The interrogation
Chapter 5
He woke up the next day, still lying on the floor, surrounded by Chase, Troy, and two new faces.
"Hey. Wake up, sunshine. We've got business to discuss," Troy said. He'd clearly taken a liking to hating and provoking Kaito. Built the way he was, he had to be either an athlete or a martial artist.
"Feeling's mutual. Wouldn't want to wake up to that face either," Kaito shot back, dissing him right back — muscular as Troy was, his face was the kind only a mother could love. "Now — where's my breakfast?" He locked eyes with Chase, making it clear he had no interest in playing along.
"Cute," Chase said.
"What do you know about the situation we're in? How'd you manage to survive this long?"
The questions were precise, grounded — Chase actually wanted real answers. For all his tough-guy act, he'd clearly thought this whole conversation through.
The world was in shambles. People had started killing each other the second they heard the virus was contagious — a rumor that turned out to be false — but that didn't stop countless lives from being slaughtered in the chaos of it.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Kaito said, feigning surprise. "Virus? Never heard of it. All I know is the dead started attacking the living — like something out of The Walking Dead. Use your imagination for the rest."
Chase smirked. "Alright. What about you — where were you before we found you?" He was fishing for Kaito's origin, which would tell him how far the chaos had actually spread. With that information, they could plot a route around the worst of it. He was thinking ahead, and Kaito knew it.
He wasn't obligated to tell them anything. As far as he was concerned, this world had turned into every man for himself.
So he gave them a cover story: just a resident from one of the homes past the main roads, on the edge of the district. It was a story with a cost — if anyone from that neighborhood showed up and asked him a basic question, he'd be caught out immediately. But he had no other choice. These people had the look of survivors who could talk themselves into anything in the name of protecting the group — even sacrificing their own, whether they realized it or not. That kind of thinking changed how a group operated, and he needed to know exactly what he was dealing with.
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