I stood in the room, pinned under Zhou Yan's unblinking stare, a cold chill seeping into my bones. I thought he would kill me, would attack me—but he did not.
His voice was hoarse, like sandpaper scraping wood, as he spoke: "You were at the orphanage too. I saved you from that fire."
My eyes flew open in shock.
"The stench, the trash disposal—it wasn't to hurt you. It was to harden you. I'm avenging the powerful who set that fire. They all deserve to die. I need you to join me in this revenge."
I was stunned, my mind a blank. Orphanage, fire, saved me, revenge, the powerful—all the words swirled into a jumble in my head.
Just then, a faint yet deadly scent drifted in from the hallway: gasoline additive, the very smell my foster father had used to start the fire all those years ago.
I snapped back to my senses in an instant. It was him—my foster father, an accomplice to the arson. He had come to silence me forever.
Moments later, a gas filled the room, thick and suffocating—a hallucinogenic gas, far stronger, more brutal, more immediate than Zhou Yan's.
Zhou Yan and I both felt dizzy, hallucinations flashing before our eyes: the roaring fire, the choking smoke, the screams, the death.
I clung to consciousness, fumbling the antidote spray out of my pocket and spraying it wildly on my face, then tossing a bottle to Zhou Yan. "Spray it! Hurry!"
Zhou Yan reacted at once, dousing himself with the spray. Seconds later, the hallucinations faded.
I saw clearly now—my foster father stood in the doorway, a bottle in his hand, spraying the gas into the room nonstop, his eyes twisted into a vicious snarl, a devil in human form.
I lunged at him, and before he could react, I snatched the bottle from his grasp. With my other hand, I grabbed a scent test paper and rubbed it hard against his clothes, collecting the gasoline scent on it—irrefutable evidence.
Zhou Yan charged forward too, tackling my foster father to the ground and pinning him down tight.
I turned to the huge sealed container and brushed a test paper against it. The scent told me everything: inside was one of the powerful men who had set the orphanage fire.
Zhou Yan had not lied. He was truly seeking revenge. And my foster father—the man who had raised me—was the killer, the devil hiding in plain sight by my side.