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Text copyright © 2025 Jan Herrington
⚠️ Content Warning: Coercion through physical violence
Last time on TSA
Viktor and Chaus made a chilling discovery in a lab.
“We’re going to find out what the old man’s up to,” Chaus said in a reassuring tone.
“And we’re going to stop him,” I replied.
Our moment of strength was soon interrupted, our hope soon crushed as I bumped into Finn.
“What do you think you’re doing, rookie?”
The gang wants the truth, Finn wants payback, and Viktor’s running out of lies. Klaus’s strange behavior has everyone watching too closely, and Chaus’s silence doesn’t help. Viktor finally learns the gang’s name—but too late. Finn’s retribution carries old wounds, and the past returns, heavy in Klaus’s hands.
Music pairing: Bakushou — syudou (YouTube, YouTube Music)
Chapter 13
The room was a skeleton of what it should have been. It was mainly built out of dirty concrete. I couldn’t get the smell of mildew and something metallic out of my nose. A single bulb swung overhead, casting moving shadows.
I sat in a metal chair. My wrists were tied with coarse rope that cut into my skin every time I so much as shifted. My jacket and shirt were gone, leaving me in just my undershirt. The cold seeped through, wrapping around me like a second skin.
Chaus sat to my right, just as restrained. What bothered me most was the rusted drain under his chair. It was easy to imagine what ran through it—what was about to, if I messed this up.
I had been in interrogation rooms before, but never like this, and always on the other side of the table.
“Why did you let him tie us up? You could have taken him.” Chaus asked.
“Me?! He made you tie me up first, and you let him!”
“He had a gun.”
“Don’t you? They never gave me even a stun gun.”
Chaus looked away, then his whole demeanor collapsed in the chair, “We left it in the ditch.”
“Oh... yeah... but you’re a gang leader, couldn’t they give you another one?”
“That would be suspicious—big boss lost his gun? Yeah, that would go over great.”
“You could have gotten the one in the ditch.”
“I looked for it, but it was gone. Klaus had a backup, big son of a bitch, but I left it at home.”
“You—you what? Why in the hell would you leave your gun at home?”
“It was too big for a waistband holster, and the shoulder holster chafed my armpits.”
“Un-believable, you—”
thunk, thunk
Two raps on the steel door interrupted me. It opened, and I recognized the edge of blue hair as soon as it poked in.
Finn sat down across from us in another stained metal chair. He was taller and far stronger than me, considering how small his jacket looked on him. It did nothing to hide the black tattoos creeping across his hands.
He had a piercing on his eyebrow and a few in each ear. His skin was probably fairish, but since Chai possessed me, being next to my pale, ghostly skin made everyone look darker.
He wasn’t smirking like most of the other gang members liked to do. He just sat watching. Still, like seeing a shark fin come out of the water, I could sense something was wrong.
“Detective,” he said finally, his voice quiet but carrying. No “Levitsky”, no “Viktor”, no “Officer”—just “detective”. I didn’t respond.
He tilted his head slowly, a measured movement. “You’re deep in this now, aren’t you?”
I said nothing. I knew how this worked. He was waiting for me to let my guard down and let part of the truth slip. Then he would pounce.
One thing about this confused me, though. Why was Chaus in the same room as me? Standard practice is to split up detainees and pit one’s story against the other.
“Now, normally, I’d separate you two—standard interrogation tactic,” Finn spoke my thoughts. “But you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, detective?”
Finn exhaled, shaking his head, “We want answers. We want to know why a cop is in our ranks and why Klaus,”—he flicked his eyes toward Chaus—“hasn’t been acting like himself.”
Chaus didn’t react.
I still didn’t let out a word, but I knew that eventually he would start using other tactics to get his way.
Finn’s eyes narrowed. He stood up and grabbed the back of my chair, tilting it forward until it balanced precariously on two legs. “Introverted, aren’t we?” he said, clenching his teeth.
The ropes dug into my wrists as I gripped the seat for balance, my heart pounding in my chest. Finn didn’t care.
“You have two options here. Either you tell me why you’re really here, or I’ll make sure you never leave this room.”
I didn’t flinch—just stared, like he did a moment before. But being silent ate at my soul, so I spoke. “You’re wasting your time.”
“Am I?” He let go of the chair, letting it slam back against the floor with a metallic clang. I could feel the sound reverberate throughout my skull.
He turned his chair around with another clang, then straddled it backwards, sighing quietly. “Tell me, detective, what did you think you could achieve by infiltrating us?”
He called me a detective, even though I wasn’t yet. Did he really know I was NYPD, or was he making assumptions based on my behavior? If I didn’t give him something, he’d keep pushing until he got what he wanted.
