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They left me in the interrogation room for almost an hour.
Concrete walls. Buzzing lights. One table, two chairs, mirror that was obviously one-way glass. Real original setup they had here.
I knew what they were doing. Leave the suspect alone. Let them stew. Wait for the anxiety to build until they're ready to spill everything just to make it stop.
Joke's on them I guess. After three days of starving while watching death lines crawl across everything in existence, sitting in a quiet room with a chair was practically a vacation.
I spent the time trying to get the shaking under control. My hands still wouldn't stay still. Adrenaline crash maybe. Or just the whole "I ripped a guy's leg off an hour ago" thing catching up to me.
That was gonna take a while to process. I could already tell.
Officer Shiwa finally came in carrying a folder. Same tired eyes from the alley. She sat down across from me and put the folder on the table.
Didn't open it. Just looked at me.
"You haven't asked for anything," she said. "Water. Food. Bathroom."
"Didn't want to be a bother."
"Most people in your situation would be panicking right now."
"Who says I'm not?" I held up my hand. Still trembling. "Just doing it quietly."
Something flickered across her face. Not sure what.
"Laurent," she said. "No last name. No records. You showed up at an orphanage three months ago, stayed two weeks, then vanished. Before that, nothing."
"That's about right."
"Where were you before the orphanage?"
"Don't remember." I shrugged. "I was really sick. Fever, hallucinations, the works. When I came out of it I was just... here. In the city. No memories of how I got there."
Technically true. Just leaving out the whole dying-and-reincarnating part.
She opened the folder. Spread out photographs.
Scarface's leg on the ground. The blood pool. Broken weapons scattered around.
I made myself look at them. The leg looked fake in pictures somehow. Like a prop from a horror movie.
"Want to explain what happened?"
"They attacked me. I defended myself."
"You took off a man's leg."
"Yeah." My voice came out steadier than I expected. "I did."
"Clean cut. No tearing. Doctors say the tissue just stopped being connected at a cellular level. Never seen anything like it."
"That makes two of us."
Shiwa leaned back. "You don't seem that broken up about it."
Did I feel bad? Yeah. Somewhere under all the shock and fear and exhaustion, there was definitely guilt. But there was also the memory of Scarface's smile when he walked into that alley. The way he'd been looking forward to hurting me.
"He was gonna kill me," I said. "Him and his friends. They were enjoying it." I met her eyes. "So yeah, I feel bad that I crippled someone. But I'm not gonna pretend I had a choice."
She studied me for a long moment.
"How'd you do it? The leg. The weapons."
"Honestly? I don't really know." That part was true at least. "I can see things. Lines. Cracks. On everything. And if I touch them..."
"Things break."
"Yeah."
"You see these lines on everything?"
"Pretty much."
"On me?"
I looked at her. The lines were there of course. Running through her neck and chest and skull. All the places where a person could stop being a person.
"Yeah," I said. "But I'm not planning to touch them. Wouldn't be here talking if I was."
"Fair enough." She didn't seem scared. Just thoughtful. "Some kind of devil contract then."
"Maybe. I don't remember making one but..." I gestured vaguely. "Weird shit happens I guess."
"Weird shit happens." She almost smiled. Almost. "That's one way to put it."
She was quiet for a second. Making some kind of decision.
"Here's your situation," she said. "You maimed a yakuza. Self-defense or not, that's complicated. His family wants you dead. And now you're flagged as an unknown with an ability that can take people apart."
"Sounds bad."
"Two options." She held up a finger. "One. We release you. You go back to the streets. Yakuza find you eventually, or you use your power again and we have to hunt you down as a threat."
Second finger.
"Two. You join Public Safety. Become a devil hunter. We train you, house you, feed you. Legal problems go away, yakuza can't touch you."
Public Safety.
I knew what this organization really was. Who was pulling the strings at the top. What happened to the people who worked here.
But I also knew what option one meant. Starving in alleys until something killed me.
"What's the catch?" I asked.
"Devil hunters die young. Average lifespan after recruitment is about four years."
Four years. In a world full of monsters and worse.
But four years of food and shelter and actually having a chance to figure things out beat four weeks of starving to death.
"I'll take it," I said.
She raised an eyebrow. "Just like that?"
"What, you want me to negotiate?" I shrugged. "I've been eating out of dumpsters for three months. You're offering me a job with housing. Not exactly a hard sell."
"Most people ask more questions."
"Most people probably haven't been where I've been."
Tanaka pulled a form from the folder. Slid it across with a pen.
"Sign here. Here. Initial there."
I read through it quick. Two years minimum. Following orders. Confidentiality. Standard stuff for signing your life away to a government agency.
Signed it anyway. What choice did I have?
"Welcome to Public Safety." She took the form back. "Someone will come get you for processing. Medical exam, psych eval, the whole thing. Then three months of basic training."
"And then?"
"Then you get assigned to a division. Work under senior hunters. Try not to die."
"Sounds simple enough."
"It's not." She stood up. Gathered the photos. Paused at the door. "Laurent."
"Yeah?"
"That yakuza. The one you crippled." She wasn't looking at me. "He's never walking again. Whatever you did, we can't undo it."
I thought about his smile when he'd walked into that alley. The excitement in his voice when he told his buddies to make an example of me.
"I'll live with it," I said.
She looked at me then. Really looked.
"Yeah," she said quietly. "I think you will."
Then she left.
I sat there alone for a while after. Looking at my hands. The lines on my skin pulsing faint red.
I'd just signed up to be a devil hunter. In a world I only knew from manga panels and anime episodes. Working for an organization that had monsters hiding at the top and bodies piling up at the bottom.
Smart? Probably not.
But I was alive. I had food coming. I had time to figure out what these eyes could really do.
Ezequiel died choking on an energy drink like an idiot.
Laurent was gonna do better than that. Had to.
The door opened. Some guy with a clipboard.
"Laurent? Follow me. Processing's this way."
I stood up. Legs still a little shaky but holding.
Time to see what this new life had in store.