The Best Way to Keep a Secret

Fran saw David approaching and tried desperately to escape, but there was no way he could get away.

"Help! Help!"

He tried shouting. His voice carried far, but no one would come to this abandoned factory on the outskirts.

David stepped closer one step at a time. His footsteps rang in Fran's heart like the tolling of hell's funeral bell, filling him with fear.

"Listen, imprisoning and harming a detective is a federal felony!"

Fran swallowed and spoke.

A seventeen-year-old high school student might have only acted on impulse. He wanted to persuade and intimidate David into abandoning this irrational course of action.

Slap!

David unhurriedly lowered Fran, who was tied to the chair, forced his head straight, and laid a wet towel over his face.

"Since its birth in the Middle Ages, waterboarding has been called one of the most inhumane punishments in human history."

His calm, steady voice carried a coldness that chilled people to the bone.

"I like this punishment. It's simple, effective, and doesn't require bloodshed."

"No... no!"

Realizing what was about to happen, Fran cried out in panic.

He tried to struggle, but the hand holding him was like an iron clamp, utterly immovable.

Splash!

David held a bucket weighing several dozen pounds steadily in one hand. Water poured down slowly and steadily, flooding into Fran's nose and mouth beneath the towel.

"Help... help..."

Fran's pleas were swallowed by the water. He choked and coughed, unable to say another word.

He wanted to breathe, but the soaked towel clung tightly to his face, blocking off oxygen.

In less than thirty seconds, as the oxygen in his blood rapidly depleted, the agony of suffocating as though he were drowning began. Veins bulged in his neck, and his legs kicked and convulsed like a strangled rabbit.

"Take a deep breath. The dizziness is normal."

Only now did the interrogation truly begin. David offered a friendly reminder.

Oxygen deprivation made him gasp and swallow uncontrollably, causing great amounts of water to flood into Fran's stomach, lungs, and bronchi. The pain and suffocation grew worse. He cried out desperately and indistinctly, but before he could utter a complete syllable, he was drowned out by the water.

Terrifying screams echoed through the abandoned factory.

"From the Spanish Inquisition to modern intelligence agencies, eighty percent of those subjected to waterboarding have yielded.

I hope you're not among the other twenty percent, Jax Fran."

There was a trace of hope in his tone.

"Because the rest were all victims accidentally tortured to death by their interrogators."

"Mmph... mmph..."

Intense pain and terror swept through Fran's body and mind, destroying his already far-from-resilient will. Only thirty seconds after he began feeling the agony of suffocation, he tried every possible way to convey that he was willing to confess.

But he could not speak, and his hands and feet were tied. Though he clearly wanted to confess, he continued suffering torture meant to make him confess.

He spent an agonizingly long two minutes in darkness and suffocation.

Fran's consciousness gradually blurred, and his limbs were already twitching unnaturally.

"That's about enough. If this continues, things are going to get ugly."

David set down the bucket.

After being waterboarded for too long, people would lose control of their bowels and bladder.

"Urgh..."

The towel was pulled from his face. With tears and mucus streaming down his face, Fran saw the light again. Like a fish hauled ashore, he instinctively gulped down air greedily. More than ten seconds passed before his pupils focused. It was as if he had taken a trip to the gates of hell. His face was deathly pale, his body shook with fear, and he looked at David as though he wanted to say something.

"Oh, right!"

Seeing his expression, David raised his eyebrows, smiling as if he had just remembered something.

"I forgot to tell you in advance how you were supposed to let me know if you wanted to confess."

Fran could see no sign on David's face that he had only just remembered. He stared at him as if he had seen a devil, eyes wide with terror and teeth chattering.

"D-Devil!"

"You've wasted quite a bit of my time. It's time to tell me what I want to know!"

David raised the chair upright, his smile fading as he spoke slowly.

"Or do you want a second round?"

"I... I'll talk!..."

As if electrocuted, Fran hurriedly begged for mercy. If he had not been tied to the chair, he would surely have been kneeling on the ground, repeatedly banging his head in submission, willing to pay anything just to avoid suffering that pain again.

Click!

The spacebar was pressed, canceling and deleting the scheduled email. David looked up at the still-shaken Fran and closed the laptop.

"Thank you for your cooperation."

"You... you're not ordinary either." Fran hugged himself, his voice trembling.

"What did you say?"

David acted as though he had not heard clearly.

"Your hand was like an iron clamp just now. Your strength was abnormally great. You held my face, and no matter how I struggled, I couldn't make it move even a little."

Recalling the agonizing pain of his cheekbones nearly being crushed, Fran understood everything now. He stared at David like he was a terrifying monster, eyes wide.

Why had Clark treated his brother's actions as though facing a great enemy? Clark had clearly promised him, yet afterward he had disappeared. There was only one explanation.

"You're a monster even stronger than your brother!"

"I don't like the word monster."

David walked up to him and looked down from above, his shadow falling over him.

"I just have a few little tricks for dealing with Clark."

"Y-You... what do you want?"

Sitting in the chair, Fran felt as though a giant hand formed from fear had seized his heart. Overwhelmed by unease, he regretted coming here to provoke David more than anything.

"Let me go, please!"

"Sorry, but the best way to make someone keep a secret is—dead people!"

David flicked his finger. The fifty-cent coin shot out like a bullet, effortlessly piercing Fran's head and embedding itself in the brick wall behind him, stained with blood.

Fran's eyes remained wide open in death. Still seated in the chair, he toppled backward, kicking up a cloud of dust.

"Even though you lost, I'll still give you the fifty cents."

"You killed him, David?"

After school that afternoon, in the warehouse attic.

After waking at noon and kicking the Kryptonite into the sewer, Clark searched around outside town two or three times at noon and after school but found no trace of Fran. He stormed upstairs.

David calmly looked out into the night. "That's right."

"He was a detective!" Clark froze for a moment, not expecting his brother to admit it so easily.

"I handled it cleanly."

He had never had any principle against killing. The only reason he had not killed those Metahumans before was to maximize Emotion Points. Fran, however, was just an ordinary person. There was no use keeping him alive.

The body was buried beneath the concrete floor of the abandoned factory. No one would ever find it.

"What I mean is, he might not have committed any serious crimes."

Clark said in a low voice.

That detective, who had been so skilled at threatening people, was unlikely to have been a good officer.

But perhaps he had never seriously broken the law. Otherwise, working at the police station, he might have been discovered and thrown into prison long ago.

"Your naivety is laughable, my brother."

David had expected Clark to think that. He shook his head.

He turned the laptop on the attic table around and pressed play.