BANG!

The eerie calmness of the early morning was torn apart by the staccato hiss of a bullet racing towards its target from a silenced handgun.

DOT yanked out his gun out of nowhere and without hesitation he shot in the direction of his enemies.

To the utter astonishment of everyone in the room, no one was hurt. Even Arul, who the gun was aimed at, was fine.

Ameer then turned back to find the unconscious Kumaresan still intact but there was some sort of viscous liquid ebbing from his chest.

"what the ..." He gasped loudly on releasing what it was.

Suriya couldn't believe what he had just seen. He simply froze without any reaction.

Arul was already plotting his plan to escape from this madness.

Every second after the shot seemed to move very slowly.

The uncommon mix of emotions in room was restored to reality by the coarse voice of DOT.
"Okay okay... enough mourning! Now if you will turn back, I have a flashback to tell y'all "

Suriya was raging with fire inside and he virtually threw himself towards DOT but he was tugged back by a physically superior Arul.
Suriya stared at Arul for doing so but he remained as calm as stillwater.

"woah! woah! Please remember that I hold a limited-edition handgun! There is obviously no need for you to show your heroic moves here! Now if you would, please ease yourself and hear me out." said DOT clearly meaning business.

"you cannot do it just like that! What do you think of yourself? How the ...? You think you're above all? huh? You're a fucking psycho! Yeah you are!" Chezhiyan blasted at DOT all the while he himself was on the verge of tears.

Ameer held him by his shoulders to prevent him from falling on his knees that looked like giving in any moment.

"what? All done? Can I start now? Look, it's not that I don't want to hear you out but why don't you all just let me finish my story so that we can move on? I thought at least you guys were cultured enough!" said DOT as he became restless.

He began tapping his foot and fidgeting with his hands.

Arul came forward and asked "what good does this flashback of yours will do to us? With all the hype, you are providing to it?"

"Nice question and to be honest, I don't know whether it will make your day any beautiful! Well you can decide for yourself!" offered DOT.

No one in the room replied to him. Sensing this as an opportunity to begin, DOT started his story.
"Now Mr. Suriya Prakash, do you remember September the 3rd last year?"

"I don't see what that specific date or my knowledge of it will help in your story!" Suriya fired back reply.

"Uh... well why don't you just stick to answering my queries instead of questioning me back?" said DOT.

"No, I don't remember what happened on that date!" replied Suriya sternly.

"Oh, you do have a pathetic memory, don't you? Anyways. Well it was the day your first case took a big fucking turn. I presume you know what I'm referring to, at least now?"

"I have no idea of the big turn of yours! but yeah, I was working on my first case at that time" said Suriya.

Ameer began to sense something odd in the way Suriya replied. It was as if Suriya knew what the DOT was referring to and yet he refrained from accepting it.

DOT aimed a sullen stare at Suriya and continued to talk,
"In that case, I shall explain it you. You quit your job as a member of the Forensics team of Stanley Medical Hospital due to your inner fire for something adventurous like the job of being a cop. Hope I'm not wrong here. Well it's your story and that's not what I'm here for.

That first case of yours was rather a simple one of murder. The victim was some school teacher and there were two prime suspects, one of which was the teacher's own daughter. Though she was highly capable of doing such a thing due to her association with drug peddling teens and whatnot, you chose to proceed with the case by ignoring her and targeting the other suspect, a 17-year-old boy, who lived in the opposite flat of the victim.
It was like you were hell bent on proving that the boy was the real culprit."

Now Ameer was convinced that his earlier assumptions could be true to some extent, he was never so keen in listening to someone speak.

"And, I must say, you took some extreme measures in doing so, didn't you?" asked DOT.

Suriya wiped a drop of sweat from his eyebrow. He was astonished to find someone that knows about his first case inside out.
He couldn't imagine who this DOT was but he decided to play the waiting game.

"What do you mean by extreme measures?" asked Chezhiyan.

"I mean what I mean. He knows what he did. If you want, I can give you the explanation." offered DOT.

"What is he saying sir? Why are you staying silent?" asked Chezhiyan to which Suriya didn't have any reply.

"Thought so. Well he framed that kid once he knew about his innocence. The whole case was manipulated in such a way that the boy was found guilty. And here comes the best part, the boy didn't even live to testify against it! He was killed and you know what that was made into?" DOT looked at both Chezhiyan and Ameer.
He then continued in a slow and piercing tone.

"SUICIDE!"

"Yeah I expected you would come up with such a trivial story! At least I was expecting better from you!" said Chezhiyan in denial.

"Talk all you want kid!" DOT was angry as he said this but quickly enough he came back to his senses.

"Okay let's continue with the story, shall we?
And to go in detail, that teacher had come to know of the dealings of his daughter, a 20-year-old medicine student, and as any other parent would he warned her like usual but later he took it up a notch when she won't budge by threatening to hand her over to the cops. That's when hell broke loose.
This girl, the soon to be doctor, was having day to day trouble because of her daddy and she decided to have him silenced once and for all. Please don't think like 'which daughter will try to have her father killed and all' because believe me when you have instant death waiting for you if you get caught, killing your father won't seem illogical and moreover this girl was insanely notorious. Studying in a private medical college, she was introduced to all sorts of 'you don't wanna try' things and she had connections in a lot of places, of which I will elaborate later.
So, scared to report this to her friends, she took up the responsibility of finishing him off. She did exactly that on a Sunday in her dad's bedroom.

What was planned as a kill-and-make-it-look-like-a-suicide ended horribly as she had to stab him in his chest.

The poor physics teacher was sleeping when the metal first cut his left arm. He apparently woke up and on seeing this, the girl panicked and stabbed him in his chest and so masterfully took away the knife.

And then those regular things happened. She faked innocence and called the cops and all that.
Here is the interesting part. The boy I told you about was the one that informed about the girl to her dad. Why he did that? No one knows! Remember the connections I told you all? They lead the girl to a reunion with one such man during the investigation. "as soon as he finished this, the DOT turned his gaze towards Suriya.
Everyone in the room followed him and now all eyes were on Suriya.

To be continued!