The numbing pain of my entire body kicked in a few seconds after the collision. I laid on my stomach above the concrete pavement with a broken spinal cord and a couple more fractures in my skull and left leg. My right leg was completely lifeless, though. The rough gravel of the concrete scraped my right cheek as I spewed blood out from my mouth. I looked down at my left arm and tried to move it, but all that I got was a twitch.

I was determined to catch that criminal. The man who was breaking into the city port and stealing brand new medical devices from its shipping cargo. It caused a ruckus in the regional hospitals that paid heavy money for the equipments, bringing along the issue to the main defense department and passing it down to the city police centre. For five weeks, no one had caught sight of the criminal. Our most professional detectives in our unit spent day and night searching for clues on who it was. They interrogated each of the logistics staff, checking their backgrounds and looking out for criminal records. 

Nothing. 

After five weeks, nothing came out from the investigation.

In the end, I was the one who caught him, even though I wasn't given direct orders to patrol the port in the first place. I had my suspicions on who the culprit was among the logistics staff, and I was right. I tried convincing the detective that one of them might've been the one, but they deemed him as clean. He got away with it easily. Some accomplice in the police department must have covered up his actual identity.

"You... piece of... shit," my voice croaked as my eyes darted to his face that was covered by a white surgeon mask over a black hoodie.

He kicked my gun away and looked down at my frail body. My uniform was all bloody from the pools of blood that seeped from my crushed right leg.  

He dropped the gunfight that we were having earlier and resorted to running me over with a truck in the dark. I was completely dumbfounded. He didn't turn on the front lights of the truck that was hiding among the tall stacks of shipping compartment. He also cut the electricity of the port so all the lights wouldn't turn on.

My vision began to blur, and my breath was shortening. I could feel my heartbeat slow down with every second that passed. As my eyelids slowly closed to an infinite black space, I heard the man's gruff voice once more.

"Sweet dreams."

*Old cover art