Surrounding the plaza, a semi-circle of police officers stood frozen. They were statues in uniform, paralyzed by the horror in the center of the lights. They had their guns drawn, a wall of black steel, but not a single one of them dared to take a shot. The risk was too high. The target was too small.
Kenji Sano stood ten feet away from the devil.
It felt like ten miles. The distance was filled with cold air and terror. Kenji's hands were still cuffed in front of his body from when he had been arrested earlier. He had managed to step his legs through his arms to bring his hands front-side, but the metal cuffs still bit into his wrists.
The killer was the young stranger in the grey hoodie knew exactly what he was doing. He used Dr. Kaori Sato like a human shield. He had his left arm wrapped tight around her neck and in his right hand, the killer held a tooth-like edged combat knife. He pressed it intimately against the soft, pulsing skin of her jugular.
Kaori was sobbing. It was a terrible, broken sound. Small, hitched breaths came her small body, shaking her even more than the cold wind.
She looked at Kenji, and her eyes were wide, white circles of pure terror. It was a look of betrayal, a look that said, Help me, please, I don't want to die.
It broke Kenji's heart into pieces.
"Let her go." Kenji begged.
His voice cracked. It was the voice of a man watching his world collapse.
"Please. Just... please. She has nothing to do with this. She's just a doctor. She saves lives, dammit. She helps people."
The killer shifted his weight. "She's a part of the system." he whispered.
In the unnatural silence of the plaza, under the hum of the floodlights, his voice carried like a bell. He was speaking directly into Kaori's ear, intimate and cruel.
"She cuts open the bodies I send her," the killer continued, his voice flat. "she weighs the organs. She measures the blood. She writes the reports that file my work away into neat little boxes. She is the auditor of my art, Detective. It's only fitting she attends the finale."
Kenji took a half-step forward. He lowered his gun an inch, trying to make eye contact, trying to bypass the monster and find a human being inside those black shark eyes.
"Why are you doing this?" Kenji screamed. The frustration made his voice raw and burning. "You killed the Banker. The Politician. The Judge. The Chief. You wiped out the delivery drivers. You tore a teenage girl apart in a warehouse. Why? What is the point of all this suffering?"
The wind blowing the killer's hood back slightly, revealing a flash of a youthful face. He smiled. It was a soft, boyish expression that looked absolutely horrific under the white floodlights.
"You want to know the motive, Detective?" the killer asked, sounding genuinely amused. "You want to know the grand design behind the blood?"
"Yes!" Kenji shouted. He needed to keep him talking. Every second he talked was a second he wasn't slicing Kaori's throat. "Tell me! Tell me so I can understand! Is it justice? Is it revenge for something they did? Tell me why you butchered them!"
The killer threw his head back and laughed.
"Justice?" The killer wiped a tear came out of loud laugh from the corner of his eye with his shoulder, never moving the knife a millimeter. "You really think that? You think I sat in that freezing warehouse for twelve hours, watching a girl being pulled apart by heavy machinery, because I cared about justice?"
"You wrote the tags!" Kenji yelled, pointing with his gun. "Greed! Cowardice! Corruption! You preached about sin! You made us believe you were punishing the wicked!"
"Props." the killer put the word out like it tasted bad. "Decorations. A script for the masses. People are stupid, Kenji. They need a story. They need a reason to look. If I just killed them, I'm a maniac. But if I give them a moral reason? If I call it 'Justice'? Then I'm a revolutionary. I needed you to follow me. I needed the city to watch."
The killer's face changed. The boyish smile vanished, wiped away like dust in the air. The mask of the young student fell away, revealing something rotten and completely empty.
"There is no great motive, Kenji." the killer whispered. "There is no righteous cause. There is no tragic backstory where the government hurt me. There is only the Urge."
"The urge?" Kenji breathed, the word hanging in the cold air.
"To kill." the killer said. His eyes began to burn with a terrifying, fanatical light. "To punish. To see the light go out behind the eyes."
He pressed the knife harder against Kaori's skin. A thin, bright line of red blood made on her white neck, staining the collar of her shirt red. Kaori coughed, a high, thin sound, freezing in his grip.
"It's a hunger," the killer continued, his voice trembling with an excitement. "It's not about who they are. It's about what they do when they break. I have an urge to see the torture of people. I have an urge to see how much the human body can take before it stops being a person and just turns into an object of meat."
To Kenji's right, Manjiro stood with his shotgun. The big man was shaking, his face pale. "You're a monster." Manjiro whispered, the word lost in the wind.
"I am an artist!" the killer shouted back, his voice echoing off the steel legs of the tower. "I didn't kill Hideo the Chief because he was corrupt. I didn't care about his bribes! I killed him because I wanted to see if I could make a strong, proud man cut his own stomach open to save himself. And he did! He did it for me!"
The killer laughed again. It was a irritating sound that made Kenji's skin crawl.
"And Reika... oh, Reika." The killer closed his eyes, tilting his head back, enjoying the memory like a fine wine. "Do you know she begged for her mother? For hours. She screamed for her mother until her voice was gone. It was music, Detective. The popping of the joints... the tearing of the muscle... it was the sweetest song I ever heard."
Kenji felt sick. Physically ill.
He had spent weeks trying to profile this man. He had looked for a vigilante, a victim of the system, a man with a painful past. But he was wrong. He was staring at pure nihilism (thinks life is meaningless). There was no guilty. There was no logic. There was only a predator who enjoyed the pain.
"You're just a sadist." Kenji whispered, his voice hollow. "You're just a sick, broken bastard."
"Maybe," the killer opened his eyes. "But I am the one holding the knife and you are the one begging."
He pulled Kaori back another step. They were now standing directly under the center of the tower. Beside them stood the wooden stake where Ichiro's severed head had been mounted.
"I don't need a reason to kill, Kenji." the killer said softly. "I just need to do it. It stops the itching in my brain. It makes the world quiet for a little while."
"Let her go," Kenji raised the gun again, steadying his aim even the tears of rage blurring his vision. "I swear to you, if you hurt her... if you hurt one hair on her head... I will kill you. I won't arrest you. I won't read you your rights. I will end you right here."
"You want to kill me." the killer nodded enthusiastically, like a teacher proud of a student. "I see it in your eyes. I saw it when you beat the suspect in the interrogation room. You threw away your badge. You broke the rules. You entered my world."
"I am nothing like you." Kenji hissed.
"We'll see." the killer smiled.
He moved the knife.
Slowly, deliberately, he slid the blade from Kaori's throat down to her chest. He stopped right over her heart. The tip of the knife pressed into the fabric of her shirt. One push, and it would be over.
"You have one second, Kenji." the killer said. "To save the doctor or to satisfy your own urge."
"Who are you?" Kenji screamed.
"Tell me your name!" Kenji roared, stepping closer, the gun shaking. "You want fame? You want the world to know what you did? TELL ME!"
The killer paused.
For a moment, the wind seemed to die down. He looked so young. He looked innocent. But he was a dark, pale moron.
"You want my name?" the killer asked softly.
The cruelty in his face sharpened into a razor's edge. He leaned close to Kaori's ear, whispering to her, but his eyes stayed locked on Kenji.
"You really don't know?"
Chapter 33 ends - Who is Shogun?