DAYS BEFORE NEW YEARS : 11

"So, shall we get started?" Mr. Collin looked at me, bleary-eyed.

I looked at Thalia to my right, who shook her head. She continued to rub against my hands to reassure me that even after everything, we will go through it together.

On the other hand, Sammie was not in the room itself.

Sure his body was there, but his mind… seemed elsewhere.

It all started after that confrontation.

He still hasn’t looked me in the eye as he is still focused on his V-cube 6. His finger fidgeted along the six sided Rubik's Cube, tagging and crossing the colors, matching almost all sides to some sort of pattern. It was as if he was in autopilot mode.

Guilt? Maybe. Avoidance? Definitely.

Either way, I am glad that I have both of them on my side because I need people who will be by my side during the will reading in my room, which belongs to the hospital.

Yes, I am still hospitalized.

“Yes, you may begin.” I shifted on the hospital sofa, allowing Thalia a close look at the documents, which is a lot.

Three full stacks of estate and property documents on one side. Two thick bundles of mail containing banking credentials beside them. And in the center, four separate envelopes, arranged in a perfect square.

If that glassy coffee table doesn’t break under that enormous weight and pressure, then Mr. Collins will.

The man reeks—like stress, exhaustion, and a suit that's seen too much grief.

In short, the man smells like he got divorce papers served on him.

I am being legit with you right now.

It's that bad.

Not only that but my man is still wearing the same crumpled suit he wore to the funeral, with the same blue sapphire zigzagged tie that is now loosely kept in his briefcase. Whatever hair gel he’d used had long given up, leaving his hair in complete rebellion.

I feel bad for the guy for having so much work to do for his employer even after they died.

But not that as bad as how he will feel after he is trapped in our plan.

Because if he thinks he's exhausted now, just wait until our plan unfolds.

He’s our main suspect.

Why you may ask?

Well…. He's our only suspect.

“Before we start, you must adhere to the rules and regulations of the legal const-”

He paused, closed his eyes for a moment and then looked behind us.

“Are you okay, Mr. Lawyer?” Officer Adam was on the lookout and was with me the past two days, making sure I had my personal space well-protected from the paparazzi.

He jumped into action and was right behind us, arms crossed.

“Sorry, just exhausted.” He stretched over to his coffee, only for the empty paper cup to slip from his hand and fall to the ground with a small thud.

I turned to Officer Adams, nodding to him in a subtle way.

Time to get things moving in motion.

“Would you mind if I grabbed you some water bottles from the vending machine? It wouldn’t hurt much, but I think you want something organic for your health.” He nudged to the door, motioning the older man to look after the traumatized poor kids.

“Hadn't drunk water in a while. Here, take a dollar-”

"No, no need. I am well-fit. Take it as a treat for helping our boy, Casper.”

The next thing we saw was my hospital bed, the table, and all the medical equipment surrounding us—our reminder that this wasn’t just some boardroom meeting.

As soon as the door closed behind Adams, we all turned to face Collin.

He looked relieved.

Good.

Now that it was just the four of us, our real plan was about to begin.

“Well, as I was saying there are tons of legal stuff going on here and there. A will is like a to-do list for us lawyers to make sure that all the deceased's possessions go to the named person. You all have seen it in the movies, right?”

We all nodded, and only then did I realize Sammie was paying attention.

No wonder, he had finished working on his Rubik's Cube.

His eyes, finally off the puzzle, were fixed on Mr. Collins. Thalia, sitting beside me, had gone unnervingly still.

Something wasn’t right.

“In this case, Casper, you’re the named person who gets everything—the house, the money, even their scientific research. What a shock, right? ” He shot a crooked smile at our dead resting faces.

He gulped down and reluctantly continued in the outstanding silence.

“Anyway, even though you’re not family by blood, the late Galvins clearly wanted you to have everything. But, for my better understanding, would you mind sharing some family history with us?” All eyes were on me.

I haven’t had the courage to talk about my secretive past, but I guess I could leak some stories. Along with some truths.

“Monica Galvin and my mom were childhood friends. Together, they both planned out their birthdays, weddings, trips, and the birth of their children. Sadly, Monica had fertility issues and couldn’t have children. What could they do?”

I chuckled at the times when we were once a family.

My mom

My dad.

Me.

