It was a cold, clear, night, a soft but chilling breeze blowing down the cobbled street that was lined with tall, looming, old, brick, buildings. A man, completely dressed in black, suddenly stepped out of one of the buildings. He glanced each way, quickly and efficiently observing that no one was on the boulevard. The man, straightening up and revealing long black hair on top of his tall frame, started walking at a brisk pace westward down the cold, cobblestone street. In the distance, a bird crowed and the man quickly glanced over his shoulder before continuing along his way. It was obvious that the man was up to no good. What that was, however, remained a mystery to Finn as he watched him walk through the night. • • • • • Ding ding ding ding, the doorbell rang and I groaned as I picked myself up off the couch. The door flew open and in ran Finn, my best friend. “Guess what Zack, guess what?!” he shouted at me. “You got a chocolate bar, and you’re now on a sugar high.” I answered groggily. “NO I SAW A FREAKING CRIMINAL!” he shouted at me. Not that I didn’t believe him, but Finn comes up with all types of crazy tall tales. He’s an ADHD, hyperactive kid, and most of the time, half of what he says are lies. “Really? What was he doing? Trying to arrest you for shouting?” I said, “‘Cause that’s a natural instinct, not criminal behavior.” I continued. “No, he was walking down the street, all mysterious-like!” he said, “And then this bird made a sound, really normal sound, but he turned around like he thought he was being followed!” Finn said super excitedly. “I was up late last night and I saw him walking down the street at one o’clock in the morning!” he continued. That was pretty suspicious, but I decided not to trust Finn’s judgement on what was right and what was wrong. Besides the guy was probably just going to a grocery store that was open twenty-four hours. “And how exactly do you know that he was committing a crime? What if he was out late shopping for...bologna.” I countered. “Oh yeah, definitely, ‘Forgot my bologna for my midnight snack, better go buy some.’ like that was what he was doing!” Finn yelled. “Well he definitely wasn’t doing anything wrong by walking down the street.” “You know what? I’m gonna turn on the TV and prove it to you!” he said triumphantly, as if some guy walking down the street to buy bologna was going to hit top news. “Sure. Try it.” I replied, wanting to keep him occupied for the morning. I stretched and got up as he dashed into the other room where television was. In a few seconds, I heard the news station blaring from the other room. I yawned and got up. I had been sleeping on the couch because my room was being refurnished and the fumes of the chemicals being used could cause dangerous reactions. My parents had left for work early this morning, which is why nobody had come running downstairs yelling at Finn for being so loud. Suddenly, from the other room I heard “AHA!”. I walked in just as Finn slammed the door open, only avoiding a broken face by leaning back just in time. “I TOLD YOU, I TOLD YOU!” Finn yelled in my face. I looked over at the TV and on the screen was a video of Finn’s street. It showed a person dressed completely in black, walk down the street suspiciously. It cut to a news reporter who told us that the video came from a stores’ surveillance camera, and that the man was a prisoner who had escaped last week. As soon as the reporter finished talking, Finn screamed in my ear again. “SEE, SEE, I TOLD YOU SO!” he yelled. “I KNOW, I SAW THE REPORT, STOP YELLING.” “Okay. But you see? I was right.” he said, finally in an inside voice. “Fine. You were. But can you please not shout?” I ask. “I wasn’t that loud.” he replied, quieter this time, “We should do something though, like, track that guy down!” he proceeded. I scowled and said, “Isn’t that the polices’ job?” “Well, yeah, but I was an eyewitness! We’d be great! I saw everything, and you’re a logical thinker, Zack. It’s perfect!” he responded. “Maybe... But the police are the police. They’re the experts.” “Let’s at least try it! If we don’t I’ll never be satisfied about this.” Not wanting to disappoint him, but honestly thinking that we’d find nothing, and also having no other idea of what to do in the day, I reluctantly agreed. • • • • • So there I was, the next night, shivering in the cold and trying to ignore the smell of dumpsters. I stood on Finn’s street at midnight with Finn standing next to me, peering into the darkness. I personally thought that this was going nowhere. Even if the guy did show up again, how were we going to stop him? I had my jackknife and Finn had a couple of stones to throw. Besides, why would he show up? If he had escaped from prison, why would he come back to the place he was? After about half an hour of squinting and feeling numb and bored and generally wanting to go to sleep I was sick of it all. “Finn, I’m gonna go home. This is pointless,” I said. “Fine... I guess there wasn’t-” he started to reply, but the rest of his sentence was cut off as he glanced down the street and his eyes expanded so fast that I thought they were going to pop out of his head. I whirled around and looked down the street. About three hundred yards westwards down the road, a man was walking away from us. He appeared to not have noticed us, but at any moment he might turn around and try to shoot us. “We have to stop him.” Finn whispered determinedly to me. “No!” I whispered back. I did not want to follow a known criminal to somewhere that could be his secret base. But Finn was already dashing off through the trees towards the man. I dashed after Finn, decided that Finn wouldn’t have a chance with his stones, but would try anyway. So that meant that I’d have to go after the creepy dude myself. I sprinted across the street, down an alley, and continued on a street parallel to the street that the guy was walking on. When the second alley came up on my right, I jumped through it, coming up a couple of steps behind the guy. He turned around just in time to see my body jump onto his back and try to tackle him. However, somehow he kept his balance and started running down the street while one of his arms tried to punch me off. I had no idea how this was going to end until I saw Finn do a crazed slide tackle, soccer style, that