Chapter Thirteen - The Purging Nail

  I have found myself in an endless stretch of darkness. It is seemingly boundless and infinite. There is no ground to stand on, or wind to feel. There is nothing. There is only the dark expanse to be seen, and nothing else.

  However, something in the distance is shining with a bright light. I cannot make out what it is, and so I move towards it. It is not walking, but more akin to swimming through air. And as I approached that light, I noticed what it is. Before me stood a figure of a person, except that the head has been replaced with a massive light that spanned the whole void. This person is wearing a detective’s trench coat, but it is battered and bloodied. It is torn in several places, and a few spots are drenched in blood. As I move my sight lower and lower, something unusual protruded from the leg of the man.

  Upon closer inspection, it seemed to be a cable of some kind. That cable stretched infinitely into the depths below me, hiding the source of it in the veil of darkness. What could it be? As much as I used my head to think, it wouldn’t work correctly. An answer was not found.

  However, as I continued to think, I heard a strange noise coming from below. It sounded like gnawing or chewing, presumably on the only material object in this realm – the cable. And then, I saw the source of the noise. Below me, there hung onto the cable a head of some kind. There was no body attached, just a head munching on the cable. Its teeth sunk into it, and with every bit, the light on the head of the person flickered and weakened. Whoever this bodiless head was, they intended to snuff out the light. They chewed and chewed, until the cable fully severed. I could only watch as the bulb on the shoulders of this person shattered in pieces. What ensued next was darkness. The light slowly dissipated, rendering the pitch-black abyss devoid of light. And with the light, my consciousness also faded.

  “Detective is waking up!” I heard a familiar voice.

  My eyes slowly opened to a sight of an unnecessarily bright light right above my head. It made for quite a challenging condition to open my eyes in the face of a piercing and soulless light. However, I managed, and I looked around to observe my surroundings.

  Wherever I was, I concluded that there were two people next to me. One of them was my dear Assistant Detective, Sylphie Moore, and the other was someone who I presumed to be Faust, but turned out to be a regular scrub-wearing doctor. A doctor, though? Am I in a hospital?

  “Sylphie called you an ambulance,” she answered to my surprised expression.

  Oh, it is coming back to me. We were on a mission to catch the Face in the act. The fact that I am here means that we most likely failed.

  The doctor spoke out to me. “Please refrain from moving too much. You just woke up from surgery.”

  My inner question of ‘surgery’ was immediately answered by the stiffness in my right shoulder, and the jolting pain right after I tried to move it. I did a sharp inhale as a reaction, and it reminded me of what happened.

  I was intercepted by the Face in the middle of our chase. In one fell move, she lashed her arm in a motion too fast to react to and hurled the nail in her hand straight into me. That single attack was enough to incapacitate me, it seems. Looking at the worried look of Sylphie, it appears that I was in quite a dire situation.

  “Sylphie found you knocked out, drenched in the rain, in the middle of a road, and with a big rod shoved in your shoulder. What happened?”

  I mustered some strength to move my lips. “Ugh, I chased after our suspect.”

  Her expression was one of worry, grief, and disappointment. My head was still not working right, so I could not discern which one exactly. However, my question was quickly met with an answer.

  “At least you are okay. Things could have gotten worse if you got hurt any further. Sylphie wouldn’t have been able to save you, then.”

  It was definitely worry. But what did she mean by ‘being hurt further’? To look for an answer, I glanced at the female doctor whose expression showed less worry than admiration.

  “Sir, you survived a particularly nasty injury. The object we pulled out of your shoulder is equipped with small blades that prevented it from being pulled out normally. We had to resort to removing some of your tissue to remove it accordingly,” she explained.

  Her look seemed to tell me something like “how the hell did you survive that?”, and to be honest, I don’t see the big deal here. It was merely a slightly larger object than a bullet.

  Or that is what I thought, until I noticed the bloodied sword-like nail on the table next to me, still covered in what could only be my viscera. On second thought, this thing is massive, big enough to be considered a smallsword, or perhaps a large dagger. And sure enough, it is razor sharp from four different sides, making sure that it leaves behind a gnarly hole. Is this the murder weapon of MC-13? Did we obtain an actual fungible piece of evidence?

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  I wanted to celebrate with my whole body, but movement was rather difficult as the doctor stated. Sylphie’s expression showed the same degree of understanding as mine did. We both knew that this operation ended up in a win, to some extent. The murder weapon was obtained, and I’m sure that Faust will have a field day with that one. I completely even forgot about my rage when I suffered the wound – this is a game-changer.

  “By the way, Sylphie, what day is it?” I enquired.

  “May 13th," Sylphie says.

  “Oh. Have I been sleeping for a whole day, then?”

  “Kind of. Sylphie accompanied your surgery that you were admitted to as soon as we entered the hospital. Then, she left you there for the night. And now, Sylphie is here yet again.”

