His first week.
His first field training with the Chief and the senior officers.
He replayed their earlier briefing in his head, where to meet, what to expect, how “the woods would wake the instincts in him.” He wanted that. He wanted to prove himself. He tugged his tie loose and re-tightened it, smiling awkwardly at no one in particular.
Birds screeched overhead. Leaves crackled beneath his shoes. The trail curved and narrowed, funneling him toward the clearing.
Then—
BANG!
A single deafening shot cracked through the forest.
Janssen jerked violently, the world blurring as adrenaline punched through him. He stumbled back, slammed against a pine trunk, and dropped into a crouch. Hands trembling. Breath trapped in his throat.
What was that?
A test?
An accident?
No—something was wrong. He felt it.
His heart hammered painfully as he pressed his back to the tree trunk. Bark scraped through his blazer. His throat tightened. He squeezed his eyes shut, sweat forming instantly at his temples.
What if something happened to the Chief? To the others?
He didn’t want to imagine it.
He imagined it anyway.
He clasped a hand over his mouth to keep himself from breathing too loudly. His pulse roared in his ears, drowning out the forest, until he heard something else.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Too calm for someone running from danger. Too neat, too rhythmic to be an animal. They approached from behind the mossy stones lining the path.
Janssen froze.
His body went cold.
The footsteps drew closer.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
He forced one eye open, then the other.
A figure drifted through the trees.
A young man, feminine, charming, almost fragile-looking. Pale blonde hair falling in loose pieces over a ghostlike face. Skin white as milk. His hands were clasped neatly behind his back as if strolling through a garden. His eyes were a startling, distant blue.
Janssen’s breath caught.
They met gazes.
Held.
The pale young man smiled—softly, politely.
Janssen’s legs almost gave out from the sudden release of tension. A laugh of shaky relief escaped him.
Just a hiker.
A weird one, sure—European nature lovers always dressed strangely—but still just a civilian.
“Jesus… don’t scare me like that,” he muttered to himself, pressing a hand to his chest. “It’s fine. It’s fine. Just a hiker. Just… calm down.”
The stranger continued walking, passing between the trees without a sound, almost gliding. Janssen watched him vanish around a bend.
Janssen lifted himself up, still wobbling, and swallowed hard.
He couldn’t run. He couldn’t hide.
He had to check the clearing.
Even if his hands shook.
Even if every instinct screamed at him to turn back.
He drew his gun, fingers white-knuckled around the grip, and climbed the last incline toward the break in the trees.
At the edge, he pressed against another trunk. His breath fogged the air. He listened.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
He counted down in his head.
- 2. 1—
He dashed into the clearing, gun up, voice cracking into a shout:
“Freeze!”
His stance broke almost instantly.
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His eyes widened.
His eyebrows shot up.
His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
The world tipped sideways.
The Chief—
The officers—
Everyone scheduled for training that morning—
Sprawled across the grass.
Arms limp.
Bodies twisted at impossible angles.
Uniforms were soaked in dark red.
Blood ran in thin threads down the slight incline, pooling in muddy patches. A crushed radio crackled faintly beside one officer’s hand. A bird circled high overhead, calling once, sharply, as if announcing the scene.
Janssen’s gun slipped from his hand, hitting the ground with a hollow thud.
“No… no, no, no—Chief? Chief!”
He sprinted across the bodies, nearly tripping over a fallen arm. He dropped to his knees beside the Chief, grasping him by the vest, shaking violently.
“Chief! Wake up—c’mon—wake up!”
He pressed trembling fingers to the Chief’s neck.
Cold.
Still.
“Please—please—” His voice cracked into a sob, then another. “Please!”
He shook him again as if brute force could return warmth to flesh.
The young detective’s pulse thundered in his ears. His vision blurred between hot tears and the metallic scent of blood filling his nose. The chief’s hand—once steady, warm, guiding—was limp. The skin is already cooling. Janssen felt the world tilt.
“No… no, no, no, this— this isn’t—” His voice cracked apart, thin as paper.
He forced himself to crawl to the next officer. A sergeant he’d met only yesterday. Then another. Then another. Each time he reached out, every time he pressed shaking fingers to a neck or cheek or arm, his mind refused to accept what his senses told him.
They were all gone.
All of them.
The grass squished wetly under his knees. The bodies were twisted, sprawled, shot with frightening precision—as if someone had cut through the team like wind passing through tall grass.
Janssen’s breathing turned sharp, shallow.
“This can’t be real,” he whispered. “This can’t be real—”
He lifted his head.
And realized something else.
No guns missing. No signs of a struggle.
Janssen froze.
He folded forward, hands trembling violently as they pressed against his knees. Blood smeared onto his trousers. His tie brushed the ground. His lungs refused to fill, straining against the clamp of panic tightening inside him. Tears blurred the world into a watery red haze.
“This—this can’t be happening… oh God…”
A pathetic sound tore out of him—half sob, half gasp. He dragged a shaking hand over his mouth, trying to swallow the rising hysteria, but it clawed its way out of him anyway.
