Secret Society: Raising Calamity Class Disciples

Dawn. The Sun peeked out from the Eastern Horizon. The tower chimed four times a few minutes ago.

Tens of carriages were parked at the garden before the gallery. All of the coaches had flags on top of them—flags that depicted a winged shield. Not a single carriage of Detectivete stayed back at the complex.

David and his team walked through the streets towards the hill—or what remained of that.

Superintendent Franklin, who was wearing his signature round glasses with a hanging lopped string, caught up with them.

"Greetings!" He took off his hat and saluted to the special team from Aramon.

David nodded. "Have you locked everything down?" he kept walking towards his destination. "Were there any civilian witnesses?"

"Yes. I have made sure nobody's in the vicinity and that nobody can enter." Superintendent Franklin was trying his best to keep up with the special team's pace. "As for witnesses, there weren't any. At least not before we received that anonymous tip."

"Do you have that letter?" David asked.

"Of course!" Superintendent Franklin took out a piece of paper from his black coat and handed it over to David.

David's grey eyes secretly glinted gold. He frowned, stopping in his tracks. "Where did you get this? Who delivered it?"

"I don't know." The Superintendent pulled off a hard brake as well. "A constable came running to me, saying it dropped on his head."

David returned the piece of paper to the man wearing glasses.

A string of electrical humming sounded beside David's ears. It was a coded message—a question from Thompson.

[There's no fingerprints other than the Superintendent's on the paper] David transmitted to both Thompson and Cassius. [The one who sent the tip is definitely a kinetic, or perhaps even a Paranormal]

David turned to the scene before him, so did Thompson, Cassius and the Superintendent.

What was supposed to be a hill of average size had 'opened up' like a lotus flower. At the centre of all those earthy petals, was a small open chamber with three metal furniture, and a corpse lion on one of them.

The open chamber looked as if it were suspending in the air. But Cassius detected thin particle 6 strings that supported the chamber and reported it to David.

As for the Gallery, the chief attraction of the town—on par with Zeitmann's Tower, it was sliced into tens of pieces.

The pieces seemed to suspend in the air, with varying gaps between the pieces. It looked like an illusory structure that is only possible in heaven or other places of high fantasy.

All the detectivete officers could hardly believe their eyes as they stared at the miraculous scene with awe.

Golden light shone in David's grey eyes yet again. He detected hundreds of invisible strings holding the whole structure together. The strings were rooted to the surface of the open earthen petals.

And there was a tall pillar that supported the tallest of the pieces of the sliced gallery.

"Attract everyone's attention," David ordered before walking forward to the structure. Thompson and Cassius followed.

Superintendent Franklin understood what David meant. He clapped his hands. "Attention lads! Gather here!" He shouted with a stern and dominant voice.

All the members of the detectivete—be it the inspectors, or the constables—moved their eyes from the structure and rushed to the Superintendent.

David, ensuring no eyes were on them or the structure, nodded and turned invisible. Thompson and Cassius became invisible as well with David's high level lumomancy. Even though nobody could see them, they could see each other.

The trio ran forward at unimaginable speed and with a single jump, landed on the small chamber suspending between the rocky petals and beneath the hovering pieces of the Gallery.

As soon as the trio scanned through the furnitures, Thompson and Cassius frowned. Only David was nonchalant—or at least he appeared to be.

Thompson pointed at the preserved brains on the shelf. "Are they…"

"Yes." David nodded. "Their sizes match."

Lightning flickered around Thompson's invisible body. "Which fucker did something so horrible?"

"This one," the otherwise silent Cassius answered as he pointed to the well dressed corpse on the metal bed.

"Doctor Joseph Hearts," David said as his eyes locked onto Joseph's peaceful face. "A psychiatrist who used to work at Benjamin Conners Psychiatric Clinic. He resigned five years ago and moved to Derbury."

He turned to the archaic looking vase placed beside the shelf. "Five years ago, the 'Vase of Ribaya' was stolen from the Southern Art Gallery, suspected to seal a Curse. And not soon after, Eulene Maisel, the first of the Derbury serial children disappearance case victims, went missing."

"So, he's the culprit?" Thompson asked, looking at the corpse with mixed feelings—happy that the culprit was taken down, disgruntled that it was not them who caught him.

David nodded.

"Who could have done this?" Thompson asked.

"The same party who did this." David pointed up, towards the tens of sliced pieces of the Gallery suspending in the air. "And sent us this tip."

Both Thompson and Cassius looked up. No matter how many times they witnessed the scene, it surprised them every time.

They were kinetics themselves—that too elites, ones who counted amongst the best the country could offer. They knew how much difficult of a task manipulating particles was. Even menial tasks put strains on the brain and required days of practice.

But restructuring an entire hill and a humongous piece of architecture on top of it? It was something their team could do as well. But it would take them days, if not months.

And they have already received reports that the whole structure was completely fine yesterday midnight.

So, everything happened in a span of four hours or worse—even less.

"But why this structure?" The curious Cassius asked.

David turned to the Sun, which was already up, before looking at the opposite direction of the chamber.

The shadows of all the different pieces coincided together to form a curved smile and a hat on top of it.

"It's a message." David answered Cassius' question, his eyes fixed on the shadowy smile and the hat on the grassy grounds.

"It's the advent of a new Secret Society."