Adam Jucas had no recollection of the moment he had lost consciousness, back at the factory. The bottle cap of concussion had just exploded out, right off the grooves near the tip of the neck, the raw fluid of senselessness spilling out and succumbing his sentience.

He hardly knew if he had even set foot inside the compound, let alone recall if Michael was there.

Nonetheless, now that the present situation called for a truce with this bulky strong individual claiming to be the uncle of the waitress, Adam deemed it ideal to remain calm and cautious.

"Hmm," he interjected the thin slice of silence. "If I'm not wrong, then your niece truly is a wonderful woman. Both in terms of beauty and skills. Her coffee is unlike any that have ever touched my lips."

"O'course, o'course," Michael nodded inhestitantly, as if he was the one receiving the credits and compliments. His facial expression turned stern at his next words. "But... Don't you ever dare disappoint her! One single tear down her cheek, and I'll be sure to tear down whoever was behind that sadness."

'I wonder if dead people cry,' Adam thought sarcastically. 'I wonder if he will ever understand. It wasn't my fault for acting in a way so suspicious.'

"True. For a kind of girl like that, I'd happily lay down my heart and my sword."

"Heheh, I knew it," Michael patted his niece's killer's head, unaware of who he is. "You're a good fella. I knew from the moment I saw your ride. To be honest, I'd even let ya ride her sometime, too."

"Ahem," the ex-detective had no time for dirty jokes, ever since the dark ones occupied his head. "Thanks, but no.  My heart had been sold to someone else, already."

"Had?"

"Yes," Adam hated bringing up the memories of his previous wife. But to win the friendship and trust, he had to keep the conveyor belt of words and anecdotes running. "I married the queen of my life a year ago. Radiyana was her name. Just like the radiance of the sun and all the stars of the celestial sea, she shone brightly into my life. Alas, nigh a month ago, a tragedy tapped on her shoulder."

"Ahh..." Michael's bushy eyebrows drooped in a hyperbolic curve of negative emotions. His mirror neurons exhibited a replica of the kind of emotion running through Adam's. His scallop-like lips extended out to portray a soundless gasp of sympathy. "I feel ya. I feel ya, m'son," he patted Adam's back. "Reminds me of my own moon and stars. Some lousy bastard ran her over and crushed her to death. Worse still, the police found her soulless body lying beside the highway, covered in leaves and blood. Can you believe it? Can you believe that a human person just like you and me, would ever be insane enough to commit such a crime?"

Adam stood rooted to the ground, hoping that it'd swallow him in order to quit being assaulted by fate and throwing coincidences at him like an artillery barrage.

Ofcourse he could believe. He himself had committed an atrocity strikingly similar.

Too similar.

"I... I cannot believe it, Mr Michael," he pretended to be a tint more surprised than he actually was. "My condolences for your beloved."

Ambiguously, Adam had wished it for both Michael's wife and his niece.

Michael wiped his eyes at their top corners, before switching to a different topic.

"Anyways, where are ya from? And what's your name, son? Your car is certainly very expensive, so I believe you're from a well-to-do background or some'in' ?"

Vesicles on Adam's skin felt a kind of pressure exerted from non-physical origins.

He didn't know what to do next.

"Well, um... Nice to meet you, sir, my name's Adam. Adam Jucas-"

"Jucas!!" Michael's eyes bulged out with a newfound enthusiasm. "Are you really Jucas?"

At the moment, Adam felt like he himself would begin asking himself the same thing. What was going on? Was this a nightmare? Could he be hallucinating?

"Well, yes, I'm Adam Void Jucas, son of Jared Lloyd Jucas and Sarah Klein Candace," he boldly introduced himself. "I'm a detective by trade," his canine teeth almost dug into the flesh of his tongue. "And an avid activist against masquerade."

One of Michael's questions remained unanswered. Adam hoped his intelligence quotient wasn't agile enough to let him pick up on it.

"Hmm, impressive names, impressive feats," Michael turned his attention back at the polished metal chassis of his customer's Bentley. "Are you related to Jack Jucas in some way?"

"Not in a million years. I honestly didn't know that someone with that name ever existed in our heirlooms."

"Uh-huh, very strange," the broad-bellied man drew out a lungful of air. "But still, good to know you carry the same name as my niece's fiancé."

For reasons unknown, the last fact punched Adam's cardiac muscles.

"Mhmm, what do you know? We learn something new everyday," the ex-detective's social difficulty was tuning up the violin of guilt with a higher octave every ten minutes. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm in a rush, so... Please let me know the billing total."

"Sure, sure! No problems, m'son. Although your tires could use some more pressure. The p-s-i seems way too uncomfortable for the rims."

Adam's hairs were about to stand on end, figuratively.

"No, no, it's fine. It's totally okay. I'll check it out at the next city."

He saw Michaelangelo Bouchie inspect the tire treads, and already began to be afraid of the change in his eyes. Blood-shot and staring widely, the veins pumping the same red liquid that he found stuck to the tires' skin.

Adam Jucas, son of Sarah and Jared Jucas, was about to faint.