Chapter 59: Questionable Conclusions
Daniel was genuinely terrified now. The confidence he’d been clinging to ever since waking up had completely disappeared. Damien didn’t look like he was joking in the slightest, and Vincent’s calm smile only made everything worse.
The two of them had never exactly been known as reasonable people, especially Vincent. Getting dragged into a tent by either one of them alone was already enough to make most people panic. Finding both of them waiting inside felt less like an interrogation and more like a funeral.
"Look, man. I was drinking with the guys like always. The blizzard was bad, but I still took the risk of walking halfway across camp to Jimmy’s tent. That’s where I stayed all night. When I woke up the next morning, everyone was saying Leslie died in a fire. I swear, that’s everything I know. I wasn’t anywhere near Leslie’s tent. Claire can vouch for me. My ability can’t protect me from a storm like that. I-I’m not even a combat type."
"Wait... wait."
Damien reached forward and grabbed Daniel by the collar, cutting off the stream of desperate excuses before they could continue. After a brief moment, he slowly let go and leaned back in his wheelchair, his expression turning thoughtful.
"Let’s go back a little." Damien rubbed his chin. "You think Claire can vouch for you. Why?"
Daniel blinked several times before answering.
"Because... I ran into her while I was heading to Jimmy’s tent."
"What time was that?"
Daniel frowned, clearly struggling with the question.
"I... I don’t know. Technology from Earth doesn’t work here, so none of our clocks mean anything anymore, and with the blizzard—"
"Yeah, yeah." Damien waved a hand impatiently. "I get it. You don’t know the exact time."
Vincent slowly stepped forward until he was standing directly over Daniel once again. His smile remained as warm and courteous as ever, yet somehow that only made him seem even more unsettling.
"This gentleman has been spouting an awful lot of bullshit... But that’s just because he’s weak, such a weak man can never best Leslie".
Damien didn’t say anything, but he agreed wholeheartedly. He had experienced Leslie’s strength firsthand. She was an Awakened who excelled in direct combat, someone whose Dormant Ability made her incredibly difficult to deal with. A utility-type Awakened like Daniel simply wasn’t a convincing match for her.
Which meant they had probably been approaching this investigation from the wrong angle.
Leslie had only lowered her guard around Damien because she underestimated him. She believed she already understood everything about his abilities, while Damien, at the time, didn’t even know the name of her Dormant Ability. She wouldn’t make the same mistake with anyone else.
"She was definitely ambushed," Damien muttered. "She probably never even saw her attacker before she died. Whoever killed her had to be a powerful Awakened, someone skilled in stealth and evasion, but more importantly... someone capable of killing without making a sound."
His brows gradually knitted together.
Several names surfaced in his mind, but only two truly stood out. Ryan of the Round Table and Claire.
Damien slowly closed his eyes, allowing silence to settle over the tent. Even Vincent began wondering whether the man had finally suffered a mental breakdown, but Damien wasn’t panicking.
He was thinking.
Carefully reconstructing every possibility, every motive, every inconsistency. Who wanted Leslie dead? Why kill her inside the camp, where so many high-ranking Awakened were gathered?
Then another possibility suddenly crossed his mind.
"Is she even dead? I wasn’t there when she supposedly burned to death. How do I know it wasn’t one of her clones that burned instead? How can I trust Andrea’s conclusion if she was deceived as well? And Naomi... why should I automatically believe her grief was genuine?"
Damien’s expression remained completely still.
"Question everything, Damien. Everyone lies. Every conclusion is built upon assumptions. If you stop questioning those assumptions, that’s the moment you die. It kept you alive in your previous world... there’s no reason it shouldn’t work here as well."
His eyes slowly opened once more.
He looked toward Daniel.
"Alright, you can go. You don’t really have a motive. Your alibi is questionable, but your Dormant Ability isn’t suited for something like this. You’re in the clear."
...
Daniel practically stumbled out of the tent the moment the ropes binding his hands and feet were cut. He rubbed his wrists for a brief moment before looking back over his shoulder at the two men standing inside.
Neither Damien nor Vincent paid him any attention.
Daniel didn’t need a second invitation. He turned around and hurried away through the snow, resisting every urge to break into a full sprint. He had survived, and for today, that alone felt like a blessing.
As for ever wandering anywhere near Damien or Vincent again, he silently swore to himself that he would sooner volunteer to fight the Eidolon army.
A cold breeze swept across the camp as Damien slowly rolled his wheelchair out of the tent. Vincent followed shortly behind, gently pulling the entrance flap closed before adjusting his tie with the same composed expression he always wore.
For a while, neither of them spoke, only the soft crunch of the wheelchair’s iron-rimmed wheels against the packed snow disturbed the silence.
Vincent eventually broke it though.
"You spent an awfully long time thinking during that interrogation."
Damien didn’t answer immediately, so Vincent glanced sideways at him.
"I’ve learned that whenever you suddenly go quiet, either you’re about to threaten someone... or you’ve thought of something rather interesting."
Damien rested an elbow on the arm of his wheelchair before absentmindedly rubbing his chin.
"I’ve been thinking about Leslie."
Vincent raised a brow, silently inviting him to continue.
"How do we know that she’s actually dead, her clones are intelligent are they not, and she should have known about the flaw of being unable to move after making them, so why stay alone in the first place, and why send all her clones on the scouting mission... I only saw two by the way, so either that’s her limit, or she was hiding more, right here in camp".
Vincent didn’t need Damien to spell it out for him.
"You think she’s still alive, and it was a clone that burnt to death".
Vincent looked up at the sky.
"There is a way to confirm whether she’s alive or dead you know...".
He glanced down at Damien with a crooked smile.
"But it’s going to involve another kidnapping".