THE CLUE
THE CLUE
Just as he was about to sleep, he caught a silhouette walking in the kitchen and back to the kitchen staff's building. Vincent had a bad feeling and went out again.
He wasn't sure why but his throat was constricted from so much anxiety. He jogged on his way to the kitchen and found no one. He followed the shadow and walked towards the other building. Still, no one in sight.
Vincent went back to the kitchen and found everything in place. 'What am I missing?' he thought to himself as he walked back to his room where the monitors were placed. Actually, he got himself his own monitors to personally see what's going on. At the same time, they have a huge control room where two police officers were tasked to check the abnormal activities through camera lenses.
Vincent couldn't pinpoint what was really wrong so he called the control room to check the cameras back to the past one hour.
The police officers immediately worked on his request and checked each camera. After half an hour, they reported back to him a negative result.
"How come? I'm sure I saw someone." Vincent pinched the space between his eyebrows while he checked the monitors himself. He didn't know how it happened but he couldn't find anyone from the camera recordings either. He even started to think that he was just imagining things.
In reality, he wasn't really imagining things. Even if he was tired, what he saw was Jackie's shadow. It was the last recording that Shein had to erase.
Jackie asked Shein to hack into the regional jail's system to help her cover her tracks. Everytime she appeared in a camera, Shein was right behind her, removing all traces.
When Vincent caught the shadow of someone, Shein was also on it, deleting her existence. It would have been perfect if Jackie didn't purposely leave her hair clip.
She dared to do it because she knew she can escape from it and she just want to see how Vincent would react.
Early morning of the next day, everyone got up and ate their bread and drank the water given to them before they head to take a shower. At first, nothing was wrong with anyone. They chatted, do their morning exercise, watered their plants, toiled the garden and do many activities.
It wasn't until 10 o'clock in the morning that Mr. Summer, the head of the family, felt an intense pain in his body. He fell on the ground and curled his body like a shrimp.
He was sweating coldly from the pain and they didn't know how to help him. The doctors and nurses assigned to the regional jail came to his rescue immediately and brought him to the clinic.
It wasn't even five minutes yet when they got another call of the same situation. Minutes after minutes, all the Summers were inside the clinic. Some were crying from the excruciating pain they felt. Some were gritting their teeth to hold back their curses.
The pain wasn't just superficial. It was bone-deep and they all felt that they were being broken into pieces.
The doctors diagnosed them but they couldn't find anything unusual from them. There wasn't any sign of food poisoning or any external factors that could've hurt them.
Vincent heard about the news and immediately went up to them. He saw all the Summers involved in illegal human experiments except for one, Simon.
Vincent went out of the clinic and started to find Simon who was actually digging a soil near his lettuce plant.
"What are you doing?" Vincent asked which raised an eyebrow from other prisoners.
Simon just looked at him before he continued doing his task. "I'm told to plant a lettuce so I'm planting another batch."
"Oh..it's not..I mean..are you alright? Are you feeling any pain like your family."
Simon shook his head. "I don't feel anything and I don't have family. Don't associate me with them."
"Do you happen to know if there's disease that can cause so much pain?"
"I don't. And if they feel pain, that's a very light punishment for what they did to everyone."
Vincent stopped asking him since Simon didn't have much of an information. In truth, Simon wasn't planning to plant a new batch of lettuce but he did so as an excuse.
When he arrived that morning to check his garden, he noticed the light footprint beside his plant and a long strand of hair and a crystal button. He didn't know who owned it but he knew that person wasn't from the place because everyone in the place had their hair cut short. The only person he saw with a long hair was Jackie but he wasn't sure if it was Jackie who came to punish them. He dug the footprint to mess with it and buried the items on the ground.
Vincent was still feeling restless from what happened. He was very sure that someone infiltrated their place and did something. However, he couldn't get his hands on any evidence. He couldn't say that the Summers were acting either because he could see the pain in their eyes and the helpless expressions.
Vincent walked for god-knows-how-long and ended up in the kitchen again. He looked at the place once again. All the kitchen staff were there except for the woman that he was missing.
"Who sent the sandwiches this morning?" Vincent asked.
Two of the staff raised their hands to answer him. "I brought the sandwiches from the 1st to the second floor."
"I brought them water and I found that the sandwiches for the third floor were already given." the other person answered.
"Who brought the ones to the third floor?" Vincent asked once again but the staff only looked at each other before they all shook their heads.
Vincent walked out and run towards the third floor immediately. He checked all nooks and cranny of the place to find any clues.
Unfortunately, the clue he found was something he couldn't show to anyone. "She really came." Vincent murmured with a sad expression while he kept the hair clip inside his coat pocket.