64 Hours

123 H O U R S L A T E R (PROLOGUE)

I was never a punctual person.

Maybe it's because time never waits for me. Or maybe it's because I don't wait for time.

Either way, time is like fighting with fire; no matter what you do, you get burnt. Time doesn't get to choose whose side it's on — you do. That's the only kind of power we have that's the closest thing to having superpowers, but in the end, time is villain. And in the end, there's no hero. 

~123 hours later~

I glanced at the clock through gritted teeth.

Only thirty-two seconds passed since I last looked at it.

I repeatedly clasped and unclasped my hands, and swallowed bullets in my throat that threatened to block the air from getting into my system. I tapped my foot on the floor like a maniac, and rubbed the back of my neck every five minutes.

My fingers finally halted at the cuffs of my suit sleeves, which were disintegrated to cinders, singed until my wrists. Burned.

The ticks of the clock hanging devilishly on the wall adjacent to me were loud in my ears, so that every tick thumped through my head, giving me a reality-check migraine every second. I ran my fingers through my short hair, working myself into a fit.

I was in a small interrogation room at the police station. How did I get here? Long story.

The wall in front of me was opaque and dark, so that whatever was on the other side was unseen and bulletproof. But I could almost feel the stares of the officers from the other side of the black glass burning several holes on my skin.

Finally, a police officer dressed in the classic pale blue and black uniform entered the room through the door. He was very, very tall, and hovered over my slumped frame. He covered the area between the door and the table in two long strides, then sat on the opposite side of me.

The police officer crossed his arms in front of him, propping his burly arms on the table, then leaned in. I got a good view of his cold, light blue-amethyst eyes that sent electric shivers down my spine. He was old, with wrinkles surrounding his dark-coated eye bags. In his hands was a clipboard with papers.

"Mr Browning," The officer began, unclipping the papers and thumping the clump on the table to get them in order. "How are you?"

I stared at him.

I don't care how rude it seemed. Out of all the questions in the world, he asks me the last one I wanted to hear. The officer stared right back at me, straight in the eyes so that we were fixated in what seemed to be a glare. In a state of trance, I didn't unlock the tension that was so thick that you could cut it with a knife.

My throat was drier than the Sahara desert. I gulped, and he finally sat back with a sigh.

"Let me rephrase. Why do you think you're here?" There was something else in his voice. A warning, and I didn't like it.

Why was I here?

"If I tell you the whole story, we'll be sitting here until tomorrow," I retorted, crossing my arms obstinately.

"I have time, Mr Browning." The officer gave me another hard look with his solemn eyes. But I didn't like the way he was looking at me; like he was staring right through my paper-thin existence, like I wasn't there.

"Why did you kill all those people, Adam?"

I looked at the clock one more time, and closed my eyes.

"Because time became my enemy."