Chapter 3: The Place Where He Taught Me to See

The rooftop felt like the edge of the world.

I stood there, Dato’ Rahman‘s frozen scream still burning behind my eyes, while the KL skyline glittered like it didn’t care that a man had just died with four fingers raised to the sky. Inspector Chen was on his phone, calling in the body, his voice tight. Amira stood near the door, arms wrapped around herself, staring at nothing.

Four dead. And V had skipped her name on purpose.

He wants me alive. He’s training you.

I shoved Amira‘s words down. I couldn’t afford to think about that now. The countdown on my phone had reset to forty-seven hours and change. V had promised a public experiment. A spectacle. And the only clue was five words:

Your father’s actual favorite place.

“Uncle Chen,” I said, turning away from the body. “Where did Dad go when he really needed to think? Not the library. Not Bukit Nanas. Somewhere... personal.”

Inspector Chen ended his call and rubbed his temples. “Daniel was a private man. Even I didn‘t know half of what went on in his head. But...” He paused. “There was one place he mentioned once. A place he took you when you were small. He said it was where he taught you how to see.”

How to see.

And then it clicked.

I made them drive me home. Not to the apartment I shared with Dad, but to the old house in Petaling Jaya—the one we lived in before Mom passed away. Dad had sold it years ago, but I still remembered the address. The new owners had painted the gate a different color, but the mango tree in the front yard was still there.

I didn’t need to go inside. I needed the shed.

Behind the house, half-hidden by overgrown bougainvillea, was a small tin-roofed workshop. Dad called it his “thinking shed.” When a case got too loud inside his head, he would disappear in there for hours. I remember sitting on a wooden stool at age seven, watching him pin crime scene photos to a corkboard while he muttered to himself.

The shed was still there. The lock was rusted, but it gave way with a hard tug from Chen‘s multi-tool.

Inside, the air smelled of dust and old paper. A single bulb flickered on, revealing what Dad had left behind: a desk, a corkboard, and a bookshelf crammed with case files. But my eyes went straight to the wall behind the desk. Painted there, in Dad’s handwriting, was a quote I hadn‘t thought about in years.

“To see what others miss, stand where no one else is looking.”

And beneath it, a crude drawing of a clock tower.

Not just any clock tower. The one at Dataran Merdeka. The Sultan Abdul Samad Building. I knew it instantly. Dad had taken me there when I was ten, on a Saturday morning when the square was packed with tourists and families flying kites. He’d pointed at the clock tower and said, “Ash, this is the best place in KL to watch people. Everyone looks at the building. No one looks at the people looking at the building. That‘s where you’ll find the truth.”

That was his real favorite place. Not the library. Not the tower at night. A crowded public square where he could observe humanity without being observed.

And that was exactly where V would stage his next experiment.

“Dataran Merdeka,” I said, already pulling up my phone. “There‘s an event there tomorrow. Some kind of independence celebration preview—live music, food stalls, thousands of people.”

Inspector Chen swore under his breath. “If he releases that compound in a crowd...”

“He won’t need to,” Amira said quietly. “Fear is contagious. One person drops in front of a thousand, and the panic does the rest. It‘s the perfect public demonstration of his technique.”

I checked the countdown. It was synced to end exactly at noon tomorrow—the same time the main stage performance would begin. A crowd. Cameras. Media coverage. V didn’t just want to kill someone. He wanted the world to watch.

“We need to evacuate the event,” Chen said, already reaching for his radio.

“No.” The word came out of my mouth before I could stop it. “If we evacuate, V will know we‘ve figured it out. He’ll disappear and pick another target, another time. We won‘t get another chance to catch him.”

“Ash, there could be thousands of lives at risk.”

“And if we don‘t stop him now, there’ll be thousands more.” I met Chen‘s eyes. “Dad spent his last months hunting V. He died for this. I’m not letting V slip away because we played it safe.”

A long silence. Then Chen nodded, once. “What‘s your plan?”

I looked at the clock tower drawing on the wall. Stand where no one else is looking.

“We don‘t evacuate. We infiltrate. Amira, you said V uses targeted triggers—sounds, visuals, a compound. If we can find his equipment before noon, we can disable it. He’ll be somewhere in the crowd, controlling it remotely. We find him, we find V.”

“And if we can‘t find the equipment?” Amira asked.

“Then I’ll make him show himself.”

Dataran Merdeka at 10 AM was already chaos.

I didn‘t have a tone generator. But I had a phone. And a voice.

I pulled up a tone generator app—something I’d downloaded for a physics project last year—and maxed out the volume. Set to G-sharp. Steady tone. I pressed the speaker against the man‘s ear.

For three agonizing seconds, nothing happened.

Then he gasped.

A ragged, desperate inhale, like a diver breaking the surface. Color flooded back into his face. His eyes, still terrified, focused on me.

