Nebulous Emperor

Charles closed the door and met with back up with Chief Enforcer Donald.

Enforcer Donald saw Mayor Charles leave the office and said, "All right boys, get in there." Enforcer Donald said to the other officers, "I don't know who it is, but I want him in handcuffs."

"No," Charles said.

All the men stopped moving simultaneously.

"What do you mean, no?" Enforcer Donald asked.

"He can stay; I've decided he is fit to run the mine in Harry's absence."

Enforcer Donald immediately understood but still had a look of confusion on his face.

"I thought you wanted to run things differently?"

Charles smiled at him and stated, "My little trip out here is rather unfortunate, but if it's going to last, I might as well make it fun."

"He's a little young, isn't he?"

"What am I then, Donald?"

"You're just young, him on the other hand..."

"You have other things to be worried about, like getting this case handled." Charles stated.

"That's what the little guys are for; people like you and me have more important work to do." Enforcer Donald said with a quick wink.

"Fine."

They both turned and headed away from the scene.

~~~

Nave sat and thought about everything that happened up until this point.

'From a kid who read books all day and rarely left the house to the owner of a mine, not bad.' He thought.

'There's really no need to still talk to myself in my head.' He smiled and looked around.

He got an idea: "I own this room now. I own this entire place now. I can do whatever I want."

He stood up and started taking all of his clothes off, walking around with nothing on.

"I always wanted to do this."

He walked around and did whatever he wanted, doing random stretches, pushups, and posing in a mirror that he found.

"Yeah, I'm awesome," he said with a big smile.

"Why am I being so quiet? I own this whole place."

"THIS WHOLE PLACE!" He yelled as he walked to and out the door.

"I OWN THIS WHOLE PL-"

Four grown men in enforcer uniforms stood outside the door, still managing the crime scene.

Everyone looked at Nave for a second before he slammed the door shut.

He put his clothes back on and sat down at his desk as if nothing happened.

...

'Well, time to get to work.' He thought.

He started to think about how his plan went.

'I think that if I just took it slower, I could have gotten to this same place just slower and with much less risk. The underworld was always an option'.

He thought for a second, 'Maybe it still is?'

The underworld played a huge role in his town; as far as he knew, most of the political powerhouses, which were very few, got their positions through illegal tactics. Nave was one of them.

Charles is one of them too, but he wasn't from Rumian. He was an outsider.

'But why here? What is so special about Rumian? And where is he from, and why is he our mayor?'

The previous mayor had "retired" many moons ago. And a new young man had taken his seat.

'And why is he pretending that he doesn't like the way the system works if he got his position in the same manner?' Nave questioned.

'So many questions and so few answers. I can be happy everything worked out for now, but I can't get too comfortable.'

When Charles asked him if he had ambition, he lied. He wanted to own the whole town; he wanted more than Harry's spot; he wanted Charles'.

'The underworld could help me get there.'

The underworld was the antithesis to the law; if Nave's logic was correct, 'Then whoever runs the underworld in this area should potentially be open to collaboration if I offer them something.'

He shelved the thought away, as it wouldn't be able to help him at this very moment.

He had things that affected him much more at that current moment, he realized as he started to clean the office up, still messy from the crime. Picking up all the items and organizing them where they belonged in the room until it finally looked presentable again.

A few things were taken for evidence collection, but it was mostly okay.

He found Harry's name tag in a random corner: "A dead man needs no name tag." He tossed it into a trash can.

During the cleaning process, he found the contract he was about to sign before he killed Harry.

The mine would be closed for a day or more if the police desired it so, which he doubted they would.

In the contract, it was required for miners to work 10 hours a day every day.

'How does this work?'

He actually read the contract this time and discovered that if the mine was closed for any reason at all, it was entirely up to the employee to make up for the missed hours or compensate the owner of the mine for its losses. But the mine was only open for 10 hours a day, so the workers only had two choices: pay the mine owner 2 cor for every hour missed or work an equal amount of hours for free.

'Which means that if I close the mine just because I feel like it, the people will owe me money.'

He literally laughed out loud.

'My father himself must have written this contract.' Nave thought.

The Shadow was known to be an absolutely ruthless businessman and politician.

'I'm surprised Harry didn't use this tactic more often. Actually, as far as I remember the mine was never closed. That's interesting.'

'If Harry did go through with this and the workers gathered unmanageable debt, they wouldn't have been able to do anything about it. The contract states that the mine has no interest in negotiating and the town wouldn't have offered any programs to assist them. Getting a lawyer, if they can find and then afford one, to help them apply for bankruptcy would only add more expenses. Not to mention the time required and the insane amount of workers who would require the service would easily overwhelm our town's small office.'

'Harry could've financially destroyed these people even more than he originally did.' Nave thought.

'Maybe he wasn't as bad of a person as I originally thought.' Nave considered. 'Or maybe he wasn't allowed to due to the potential impact on our town's economy, which would then affect people above him.'

Nave continued thinking far into the day as he continued gathering information on the mine's operations from documents he could find in Harry's office.

