Chapter 2

I froze.

I thought, 'Fingerprints? Footprints? A full-face shot?'

I thought, 'How was that even possible?'

I stared at the dark mouth of the gun, ice spreading through my whole body.

"It wasn't me... it really wasn't..." My lips quivered as I tried to defend myself. "I told you, I'm paralyzed..."

"Paralyzed?" The captain let out a cold laugh and slapped several printed photos against my face. "Then explain this. Who the hell is that?"

The photos fluttered down onto my blanket.

Under the light, I finally saw what was in them.

A man was straddling a victim in a dim room, a dagger flashing in his hand.

The image was a little blurry, but that face...

That was me.

It was my face from three years ago. Back then I was strong, solid, and there was a vicious look in my eyes. I looked nothing like the withered wreck I was now.

But it was still me.

My pupils constricted sharply, and my heart seemed to skip a beat.

"No way..." I muttered, feeling like the whole world was spinning.

Right then, the captain got a call.

The second he answered, his face turned even grimmer. "What? Another one? In the complex next door? ... Surveillance caught it? Fine. We'll secure the suspect now."

After hanging up, the captain fixed me with a stare, as if I were already a dead man.

"Alex Carter, one minute before we breached your apartment, another person was killed in the complex next door. Surveillance shows the killer climbing out a window, running across the buildings, and finally vanishing near the entrance to your building's stairwell."

He stepped closer and closer, the gun barrel nearly poking into my eye.

"What the hell are you?"

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

I stared at that swift, deadly version of "me" on the surveillance footage, my blood running cold.

Fear swallowed me whole.

But what scared me even more was what happened in that exact moment, under all that terror and shock...

I felt it.

My legs, numb for three years, so forgotten I'd almost stopped thinking of them as part of me, seemed to...

They really did move.

It was faint, unbelievably faint, but real. As if a long-dormant nerve had been jolted awake, sending a numb tingle through me and... a hunger.

A hunger to stand up and run.

My eyes went wide with panic as I stared at my legs under the thin blanket.

Something under that blanket seemed to be waking up.

"Take him away!"

At the captain's order, two officers rushed over and roughly hauled me up off the bed.

"Wait! Officer, I'm innocent! I really can't move!" I shouted, trying to fight back.

But my atrophied arms had no strength at all. They just hung there like dead branches.

The instant they lifted me, my body lost all support and slid downward.

"Playing dead now?"

The captain snorted and motioned for them to throw me straight onto a stretcher.

Just then, hurried footsteps came from the doorway.

"Move! Everybody move! I'm his attending doctor!" a breathless man shouted from the doorway.

A middle-aged man in a white coat and glasses came rushing in, out of breath.

It was Dr. Michael Miller, a neurosurgery specialist from Central Medical Institute and the doctor who'd been treating me for the last three years.

"Dr. Miller!" I shouted like I'd just seen my last hope.

Dr. Miller shoved the SWAT officers aside, rushed to me, checked my pupils and vitals, then spun toward the captain and roared,

"What the hell are you doing? Alex Carter is my patient! He's a high-level quadriplegic with zero sensation below the neck! And you're accusing him of murder? This is beyond ridiculous!"

"Dr. Miller, is it?" The captain looked at him coldly. "His fingerprints are on the murder weapon, his shoe prints are at the scene, and surveillance caught his face. If you say he didn't do it, then what, did a ghost do it?"

"That..." Dr. Miller froze. Looking at the photos, his face went pale. "That... that's impossible. Medically speaking, his spinal cord is completely severed. Recovery isn't possible, let alone murder..."

"The evidence speaks for itself." The captain waved a hand. "Take him back for interrogation. Dr. Miller, you'll need to come with us as well to assist with the investigation."

They lifted me onto the stretcher and wheeled me out of my apartment.

The hallway was packed with nosy neighbors.

"Isn't that Alex, the guy who's been bedridden?"

"They say he killed somebody? No way. The guy can't even walk."

"You never really know people. Maybe it's all been an act."

"Exactly. He always looked harmless. Who would've guessed he's some psycho killer..."

Their whispers stabbed into my ears like needles.