Cedric just stood there looking over at Kevin with the angry look across his face.
“you are a member of Beocraft.”
He started moving slowly away from him. “Are you going to kill me?”
Cedric took a seat and after a long silence, he finally spoke. “If I wanted you dead, I would have killed you a long time ago... tell me what you already know about Beocraft.”
“…all I know is Beocraft is a community of dangerous killers who keep their activities a secret. At least that’s what Leonard told me.”
Cedric then began to laugh out in a way that was disturbing to Kevin. Kevin just stood there perplexed, looking over at him while he laughed. “Did I say something funny?”
“We are not killers… we are something far from that. We are visionaries.” Cedric said “Beocraft is a community of high profiled male and female shifters who have distinguished themselves in the society as icons. By that I mean famous and wealthy individuals like doctors, mayors, professors and those vested with political or military power.”
“I’ve never known you to be a man of high profile. How come you are one of them?”
“There is a lot of this you still don’t know about me. Long ago before I’d met you, I served as a military leader in fallout city but now –am retired.”
“Wait a minute… is Mayor Ramsey, the mayor of this city also one of you?” Kevin asked curiously.
Again Cedric waved a smile at him “no…” he answered “…only a shifter can become one of us and the mayor is not.”
“…and one more thing, why do you all wear mask when you meet?”
Cedric looked over at him. “You know so much about us already. Did Leonard tell you that too?”
“Yes… he did.”
“This Leonard guy is a scourge…” Cedric said slowly deviating from the question.
Kevin said “just tell me what I want to know, why the mask?”
“…to conceal our identity from one another when we meet. To put it in simpler terms, I don’t know anyone there at the meeting. All I see through my own mask are other masked faces. We don’t know the identity of whoever sits beside us whenever we meet.”
“Is T-Rex a member of Beocraft?” Kevin asked curiously.
You weren’t paying attention to what I was just saying, were you?” Cedric berated him. “No one member has ever seen the face of any one single member of Beocraft. Every individual’s identity is hidden. So I cannot tell for sure if T-Rex is one of us or not.”
Kevin found it odd then he asked out of curiosity. “What if someone tries to impersonate a member of Beocraft, how would he be spotted out?”
“Trust me… no one has ever been impersonated at Beocraft” Cedric look coldly into Kevin’s eye as he spoke.
“I will be in my room if you need me.” He spoke trying to avoid looking into his eyes. Then he left. Cedric smiled as he watched him leave. Something about that smile made Kevin so uncomfortable.
Kevin quickly entered his room. He took out his laptop and then placed it open in front of him. He began to surf the internet with ‘Beocraft’ as his search word. The search result showed nothing relating to what he was looking for. It made him so frustrated. He closed the laptop.
His curiosity to find out about Beocraft grew. He just sat there and then began to ponder over what had transpired between him and Cedric. The way Cedric had reacted made Kevin feel suspicious about him.
Kevin knew there was something Cedric wasn’t telling him. Reminiscing over his conversation with Cedric earlier, Kevin felt he was hiding something there in his room -something that was far from him being a member of Beocraft. It had to be something big and the thought of that bothered him so much.
It was then Kevin realized that he had never been to Cedric’s room before. Cedric never allow him go into his room. Kevin started to wonder why?
Kevin took Alex to the warehouse T-Rex had used to torture Loretta. It was an old abandoned warehouse that hadn’t been used for about a year. The place looked dilapidated.
Kevin looked over the old building for a moment. He felt like he was revisiting his horrible past by coming back to this very place. This was the very building he had sat down to watch Loretta die.
He was going back to the one place he hoped he’d never have to see again. He climbed up the broken old staircase with Alex following him closely behind. The memories of the past began to come back to him…
…It was almost twenty-four hours after T-Rex had left the room leaving him tied up to the chair to watch as flies buzzed around the exposed flesh of Loretta. Then door finally burst open and bright rays from the touches of the policemen that came in hurt his eye. That was when he met Leonard.
Leonard walked up to him flashing his touch light at Kevin’s face. He then loosened the belt strapped around Kevin’s arm. The rest of the officers who were with him untie Loretta’s body from the pole. Flies were buzzing around her. Covering their nose in disgust, they dragged her out of the room with her heart hanging out. Traces of her blood were drawn on the ground as she was dragged away.
“Who the hell murder someone this way?” he heard Murphy uttered looking over the corpse in disgust while holding his nose.
Leonard held the touch over Kevin’s face and then asked him “…did you see the person who did this?” Kevin was numb. He wasn’t reacting to anything. He just sat there looking straight ahead at them like he had no life left in him.
“Hey… what’s your name kid?” Leonard asked waving his hands over Kevin’s face.
“After what he had just witness, I think he is in shock.” Murphy answered from behind Leonard as he walked towards them. “We need to give him some time to recover first before we start to question him about what had happened here…”
Leonard began to search Kevin’s pocket. “What are you doing?” Murphy asked him.
“Looking for some ID’s” Leonard answered then he took out his wallet and then opened. He brought out the cards and looked over it.
“Kevin Logan…” he read out the name on the card.
