"I will, officer. If there is one thing we both have in common, it is that we both want justice for my brother. So you don't have to worry about that." Ron said.
**
Being inside the house, Ron could finally understand the reason why Dan and his team failed to find anything.
Nothing seemed to be missing.
In fact, Ron couldn't help but consider the fact that maybe his brother's death hadn't been because of a mere robbery.
Maybe it had been an assassination, and his brother had been targeted.
"Anything?" Dan asked Ron, who walked by his side as they gave his brother's house another round of inspection.
"No... nothing.
Everything seems to be here." Ron replied.
"Are you certain it's a robbery? It may have been an assassination."
"I'm certain. Just look harder." Dan said, leaving Ron to inspect a particular spot, while he went to another.
The moment Dan's figure disappeared into another room, Ron bolted up towards his brother's bedroom.
In there he was glad that there wasn't any one of Dan's investigator team in there. They had obviously completed their investigation in this room.
If they hadn't, and some of them were still present inside the room, then it would be a bit impossible for Ron to do what he had intended.
**
As soon as he stepped into the room and locked its door behind him, he approached the one and only odd thing in his brother's room:
A bookshelf.
His brother wasn't anyone's typical reader. So, for those who knew him well enough, it would definitely seem odd if someone of the like of his brother — owned a bookshelf.
Ideally, he could be said to be more of a gamer than probably anything else, concerning hobbies.
So if the policemen, who were currently conducting an investigation in his brother's house, knew his brother closely enough in that particular aspect, they would certainly know that that bookshelf was only there as a decoy. A decoy he had to strain the last ounce of his entire muscles to get it to slide open.
"Grrgh.."
He tried not to make too much noise with the shelf to not draw the attention of the policemen to him.
Having slid the shelf at an angle decent enough to come into view with a deed — implanted in the wall behind the bookshelf, Ron inched closer as he examined the deed box.
"Please be in there. Please be in there..." He muttered silently to himself—before inputting the combination to unlock the deed box.
As soon as the final unlocking click was made, Ron opened the deed box, only to have his heart sink into his stomach—as he watched with dread, the items he saw...
....or more accurately, the items he didn't see.
Aside from the Four-hundred thousand dollar bills currently sitting inside the deed box, one other thing should have been there if someone hadn't already beaten him to it.
This one other thing was the only thing that was worth more than his brother's life savings, and most probably, every other thing he could boast of:
His research!
It was missing from the stacks of bills!
Ron's mind raced with possibilities, trying to piece–together the few eluding pieces that were spiralling in his mind.
Then a grim fact clicked in his mind.
"They took it...!!" He exclaimed in a whispering tone.
"Those sanctimonious piece of--- Oh, my---"
Ron was suddenly on the brink of breaking down in tears as a heavy knot appeared and tightly clutched his throat.
He resisted the stinging sensation that shrouded his eyes for a while as he stared blankly at the opened deed-box in trepidation. But in the next second, streak after streak of tears rolled down his cheeks as he sobbed silently.
The reason behind Ron's instantaneous breakdown was that Not only was he aware of the people who had a hand in his brother's death, but he also blamed himself for it.
Like, somehow, it was his fault, too.
A basis for Ron's former deduction was that: There was only one ever group of people—besides his colleagues, who had had the opportunity of looking directly into his research.
So whoever had killed his brother for the sole purpose of retrieving that research would most likely be from this said group of people.
As circumstantial as it may sound, Ron was pretty convinced that he hadn't been far from the truth.
...
These said group of people were particularly the same group of people who had vetted and defaced his research, degrading it to the smallest insignificant atom as possible.
They were the Prime Minister's so-called "Tech geniuses of the country."
They were the only ones who knew exactly the structure of his entire research.
So theoretically, they only despoiled the potential of his research, only to swerve towards Ron's back to claim the spoils, with the sole intent of rebuilding it as a product of their own twisted ingenuity.