  It sounded like she omitted the fact that she stayed here for the night, which would be deathly in character for her. Regardless, I have been here for quite a while, and sleeping for longer is not in my best interests right now. It is time to get up and get back on track.

  “Alright Sylphie, let’s go,” I say while getting up.

  “Already? Have a day or two of rest.”

  “I cannot rest until I have MC-13 held by the neck. You know that very well.”

  “You have done enough. Sylphie informs you that our operation resulted in a valuable lead, and a murder weapon as well.”

  “A valuable lead?”

  “Precisely. Sylphie thinks it is no grave matter and implores you to rest for a few days while she investigates,” she said with a low thumbs-up.

  The thought that I can leave a case to someone else is alienated to me. It is not something I have ever done before, nor have I ever considered it. I always relied on only myself for the thinking jobs, but now, considering I can hardly move, maybe it isn’t the worst idea to let Sylphie investigate. From the sound of it, it seems like she met the one who called the police, or perhaps a witness from nearby. Either way, I am not in the mood for another visit to a rich person’s fever dream house, so I might actually rest up for a while.

  With a verdict reached on our next move, Sylphie left my hospital room. She provided me with no information as to what our lead is, but I believe that she did it for the sake of surprise. We decided that it would be for the best for me to stay in the hospital for two days, as the doctors recommended. As for the nail the surgeons pulled out of me, I was allowed to keep it after convincing them that I was a detective, and that the nail is important to a murder case. I snagged a box of latex gloves to my room in order to investigate this intricate weapon without leaving any fingerprints, that way, there will be no tampering with the evidence.

  I put the gloves on and began the inspection. Truth be told, this is a weighty piece of metal, and definitely not the same as a nail used in construction. If I were to assume, it is about as long as my forearm, the perfect length for a close-quarters battle weapon. The ‘blade’ part extends from the tip to the bottom, leaving enough room there for a single hand to hold. The head of the nail covers the bottom of a holding hand, as if it provided a tactical benefit in combat. As I hold this thing in my hand, a few things become clear. This is no ordinary weapon that a tiny girl can wield without training. It is heavy even for me, and I am far from being a tiny girl. Secondly, it is seemingly made for the Face, because my larger hand does not even fit in the designated handle space.

  As for the sharpness, I can tell it would rend flesh without any problems if I tried to move it across my hand. With how the blades are aligned, there would be no problem using it for either stabbing or slashing. In other words, the murder weapon has more than the use that was demonstrated hundreds of times before. It is without a shadow of a doubt a mastercrafted tool made specifically for the Face to wield. There is nothing like this thing in the world, as far as I know.

  This also helps me flesh out the identity of the Face even further. Now that I know what her weapon of choice is, I can say that the person behind the mask is a trained fighter, someone with extraordinary physical capabilities, as she demonstrated with the precision of that throw. She wields an intricate nail made specifically for her purposes, which adds in another possible way to look at this case. There must be a maker, a manufacturer of this weapon. If I could discover the origins of this tool, I could trace the transaction to the Face, or maybe even the Flawless.

  Given the gruesome design of this thing, and the impeccable serrated blades it is fitted with, I deemed it appropriate to call it the Purging Nail. It is without a doubt the weapon of choice for these murders, as it can excel both in the killing method and self-defense. I have tasted this blade myself, and it certainly proved effective. It took a whole day for doctors to extract it from my shoulder, that is more potent that any bullet ever was.

  Not only is the hunt for the Face a mental undertaking, but now, it is also a physical one. Restraining her will be no small feat, as she has proven to be quite deadly. We also missed our chance to seize her this time, making us wait for another nine days. However, we have gone overboard this time, completely revealing our knowledge to the killer. The Face saw us, and with that, the investigation is now known to their side. Chances are that they will begin avoiding us from now on, possibly even going into hiding. I sighed upon that notion – now is not the time for things to get more complicated.

  I came to realize more things as I recovered from the injury. We never saw the murder that MC-13 consists of. Could there not have been one? Were we there so early that the murder hasn’t even happened yet? No, that is impossible. Someone called the police, otherwise we wouldn’t have known about what happened at Good E’s that day. With how haphazardly we acted then, it may be possible that we overlooked the actual murder case. We were too preoccupied with the poor lad who died by the hands of the Face, and then the chase afterwards. In truth, what led to all this was my misconception. We were supposed to investigate in order to obtain more clues, but we jumped the gun and immediately went ahead to interception of the culprit.

  It was a dire misplay on my part. My emotions got to me, but that is no valid excuse for a detective. Simply put, I failed. And now, what matters more is filtering out the clutter of questions that have amassed. There is the thought of the insider in the DPD, and there is still the sender of that cryptic and unusual letter. I was hoping that Sylphie would come back with some answers to my questions, including the clues she found and maybe even the letter. As for me, I can only sit here and pretend I need this recovery. It makes me feel like an unwanted parent that you throw into the retirement home to erase any trace of them. Oh, well.