Collateral Damage

SHAY

I wish I could express a vision of surprise, shock, and even hurt for Detective Oliver's sake.

Unfortunately, this wasn't news to me at all.

I knew.

I always knew who my parents' killer was.

I knew it was Marcus.

Despite this knowledge, I opted to live with him after he got me out of the orphanage in the medical building of Zone C1, five years later, after the apocalypse.

I allowed him to take care of me and even let him change my last name into his. I had stayed with the man for the last fifteen years.

I was by his side when X started killing his people.

I watched him mourn, crumble, and become vulnerable as he kept losing his loved ones.

I knew, I always knew.

"You came all the way here just to tell me that?"

Detective Oliver seemed taken aback by my response. It wasn't the reaction he had expected.

"Yes."

"I appreciate it, Detective. Thank you". The Detective's eyebrow furrowed while he eyed me. Realization dawned on him a little late.

"Wait, you knew?"

I confidently looked into his deep blue, calculating eyes.

"Remember I told you about my strange habit earlier? I didn't say that to impress you."

I think I was the one who gave the Detective quite a shock. I rendered him speechless as he ran a hand through his blonde hair, which perfectly fell back in its respective place right after.

"You were there, and yet, you didn't report this to the authorities. Why?"

It was easy to tell him why. Yet, I have kept my secrets to myself all these years.

I had always known that a day like this would eventually come.

But I told no one about what I knew, not even to Marcus.

He had died believing that he had taken the truth regarding my parents' death to his grave.

I have no intention of spilling them now.

However, there might be a way to persuade me.

"Tell me, Rafael, tell me something I don't know, and I promise, I'll tell you my secrets." Detective Oliver locked eyes with me. I smiled.

"I'll spill everything. One by one."

--

RAFAEL

I splashed the cold water on my face, staring at my drenched reflection in the bathroom mirror of what used to be Marcus Zephanie's room.

My father, George Oliver, took over Marcus' position by a fair vote. With his rise to leadership, all of Marcus' possession went to him.

Except for his personal assets, they handed everything else to my father, which would be passed on to the next ruler after him.

But instead of living in Marcus Zephanie's abandoned home, my father, being the humble man that he was, chose to stay in our decent apartel.

And so, I, being the eldest of his children, ended up transferring in the beautiful luxury in his place.

It would have been a waste, with nobody wanting to stay in here because of it being a former crime scene, anyway. So, why not allow myself a bit of extravagant living?

Speaking of crime scenes, thoughts of my visit to Shay Zephanie in Zone C4 invaded my mind. I grabbed the towel hanging at the back of the bathroom door, patting my face dry, and went back inside the sumptuous bedroom.

I threw myself on the bed, feeling frustrated.

My little expedition turned out to be useless.

Not entirely, but still.

I never thought of the possibility that she knew.

She always had, and yet she was able to live with the man who killed her parents under the same roof for fifteen years.

She didn't even seem bothered about being X's target for a while. I didn't detect any form of resentment from her, either. That or she may have gotten so good at pretending, it was natural for her to mask her genuine emotions.

"What kind of woman are you, Shay Zephanie?"

"Perhaps, someone out of your league." I rolled my eyes, knowing that it was my annoying cousin, Tori, who, for some reason, found it entertaining to barge in, uninvited, in my room.

I sat up and saw her leaning by the door frame, a mischievous glimmer in her eyes.

"Aww, you seem to be taken by her dear cousin."

"You're mistaken." She gasped, covering her mouth with her hands.

I almost can't believe that she was the same scraggly kid back in the day. She used to be so tiny, but looking at her now, in her late twenties and the best forensics I had ever met, I couldn't be more proud.

She lost her parents during the apocalypse and was raised by my parents. We grew up together and had developed the same thrill for action. Luckily, we excelled in different fields, which might explain the reason for her not so welcomed visit.

But she did have the extra key card to this apartel, on my dad's insistence. So, I guess she wasn't that 'unwelcomed' after all.

"I dare to disagree. She has left quite an impression on you. Though I have to admit, Shay Zephanie is a darling. She's an ugly duckling turned beautiful swan kind of babe."

I shook my head in disbelief.

"Sometimes, I really wish that you would stop spewing this kind of nonsense."

"Oh, but this kind of 'nonsense' is what helps solve your cases more often than not."

