True Criminals

The first time Marcus Blake saw the body, he felt nothing.

It wasn’t guilt, or fear, or shock. It was emptiness—cold and quiet like the morning fog hanging over Brookside Alley. The blood had dried in strange patterns across the concrete, curling around the edges like the petals of a dying flower. Detective Holloway crouched beside the corpse, lit cigarette between his teeth, eyes narrowed as if trying to read the secrets in the blood.

Marcus watched from behind the yellow tape, a reporter’s badge around his neck, notepad in hand, and a lie buried deep in his pocket.

Everyone thought they knew the story. A girl stabbed in an alley, no witnesses, just another late-night mugging turned murder. But Marcus knew better. He knew because he was there. Not as a reporter. Not even as a bystander. He was part of it.

Two weeks earlier, Marcus had received a tip—anonymous, cryptic, and unsigned.

“She knows. Meet her. Midnight. Brookside Alley.”

No name. No number. Just the address.

The "she" was Carmen Doyle, a name Marcus hadn’t heard in years. She had vanished from his life the night after they exposed the Peterson Scandal—when their story had taken down half the city’s police department. She ran because she had to. Marcus stayed because he chose to.

He should have walked away when he saw her that night. Carmen was shaking, coat wrapped tight around her, eyes darting behind her like shadows had voices.

“They’re watching me,” she said. “I told them no. I told them I wouldn’t sell you out.”

“Who’s ‘them’?” Marcus asked.

“The ones who run the city. The ones we missed.” She handed him a flash drive. “They’ll come for this. And for me.”

He never got to ask her what was on it. Moments later, tires screeched and footsteps thundered. She pushed him back and ran.

He heard the scream five minutes later.

Now, in the daylight, Holloway barked at the forensic team, piecing together a narrative that made no mention of cover-ups or flash drives—just robbery, maybe drugs, maybe wrong place, wrong time.

Marcus wanted to shout, to tell them they were blind, but the lie in his pocket grew heavier. The flash drive. Still unopened. Still unread.

He waited until midnight to open it.

His hands shook as he plugged it into his laptop. It was a video—grainy footage of a basement meeting. Men in suits. Police captains. A judge. And a man Marcus recognized instantly: Councilman Reed. The same man campaigning on promises to “clean the city of corruption.”

The footage was damning. Bribes, murders-for-hire, trafficking. Carmen had found it. And now she was dead.

Marcus knew what had to be done. But when he reached out to a trusted colleague at the paper, the response was chilling.

“I can’t touch this,” she said. “Not unless you want to end up like her.”

The city was rotting from the inside, and even the press had gone quiet.

So Marcus made a choice. He would leak it anonymously. Post it online, let the world see it. He'd finish what Carmen started.

But that night, as he left his apartment, he saw the shadows move.

Two men followed him. No uniforms. No badges. Just the silent intent of wolves closing in.

Marcus ran.

For days, he hid—changing motels, using cash, never staying more than a few hours. And all the while, he edited the footage, created backups, sent encrypted files to foreign servers.

The leak hit three days later.

It exploded across the internet.

But it was already too late for Marcus Blake.

One Week Later.

Detective Holloway stubbed out his cigarette and stared at the second body in a week. This time, the reporter. Stabbed. In another alley. No witnesses.

“He was close to Carmen Doyle,” said Officer Lin.

“Too close,” Holloway muttered. “Another random mugging?”

Lin didn’t answer. Just stared at the blood splashed across the bricks.

But Holloway knew it wasn't random. He’d seen too much, played both sides too long. He knew the council didn’t like loose ends. And Marcus Blake had been a thread unraveling fast.

Still, Holloway felt something twist in his gut. Not guilt—he was far past that—but something colder. Maybe fear. Maybe the realization that even the people who cleaned up the mess were now disposable.

He picked up the reporter’s notebook from beside the body. One word was scrawled across the last page.

“CRIMENAL.”

Misspelled. Or maybe not.

Maybe Marcus had known exactly what he was doing.

Not just exposing a criminal. But the crimenal—the twisted truth that crime wasn’t the act of the few, but the fabric of the system itself.

One crime. Many lies.

And no way out.