~~~

A large man sat in a chair handcuffed to a table in a dimly lit room with a single light hanging over his head.

He had been waiting for hours—no water, no food, and no one else around him.

'I feel so alone.'

The man sat with his head in his hands, thinking about how he got here.

Until the door opened, two men in blue uniforms walked in.

Enforcer Thomas, the same man who arrested him along with an older officer by his side.

The man had a scar above his left eye, and he had plenty of gray hair on his head.

They walked in, and the older officer took a seat while Thomas stood in the corner, refusing the other chair. He looked restless.

The older officer rested in his chair and stared at the suspect.

No one said anything for a long time; both the large man and Enforcer Thomas looked like they were about to explode. The other officer looked like he was wondering if he left his stove on.

When it looked like they both could take no more, the large man finally said something.

"It wasn't me!"

He looked like he had been wanting to say that for a long time.

The officer didn't even seem like he heard him. Just when it seemed that Enforcer Thomas would also explode, the older man finally said something.

He reached down onto the table and grabbed a folder. He opened it and said, "Serguy, is it?"

"My name is Sergei."

"Okay, Sergee, well, I have some bad news for you."

Sergei's face sunk even more.

"We caught you at the scene of a murder with the victim's blood on your hands."

"I just told you, it wasn't me!"

The older officer looked at him and said, "Do you think I'm deaf or something?"

"I heard you the first time, but I don't believe you, and I guarantee no one else does either. Right, Enforcer Thomas?"

He turned his head toward Thomas again and gave him a wink.

The young man wore an incredibly conflicted expression on his face; after some mental deliberation, he nodded his head.

"Rookie, you gotta speak up."

"Right, Officer Spencer."

Officer Spencer turned to Sergei and said, "Look, Serlei, I know it's been hard for you; you've been here for a long time, no water, no food, and no contact with other humans."

Sergei sighed in relief, happy that at least someone understood what he was going through.

"And someone walking in on you committing a murder must have been very difficult."

"IT WASN'T ME!" Sergei yelled and abruptly stood up, pushing his chair out from under him.

Officer Spencer showed no reaction at all, and Thomas had looked away a little while ago.

"Woah, buddy, calm down; I'm just working with the information I have available." Officer Spencer closed the folder and stood up. He looked at his wrist at a watch that didn't exist.

"Me and Thomas over here are very busy men, you know; I think we'll have to come back once you cool off a little bit. Lets go, Rookie."

They both began to exit the room. Sergei couldn't control his emotions anymore.

"I DIDN'T DO IT! I DIDN'T DO IT!"

He slammed his fist against the table repeatedly and kicked his chair out of his reach.

The noise ceased once the officers closed the door behind them standing in a mostly empty hallway.

Enforcer Donald pulled a small device out of his pocket; it had a pyr crystal on the top of it and a small piece at the beginning to put your mouth on. He put his mouth on the device and inhaled.

"I thought you'd prefer the old school stuff." Enforcer Thomas said.

Exhaling a gas, Officer Spencer said, "I do, but this new stuff is so convenient."

He started walking away.

"Wait."

He didn't stop.

Enforcer Thomas caught up with him.

"I told you he wasn't the only one at the crime scene. Why are we not investigating that at all?"

Officer Spencer sighed, "Rookie, how long have you been here now?"

"Two and a half months."

"Good, you're almost at the point where you give up."

"I'm not going to give up." He said it sternly. "Answer my question."

Officer Spencer stopped and turned around to talk face-to-face with him.

"Look, every other Enforcer who caught even a whiff of this case knew what went down immediately. Now it's your turn. What's obvious about this case?"

Enforcer Thomas looked at him with a serious expression, "Sergei was framed."

"Of course he was; have you met the guy? Plus, Harry gave him everything a simple guy like him could need. Now why would someone frame Sergei and kill Harry?"

"To get him out of the way and probably to take Harry's spot."

"Good, now you get it."

He walked away once again.

"No! I still don't get it, and you still haven't answered my question, Why aren't we investigating it?" Thomas said loudly.

Turning around quickly, Officer Spencer responded, "We aren't investigating it because when the elephants get angry, the ants either move out of the way or get crushed!" he said while putting his fumer back in his pocket.

"Now you seem like a good kid; I don't want you getting crushed. So you're going to leave it alone. Understood?"

"Yes, Officer Spencer."

Officer Spencer walked away for good this time.

Thomas stood in the hallway with his hands balled into a fist. His fingernails dug into his palms, drawing blood.