9th July 2025, 5:23 a.m.
At the local police station.
~~~
"Good mornin', detective. Want some coffee?" Said a rookie police officer as he handed out an extra coffee to William who calmly accepted with a smile.
"Thank you, I haven't got a time to prepare my coffee because I was called so suddenly," William finished the coffee in a short amount of time, "Ah, by the way, where's the meeting room? Is it at the chief's office?"
"I think so," He sipped the coffee, "I saw other detectives going there in a hurry."
"I see." William nodded before leaving the rookie to the office.
After going past a turn, he reached the door with a large word of chief carved on a sign, he grabbed the door knob and opened the door.
"Look who's late? You must've been lazing around you worthless bumsack."
Standing at the height of 6 foot 7 inches, he has a messy red hair, wearing a long black coat customised to have a certain aesthetic befitting of a grimdark fantasy with a gray suit underneath, he's wearing a long dark blueish gray pants, his socks are black with two dark red line on the top and a brown leather shoes.
"Marco, this is not the time for your childish nonsense, this is an urgent matter."
Standing a foot taller than Marco was Brandon, a man of african descent with a long braided black hair, his eyes glowed a hint of purple, wearing a black jacket that extends past his waist over a plain white T-shirt, to complement his appearance he wore a long slightly baggy gray jeans that was kept up by a belt, he wears a plain light brown socks underneath a blue and red shoes tied with white shoelaces covered in an interesting pattern.
"What's the matter anyway?" William asked before he pulled out a lollipop and eat it.
"We received a warning."
The chief assistant dropped the piles of documents and objects over the table, there was a variety of items, ranging from paper filled with threats to videotapes.
"This is all the stuff we received just this month, we've received a handful of them since a few months ago after Detective William's finished his investigation." The chief explained with a small drop of sweat falling down his cheek.
"We also get a warning ourselves," Oliver added as he revealed a few text messages from an unknown numbers, suspicious emails and letters, "I don't know how but these folks really have great intel on their targets, and unfortunately for now, we're those targets."
"I don't receive anything from messages or emails, but I do receive a lot of threatening phone calls from a registered number in my phone, I already tried to change phone three times now, even using a burner and decoy phones but they seemed to be able to keep up with me in no time," Marco said as he brought out a small object—it was a nokia, "I purchased this phone from an acquaintance, he's pretty much one of the best when it comes to tech so I can say, I'm fairly safe using this phone for messaging or phone calls as long as I follow to the cleaning procedure and don't make a huge blunder."
"Yeah, they might have some level of influence over the world, they might have connections with the government or even some unknown hidden organization that could make the entire government give a run for their money."
Falling down from the ventilation that was placed on the ceiling and then land on both of their feets crouching above the long desk right beside the wall, a young male barely reaching 20, wearing a plain and simple long-sleeved blue sweater, hanging from his sweater collar was a sunglasses, his bright blue eyes and dark blue hair was one of his most noticeable features, he wore a pants that covered only halfway through his calves, white socks and white sports shoes.
"Daniel? What were you doing on the vent-?" Marco was about to ask but he was interrupted by Brandon, "Daniel, do you find anything with your connection?" Brandon asked.
"Unfortunately no luck, my status as a 'King' have been revoked because of my loss last night, that bastard's play was extremely good, I was losing since the first round, luckily the gamble was for only my status not my membership as a whole but he did gave me some clue about these new folks and gave me a special favor of hiding everything about 'Daniel' from them." Daniel explained before ripping off a lollipop wrapper and putting it in his mouth, "So for today's onward, I, specifically 'Daniel! never existed." He said.
"That's the reason why they don't send anything to me because they received information about 'Daniel' being dead after at the hands of a debt collector after losing a gamble against the leader of the club." He added.
"Hm? I thought you said 'you' never existed, not that 'Daniel' is dead." Marco asked.
"There's no record of me ever existed in any record accessible to the 'regular' people, the club only changed my 'hidden' status as dead even though I'm still alive. The reason for that is because such organization must be powerful enough to have access to the higher level of information that requires immense authority to be obtained. The 'erasure' of identity is just a cover so that they believed 'Daniel' was really killed." Daniel answered.
"Fooling them into thinking you really died via the erasure of your identity… I didn't know they participated in such practices." William pulled out a mint-flavored candy from his coat, "So that's why all of those losers seemed like they were about to be dead." He said while chewing the candy.
"Moving on-" As Daniel was about to change the topic a police officer knocked on the door.
"You may enter." Said the chief.
"I'm sorry to interrupt but we received a new one." The police officer walked inside and hand it out to the chief before leaving.
"A new videotape." The chief muttered.
"May I?" The videotape was handed out to Daniel who quickly checked if it has suspicious objects within it, "It's safe, you may play the video."
After inserting the videotape, the monitor showed us a gray room with someone tied on a chair in the middle of it, a bag covered their face and a muffled scream coming from underneath, slowly a figure stepped into the view.
Daniel noticed a familiar watch on the left hand of the tied person, 'Don't tell me-!' He grabbed his phone and pressed a number on the phone, 'Please don't be right.'
[ "Hello ladies and gentleme- hm? Ah, someone's phone is ringing~" ] The figure on the monitor spoke.
"Hm? Is it live? Do you know who's that? Why does the phone rang at the same time you called?" Brandon muttered as he turned his head to Daniel who were staring at the monitor.
"No, that wasn't it, this videotape isn't live, it must be a coincidence because I am calling Jack's number and the number I just called belonged to someone else now," Daniel said after he hanged up the phone and the monitor showed the camera zooming into the figure grabbing the phone upside down and put it on his ear, "Wait, that number is mine… and the date? 17th April, 9:54 p.m, I remember that time! I was calling Jack to discuss about the new case we were assigned to solve the day before but when I was talking to him, he was acting extremely strange… so this is why." Daniel finally acquired a revelation.
The voice of the figure shifted into a voice they all are familiar with, it was Jack's, [ "Hello, Daniel, what's the matter?" ], the small almost inaudible voice of Daniel can be heard, [ "Hello, Jack, the case yesterday, how should we approach them?" ].
[ "I will approach it as usual." ] The figure spoke.
[ "…" ] Daniel voice was silent before asking, [ "As usual? Well, that would be quite problematic isn't it? Your usual method are just barging into the criminal's hideout which wouldn't be so effective in a place where there's hundreds of armed men." ] He spoke with a sigh.
[ "Ah, I see, my usual method won't be applicable in these scenario hahaha," ] The figure let out an awkward laugh, [ "Then I'll let you handle all the planning and problem solving and I will just do some support work." ] He said.
[ "Alright, see you tomorrow, Jack." ] Daniel hang up.
The figure let out a defeated sigh before saying, [ "Because of that my time has been cut short, I will release Jack Collins back into the world and I will take him back in the fourth day of July, at the height of Blacktale Coffee Shop but in time, and also protect the red lady because my boss has taken a liking to them." ]
At the same time as the end of the videotape, an explosion occurred right at the parking lot of the police station, all of the detectives and officers quickly exited the building and saw two police vehicles almost completely destroyed after being crashed into by a car engulfed in a terrifying fire.