And she said it. It was a fact.

"Exactly. I only said, 'sometimes,' like right now."

Tori let out a sigh as she hurled herself on the space beside me.

"Seeing that look on your face, I gather the meeting with Shay didn't go the way you wanted it to."

It was my turn to sigh.

"She's surprisingly unpredictable."

"Yes, and that's a woman's charm."

"Great. Now, I do not know how to convince her to come back and make a statement to convict a dead man." That was actually the entire purpose of why I needed to see her.

I was supposed to get her to come back with me.

But her unexpected revelation threw me off completely. I wasn't able to tell her about my practiced speech.

"Consider yourself lucky." I looked at Tori, confused. She seemed excited.

That only meant one thing.

"You found something."

She nodded, getting herself to sit up, and faced me.

"Yes, and you'll totally be in for a shocking discovery."

"Spill it, Tori, don't keep me guessing."

Tori's eyes went animated for a brief second as she took a deep breath, ready to blurt out her big news.

"Marcus Zephanie faked his death. Basically, you will not be convicting a dead man." I stared at my cousin, not knowing how to respond. Tori was right; it was shocking, indeed. It took me a while to collect myself.

"How?"

Tori's expression suddenly became sheepish.

"That's… where this goes down the drain. Remember the recent footage we found on Marcus' hard drive, which you found by accident?"

Yes, as she had mentioned, it was by accident that I came across that piece of evidence.

I wanted to make this room mine somehow, so I did a little poking around, not knowing that Marcus Zephanie had a secret compartment under his bed. That was where I found it.

Why he kept it after all these years instead of destroying it was beyond me. But it was enough to change my perspective of the man.

And right now, I didn't like where Tori's story was going.

"The evidence is missing." I concluded.

"Yes, he stole it, openly exposing himself to the cameras all over the office. I couldn't believe it at first. So, while you were gone, I went to the memorial where I took a tiny pinch of Marcus's supposed to be ash remains and ran some tests, comparing it to some prints which he carelessly left behind, thank goodness, while trying to steal his property. It turned out that the man had us fooled."

Tori paused and whistled.

"All this time, the corpse that we had burned was a double. A duplicate, like a clone."

"A… what now? How did you come up with that conclusion?"

"This is a crazy theory, but hear me out."

I was totally in the dark, but I was willing to listen.

"Marcus Zephanie was a research scientist before the apocalypse. He majored in biology. Actually, he was a research biologist. Anyway, he was doing some sort of experiment. I'd like to assume that his experiment included in vitro fertilization, cloning life forms, and all that crazy science crap. But then, someone opposed it and boom, apocalypse. But before that, he might have succeeded and secretly continued with his experiment in a secret lab. Peter Trellis' death must have alarmed him and made him sprung to action. He then orchestrated his death, thus saving his beloved Shay from suffering in the hands of X by putting a clone in his stead, leading the world, especially our killer X, to assume that he was dead."

I blinked.

"How can you be so sure that the ash was the clone and not the other way around?"

"Easy. I asked for the corpse photos prior to burning and remembered seeing a C1 mark on his upper right shoulder when his body was sent to us for autopsy. I had thought of it as a tattoo when I first saw it, you know for the zones though I wondered why it was C1 only, I mean, what about the other 6? anyway, after seeing the camera footage of a replica of Marcus Zephanie, very alive and breathing, I concluded that it was an identification. C1, like Clone 1."

"And where did you get all this information?"

"His biography, which was actually from a one-on-one interview with him. It wasn't supposed to be published, but eventually, Marcus changed his mind. He didn't disclose what experiment he was working on, though, which was why I think he finally agreed on releasing his very own life story."

"Okay, and where would Shay Zephanie fit in all of that?"

"Simple, to pull Marcus out of his hiding, Shay will be the bait. She will be the ultimate key to all of this. Who knows, maybe Marcus Zephanie could eventually lead us to X."

Hearing Tori's crazy theory, Shay Zephanie's words echoed through my head.

'Tell me, Rafael, tell me something I don't know and I promise I'll tell you my secrets. I'll spill everything. One by one.'

If my cousin's crazy theory would be proven right, I'd like to believe that Shay Zephanie knew all about it and maybe more.

"Your crazy idea has led me to a crazy decision." Tori looked at me funny.

"What?"

"I'm going to marry Shay Zephanie."