lieutenant’s respect to the point where, after retiring, he offered to provide Jason with information he needed as long as it does not involve any gangs, including his own former gang.

“Good evening, Mi Huan,” Jason greeted the scarred ex-gangster as he stepped in front of his noodle stall.

“Ah, Inspector, nice to see you again. I heard you got transferred to the police’s personal freakshow circus?”

“Yes, and the freakshows are surprisingly better to get along with than normal people.”

“Of course they would. Back in my triad days, we tend to listen to the monsters than our own people. No politics, no blame game, no smiling at your face with a knife behind their backs. So, you are here to have dinner, or here for the treats?”

“Both, in fact…”

“Wanton mee or prawn mee?”

“Wanton mee. Shrimp…”

“Coming up.”

“You know about the murder that happened on Carpenter Street?” Jason asked as he grabbed a newspaper from the table and began reading.

“Front page news, brother. Victim was a hotshot in the pharmaceutical industry, so I’ve heard. You investigating it?” Mi Huan replied from the kitchen.

“Yeah. Do you know any costume shops that sell old police uniforms?”

“That’s a bit difficult to say. There are a few costume shops around here, but most are closed now. Better luck in the morning. As for police uniforms, I don’t think anyone dares to sell them outside of Beach Road, old or new. Need license and all… Why? Your killer dressed as a cop?”

“He might have… Someone infiltrated our ranks during our preliminary investigation, overheard where we were sending the witness to, then attacked the safehouse to try and kill her. So I am a bit pissed about the whole thing.”

“Wow, this killer must be very desperate or feeling suicidal. Is this related to my old business? If it is, I cannot help you.”

“It’s a little bit hard to say, to be honest. Scorpio-45 may or may not be involved.”

“Scorpio-45? Lan jiao, they’re not gangsters, they’re fucking actors.”

“Actors?”

“They’re like local youth gangs, act all big and powerful when in a group, beating up people who can’t fight back for the fun of it, then taking out knives to stab the ones that can fight back, but once the police catch them, all it takes is an average of ten minutes in the interrogation room for the pai kia act to drop, after which those morons will start snitching on each other. Tell you what, since we of the Bak Lung Ga don’t recognize Scorpio-45 as a gang, I’ll help. You know what’s on the other side of the road, right? Basement Four of Sterling Mall, at the left corner next to the carpark entrance, there’s a store that sells pre-WW3 army, firefighter and police uniforms as Halloween costumes. The owner, Jin Shu Wei, is said to be a fence for Scorpio-45, so be careful.”

“I see. Thanks for the treats,” Jason replied as he got up.

“Wait, you’re leaving now?”

“I’ll be back, just keep my noodles warm.”

“Wa lao, I just cooked it… All right, just be quick.”

Jason has never been inside Sterling Mall before, but he knew it was quite a popular hangout for many young Singaporeans. Crossing the street and entering the mall, he made his way down to Basement One, but as he proceeded to Basement Two, he felt as though he had been transported to another world: The bright lights and colourful shop signs were replaced by barely working fluorescent lights and monotonous store entrances with reinforced metal grilles protecting their shutters. Jason could not help but feel uneasy as he continued descending to Basement Four, where the whole place was empty except for a few stores.

As Jason neared the costume store he was told of, he immediately sensed something wrong. There was a stench, like a wet dog, that got stronger the closer he got to the store, and there was also the sound of someone thrashing the place. Not a good sign. Due to strict gun laws in Singapore, police officers do not carry firearms when off-duty, so Jason picked up a loose brick from the floor and cautiously made his way to the front of the store, just in time to see what looked like a therianthrope smashing every electronic he could find.

Immediately, Jason recognized the creature as being the same one that had attacked the Heng Heng Waffles Café, for on its arms were the wounds caused by Xiaoye’s aswang house-mate. There was a man inside, definitely dead, with his legs brutally severed from his body. Jason wondered if that was the store owner when he realized that the pricolici had stopped thrashing the store and was staring right at him.

“Fuck.”

Jason backpedalled quickly and hurled the brick at the approaching pricolici, striking it in the face and dazing it long enough to start fleeing, but the pricolici recovered quickly and started pursuing him as he fled up the escalators, but just when he was reaching Basement Two, he felt his leg being grabbed by the pricolici right before he gets thrown down back to Basement Three, followed by the pricolici pouncing on him. Winded, he started kicking and swinging his arms wildly at the pricolici, unable to get a good look at its face as he fought for his life when a bolt of lightning struck the creature in the back hard enough to throw it off him.