He staggered up to his feet, stumbling backward, eyes wild as he scanned the massacre. Officers he had greeted just hours ago—men who had jokingly told him to bring good shoes, who had patted his back, who had promised to “go easy on the rookie”—lay twisted and broken in the grass. Some had collapsed mid-step. Others sprawled unnaturally, as though flung.
Gunshots. All of them.
A massacre.
Efficient.
Clinical.
Silent.
Janssen’s breathing collapsed into sharp, panicked gasps. Tears spilled down his face, dripping onto the ground. He looked around, taking in the bodies again, the blood seeping into his trousers, staining his knees.
His face twisted in grief.
Then pure, consuming horror.
He screamed—loud, hoarse, unfiltered.
Screamed until his throat tore with the effort.
Screamed because no one else could.
Detective Janssen’s scream had barely faded when—
Crunch.
A twig snapped somewhere behind him.
He froze mid-breath. His pulse lurched into his throat. Slowly, slowly, he turned his head.
More footsteps.
Not the soft, deliberate tapping from before.
These were heavier. Urgent. Many.
Suddenly, a burst of static cracked sharply through the clearing:
“Unit Three, we’re approaching the training site now—”
Police chatter.
Janssen’s stomach dropped.
A moment later, uniforms emerged from between the trees, five, six, seven officers bristling with radios and sidearms. Their steps slowed the moment they entered the clearing.
One of them gasped.
Another swore under his breath.
All of them stared first at Janssen, with bloodied knees, trembling hands, pale face, then at the massacre surrounding him.
The nearest officer took one step forward, voice tight with horror.
“...This is murder.”
Janssen’s mouth parted, but no words came. His throat was too tight. His mind was too loud.
The officers didn’t wait.
Guns snapped upward in a single, practiced motion.
“Hands where we can see them!”
Janssen jolted, tripping back a step, hands half-raised, shaking.
“N-no—wait! I—I didn’t— I don’t know what happened! I swear— I swear it wasn’t me!”
The officers exchanged a glance, quick, grim, resolved.
One of them, a tall lieutenant with a dark beard, barked:
“Daan Janssen — you are under arrest for the murder of the Chief and all senior officers present at this site. Drop to your knees, now!”
The accusation hit him like a physical blow.
“Murder—?! No! No, please— you don’t understand— I just got here! I didn’t— I didn’t do anything! I found them like this!”
“Drop the weapon!”
“I don’t—I dropped it! Look—look—” he cried, pointing frantically to where his gun lay in the bloody grass.
“On your knees. Now.”
His mind screamed.
Prison.
No trial.
No one will believe him.
They’ll say he snapped.
They’ll say he killed the Chief.
They’ll bury him.
He felt the world closing in, the barrels pointing at his chest like sharpened fingers.
He couldn’t move.
Couldn’t think.
Couldn’t breathe.
The bearded lieutenant took a step closer—
—and something inside Janssen snapped.
“NO!”
He turned and ran.
A shout tore the air.
“STOP! STOP!”
Gun safeties clicked off. Branches whipped against his arms. Leaves slapped his face as he tore down the incline, feet pounding the forest floor.
Janssen wasn’t just running.
He was fleeing for his life.
The forest blurred, green, brown, gold. His lungs burned. His heart slammed against his ribs. His ears filled with the frantic sound of pursuit: officers crashing through the underbrush, yelling orders, crackling radios.
“Suspect fleeing!”
“Cut him off at the south ridge!”
“He’s heading deeper—someone intercept!”
But Janssen was younger.
Faster.
And terror gave him wings.
He vaulted over a fallen log, slipped down a muddy slope, nearly fell, and caught himself. He didn’t dare look back; he could feel them behind him, close, too close, he could hear the snap of branches as they fought to keep up.
But the deeper he ran, the thicker the forest grew.
The terrain turned uneven, tangled, wild.
One officer shouted something, cut off by labored breath.
Another cursed loudly.
And then—
Silence.
The forest swallowed the pursuit.
Janssen staggered behind a wide, ancient tree and collapsed against the trunk, gasping, entire body shaking. Sweat dripped from his hairline, mixing with dirt and flecks of dried blood. His breath came in broken gulps.
He listened.
Strained every nerve.
No footsteps.
No voices.
No radios.
Nothing but birds screaming overhead and the trembling rush of his own blood.
He sucked in a desperate breath, clutched the tree bark like it was the last solid thing in the universe, and slowly slid down into the undergrowth.
His body curled instinctively.
His heart wouldn’t stop racing.
His vision wouldn’t stop replaying the clearing.
The blood.
The bodies.
The smile of that pale young man.
Janssen covered his face with both hands, shuddering. A soft, ugly sob broke out of him.
He was alone.
Hunted.
Framed.
And somewhere, somewhere in the world, the real killer moved… too gentle to belong to anyone human.