EGOISM SYNDROME

London, 1975.

On the roof of the police station building,the air was as heavy as his breaths echoing against the ancient walls. Five detectives stood at spaced intervals, their feet planted on the ground as if guarding a fragile balance between life and death. Their voices rose with frantic, tense pleas:

"Don't jump! Just come back to us… We'll help you!"

On the edge stood a boy no older than eighteen. His features were pale, his eyes devoid of any tremor. He held an apple in his hand, as if it were the last remnant of the human world. He took a slow bite, looking at them with a coldness that hurt more than the fall itself, then leaned his body back… closed his eyes and said, "There's only one thing that can help me… and it's death." And he jumped.

The moment of his fall seemed as if time had withdrawn from it. But he never reached the abyss. A strong hand suddenly gripped his wrist.

A tall-built detective held him as the boy screamed:

"Let me go!"

The boy was frantically beating the detective's arm with piercing madness.

But the detective smiled a smile that didn't resemble joy, and said in a low voice, as if whispering into death's ear itself:

"Even if you fell now and died… even if you went to hell, I'd follow you in and pull you out. Your kind doesn't get to escape. Escape isn't for everyone."

The other detectives rushed to help him, and the boy was pulled back onto the interrogation room floor. Inside, away from the edge and the cold sky, his confession to the crime spilled out as if he had been waiting only for a hand to pull him from the darkness.

In the courtroom, the murdered girl's family sat in the audience seats. A mother with eyes swollen from wakefulness, a father trying to hide the trembling in his hands… and the boy in the defendant's chair. Detective Jim sat next to the family, watching the judgment, watching justice, or what resembled justice.

The verdict came: Just ten years.

The courtroom seemed to freeze.

The mother screamed, unable to comprehend the sentence:

"We adopted you! Raised you! Olivia saw you as a role model… and in the end, you killed her in cold blood. What kind of monster are you?!"

The father lunged forward and punched the boy in the face, shouting with a shattered voice:

"Your place isn't in our home with us, but in prison with monsters like you! And if you get out… you'll see hell for yourself!"

Jim had to calm them down before everyone left in a silence dripping with loss.

Jim returned to the police station.His colleagues insisted on celebrating him closing his first full case in his career. He laughed, shared a drink with them, shared the moment… but his mind wasn't present.

An inner voice whispered:

"What if I had let him fall? Maybe justice would have breathed easier than with ten years… Now the family is the one serving a life sentence in the prison of betrayal."

That was his first case, and it was natural for sympathy to mix with confusion and learned harshness inside him.

The very next day, Jim apprehended a serial killer and a jewel thief. It was only his second day as a detective, but he knew all the details of the cases. Before his promotion, he studied cases purely out of passion and didn't share anything with the station. The police valued position and status more than facts. But with his promotion, he shared all his research and efforts, and within just two days of starting, he found the three suspects. From that day forward, Jim was no ordinary Jim at the police station; he was a symbol of heroism and hard work.

as the years passed, neutrality seeped into his soul, his expertise was honed, and his measured cruelty grew. Jim became the name criminals feared, the shadow that preceded the public prosecution by one step.

_________________

The year 1990.

Forty years of age,half of them spent chasing darkness.

Jim had become London's premier detective:a man who didn't make mistakes, didn't hesitate, and didn't retreat.

And in his home,he was the ideal father to his son Jack and his daughter Emily, and a faithful husband to his wife Elizabeth.

A large house,a luxury car, a loyal dog named Dougie… and a family that saw him as an angel descended in the form of a man wearing a badge.

Jack dreamed of becoming like him.

Emily wished to one day marry a man of his purity.

And his wife was jealously protective of him in an endearing way,joking:

"If you take off the wedding ring, I'll cut your hand off."

Jim would laugh and reply:

"I won't take it off… even if the blood stops flowing to my finger. A promise is a promise."

Then she would approach him and place a kiss on his cheek:

"Go now… and finish off the bad guys."

He would reply with a smile:

"Yes, Captain."

Despite the years of experience, despite the fame, despite his ability to reach the highest rank… he refused promotion.

He always said:

"My mission isn't to sit behind a desk. My mission is to catch devils. And no one catches them better than a detective."

______________

On that cold night, when he returned home after a long day's work, he parked his car in the garage and approached the villa's door. But he heard a faint sound coming from the garden.

A sound moaning from within the grass.

He bent down cautiously, reached out his hand, and pulled out a new police-issue walkie-talkie. The device was emitting a fuzzy crackle, then a strange voice began to emerge:

"Testing… testing… Is anyone hearing me, heheh?"

Jim raised an eyebrow. He activated the recording feature and stared around cautiously.

Then he said in a low voice:

"Who's there?"

The reply came in an enthusiastic voice, a young boy by the sound of it:

"Hello! Can you hear me? Oooosh, looks like I succeeded in fixing it! My name is Emmanuel… you can call me Em. I was trying to fix this old device. Looks like your phone connected directly to mine!"

Behind his voice, there was a distant radio whisper…

A faint news bulletin talking about a crime that occurredtwenty years ago, on July 5th, 1990… near the National Park.

A stabbing victim,fingernails removed, a series of sequential crimes known as:

"The Hell's Angel Crime."

Jim wasn't listening to the boy as much as he was listening to that distant sound… that radio which seemed to be speaking from the past.

Then he said with the rigidity of detectives who know all the tricks:

"Do you think you're playing with me, boy? Do you know who I am? I'm the lead detective in London. If you're planning a prank… choose your victim carefully."

Then he coldly ended the call, and said quietly to himself:

"I'll let it slide today… but it would only take me one day to find you, so don't repeat this and stop messing with people's phones."

He entered his house, placed the walkie-talkie on his desk… and went to sleep.

He didn't know that those fuzzy words coming from the strange device buried in the grass…

were the first door to a future from which he would not exit as he had entered.