knocked the guys’ feet out from under him. Everybody landed in a big pile on the ground. The guy was the first out of the pig pile. He rolled out of the way, straightened up and ran full tilt off down the street. Finn jumped up next, and took off after him. As for me, I simply got up, and started walking after the both of them. About five hundred feet down the street, Finn stopped and looked at the entrance to a building. The air was too foggy for me to see where the other guy had gone. Finally I caught up to him, standing there, still staring at the doorway. “That’s where he went. We should follow him,” Finn said to me. “Do we have to?” I asked him, but Finn was already walking through the doorway. I sighed and followed him into the building. • • • • • The building was called The Mermaids’ Shell according to a sign on the back wall when we walked in. It looked like a broken down hotel or something. On one side of the room, the counter where you check in and check out was situated. Behind the counter, a computer ran its’ screensaver, illuminating a stairway into something that looked like a basement storage area. On the other side of the room, a large, dusty, stairway led up to the rooms. On the wall where the big sign hung, lots of pictures from the 1940’s hung. All around the room were chairs and couches and coffee tables with magazines stacked on top of them. “This place was where he went, but everything is from the 1940’s!” Finn exclaimed. I looked around again, knowing there must be a way that the criminal went. If I was a criminal, where would my headquarters be? I suddenly grabbed Finn’s shoulder and said, “If everything is from the 1940’s... Then why is that computer running its’ screensaver?” and I pointed at the counter. We ran over to the counter and looked at the computer. We couldn’t wake it up, because it needed a password to come out of sleep mode. So instead, I looked down the stairs where metal objects glistened off the moonlight shining through a window. “That way,” I said to Finn. He nodded and we walked down the staircase into the basement. In the basement, a lot of boxes were stacked in towers as tall as I was. The metal objects I had seen were a couple of bullets, which wasn’t exactly cheerful. Three inch wide support poles held the wooden ceiling up. The place had a musty smell that reminded me of a graveyard. The floor was made of dirt, and there were some piles of mysterious things that I didn’t want to know anything about. Most of the place was lit by fluorescent lights, hanging from the ceiling. On the far side of the twenty foot room, a metal door was set into the concrete wall. “Where did he go? Through that door? Or is he hiding in here?” I asked Finn. Finn shrugged and walked over to the metal door. He tried spinning the wheel on it to open it, but it was jammed fast. On closer inspection, we saw that there was ten buttons above it, labeled 1 - 10. “You must need a password for it to open,” I said. “Yeah, look around here to see if we can find it. Maybe it’s written down somewhere,” Finn replied. About fifteen minutes later, when I was thinking to myself of the most likely places for it to be, Finn called to me from across the room. “Wait... Can you seal the door from the inside?” he stopped searching and stood up, looking around again. “Or, maybe, like you thought of, he’s hiding around here-” Finn’s continued sentence was cut short by a chilling voice that came from in between us. “Just waiting to ambush you? Yes, that does seem like something I’d do.” The man stepped out from behind a pile of boxes. At first, I wasn’t scared, and didn’t understand why Finn was petrified, his eyes looking like they’d pop out of his head again. Then I saw the two machine guns in his hands. • • • • • The rest seemed like a dream, with everything in slow motion. As I dived for the cover of a box tower I saw the man glance at me, comprehend that it would be harder to kill me, so instead slammed both his guns into aiming at Finn, who was still standing there. He realized what was happening too slowly, which was ironic considering he was ADHD. He tried to duck, but the man fired about twenty rounds into his torso, sending him flying back and causing a tower of boxes to fall on him. “FINN! NO! FINN!” I screamed. It was my fault if he had died. I was the one who had led us down into this dumb trap. The man just smiled and turned toward me. I dived behind another box and heard gunshots from where I was. I quickly tried to think of something that could help me. I wondered what was in the boxes. I rolled over and read the label. As soon as I read it, my heart stopped for a second and I knew hope was lost. The box read ‘GRENADES’. The man smiled calmly as he appeared over me. He didn’t even bother to shoot me. He just shot the box. Everything exploded into pain and brightness. Then faded into black...
Officer Bradley 10/31/13 Police Report of Attack from Escaped Prisoner Hanrad At 1:56 AM officers patrolling the streets where Hanrad was last seen heard gunfire and a large explosion. They drove down Adeth Boulevard to The Mermaid’s Shell Hotel, where the sounds had been coming from. Officers Underbridge, Ackson, Ekilptrix, and Officer O’Tare went into the hotel and found the crime scene in the basement. What they found was Hanrad, with two machine guns slung over his back, conversing with black market traders Dylan Daros and Henry Sader. Next to them was a bloodstained crater and behind them was a boys’ body. Officer Underbridge shot Sader in the leg, Ackson clubbed Daros with his pistol and O’Tare tackled Hanrad. Officer Ekilptrix put handcuffs on Hanrad. Ackson shackled Sader and Daros. At the station, the convicts were questioned. They admitted to dealing illegal weapons and drugs, and Hanrad admitted that he was there first and had organized the entire scandal. Police suspect it was Hanrad that killed the boy, identified as Finn Palonrim. Missing boy Zack Caquire, one of Palonrims’ friends, might also be connected to what happened. A theory presented by Officer Ackson is that a bomb might have exploded, killing Caquire and leaving the gory crater. Punishment shall be determined in court at November tenth. Until then, the culprits will remain in prison, where they most likely will be returning to, after November tenth.