Soul - The Shadow of Fear

The Funeral of Will Smith

Mr. Smith was on the bed, inside the ICU. The doctors had given up, and Martin had given up too.

"He is now unable to react to any stimuli, due to direct damage to his face and brain. We doctors call it coma." The doctors declared.

Chief was there to do the paperwork, Martin fell back on the desks after hearing it.

He was more shocked than he could ever be. First his mentor, his brother died, and then he had got a support in the form of Mr. Smith when this all happened. Tears dropped down from his eyes. His heart could not withstand it anymore.

Chief had called his mother to take him back with her. It was strong of him to manage everything on time, if he hadn't been there than Mr. Smith would've died.

Martin went home, and rested in his bedroom, aline. He was constantly thinking about the accident. The moment that truck hit Mr. Smith, he could've saved him if he had called a little early.
It was all his mistake, now he was in coma, and his brother was dead. Everything was going wrong.

The next day, Will Smith's body was given back to his family for his funeral. Martin and his family were present there too.
Chief and some other policemen were also present.

The place was silent and dark, no one was making any movement. The place was still. They were waiting for Mr. Smith's wife, who was returning from the hospital after seeing her husband, who was in coma.

The woman was in no condition to take part in the funeral, but she had to. She gave a told the people about Will Smith. She threw the soil in his coffin. Her eyes were red from crying, as she had just seen the condition of her husband.

Everyone paid their respects to Will Smith, and returned. The crowd started to decrease and in the last, only Chief, Mr. Smith's wife and Martin's family were standing there.

"You know what his last words were..." Chief said to Martin.

"I never knew that he had died, I was not there when all this happened." He replied.

"I am not talking about Will Smith." Chief said.

It drew Martin's interest, he looked towards Chief who was staring at Will's grave.

"Martin, I know you are a little depressed but I want to talk to you for a minute." Chief said 

Martin thought for a while, but he didn't said anything.

"I want to know how you reached at the exact spot of the accident. You even knew that Mr. Smith was in danger, I want to know how."

"When I left my house, I went to the hotel Sapphire as I thought Mr. Smith would be there, but when I reached there, I got this." He said, giving a piece of paper to Chief. "The police found it, in Will Smith's body."

Chief too the note, it contained nothing but some zeroes and ones. It was in Binary. But why would someone use it for writing suicide note?

"It is not Binary language Chief, it's Morse code." He said. "At first,  I thought the same, but in Binary language a word had minimum six letters. Then this doesn't look anything like it, the second option becomes, the Morse code, and the pattern matches that of the Morse code."

"Well, this means that either this is not suicide or the note was not written by the person who suicided."

"Exactly."

"What does it says?" The chief asked. Martin took out his cell phone.

"If you decipher it, it makes no sense, but when you read it like this..." He said bringing his cell phone against the note and usee it as a mirror. "Then it is like this."

000 1 0 0001 0 10  
000 11 00 1 0000
00 000
01 1000 111 001 1
1 111
100 00 0

"If we take the ones as the dash and the series as dots, them it says that-"

"Steven Smith is about to die.

"Exactly." That's the answer if your first question. As soon as I got it, which was like seventeen minutes, I rushed to tell Mr. Smith about this. But..."

"This arises two cases." The Chief said. "Will Smith somehow knew that his brother was about to die and found a way to tell him. But he couldn't tell him directly as he knew that there was no way to avoid his death, so he wrote this so that the murderer would not be able to notice that he was telling the police about his plan."

"Or, someone else put this to there to inform us, because he couldn't inform us directly. Maybe because he or she is also a target of the murderer. Or he is a part of a team which was involved in this."

"The problem is, that I have seen only one person in the world who uses Binary digits for Morse code." Martin said. "And even if someone copied him, he or she wouldn't have used the mirror."

"Who is it?"

Martin suddenly stopped. The person was related to his own past. He had worked with him but he they had to be apart. He had left his memories when he had returned but now, the code had awakened the sad memories of his past.

"I can't tell you that." Martin said. "Figure it out yourself."

With that, Martin walked away from the place. The poor boy was suffering a lot on his heart...

Chief was all alone at the ground,  no one else was there. Suddenly, his phone ranged in his pocket.

"Yes, Chief Burg reporting." He said attending the phone. "What, who are you?"

"That doesn't matters." A voice said on the phone. "The thing which matters for you is your life, and I don't think it is going to be any longer."

"What are you saying? I don't get it." He said being confused from what the person on the phone said.

"Stop this investigation right now. Otherwise you are going to rest just beside the grave you are seeing." The voice said.

"No. I won't, because I am not afraid of you. I would find you and eliminate you, for murdering six innocent people and attacking Steven Smith."

"You are not afraid? Believe me, this would be the greatest mistake of your life. Because what I want is just... Fear." The voice said threatening him. "I am giving you three days, go Chase your Shadow."

And suddenly, he put off the phone. Chief looked at the number and tried to reconnect, but he failed.

"Three days." He said to himself. "To chase my Shadow? What did it meant?"