“They spoiled and loved me as their own, until I turned six. That’s when their company had their big break in making a groundbreaking discovery about mirror life. They had to leave their home to go aboard and chase their dreams. Time passed, and just as they promised, they returned to our lives. Once again.” I closed my eyes briefly, remembering that day in fifth grade.

“Along with an adopted kid.” Sammie spoke out.

Right. Sammie was there with me.

On that day, when the infamous Coby made his introduction that set us all nerved up.

“I just know that they got him from some orphanage out of nowhere.”

Half-truth and half-known.

Mr. Collin noted it down on his pad and thanked me.

“It’s a big responsibility, but it’s also a way for them to show how much they love you.”

He looked more at ease than ever.

“There are also taxes and debts to take care of, but don’t worry, we’ll help you with all of that. If anyone has questions, now’s the time to ask.”

I didn’t answer.

Instead, I studied him.

The nervous ticks.

The darting glances.

The way his hand kept reaching for his coffee cup only to remember it was empty.

He’s hiding something.

The realization settled over me like a weighted blanket. I gritted my teeth, fingers curling into fists. Every puzzle piece I’d been trying to force together suddenly clicked into place.

Collins wasn’t just an overworked lawyer handling a will.

He was bribed.

Somehow, someway, he was bribed.

I exchanged a glance with Thalia.

The silent signal.

She understood immediately.

The next moment, the soft creak of the leather sofa was drowned out by the sharp click of a blade.

Collins’ breath hitched.

“Good, because we have a lot of questions for you.”

At that, Thalia shot up from the sofa, flipping open her hidden pocket knife with a sharp click. She stepped toward Mr. Collins, apologizing her way through. The gleam of her pocket knife caught the dim hospital light as she advanced a step closer.

Collins stiffened. His eyes darted to the door, then to Officer Adams’ empty chair. His lips parted, fumbling for words, but nothing came out.

Sammie had sprinted over to my bed and tossed my phone towards me. If things got messy, we already had planted a GoPro inside Sammie’s shirt that had started recording from the very beginning.

“Wh-what?” Mr. Collin’s mouth slightly opened, lips parted as if about to ask something.

Darting eyes as if looking for an answer.

Collins swallowed hard. “Wh-what’s the meaning of this?”

Huh. Meanings. Life lost it’s meaning after Coby got my mind screwed up.

Or maybe it was even before that.

“Out of all the people, you were the only person to have had access to both my location and phone number.” I spoke, stepping forward in my hospital gown. Holding up my phone, the screen glowed with a familiar message.

His message.

“That’s not m-me. I wa-as with my ki-i-i-id.” He shifted his sights on me with unfocused, narrowed eyes.

“Then? Who was it?” I ground my teeth, the sharp sound barely registering in the heavy silence that hung in the air.

Thalia inched closer, her grip tightening around the handle of her knife.

Then—

“WAIT! I have something from Coby!”

His voice cracked. His hands shot up in surrender.

We all froze.

I hadn’t expected him to crack this fast.

Hell, we didn’t even think of a possibility of him giving in so quickly, unlike the previous ones.

“Why didn’t you say so?” I allowed him to touch his briefcase, pulling out his laptop and a small black metallic box.

Mr. Collin revealed the content : a pen drive.

“When did you receive this?” Thalia's eyes squinted to make out any markings left on the box.

“I got it in my mail, before the funeral.”

Thalia froze up momentarily, turning her head to me, causing tension in her shoulders. I shot her a quick, darting glance, silently checking if we were on the same page.

She strode towards me, keeping Mr. Collin at a safe distance from the knife’s point.

“That can't be... unless... It was after the night we found the body,” I said, my realization dawning. She nodded in confirmation, then returned to her position.

I looked back at our suspect who was still browsing and clicking keys in a hurry.

Poor guy.

But, from the looks of his eyes, it seemed like he had received what was unexpected.

“Is everything alright?” Sammie looked over from the sofa.

Seems like even he caught up with it.

“No… Never mind. This is what I got,” his shaky hands handed me the laptop.

Apparently, the pen drive had a document with just the title ‘LiNk’.

It took some time to open, but when it did, I was more confused than ever.

The whole page was blank.

No wonder Mr. Collins was more nervous than ever.

Since my mind hasn’t come back to its original state, I took it to our polymath genius.

“It’s blank.” I showed Sammie one page. No word count at all.

