My back and ass ached from sitting on the hardest metal chair I had ever come across; the wounds from my shoulder, knee, face and everywhere else I had been inflicted with damage throbbed and stung with every movement I took. Most of my wounds had stopped openly bleeding, but now they just oozed, which was a lot more worrying.

  I tried to move my body to get comfortable but handcuffs secured me to a table that hindered my movement.

  I rubbed my itchy ear against my shoulder and looked around the small room I was in. Grey walls gave away to a dirty carpeted floor that could have been any colour once but was now just beige, a two-way mirrored wall was to my left and an empty chair sat in front of me. I looked up towards each top corner of the room and found that they were empty of surveillance equipment.

  A door before me opened and a man dressed in a grey suit, with matching tie that had a ketchup stain on it, made his way towards me. Bushy brown moustache covered his top lip, a mop of brown hair covered his head. He had the weight and bearing of someone who looked like a sergeant.

  He dropped a brown file in one hand on the desk in front of me, while he ate a hot dog with all the trimmings with the other. He pulled out the chair opposite me and placed himself in it, while he continued to eat.

  “God damn, Jerry knows how to make a good hot dog and serve a fine beer,” he said, finishing his meal and licking his fingers clean.

  “Jerry, the owner of The Office?”

  “The very same.”

  Who would have thought Jerry had so many fingers in so many pies?

  “Well, Mr...?”

  “I would rather not say until I have a lawyer present.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s not start throwing the L-word around, shall we, let’s just back up a minute and go through the events which led to you being here.”

  “I would rather have a lawyer represent—”

  “Listen, take my advice, all the lawyers in this borough are shit and a lawyer from another borough won’t touch this case, even if they got to sleep with Miss Paradise Lost. This is such a slam-dunk case, I don’t know why my officer even brought you to me,” he said, opening up the paper file in front of me, which left a greasy mark on the files.

  “Who even uses paper anymore?”

  “A police force network is constantly hacked, then the information gathered from that hack is leaked to the public, sensitive information. Information about a certain high-ranking officer in certain poses taken for his lover, a lover his wife knew nothing about and is still looking for her piece of flesh, although he already told her he had certain urges and if she just tried to—” He cut himself off and shook his head.

  “Anyway, that is not important. What is important is the state we found you in.”

  I gave him a blank stare not allowing any emotion to register on my face.

  “One of my officers found you covered in blood and shit carrying a bloody hammer with fragments of bone and hair flecking the metal. Which isn’t a first in this borough, far from it. What is a first is that you offered yourself up with no resistance, nor did you try to flee, which is strange indeed.”

  “The reason I offered myself to your officer is because I am not guilty of anything.”

  “Is that so?” he said, drawing out the last word.

  Eventually he broke his own silence: “Everyone is guilty of something in this cesspit of a borough; there is a reason they named this planet Safe Haven after all.”

  “Like I said, I am not guilty of anything.”

  “Then how do you explain carrying a bloody hammer?”

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  “Found it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “We are doing tests now on the hammer and on the blood samples taken from your clothes and I would bet my retirement saving they both match. Which means the weapon was in your possession when it was used to create such a mess, that or you were in the vicinity when said weapon was being used. So would you like to try again and tell me what you did with the hammer?”

  “Can I please see my lawyer now?”

  He shook his head. “How about an easier question, what’s your name?”

  I stared at him while he chewed the ends of his moustache in frustration. I wanted to tell him who I was and where I had come from, but who would believe me?

  I had already killed two men, plus maybe a third, and I had the might of Xcorp trying to kill me and every gang in this city wanting to take me to see The Lady.

  I couldn’t trust anyone.

  Not my wife.

  Not my boss.

  Not the company I had given up so much of my life for.

  “My name is Officer Hank Phillips and I want to help you, but I can’t do that if you don’t help me,” he said with a smile.

  “Get me a lawyer and I’ll give you all the help you want.”

  He shook his head and threw across the table a picture of me entering Jerry’s bar.