But somehow, after all they had plotted, Ron still managed to stay half a step before them.
The truth was that: After the vetting had been completed, Ron thought that giving custody of the research to a single person was going to increase the risk of losing the whole thing if there happened to be an accident.
He thought that if one person were to have the entire research and, let's say, his house got burnt down in a fire accident, it would entail that the research would most likely burn down with it, tossing their entire life's work into the ocean.
But if he were to split his research into five categories, each detailing one particular aspect, which would act like a pillar that holds the entire structure of the project, then it would diminish the risk of having to lose the entire thing to a fire accident, or any other type of accidents.
Of course, his four colleagues found his reasoning quite rational and decided to go along with his proposal.
Ron then split his research of the Quasiparticle Transporter into five main categories, which were:
"The Methodical Operations for the Quasiparticle Transporter", which he gave to one of his colleagues.
"The structural tools and equipment for the invention of the Quasiparticle Transporter", to which he gave to another one of his four colleagues.
"The Structural blueprints for the Quasiparticle Transporter," This one, he gave to another one of his colleagues, leaving Ron himself and one other colleague, who happened to be his now-deceased brother, Dave.
To Dave, he gave "The Maintenance procedure for the Quasiparticle Transporter."
And for himself, Ron kept "The calculations for the analytic procedure for Quasiparticle Transporting,"
**
Ron was certain that none of his other colleagues had had a hand in his brother's death. They had worked on his research together, had their own fair share of the shame and humiliation that came with it, and also, contributed lots of money to see that their big dream came that far.
But regardless, what could they possibly gain by plotting to take the entire research for themselves? They all got the memo stating that their project was nothing more but a lost cause, so it would definitely do them no good if they decided to claim it all to themselves.
This particular fact furtherly narrowed down Ron's suspect list to the group who had called his research "A threat to human life".
He then made a mental note never to let those who had ruined his brother's life get away with it and to do whatever it took to see that they lost something comparatively precious to them...
....Even if he had to forgo every moral obligation known to mankind.
And he just knew where to start.
He would start by destroying the company those miscreants had fought tooth and nail to establish; A company whose first-rank position in the city was thought to have been threatened by his research. A company whose leaders he had no doubts about did lots of misdeeds to get to where they were now.
If Ron were to mention the one and only thing that was easier to do after building anything whatsoever... it would be to destroy it. Destruction came very much easier and faster than almost everything he could think of.
And luckily, that happened to be a topic he knew quite a bit about.
He was, after all, branded the title: "A threat to human lives."
'Time to finally own up to my title'
----
Unbeknownst to Ron, the same company which he now sought to destroy would be the same that would employ a Mister, John Carter, later in the future to be the head in their IT department.
----
But before feeding into the prospect of the ruinous destruction of the first-rank company in the country, Ron thought he had to notify his other partners of a future potential threat to their lives, as they were still in possession of the remaining portion of the whole research.
And he had to do it quickly while he still had the time advantage on his side.
With that thought in mind, he swept clean of his brother's deed box, concealed it with the bookshelf and left the room, posing as though nothing had happened.
***
Minutes turned into hours, hours to days, days to weeks, weeks to two months, and Ron was finally ready to accept that his brother's death wasn't at all his fault.
He was ready to acknowledge that the real culprit was out there, plotting at a thus far fruitless avenue to retrieve the remaining parts of the Quasiparticle Transporter project.
The same group of people who had killed Ron's brother for his own part of the whole research had predictively gone after Ron and his other partners for their own portion of the research. They did so soon as they realised that they had only secured just an insignificant piece of an entire jigsaw puzzle of a research: "The maintenance procedures for the Quasiparticle Transporter."
What exactly were they going to achieve with a mere list of maintenance procedures for their grand prize?
But thanks to Ron's previous information, he and his other partners had always been seven steps ahead of them, causing those miscreants to constantly fail to retrieve the rest of the research during each and every one of their encounter.