“No, it isn’t. Look at the character count. It's showing one.” He finally met my eyes, before pointing the ‘1’ on the screen.

He hit Ctrl + A.

Nothing happened.

Except a blue blink showed up at the very bottom.

"Wait, what is that? A dot?” He right-clicked it and there was a hyperlink attached to it.

We were teleported to the website and then a play button showed up.

Before clicking on it, we made sure all sound and audio quality was fixed, and no issues were involved. Sammie carefully placed the laptop on the bed and made sure everyone could see it.

Yeah. Even, Mr Collins.

“Is it rolling? Hey, gang! It’s me, Coby boy!”

And there he was.

Alive.

Coby Galvin.

He was smiling ear to ear and looked as if he had made us go through all that trauma last week.

"You guys weren’t actually kidding," Sammie murmured, his mouth falling open as he realized that whatever theory we’d told him about Coby being alive was coming true.

“SOOOOOOOOOOO! HOW Y'ALL DOING?” Screen-Coby shout at us, spreading his arms wide and then throwing them up in the air, as if embracing the fact that he didn’t murder a predator.

I couldn’t blame him. It’s just that he could’ve left us out of this.

We all stood there, dumbfounded, staring at the screen as the seconds dragged on, waiting for the video to continue, unsure if this was some kind of twisted prank or a terrifying reality that we were now forced to witness.

“Wait… guys… I don’t—” Thalia began, but was cut off by Screen-Coby.

“Darn right! This ain’t just a video. It’s a video-call !”  He jumped up and down like an angry bird in slingshot.

“WHAT!” We all screamed out loud and were about to curse him out when the screen changed to a young-girl, probably in her mid-twenties making axolotl crotchets. On further notice it seemed like she was wearing a maroon bandana over her bald head.

“No…my Amelia.” We all turned back to Mr. Collin who slumped down to the floor.

“Mr. Collins?” Thalia at once hid her knife and assisted him back to the sofa, while I listened to what Coby had to say to us.

“Now that your lawyer’s passed out-” I digged my nails into my palms at once when I heard his squeaky voice screech.

"HOLD UP! HE ISN’T MY LAWYER! He’s the late Galvin family’s lawyer. Now, Cassie, why would I associate with a guy like that?" Coby raised his shoulders in mock defensiveness, pulling them inward as if to shield his chest from my punches.

“What do you mean by that?” I furrowed my brows, over his overcomplicated tone that’s itching me to break through the screen and strangle him.

“What I mean to say is, why would I be next to my hypothetical molester’s lawyer? Who practically reduced his sentence from 25 years TO 10 YEARS! ” He gasped for air and in the midst of his theatrics, a bottle was quickly thrown at him.

While he drank water, guilt washed down my throat over how much I presumed from Sammie over that confrontation.

The scoldings and lessons I tried to drill into Sammie’s head were like bullets to my heart.

How could I have overlooked at this factor?

Why was I so obsessed over his pictures at the Galvin’s Foundation’s pictures rather than his cases he’d won?

“And also, if you think he’s one of my accomplice who texted you, you’re SOOOOOOO wrong. He’s not even a part of my friend group.” I let him continue as a cover to carefully plan-out my apologies.

“So, for the next couple of minutes you better listen to my instructions very carefully. For the upcoming apocalypse.” He took a breath in, then came very close to the camera.

“You see those four envelopes? They have clues inside them and will lead you to get an item of certain value that matches with them. They are the codes for that chest you found in Jackie’s body.”

I shot a glance at Sammie, it seems like he's taking in the info well.

Almost too well.

Thalia, after ensuring Mr. Collins was stable on the sofa, darted toward the bed like something had clicked in her mind. Even that—her sudden urgency—was enough to halt my spiraling thoughts.

Coby kept talking, his voice laced with that infuriating mix of amusement and calculation.

“So that means, don’t throw away all the clues from the previous hunt. Match them up however you like, and maybe—just maybe—you’ll finally uncover the truth behind my plans before New Year’s.”

Sammie nudged me forward, his touch hesitant yet firm. An unspoken plea.

“Coby, can I ask you something?” His voice was quiet, raw.

Coby paused mid-ramble. “Sure. No… wait. Hang on… Is it about Mr. Collins? Well, I kinda threatened slash bribed him for his daughter’s chemo—”

“No, Coby.” Sammie barely held himself together. His fingers curled into the fabric of his hoodie, his whole body trembling. “Why? Why would you do this?”

