After saying his part and ignoring my receipts, Inspector Slater stared at me as if trying to see into my mind. Given his extreme sensitivity to particles, I couldn’t read his, leaving us at an impasse and allowing our conversation to stall temporarily.
’At best, he maybe picked up an extremely faint particle content in the air back in Hyde, but even with his Skill being at the Major-Plus attainment, it would be impossible for him to pick up on their distinct signature, even if he had arrived as soon as I left, so he is bluffing.’ I thought while fighting back the urge to try and use my Talent on the man.
Between his high sensitivity and the fact that I had come in contact with this man numerous times in the past, I knew better than to try using a weak skill like coercion on him, as his Intellect stat rivaled my own…speaking of that word…rival, I suppose you could even call Desmond Slater somewhat of a rival to my alter ego, Xipher.
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He was, after all, the man leading the charge to take me down in the Origin Timeline.
Time and time again, I would face off against the Inspector, who would blabber on and on about Justice, bringing me down; frankly, in my eyes, even calling him a rival was too much, as he was more like an unkillable cockroach, not that I had distinctly attempted to do so.
If anything, he added that extra flare to my life, as I knew, there would always be someone hunting me down, making me better, and keeping me on my toes.
In a sense, he was the Batman to Xipher’s Joker. Yet, every time we came face to face, the result was the same: we would duke it out, fighting with our lives on the line, and in the end, I would make my escape once things got too dicey, such as backup arriving or the situation getting out of my control.
I had been curious about whether or not the Inspector had returned to the past or died a true death in the Origin Timeline. Still, now that he was sitting across from me, acting out one of the MANY interrogations we had been through during our time together, I found it increasingly difficult to NOT slip into my Xipher persona and let the man know that I was alive and well.
’Should we toss him a bone? Or would that be too risky,’ if I am being perfectly honest, I quite looked forward to the banter and little games I played with the Inspector back then, so the fact that he was here before me now, I wanted to pick up where we left off in the Origin Timeline. Still, the only issue was if I did…every single plan I had made would go out the window.
I couldn’t be 100 percent sure that my face hadn’t been picked up on any of the CCTV cameras, and worse yet, Inspector Slater now knew what my real face looked like.
As someone who was the head of one of the top three Guilds in Europe, it was a given that he had interacted with Brenden on more than one occasion, so it wouldn’t take long for him to connect the dots when it came to my identity, so after weighing my options, I cut off that train of thought and formulated a new ploy in my head.
I needed a way to get off scot-free….a way to divert the attention away from myself and get the Inspector to ignore my existence. In those few short minutes when the only audible sound was the train’s soft rumbling along the tracks, I came up with an ingenious plot.
"Sigh…..Inspector, I know you have no reason to believe what I am about to tell you, but please hear me out with an open mind, as we, the Returners, may all be in greater danger than we could have ever expected." Cupping my face in my hands, I began to massage my temples with the tips of my fingers, acting as if I suddenly had the weight of the entire world on my shoulders.
"I can’t give any guarantees, but I will hear you out…" Flinching slightly and sitting up a little straighter, Inspector Slater’s eyes narrowed as he noticed the physical change in my body language, which caused him some concern.
"It wasn’t me who caused all that trouble in Hyde…but I was there. In my old life, I was studying to be a criminal profiler and even went to school for it; and to top it all off, I was in the process of joining the NCA *National Crime Agency, AKA the British FBI*, before the Descent of Arkadia, so I had done my research on past serial killers."
"When we returned to the past and got those quests, the idea I came up with was hunting down those very same serial killers and bringing them to justice ahead of time, saving as many of their victims as possible and, in turn, pushing the Descent clock as an added benefit."
"And Harlow Sheffield was the first name on my list, being one of our most prolific killers; I knew that if I stopped him early enough, I could save many lives; however, the problem is, I was too young even to leave home alone…and even when I did get out, I was forced to bring my butler Vincent along with me." Spinning a tale that was actually partially true but mainly lies, I got to the good part of my plan.
"But when I finally got a chance to head to Hyde and try to intercept Sheffield….there was someone else already with him." To add a bit of dramatic flare to my tale, I paused and shivered as if remembering what had happened had caused some psychological trauma to my mind.
"There was a young man, probably three or four years older than me, not quite a teenager yet, standing over the corpse of Sheffield. And although he was wearing a mask like the one from those slasher films, the white hockey mask, there was one thing that stuck out to me…it was his eyes."
"His eyes?" the Inspector parroted, slightly confused.
"Yes, his eyes…I still see them when I lay down to sleep…they were blue, but not a regular color, no, they were like icy steel…and they glowed in an eerie light."