Senior Inspector Lyall didn’t show up at our meeting place. It was expected but still irritating. I went in and out of a few dives, engaging in a bit of conversation with different people as I waited for the murderer to take the bait. With my clothes smelling like whiskey and cigar smoke, I stumbled around the cobblestone streets like a drunkard, making sure to occasionally trip over gaps in the road, laughing and chuckling as I did so. 

When I stepped into an alleyway, a shadow appeared in my peripheral, a figure following behind me. I waited for them to come closer, the sheen of their needle visible in the low lamplight. 

When he made the motion to inject me, I grabbed his wrist, twisting it back until he dropped the syringe. He let out a pained yell as I yanked his arm backward until he went to his knees. Placing my knee in the middle of his back, I forced him to the ground. 

“You’re under arre—” A sharp pain exploded in my side, choking off my words. Embedded into my ribs was a blade, crimson bleeding out into the fabric of my waistcoat. 

So this was why the M.O. changed. 

There were two robbers now, not one. 

The other man ripped the blade out of my side and I stumbled up, trying to disarm him. He kicked me hard in the knee to keep me down, my old injury erupting with agony. When I tried to move, something hard smashed into the side of my head. My vision blanked out, spots of black and swirls of colour filling it when it returned. Something warm and wet dripped down onto my cheek as I collapsed fully to the ground. 

“They finally sent a cop, huh?” he said. 

“He broke my syringe,” the first man said, standing beside him and rubbing his wrist. “Stepped on it.” 

“Not really a problem,” the other said. “It’s not like he’s gonna be alive for much longer.” 

I gripped my side, pulling my pistol out of my jacket and pointing it at them. It shook in my hand, taking all my strength to aim it. The first robber stepped back in surprise, eyes widening in the dim light. 

“If you even think of coming near me, I will shoot you,” I said, my breath coming out strangely from the pain below my ribs. My lungs burned for air, almost as if they were filled with water or a weight was pressing down on my chest and crushing it. 

“It’s not like you’ll be alive much longer anyway,” the second man scoffed. I tried to keep the pistol aimed, but my hand kept moving and my limbs were becoming lead. “You overestimated your abilities, officer. It’ll be nice to have a GPD regulation pistol once we raid your corpse. A nice souvenir.” 

“If we let him die, the GPD—” 

“If he lives, he’ll turn us in,” he said to his partner. “The dead can’t speak.” 

He took his partner by the wrist, pulling him away and down the narrow alley back into the main road bathed in the light of gaslights. The sound of their shoes clicking on stone echoed against the walls of the buildings, rattling in my skull as I struggled for breath. Every attempt to move was stifled by agony and so I lay there, alone in the darkness and dirt. 

I wheezed out a laugh, closing my eyes. 

I’d see my dear partner again soon. 

~*~ 

A sense of unease had settled into my gut the second we arrived at the train station. Nothing was out of place, nothing suspicious, and yet that feeling remained burning in my chest. The princess consort got onto the train without issue, thanking us sweetly as she made her way to her seat in her reserved train car. The two of us began walking away, replaced by younger recruits. It was routine and yet it still felt off. Vinson glanced at me, sensing my discomfort. 

“What is it?” he asked, gaze sweeping over the station for a moment. When he found nothing, he turned his gaze back to me. 

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Maybe I’ve grown paranoid.” 

“You’ve been working too much,” he said with the slightest quirk of his lips. “We should request a vacation.” 

I laughed at that, still scanning the surroundings of the platform. What was it? 

The world held its breath, the pressure growing so heavy that I could not move. Vinson stopped too, brows furrowed. His eyes widened as he turned towards me, opening his mouth to— 

Then the train exploded with a loud boom. 

Ringing filled my ears, my brain rattling in my skull as I regained consciousness. The length of my blackout was a mystery to me. At least a minor concussion. Perhaps a major one. Where was Vinson? I turned my head and— 

His corpse lay next to me, his eyes staring unseeingly at me, and his arm outstretched as if he were reaching to touch me. The pool of his blood was soaking into my uniform as I lay pinned to the ground by the wreckage, trying to reach him. He was slightly too far away, my fingertips brushing against his. A large piece of metal debris pierced his chest, pinning him down like a hunter’s arrow. 

I screamed his name, hoping that he could be alive, that breath would fill his chest and he would magically respond. Any attempts to pull myself out of the wreckage made a sharp pain stab through my leg, but I couldn’t just lay there, watching him bleed. He could be alive. 

“Vinson,” I called, reaching as far as I could, barely able to touch his palm. “Vinson!” 

In the end, I was a failure. It was a simple job, a simple task and I failed. 

The princess consort was dead and so was Vinson. 

~*~ 

Her Highness, Princess Julianne Octavius. 

Privates Clara Jackson and Liam Proctor. 

Five hundred and thirty-six civilians and workers that were boarding the train or watching their loved ones depart. 

Sub-captain Vinson Chu. 

I was the sole survivour. 

His face haunted me, his words forever engraved into my brain. Everything he ever said. The shape of his brows. The tiny scar on his left cheekbone. The way he smiled as if all the muscles in his face were frozen. Every piece of him, every memory, was forever haunting me like a ghost. 

He never had a chance to truly live, to find his own happiness and freedom. He was never completely and wholly known by anyone, his thoughts and desires now a forever untold secret. Instead of all those promising lives, of all those people who could have gone on to greatness, I was the one to survive. If anyone should have lived and had a chance to remake themselves, it should have been Vinson. Perhaps I have been running towards him this whole time, wishing for a chance to say sorry. 

It was better this way, wasn’t it? 

I wasn’t even a good officer. All I was ever good at was running and I can’t even do that anymore. 

A voice filtered in through the silence of death. “Shit.” It felt too loud and entirely unwanted. Let me be discovered too late, let me not have to wake up in a hospital room once again, knowing that I had failed. “Foxx.” 

Something tapped the side of my face. Through blurry vision, I gazed up at Lyall’s distorted visage. He was nothing but wet paint running down a canvas. 

“I thought you’d give up,” his words crackled through my ears, coming in and out of clarity like the push and pull of waves. They washed over me and yet could not sink in. “Why the hell did you not just give up?” 

My body was moved, pulled up from the ground. I felt weightless. Perhaps I had fallen into a lake and was drowning, losing my last pieces of air. The lack of gravity and the burning in my lungs pointed to it. Was all of this a hallucination of my last moments? 

Was I already dead? 

“You’re not going to die,” Lyall said. He sounded a thousand miles away, an echo that had reached my ear. “I’m not letting you die.” 

Such statements were empty if the blackening of my vision meant anything.