His voice cracked.

I wanted so badly to hug him. To tell him it would be okay, that we’d figure this out together.

But do I even have the right to do that anymore?

After everything?

After how hard I’ve been on him—pushing, doubting, treating him like an obstacle instead of the one person who’s always been by my side?

All he ever wanted was to make me feel at home.

And yet, here I am. The worst kind of jerk.

The kind who turns on the people who love him the most.

“...... That’s all for today…. See you later.”

Then, the screen cut to black.

“That’s it?” Sammie’s voice was barely above a whisper, thick with disbelief. His eyes had become a rainfall of tears, streaming freely down his cheeks.

I reached out, wiping them away. “Yeah… that’s all.”

But I wasn’t sure if that was comforting or just another painful truth.

I sighed, already building my mental checklist of apologies.

Thalia, ever the one to break tension, gave an awkward shrug. “Hey! At least this one didn’t end up in a faking his own murder, like the last time… or the one before that.”

The words hung in the air—a poorly timed joke in a room where someone had just fainted.

And that’s exactly when Officer Adam walked in.

Three teens—huddled together, some laughing by the bedside.

A lawyer, unconscious on the sofa.

His eyes darted between us. “Is he okay?”

We all nodded in sync while Officer Adams was perplexed by the whole situation.

The 31-year-old squinted, clearly not buying it. Then, with a sigh, he launched into a familiar rant—how we were too irresponsible for our age, how we needed to start taking life seriously, how we should all be learning from his example.

Right. The guy who knocked up his girlfriend at our age.

That’s how Sue was born.

“Eh… no biggie—” I muttered, a little too loud.

Which, of course, earned me another lecture.

Thankfully, he covered up our very illegal and risky mission, by calling the nurse into the room for an emergency.

Given how badly he smelled and how red his eyes were, the nurses accepted the ‘he collapsed as they were doing the will reading’ reason without any doubts.

After the visiting time got over, my assigned nurse for today took over and explained to me the procedures and tests I had to undergo for my trauma diagnosis.

Unlike the others, she let me spend a little bit more with my pals which was very generous of her.

She even let me say goodbye to them from front-gates!

What a nice lady!

Before I knew it, we hit it off quickly and the icebreakers were no longer required. I even narrated the whole afternoon incident to her.

"You wouldn’t believe how shock we were when we found out that he was on his twenty-second cup of black coffee." I swung my legs onto the bed, getting prepared for my shot.

“That man is running purely on caffeine and questionable life choices.” My nurse shook her head sideways, clicking her tongue. Tsk, tsk. “At this rate, he’s going to skip the will-reading and go straight to needing one himself.” She flicked the injection one more time, making sure of no errors.

"You sure that was all? I feel like you're hiding something here." Her black shades reflected the light onto me, as if I was getting interrogated.

Of course, I left out the part where we were the ones who pushed him to the edge.

“Yeah, sure. No, but either way,” I extended my hand as she injected the milky white medicine into my forearm, “his assistant came over and said they’ll handle the rest… stuff… themselves.” I rubbed my eyes with my free arm as she pressed a dino-shaped bandage onto my skin.

“Yeah, they told me about it. Turns out they gonna transport the documents in an hour or so. Better go read them.” She winked at me, moving her gloved hands in font of me,

She pointed at me.

She moved her right hand forward in a slight arc.

Then placed her fingertips against her chin before flicking her hand outward into a thumbs-up.

ASL. You. Future. Better.

My alarms in my head started to go off.

How did she know that I used to be deaf?

No hospital or even my health report had ever taken a note of this. Ever.

The Galvins were the only one that knew about this.

Heck, they even promised me that they would take this secret of mine to the grave just like how I am doing with theirs.

No…

It was the Galvins who struck the deal with me, not Coby or his friends.

I toppled on my back to the bed, my mind racing. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. She’d been in such a rush to get my health check-up done that she’d forced everyone out—including the other nurses.

Just like how I was waiting for Mr. Collins to drop his guard, they too were waiting for me to do the same.

As I took my last sight of a person’s back going forward, I too looked forward to what all other secrets Coby spilled to them.

No matter how close we get to the finish line, Coby always seemed to move it a bit further than before.

Never letting the race die on its own terms.

Rather, he’d most likely grant its death on his very own terms.