"What is your full name?"
"Luke…"
"What is your date of birth?"
"I was born on July 15, 1979."
"Do you have any family member or acquaintance involved in supernatural activities?"
Luke looked in confusion at the man with a scar on his face and asked, "Do I have to answer that question? I've told you everything I know three times already. We were only exploring to honor the death of our best friend."
The guard assigned to this interrogation looked up, placed his pistol on the table, and asked again, "Do you have any family member or acquaintance involved in supernatural activities?"
"No, none so far." Luke didn't know anything else about his friends; he hadn't seen them since these people had taken them.
"Have you experienced sudden changes in your behavior or personality?"
"No, besides the anxiety after walking through the forest again and again and arriving at the same place no matter where we went."
"Have you ever felt strange presences around you?"
Luke nodded. "I had severe nightmares— all of us did. One of them even prayed in his sleep to a strange statue…"
…
"How are they?" After wiping the blood from his face, Jonathan entered a special truck that had been brought to the nearest road.
"They all answered exactly the same. There's no reason for them to lie to us."
He was also watching the interrogation, and even after a long time he hadn't noticed anything strange about them. They were all clean, but a psychological evaluation would be necessary to understand the damage they had suffered from this supernatural experience.
"What are our numbers?"
"There haven't been extreme deaths. We confirm three allied casualties and ten men with minor injuries." An assistant showed Jonathan a smart tablet with detailed information about the events.
More than four hundred individuals belonging to a sect associated with the incidents in the village had been neutralized. This would bring the intensive search for these subjects to an end, but it was still not enough.
A sorcerer must have been involved in this sect for the enemy to have such sophisticated black magic. This was a far greater problem, as it meant the events of today could happen again.
"We've discovered that this sect was also active in Japan before being eliminated by the Japanese government. They weren't as lucky as us because by the time they arrived, more than five hundred people had already committed suicide."
Jonathan looked at the images of that incident. His gaze rested on all those corpses, but he showed no expression. All the bad things—he had learned to leave them behind. He would have time in the future to accept all those pains, but for now, there was a world that needed him.
"I'll take care of interrogating those people. Gather them all in a single room so the process is faster. Let's go, let's finish this soon." Jonathan said as he stepped out of the room he was in.
Things were about to become a bit harsher. Dealing with these people was something that should fall into other hands, but Jonathan wanted to teach Akira this very important process of mutual understanding between the affected person and a priest.
"Captain!" The soldiers standing on both sides of the door in the interrogation room greeted Jonathan with a standard salute.
Jonathan nodded and asked, "Are they all inside the room?"
"All of them. Will you need help?"
"I'll handle it from here." Jonathan shook his head and entered the room.
"Understood!"
…
"What the hell are these people going to do to us? Luke, what did they ask you?"
Luke looked up, a bit dazed, and said, "The same as all of you, nothing new to add to what you already told them."
Crack!
Jonathan entered the room while lighting a cigarette. His calm gaze passed over these people, and walking toward a chair, he pulled it up to a metal table. "You're lucky, guys…"
"Is that so? What the hell makes you think that? You know damn well we lost a friend. Maybe you don't understand what that means, but we sure do." Hutch got so agitated that he wanted to stand and fight, but when he met Jonathan's eyes and all those scars on his face, he went silent.
Jonathan looked at some documents on the table and said, "Hutch, Luke, Phil, and Fiend… How are you feeling?"
"We're fine, very grateful that you helped us…" Luke was smarter in the conversation than the others.
Jonathan smiled faintly. Obviously, he knew these people were afraid. "Forgive my rudeness. I'm sorry for what I said, but given my job, I don't place much importance on the deaths you might consider significant…"
"Anyway, I can see you haven't been affected by anything other than psychological damage. Still, I'm afraid you will be held in quarantine, confined in a facility." Jonathan wanted to take a deeper look at these people.
Luke sighed in relief, but his other friends couldn't wait.
"What about our families?"
"They will be informed."
"Can we call them?"
Jonathan nodded and said, "I don't see why you couldn't."
They were about to speak further when the door to the interrogation room opened again and Father Doug quickly approached Jonathan with a very worried look.
"Chief, didn't I say you were supposed to take a break?"
"Well, I can't refuse to work when things show up at my door." Jonathan would never refuse a job, especially when lives were in his hands.
This time he realized this case was related to a story he knew, but he found out too late. Even so, in his view, he had done things flawlessly once again.
"I'll return to the church tonight." Jonathan would make sure to return to the church; at least everything was simpler when he was alone.