The longer I stayed in this chair, the worse my chances were of getting out alive. I had to play it safe, though, and not give him anything he doesn’t actually know.
“I’m here for answers,” I said finally, voice firm despite the dryness in my throat. “Someone I cared about was killed—Olivia. I know her death wasn’t what it seemed.”
His face then said something else. Not cold detachment—not anger. I couldn’t quite tell what it was. He quickly masked it.
He started tapping his long fingernails on the top rail of his chair. The clicking filled up the silence immediately. Was he thinking—plotting his next move as I was?
I glanced to my side without turning my head. Chaus’s expression was as unreadable as always. He didn’t look frightened or panicked—still hadn’t said a word.
Abruptly, Finn stood up again, his dark blue hair catching the light. For a second, I thought he would hit me. “And just who do you think is running this?”
I kept eye contact with him even though it made me uncomfortable. At this point, I didn’t really know anything. All Chai had been able to give was “the old man”.
Finn was casting lines to see if I’d bite. Let’s see how he likes it. “Your boss, I’ve heard about her.”
“Anna? Pssh, she’s nothing.”
That’s something—I’ve got him on the line, I thought as I considered why I kept throwing out fishing metaphors even though I hate it.
Finn was quiet for a moment. Then, he looked away, his eyes on the wall. The bulb above us went out for a split second before turning back on just as quickly.
“No—it’s The Contagion,” he said under his breath, barely audible.
The name settled in my gut, though I didn’t know why.
Finn exhaled slowly. “You don’t know anything, do you?”
I clenched my fists against the ropes. “I know enough. Enough to—”
“If you knew enough, you wouldn’t be wasting your time chasing Anna,” Finn interrupted. “She’s nothing—just another pawn.”
I didn’t correct him. He was ramping up for a villain monologue. Better let him swim out his strength, I thought as my Father’s metaphors continued to entrap me.
His jaw tightened. “The Contagion’s the one pulling the strings. The one who’s been spreading through the city like a disease.”
His voice didn’t waver much, but I could hear the disgust underneath. “You’re working against him, aren’t you?” I said without thinking for once.
Suddenly, Finn laughed. It was short and sharp. Like something in him had snapped.
“Well, shit,” he said, face full of amusement. “Took you long enough, rookie.”
All of a sudden, I understood. He needed to make sure I wasn’t actually working with the cops, whether I was one or not. He needed to make sure I wasn’t actually trying to be part of the gang. This helped confirm Zoe’s dossier on the station.
If I were another shill for the force, or some idiot throwing himself into a gang he didn’t understand, he couldn’t trust me. I might still be an idiot, but he didn’t need to know that.
He had a reason for keeping me and Chaus in the same room. He wanted to see how Chaus—no—Klaus would react to this. That’s why we were both tied up. If Klaus were Klaus, he would have killed Finn right there, right then.
But how could he know Klaus wasn’t Klaus? How could anyone believe such a thing? I’d have to figure that out later, for now, I had to respond.
I let my head fall back against the chair, exhaling. “You were testing me.”
Finn clapped once, sharply, “Glad you’re keeping up.”
Beside me, Chaus shifted slightly, finally speaking. “So what now?”
Finn sighed, “Next, I redeem you with the organization.”
“The... organization?” A thousand other questions came to mind, but this one had been gnawing at me for weeks. I had to know who the hell we were working for—working against. “Is that what the gang calls itself?”
Finn smirked at me, “You really are a rookie.” I thought he was just going to leave it at that, but after a moment, he continued.
“This isn’t a gang, detective—it’s a business—a family business, sure, but still a business. Business is shady, and this one more than most, so they hire shady people to do their shady work.”
“Well, shit,” I said, face full of incredulity. This whole time I thought I was infiltrating a gang, when the gang was a front—a front for a business. This whole operation could have been an email.
“What about Joseph and Mei, the others—they all seemed like gang members?” I asked, thinking of Chai, who thought he was in a gang.
“If you’re not family, you’re just a regular employee. Some people wanna play thug, sometimes that makes it easier to do the shady stuff we need. The business just lets them believe whatever will get the job done.”
This just created more questions, what the hell is the family business?
“We don’t have time for 20 questions,” Finn interrupted my thoughts.
“Fine. So, how do you redeem us? A call to HR? A performance improvement plan?” I questioned.
Finn’s smirk faded. I was never good with emotions, but if his face showed anything, it was sadness. He turned to Chaus, “With the only language they understand.”
Chaus’s expression didn’t change, but I could feel the weight of the words settle between us.