“You’re okay,” I said, my voice shaking. “You‘re going to be okay.”

But V wasn‘t done.

The speakers crackled again. “Impressive. You’ve been paying attention. But that was just the opening act. The real experiment begins now.”

A new sound filled the square. Not music. A countdown. Amplified, pounding, synchronized with the numbers on my phone.

00:59:59.

00:59:58.

“Chen!” I shouted into the earpiece. “Where is him?”

“We traced the signal to a rooftop northwest of the square! I‘m sending a team now!”

I looked up at the buildings surrounding Dataran Merdeka. Rooftops. Windows. A hundred places to hide. And in one of them, V was watching.

My phone buzzed again.

Northwest rooftop. Come alone, Ash. I want to meet you face to face. If you bring anyone else, I trigger the main event—and this time, the whole square goes under.

You have ten minutes.

—V

I stared at the message. Every instinct screamed that it was a trap. But the countdown was real. And if V could put one person into cardiac arrest, he could do it to a thousand.

“I have to go,” I said into the earpiece.

“Ash, don‘t you dare—” Chen’s voice was cut off as I pulled the device out and dropped it.

The man I‘d saved was sitting up now, being helped by paramedics. The crowd had thinned, people fleeing toward the edges of the square. The countdown echoed from every speaker.

I turned northwest and ran.

The building was an old colonial-era shop house, seven stories, with a rusty fire escape clinging to its side. I climbed it two steps at a time, my lungs burning. The rooftop door was already open.

And there, standing at the edge with the KL skyline behind him, was a figure in a black hoodie. Young. Lean. His face was hidden by a simple white mask—featureless except for a single symbol painted on the forehead.

The Roman numeral for five. V.

“You came,” he said. His voice without distortion was shockingly ordinary. Calm. Almost familiar. “Most people would have run.”

“I’m not most people.”

“No.” He tilted his head, studying me like a specimen. “You’re not. You‘re your father’s son. That‘s why you’re still alive.”

I took a step forward. “The square. Call it off.”

“I will. On one condition.” He raised a small device in his gloved hand—a remote trigger, thumb resting on a button. “Answer a question correctly. A riddle, you could say. The same one I asked your father before he died.”

My blood ran cold. “You spoke to him? Before he—”

“We had a conversation, yes. In his thinking shed, actually. He was very calm for a man who knew he was about to die. I asked him the riddle. He gave me an answer. But it was the wrong answer.”

The mask tilted again, and I could swear I sensed a smile behind it.

“Here it is, Ash. Listen carefully.”

V‘s voice dropped, almost reverent.

“I am the oldest prison in the world. I have no walls, no bars, no guards. I hold more prisoners than all the jails on Earth combined. Everyone visits me, but no one escapes me alive. What am I?”

The wind gusted across the rooftop. The countdown from the square was still pulsing, a distant heartbeat. Forty seconds left.

My mind raced. A prison with no walls. Holds more prisoners than all jails combined. Everyone visits. No one escapes alive.

The oldest prison in the world.

And then I remembered Dad’s words, painted on the shed wall. To see what others miss, stand where no one else is looking.

It wasn‘t a place. It was something inside every person. Something Dad had faced in his final moments. Something V had been trapped in since he was a teenager, broken by experiments and rebuilt into a monster.

I met V’s eyes—or where his eyes would be behind the mask.

“The answer is... fear,” I said. “The oldest prison is fear.”

Silence.

V didn‘t move for what felt like an eternity. Then, slowly, he lowered the remote.

“Correct,” he said softly. “Your father answered ‘the mind.’ Close. But not precise enough. He died because he couldn’t admit what he was really afraid of.”

“And what was that?”

V turned away, walking toward the edge of the rooftop. “Losing you.”

The words hit me like a physical blow.

“Your father was afraid that his work would catch up to him and you would pay the price. And he was right. Because here you are. His greatest fear, standing on a rooftop with the man who killed him.”

I lunged forward, but V was faster. He stepped off the edge—and I realized, too late, that there was a zip line rigged to the fire escape, disappearing into the alley below. By the time I reached the edge, he was gone, a black shadow melting into the chaos of the square.

My phone buzzed one last time.

The fifth experiment is complete. But not because he died—because he lived. You saved him, Ash. That was the real test.

You and I are more alike than you want to admit. We both understand fear. We both know how to use it. The difference is, I’ve accepted what I am. You‘re still pretending to be something else.

Sixth experiment in seven days. By then, you’ll have a choice to make.

—V

Below me, the square was slowly returning to life. The countdown had stopped. The man I saved was being loaded into an ambulance, alive. I had stopped a murder. I had solved the riddle.

But as I stood there, watching the crowd disperse, V‘s words echoed in my head.

You and me are more alike than you want to admit.

And the worst part?

I couldn‘t tell if he was lying.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***