L*st and Death

“A super-hot... Asian pretty boy gave you my number?”

Three days earlier, while chasing traces of the missing Lewis and Siron, Anna McCarthy had panicked when she discovered a massive bloodstain outside the Millander Public Support Shelter on an unnamed road. Then a phone call came, leading her here, to Darien—a small town on the southeastern Georgia riverfront.

After driving nonstop for seven hours, she arrived in Darien, a quiet rural town. Weathered docks stretched long over the rippling river, where a handful of old fishing boats were moored. Crossing the bridge into town, Anna parked in the lot of a seafood restaurant—the agreed meeting place.

Inside, the restaurant buzzed with life. Local fishermen gathered around tables, sharing raw oysters and beer. And in the farthest corner from the door stood a man, awkwardly, glancing at Anna with uncertain eyes.

“I’m Anna McCarthy.”

“Dermot Ramsey. I know it’s rude, but I was starving, so I ordered some food while waiting.”

The man averted his gaze with an embarrassed cough. Taking in his shabby appearance and nervous manner, Anna quickly understood. Pointing at the menu, she replied,

“That’s fine. I was hoping to treat you as thanks for making the time.”

Dermot was small but solidly built. Beside him sat a frail-looking man with a weak expression, mumbling to himself while staring at the table.

“...Who’s that?”

“A fellow escapee. His name’s 354... no, right. Andy Leclair.”

Dermot smirked as he added,

“Used to write science articles for the New York Times, apparently.”

Andy raised his eyes timidly.

“I—I majored in ex...extraterrestrial biology at Harvard. My most famous article was written in base-60. The Ba...Babylonian mathematicians picked their noses and frowned, but I wrote that the human brain is an antenna for signals from the universe.”

“That’s right. The government flipped its lid. That’s when the CIA started watching you.”

At Dermot’s teasing, Andy nodded earnestly, his expression lit with fervor.

Anna felt exhaustion crash down on her at the incomprehensible conversation starting the moment they exchanged names. Andy Leclair hardly seemed sane. Had she really needed to meet them in person? She twisted her body, ready to wrap things up and leave. Perhaps sensing her restlessness, Dermot quickly brought up something that caught her attention.

“That super-hot friend left me this note to pass on to you, along with your number.”

Anna carefully unfolded the crumpled note supposedly handed to him by a “super-hot Asian pretty boy.”

Joseph Miller is tied to the homeless abduction case. I was kidnapped from Millander Public Support Shelter. Your brother was outside the shelter waiting, but at the moment of my abduction he was nowhere in sight. The abducted homeless men were imprisoned on an island between Cuba and Mexico. On the island were Shibal-man and the owner of the ‘photos.’ We escaped together. No trace of Joan Welch was found. Ask Dermot about the details of the escape.

Anna pressed her forehead, frowning.

“What is all this supposed to mean?”

Dermot scratched his red nose with a thick finger and shrugged, as if he had no clue. Anna forced patience and read the note more carefully. By then, food had arrived, but she was too absorbed in the words to notice.

The claim that Joseph Miller and the Millander Shelter were tied to homeless abductions fit her suspicions. Her heart sank at the part about Lewis disappearing outside the building before Siron was kidnapped—but it was still within her guesses. What shocked her was that the abducted homeless had been taken not within the U.S., but to a foreign island.

Reading the memo several times, she soon recognized who “Shibal-man” and “the owner of the photos” were. “Shibal-man” was Baekgyeong, who had once taught her that curse word. “The owner of the photos” was Isaac Bazelli, the murder suspect who had tried to burn incriminating evidence while shutting down his urology clinic.

And Siron had failed to find any trace of Joan Welch, the missing man at the root of all this. Keeping her face carefully composed, Anna asked Dermot,

“What happened on the island?”

“There’s a lot I could tell you.”

Dermot paused, eyeing Andy devouring food mindlessly, then recounted the horrors. The abducted homeless weren’t treated as human. They were injected with strange drugs, used as test subjects.

On the day of the escape, he had seen bloodied guards lying dead. A tall man had cut them down and freed the prisoners. But freedom wasn’t the end—they had to cross mountains of corpses and survive the furious waves that tried to swallow their ships.

“I thought I was staring death in the face. Even when I worked as a sailor, I’d never seen waves like that.”