Finn ran a hand through his hair. “They’re already suspicious of Klaus—or, well… whoever you are,” he looked over Chaus carefully. “And ‘Klaus’ vetted you ‘Dmitri’.”
“Klaus was an idiot,” he muttered. “We never got along, always fought. I never liked the bastard. But family…” he trailed off.
He didn’t have to finish the sentence for me to finally understand—his face said it all. The disdain, followed by regret, then the type of melancholy that swallows a person whole. I’d seen it all before.
“You still cared about him anyway—your brother,” I guessed. Finn didn’t really resemble Klaus, especially with his blue hair and piercings. More K-pop than Klaus’s smooth jazz.
“Half-brother. Doesn’t matter now. You killed him—he’s gone.” Finn looked toward me. “They want to send ‘Klaus’, here, a message for putting his nose where it doesn’t belong. He’s been digging around, probably helping you, detective.”
“And you’re the one to do that?” I asked.
“Normally, they wouldn’t send someone like me to punish a boss like Klaus, but they know that there’s no hate like brotherly love.”
He stepped in front of Chaus. “If you leave here like you came in, that’ll look suspicious.” Chaus nodded curtly—he understood something I didn’t.
Finn sighed, “I’m gonna have to make it look real.”
“Do it,” Chaus said, eerily calm.
Without hesitation, Finn struck. Chaus’s head snapped to the side. A fresh trickle of blood trailed from his split lip. He barely flinched.
Finn rolled his shoulders, shaking out his hand. “Gonna need a bit more than that.”
Chaus looked at him blankly, then spat blood on the dirty concrete floor. “Go ahead.”
“You see, I don’t know who you are, but you sure look like Klaus. Hell, you even sound like that fucking sadistic, racist asshole.”
Finn threw another punch at his jaw. I winced at the sound, solid and dull—I felt it in my teeth. I wanted to face the door instead of their corner of the room, but Finn’s performance commanded my attention.
“But you aren’t Klaus.”
A left hook.
“I don’t know how you did it, but I have some idea.”
A right hook.
“I’ve seen that freak-show Ben. I don’t know exactly what he is, but I know it’s not natural.”
A backhand.
He finally stepped back. I couldn’t help but think that Finn needed a better coping mechanism for his fluctuating emotions.
I looked over to Chaus, his face was bruised. Not an extreme amount of damage, just about enough to sell the act.
“Somehow, this all has something to do with you,” Finn said, drawing my attention back to him. “You’re not getting out that easy yourself, detective.”
He sent one quick punch to my cheek, splitting my lip, knocking my face to the side.
Finn wiped his bloody knuckles in a rag he pulled from his jacket. “Alright. That should do it.”
He looked at me. “This never happened. If things go sideways, I won’t be so nice next time.”
I met his gaze. “Understood.”
Finn stepped to the door.
“Uh, I think you forgot something,” I said, since we were still tied up.
“Right. Good luck, detective.”
I let out a sigh. “Not that…”
He smirked, he was fucking with us. I guess he’s not just his hardened criminal front.
“This will only buy a little time,” Finn said as he untied us. “In two days, there’s going to be a raid.”
He stood beside the chair, idly tapping his fingernails on the rail again. “Cops are coming in full force. When they do, the organization is going to shoot back. The office is going to become a battlefield.”
“Aren’t the cops working for the organization?” I asked.
“Some. But the Contagion—the old man, as most call him—has been getting too confident. The police chief was stalling. I guess there wasn’t enough on him to keep him in line. So the Contagion went around him. But the chief’s boss? Golden boy—lives by the rule of law.”
I couldn’t tell what Finn thought about the law. Maybe he was as pissed as I was that corruption so easily spread—a contamination. Finn wasn’t done talking.
“Golden Boy’s got a warrant for a raid to shut this building down and take the computers for info. Only reason we knew is because the Contagion has enough on one guy that he’d never think of not leaking everything.”
I’d have to figure out who that guy was. But it sounds like I’m not returning from leave, yet.
“Detective—two days.” Finn reiterated. “Do your normal rounds until then. Don’t do anything stupid. When the shooting starts, I’ll find you.”
That didn’t sound very reassuring.
“Oh, one last thing,” he reached into his jacket, pulling out something. He turned it in his hand and gave it to Chaus. “You’ll need this.”
It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. No clear markers, nothing flashy to identify it by. But I knew it well, and what it meant—so did Finn.
I recognized every sharp line, every angle, every scratch on its matte black surface. Its image seared into my brain by the adrenaline-fueled struggle over it in the ditch.
It was Klaus’s gun.
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