Jason looked up to see Weijin wielding a wooden sword in one hand while grasping several Chinese paper talismans in the other rushing down the escalator. He then heard the pricolici snarling and rolled away just in time to avoid the creature charging towards Weijin, who hurled the paper talismans into the air and quickly uttered a spell while pointing his sword at his opponent, causing the talismans to explode into lightning balls that struck the pricolici repeatedly until it was knocked off the ledge all the way back down to Basement Four.

“That’ll teach him… Inspector, you all right?” Weijin muttered as he helped Jason to his feet.

“Is it dead?”

“I don’t know. Was that thing the pricolici? That ultra-rare vampire from Romania that Xiaoye and the others have been talking about?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, in that case you’ll need silver to kill it, not Taoist magic. Not that the latter can’t cause severe harm to one.”

By now, the two men could hear the pricolici whining in pain and looked down to see it making its escape through the exit to the carpark.

“Damn it, it moves real quick for something that’s been injured,” Weijin commented.

“Never mind that, what are you doing here?”

“I was shopping for drinks, then I saw you going down to Basement Two, and thought I follow you just in case… Fuck, inspector, no one goes past Basement One of Sterling Mall unless they’re looking to buy something illegal, they’re criminals or they’re police officers conducting a raid. Any sound made here doesn’t travel up to the regular floors of the mall, so you can get murdered here and scream your lungs out, but no one is going to hear it.”

“I’ve never come down here before…” Jason commented as he slowly regained his composure.

“Well, I came down here several times during my days in Vice. Would you believe that Basement Three used to be filled with illegal brothels? Ah, shit, I’m exhausted.”

“After two spells?”

“Yeah… First rule of fighting a vampire: The longer the fight, the more advantages the vampire has against you. So I clocked it with one of my strongest lightning spells. Damn, that’s one tough bastard, he just got struck with enough electricity to black out the entire Downtown Core and it only took him a minute to get back on his feet and run… Oh, and you still haven’t told me why you’re here, Inspector.”

“Remember that extra police officer we caught on the CCTV footage from Carpenter Street? The fake cop? My CI just gave me some information about a costume store here that sells pre-war military, police and firefighter uniforms-”

“I know which store you’re talking about. Jin Shu Wei’s. That guy’s a fence who works for Scorpio-45. Specialized Crimes have been trying to arrest him for ages…”

“Yeah, I think that guy’s the dismembered corpse I saw laying on the floor of the store. Our killer must have realized we were trying to nail him down and is now trying to cover up his tracks. Even wrecked every electronic in the store: Laptops, CCTVs, phones, even the radio.”

“Shit, you sure?”

“Let’s go back down and take a look.”

True enough, Weijin recognized the face of the deceased the moment the two men made their way back to the costume store. Jason hissed in disgust at the way the man was killed while Weijin lets out a resigned sigh.

“I better call Specialized Crimes to come down here. They aren’t going to be happy that one of their targets got murdered…” he muttered as he pulled his phone out.

About six minutes later, a number of investigators and police officers came walking down the escalators to Basement Four, where Weijin and Jason were standing outside the costume store quietly staring at the carnage that had occurred within.

“Weijin, Inspector Narayanan, I heard Jin Shu Wei was taken out by the suspect of your murder case. The corpse still there?” one of the elven investigators who Jason recognized as one of Weijin’s acquaintances asked as he approached the two.

“All over the place,” Jason replied.

“You mean… Torn apart?”

“Yeah. Killer destroyed every electronic in the store. I guess he didn’t want anyone to find out something. If you and Cyber Crimes can salvage any name list from the computers or laptops, send a copy to my department?”

“Well, my department owes Weijin here and Sergeant Xiaoye for that gremlin infestation so, yeah, I’ll see to it that it’s done, inspector.”

“So, what do we do now?” Weijin asked Jason as Specialized Crimes began sealing up the area around the store.

“Wait for the results… Nothing else we can do right now,” Jason replied solemnly as the two watched an officer place a cloth over the deceased’s corpse…