Murphy looked over at Kevin “he look like a mess right now. We need to get him to a hospital.”
“Kevin! Kevin!! Kevin!!! Snap out of it” Alex kept calling him waving his hands over his face. Kevin blinked his eye. “… are you daydreaming?” Alex snapped his finger at him.
They both stood over the door “it’s just something I remembered that happened a long time ago.” Kevin said “let’s go.”
Kevin reached for the door knob and opened the door. The door gave out a crack sound as it gently slid open. They both looked inside. The room inside was really dark and dusty. Alex brought out his flashlight and then walked into the old wooden house.
Cobwebs wrapped on his face as he inched into the darkness. He heard a crack as he stepped on the old wooden floor. Alex flashed his light over the little iron chair at the corner of the room. An old belt hung from the arm of the chair.
“…am guessing this was where T-Rex tied you up am made you watch while he tortured your fiancée.” Alex said looking over the old dusty chair covered in webs.
Kevin stood there looking over the iron chair –a painful reminder he couldn’t do anything while T-Rex tortured Loretta.
He walked over to the table T-Rex had placed all his torture equipment. He slid his fingertip over the table, it was covered in dust.
Alex walked over to the wall to turn on the light switch but the light bulb was dead.
Kevin walked up to the pole where T-Rex had tied Loretta. “…this was where he tied her.” Kevin said to Alex sliding his hands over the pole.
Alex flashed his light on the pole, there were still stains of dry blood on it. He rubbed his fingertip over the pole then he said “…her blood is still on it.”
Alex suddenly stepped on something slippery that almost made him drop.
“What the hell is that?” Alex yelled flashing his touch down at the wooden floor to see what he had stepped on.
It was a little pool of thick blood...
A frown curved on Kevin’s face. He bent to examine it closely. Touching the blood with the tip of his finger, he rubbed his fingers together.
“That’s wired, it’s still fresh.” He then looked over at the dried blood on the pole then he closely examined the one on the ground.
“Something is not right…”
“It’s not possible for Loretta’s blood to stay fresh this long.” Kevin stared at it with a puzzled look on his face.
“…or maybe it not hers.” Alex said flashing the touch to reveal more fresh blood on the floor. He followed it with his torchlight and the trace of blood ended beneath the foot of the dusty table.
Looking under the table, Alex startled backward in fear when his torch fell on the dead body of a man on police uniform.
The chest of the body was torn open and his shirt was soaked in his own blood. The body had been tortured in a similar way Mirabel had been tortured.
The brutal nature of the corpse made Alex puke while Kevin threw his face away in disgust. Kevin was now getting used to seeing tortured bodies like this.
Dragging the body out from right under the table, they both looked over the corpse in disgust. The face of the man had a tortured scream frozen on it. Flies infested his open wounds.
Alex flashed the touch over the police uniform on the corpse. Kevin looked over at Alex and then asked “…any idea on who he might be?”
“…am not sure since his face had been brutally burnt beyond recognition. It will be difficult to place an ID on him.”
Alex bent over to have a closer look. “The wounds and cuts on his body are still fresh. …judging from how fresh his blood appeared to be, it wasn’t long ago this happened to him. He died twenty hours ago -two days at most.”
Alex then looked over at Kevin “you think it’s the same person who did this to him?”
“It’s T-Rex! I am sure of it. Look at the burns on his forehead. This was caused by hot burning liquid poured over his head. Look at the way his heart slightly hung from his chest, it is the exact same way T-Rex had tortured both Loretta and Mirabel.”
Kevin bent to have a closer look at the corpse. “Can we get an ID on him?”
Alex put his hands into the breast pocket of the corpse. He took out a badge with a name carved out on it.
“Murphy Hatfield…”
They both raised their brows in shock at the realization of who he was.
“Oh my God, this is Murphy Hatfield of fallout city police force. Last I heard was that he’s been missing from the police precinct for about a week now.” Alex gulped
“T-Rex got him.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: BEOCRAFT
Shady sat an old bench in the lock prison room looking over at Frank sitting opposite. Frank was neatly dressed on a navy blue suit and a dark glass to cover up his eye.
He just sat there looking at Frank while he went through some files on the desks before him like he was searching for a particular file.
Frank singled out a file from the bunch. He then took it out and then looked over it. He read out the name on the file. “Mr. Shade Casper…”
“Shady…” the thug corrected him.
Frank read out again “Mr. shady…” but he was interrupted again.
“Please, just shady is fine.” The thug tried to sound polite.
Frank was now pissed for being constantly interrupted. He then took off his glasses and then looked at him straight in the face. “Mr. Shade or whatever your name is… I don’t give a damn about it.”
“oh I think you should give a damn about it.” shady opened his eye at him “… cus I don’t want my name spelt out wrongly in the newspaper when I finally get out of here and burn this whole place to the ground.”
Frank chuckled “…that’s the best joke I’ve heard in a while.”
“…have you considered quitting your job? Maybe your life would be more exiting…”
“Now you think you are funny… humor me.” Frank leaned in close to him and then whispered into his ear. “You want to hear something? You’re never getting out of here.”