  “Is this you entering Jerry’s bar the night it got destroyed?”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  He threw another picture across the table of me exiting from the back, while the building was on flames.

  “It was a busy night that night; many people were at Jerry’s bar. What’s your point?”

  He shook his head and showed me another picture, this one of a dead man whose face had been caved in by a blunt object.

  “Do you recognise this man?”

  “Who would?” I replied, pointing to the picture. “His face is all fucked up.”

  “What about this man?” he said, throwing another picture my way, which showed another dead body with its skull cracked in.

  “Or this man, or this man, or this man.”

  He kept throwing photographs my way, till I was drowning in a sea of battered murdered faces. I studied each one in turn, trying to find out some clues as to what they had done to deserve such a fate.

  “Look, I don’t—” I began but was interrupted by a knock on the door.

  “Come in,” said Officer Phillips.

  A man dressed in uniform hurried up to us and whispered something in Officer Phillips’s ear, which caused a smile to break out on his lips.

  “You sure?” he asked.

  The officer gave him a nod and walked out the way he came.

  “Well, it seems we shall not be needing any help from you after all,” he said with a shark-like smile. “Forensics have matched your hammer with ten different murder victims, that we couldn’t solve the cases on.”

  I stared at him open-mouthed not knowing what to say.

  How could this be? Yes, I had killed people, but it was only to escape. To survive. The pictures of these men he showed me appeared to be weeks if not months old. My gut rumbled as I sensed a black hole opening up beneath my feet.

  “I... I, I didn’t do this,” I stammered.

  “Well evidence doesn’t lie,” he said, giving me a shrug as he placed the pictures back in the brown paper file.

  “But I didn’t do this! Those pictures look weeks or months old and I haven’t been on this planet that long.”

  “Well, that’s too bad for you, isn’t it?” he said, getting up. “Now if you were affiliated with one of the crews in the borough, maybe we could have worked something out but as it stands, you have no money, no influence and no friends. So I’m sorry to say, you’ll be going away for the rest of your life.”

  The crooked bastard was trying to shake me down.

  “You can’t do this! This isn’t how the law works.”

  He placed both his hands down on the table and gave me a look that caused my spine to shiver.

  “I guess you haven’t realised we do things differently here in Safe Haven. Money talks and power rules and you, my friend, have neither.”

  He walked to the door and tapped on it lightly. Two officers came in through the door and took up positions beside me as one of them unlocked my handcuffs from the table. They lifted me up to my feet and dragged me away.

  It couldn’t end like this! I had escaped death more times than I could count and they would sentence me for crimes I didn’t commit, just because I didn’t have friends this asshole feared.

  “Wait, wait, wait!” I said, struggling against their restraints. “Hear me out—have you heard of the Junk Yard Dogs?”

  “What about them?” Officer Phillips said, bored expression plastered on his face.

  “If you speak to them, I’m sure we can sort this out. Just get in touch with José and all this will go away.”

  “Ha, those broke bums don’t have the capital it will take to get you out of this. Take him away.”

  “No, wait, wait. Listen to me! José is doing a job for The Lady. You know of The Lady, right, of course you do. Well, he is in the process of completing a job for her and I’m integral to those plans. Now I don’t know about you, but I would hate to ruin the plans of The Lady. To say that she may not take too kindly to anyone who gets in the way of those plans is an understatement.”

  My lungs hurt as I spilled out my words without taking a breath. The officers who had been dragging me out of the room had stopped as they looked between me and Officer Phillips. I couldn’t read his thoughts but I could see the cogs turning as he calculated how best this could profit him.

  “All I know is, José would pay a hefty sum to see me returned, and the person who returned me would also be in The Lady’s good graces.”

  He stroked his chin while he chewed the ends of his moustache. “Take him away while I make some calls. Put him in cell H.”

  “You sure, sir?” one of the men holding me said.

  “Absolutely,” Officer Phillips said with a smile.