Gun of Ashes

The drizzling rain kept falling, with faint sunlight piercing through it all, sneaking through the curtains’ gap and into the room, chasing away the dimness and bringing a hint of brightness.

This building looked quite old, with green vines crawling along the cracks and pipes into the windowsill. There wasn’t much furniture inside, apart from some living essentials, there wasn’t an ounce more.

The girl on the bed slowly woke up, the first thing she saw was the white ceiling, and as she smelled the familiar scent of disinfectant filling the air, she couldn’t help but frown slightly.

This was a ward, but unlike the usual crowded ones with several people, the girl clearly had a special status, having the fortune to obtain a private room in this dreadful place. Although her freedom was limited, compared to those who had to wear straitjackets at all times, she was really quite lucky.

Lucky… lucky my ass!

Eve lifted her hand, wanting to smash the door down with a punch and then make a quick escape, but just as the anger rose, it dissipated.

Leaning back on the pillow, she casually grabbed an apple from the fruit basket beside her and began to munch on it, not caring about her image.

Crunch, crunch.

She bit into the apple forcefully, like an angry squirrel, but Eve was also well aware that here, about all she could take her anger out on was the apple.

Eve Phoenix, the heir to the Phoenix family, a detective of Suyalan Hall, and the self-proclaimed Captain of Ingwig’s Women...

Alright, none of those identities mattered right now. At this moment, Eve was a patient, trapped in this place called Black Mountain Hospital.

The ordeal began more than half a month ago due to a raid on the mafia, orchestrated by Heracles, who, driven by a thirst for secret knowledge, leveraged several factions, leading to disputes over the shoddy Secret Blood.

In the end, the familiar outcome unfolded: Demons appeared, and Mr. Lorenzo Holmes made his shining entrance at a critical moment, ending it all.

For Lorenzo, the incident ended there, but for Eve, it was ongoing. She and those detectives from Suyalan Hall had been affected, and to ensure the impact wouldn’t spread, the Purification Mechanism contained them in Black Mountain Hospital, conducting mental examinations and treatments to cleanse the eroding influence.

But ultimately, the treatment took too long. The doctors’ words were the same every day, saying she hadn’t recovered and couldn’t leave. Compared to this nonsense, Eve tended to think that Arthur had trapped her here.

This concerned father finally couldn’t stand his nerve-wracking daughter anymore, so he simply fostered Eve here. Anyway, she couldn’t run away, and that father was probably busy dealing with Mission matters.

Although Arthur never revealed these matters to Eve, having interacted with Lorenzo for so long, she could more or less guess, but it was also because of these guesses that she felt she really angered Arthur this time. Maybe when she gets discharged, Arthur would send her to some idyllic island, saying goodbye to all these so-called Demons.

Eve didn’t want that; she didn’t want others to make decisions for her.

She had also tried to escape many times, but each time she was caught halfway. Possibly due to her identity, those doctors were very polite to her, only ever confining her at most.

Ah... what a pity, it’s just too bad there’s no ladder here, otherwise, Eve would really like to give this life’s passport another try.

She tidied up the bed, got dressed in her white hospital attire. If there was some strange number added to it, Eve would even feel like a prisoner.

She sat on the bed, swinging her legs, just as she usually did here. In a little while, footsteps echoed in the corridor, and the nurse opened the door, pushing a small cart in front of her, with a mechanical instrument on it.

”It’s time for your routine check-up, Miss Phoenix.”

The nurse wore a white nurse cap and mask, so only her bright eyes were visible. Every one of them was like that. If not for the different name tags on their chests, Eve would hardly distinguish them.

They treated Eve politely, after all, her last name was Phoenix, even if these nurses were unclear about the inside story, their superiors more or less hinted at Eve’s nobility.

But it’s understandable, one stormy night, Eve knocked out the duty guard with a chair leg and climbed down from the sixth floor along the pipes outside the wall. If the guard’s clothes weren’t too big for her, she might really have escaped.

And it wasn’t the only escape attempt. In this over half a month of treatment, Eve thoroughly demonstrated to the doctors how outstanding a detective could be when she wanted to commit a crime.

But fortunately, Black Mountain Hospital’s security was strong enough, every time they caught Eve back. For such patients, who were related to erosion and extremely uncooperative, their usual approach was straitjackets and tranquilizers, but none of this fell on the girl. She was only transferred to a building with a higher security level, and patrols were intensified.

”I know, I know.”

Eve said dismissively, then lifted her fiery red hair.

On the back of her neck, the area originally covered by long hair had long been shaved, exposing the skin underneath. Seeing Eve so cooperative, the nurse pushed the machine to the bedside, taking a few electrodes from it and piercing them along the exposed area behind her head.