“Mr. Shade, do you know why you were arrested?” frank said leaning back.
Shady chuckled “I have done a lot of bad things throughout my life… I could be paying for any of those crimes.”
Frank said “you raped a lady a week ago and her father…”
“I raped a lot of ladies last week…” he chuckled “…so you’re going to be a bit more specific.”
Frank looked over at shady and saw he was nothing more than a thug. He then realized he had wasted his time coming here.
“Do you know your sentence had already been carried out? In less than twenty-four hours, thirty two thousand joules of electricity would be passed through you. you would be paying for all those murder you’d committed before you escaped custody. You have only few hours -a day at most to live. So now you see you are never going get out of this place alive.”
Frank then lean closer to him and then said. “I can help you if you want to see the next day, but that will depend on the answers you give to me right now… so if I were you, I wouldn’t waste this opportunity.”
“Wow… so thoughtful of you to give a damn about me” Shady said mockingly in a feminine voice.
“My name is Dr. Frank, and I am a lab specialist for a special taskforce here in the city. Come with me to the laboratory and I will give you a new purpose in life, a chance to become someone better, a chance to join the task force with us and fighting alongside us.”
Shady began to shake visible while he laughed out loud at frank then he said “you want to turn me into one of your lab rats, that ain’t gonna happen.”
“I am simply offering you a second chance at life…”
“I lost my second chance at life a long time ago.” Shady leaned in close to Frank and then spoke in his face “…go to hell with your second chance. I like the one I got right here.”
Frank moved his hands from the table obviously disappointed at his decision. Frank searched through the files and then brought out a picture, then he placed it there on the table in front of shady.
“Take a look at this…” frank said “this picture was taken early this morning. These bodies were found lying around the street of this city. These are the bodies of your gang. They were brutally murdered yester night by something we call shifter.”
Shady looked into the picture –his eye suddenly widened. “No… this ain’t true. This ain’t true”
“Calm down Mr. Shade. The taskforce I work with are currently still searching for the man who did this to your crew. But we can’t do this alone, we need your help. All we need to do is to modify your senses and make you a lot faster and stronger than you are right now. I am giving you a chance to take revenge on whoever did this to your crew.”
Shady kept looking at the picture. His breath became noisy, his hands were vibrating and he was visibly boiling up. He then looked at frank and asked. “Where do I sign?”
Frank let out a smile and handed a pen to him.
It was a hot sunny afternoon. Kevin sat there at the park. It was summer. Gently breeze came rushing towards him. Threes black birds caught his attention. They were sitting on a rocky cliff pecking the ground.
It was the very same crows he had seen from his dreams. He stood up and then walked towards them to have a closer look, but they all flew away when he got really close.
Suddenly the wind blowing in his direction, intensified. He heard a voice from the vehement wind that sounded almost like a whisper.
“NATASHA…”
Suddenly he found himself standing on the door mat of Natasha’s residential home gently knocking at her door. He heard a loud noise inside. It sounded almost as if something dropped and scattered to pieces on the hard floor.
He quickly opened the door to see William in a gunfight with something in the dark which he couldn’t see.
“Quick! Take cover.” W
illiam yelled at him quickly loading bullets into his revolver. T-Rex quickly jumped from the shadow and then tore William’s arm with his claw.
William was wounded pretty badly. Blood spilled from his arm soaking his shirt. He let out a loud painful scream which woke Kevin up from his disturbing dream.
Kevin quickly jolted from his nightmare. His chest was heaving rapidly. Little drops of sweat formed on his forehead.
He then looked over the table at the pills Cedric had left for him.
After he had started taking those pills Cedric had given to him, he hadn’t had any nightmare in a while. He saw that he hadn’t taken the pills Cedric had left for him before he had gone to bed last night.
He picked up an empty glass that sat on the table and filled it up with water. He swallowed the pills with it. Then he set the empty glass upon the table.
The image of T-Rex tearing William’s arms played out in his mind. William had screamed the exact same way Derik screamed when he had tried to stop T-Rex from kidnapping Natasha.
Kevin’s eye widened when he finally realized something.
It wasn’t just any nightmare… it was a vision of an event that will happen again in the nearest future.
Suddenly his phone buzzed on the table.
He looked the big clock that hung from the wall.
3:15am
For a long second, Kevin sat there looking over the phone as it buzzed on the table. He wondered who could be calling at this time of the night.
The phone kept buzzing on the table, then it stopped. Few seconds after, it started buzzing again. Kevin slowly picked it up then looked over the phone to see who was calling. It was an unregistered contact on his phone.
Placing the phone slowly over his ear, his eye paced the room, he didn’t know what to expect. He heard a familiar voice call out. “Hello?”
“Leonard?” Kevin said unsure of himself “…is that you?”
“Yes Kevin.” Leonard answered, he sounded like he was really in a hurry “am sorry to bother you this night but there is something I just found out about the masked man and I need you to pay close attention to what am about to tell you. They just found Murphy’s body. He was killed by this secret organization I told you about earlier.”
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