He spoke as though reliving a nightmare. The escapees split between two vessels, each sailing toward a different destination. Just before parting, the Asian man handed him Anna’s contact.

Anna pulled out her phone and showed him a photo of Lewis.

“Have you ever seen this man... on the island?”

Dermot furrowed his brows, stared at the picture, then shook his head.

“Never. I’ve got a sharp eye, and I’ve never seen him.”

Anna hid her disappointment and asked something else.

“Were either of these men on the same boat as the one who gave you the note?”

On her phone were photos of Baekgyeong and Isaac—Baekgyeong from an online article, Isaac from a CCTV capture at the Mexican supermarket where Siron was abducted.

Dermot nodded at Isaac’s picture.

“Yeah, this guy. The doctor who got us out.”

“Doctor?”

“He’s the one who injected me. Remember, I told you about shady human experiments? Anyway, both of them left with that super-hot Asian friend.”

Anna couldn’t understand why Siron and Baekgyeong would choose to stay with Isaac Bazelli, a murder suspect, instead of returning to the U.S. with the other escapees. In her desk drawer still lay those gruesome photos from Bazelli’s urology clinic.

“Did he look like he was threatening them?”

Anna pointed at Isaac’s enlarged face on her screen. Dermot squinted at the noisy image and tilted his head.

“Didn’t seem that way at all.”

“Then do you know where they went?”

“Not really...”

“Belzoras.”

The one who spoke was Andy Leclair, who had been quietly finishing his smoked salmon steak. Both Anna and Dermot turned toward him. Embarrassed, Andy ducked his head.

“The blue-eyed doctor... the man with him played guitar in Belzoras style. The notes, the grammar, the words were Belzoras. I heard it. I definitely heard it.”

“Don’t know what you mean, but I suppose he did talk like someone from Belzoras... but then, don’t all South Americans sound that way?”

“N-no, they don’t.”

Ignoring Andy’s protest, Dermot downed a bowl of soup full of smoked cod chunks, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and burped. Suddenly remembering something, he slapped his knee.

“Ah, right. Almost forgot something important.”

Dermot pointed at Baekgyeong’s photo with a grave look.

“This man was stabbed. He was unconscious. On the brink of death.”

“What?”

Anna’s expression tightened. Dermot sighed.

“He bled a lot. Probably didn’t make it.”

Glancing at her shocked face, he asked,

“So what happens now? Is there going to be an investigation?”

“Investigation?”

“You’re police, aren’t you?”

The devastating news about Baekgyeong made Anna’s nose redden faintly. Her dry lips parted. She clenched her teeth and answered in a rough, cracking voice,

“Yes. Of course. An investigation is being prepared.”

Her tone was steady, but no one knew better than Anna herself how incapable she truly was of solving a case this tangled.

“Have you told anyone else what you told me today?”

“No. Who’d believe a homeless man’s words?”

Dermot continued,

“But not everyone who escaped thinks like me. Rumors are already spreading among the homeless. That the U.S. government is experimenting on them. We’re easy prey. Who cares what happens to people like us?”

“At least I will—as long as I’m alive.”

A worried look crossed Dermot’s face. Feeling she’d sounded too dramatic, Anna forced an awkward smile.

It didn’t seem like she’d get anything more from him. She pulled a bundle of hundred-dollar bills from her wallet, split it in two, and pushed half toward Dermot and Andy.

“Use it to settle back home. I’ll be going now. If you remember anything else, contact me.”

But instead of looking happy at the money, Dermot frowned strangely.

“Thanks, but I think you, as a cop, should be the one to help hand this guy over to his family.”

“What?”

“This guy’s not right in the head. I can’t handle him. Please.”

“I’m n-not out of my mind! I’ll take off on my own. I’m the one who blew up the spaceship and made it off the island. I was going to stand guard over the last defense line of humanity!”

Andy, who had been quietly eating, suddenly slammed his fork down and spoke with a wounded expression.

“See? You saw that, right?”

Dermot flashed a vague smile, quickly pocketed the cash, and stood.

“Well, I’ll be heading off.”

Before Anna could stop him, Dermot bolted from the restaurant. She chased him outside, but seeing him fleeing at full tilt drained her strength, and she halted, disheartened. Returning inside, she found only Andy left at the table, muttering with a bitter, aggrieved face.

Hunting for traces of the missing Lewis and Siron, Anna had ended up saddled with a half-mad homeless man.

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