Bonus Chapter: I Used Six Degrees Murder to Kill a Sex Offender — Part 2
He was slurring his words, thoroughly drunk, apologizing profusely—he'd had too much, he said. All that stuff he'd just reported was just a dream. He even held up his phone and panned it around to show the supervisor the inside of the precinct.
The supervisor cursed him out over the line.
By then, Zack and Marcus had already walked out of the precinct.
Zack was still in disbelief. You bribed him?
Marcus gave a faint smile. Do you think that's possible?
Zack still couldn't wrap his head around it. Even if that paper laid out the method in exhaustive detail, even if the hypnosis techniques were brilliant—Marcus was a complete amateur. A beginner at best.
How had he pulled it off?
Marcus was quiet for a moment, then said: While I was hypnotizing him, I had only one thought in my head...
This is the one thing I can still do for my daughter.
11
Hypnosis had worked. But whether psychological suggestion could actually drive someone to suicide—that remained an unknown.
They needed an experiment.
On the table, Marcus's phone lit up. Zack saw the lock screen—a photo of a little girl, smiling brightly at the camera.
Now her face held nothing but fear that would never fade.
Zack thought back to that night, to Marcus's words: "This is the one thing I can still do for my daughter."
Use me for the experiment, Zack said first.
Marcus tried to refuse. Zack shook his head. This is the one thing I can do, too.
12
A summer night. The pavement was slick, neon lights shimmering. A young man and a middle-aged man walked with their heads down, hiding the murder in their hearts.
Zack spoke quietly about the memory that might be used to kill him—a secret he'd buried deep inside for over a decade.
When he was little, his father used to travel to the provincial capital for work. Young Zack had begged him to bring back a set of toys.
His father kept his promise. But he never came home.
The police told Zack's family that when the man's body was found, the set of toys he'd just bought lay beside him.
Over ten years had passed. Whether he'd ever moved on or not, Zack couldn't say.
But looking back, he finally understood why, years later, he'd chosen to become an auxiliary officer—to work toward becoming a real police officer.
13
Zack took a day off. He had dinner with Elena, walked around with her, watched a movie.
Late at night, after Elena had fallen asleep, Zack stepped onto the balcony. He used a fountain pen to record the experiment results on paper, then called Marcus.
He spoke in a grave tone. Something's not right.
According to the original plan, Marcus should have already hypnotized Elena, then channeled the lethal psychological suggestions through her to Zack.
If Zack had shown suicidal tendencies tonight, it would prove the entire scheme was workable.
But as of now—not only were there no lethal suggestions taking hold, even the hypnosis itself had had zero effect.
The so-called Six Degrees Murder had produced not even a fraction of the expected result.
14
"Give it a little more time."
Elena's voice came from the other end of the phone.
Zack froze. He turned around. Elena was sitting up in bed—she must have been holding the phone.
But something was deeply wrong. The way she moved toward him, the expression on her face—this wasn't the woman he'd spent every day with.
Every hair on Zack's body stood on end.
15
Zack tried desperately to recall. He remembered that before the experiment began, Marcus had come to see him.
But now, Zack couldn't remember a single word of that conversation—not even a fragment.
The eerie scene before him was most likely the result of a hypnosis Marcus had planted during that now-forgotten talk.
The strange thing was—if they'd agreed to hypnotize Elena, why had he hypnotized Zack himself?
Why was the post-hypnosis vision so unsettling?
And he didn't understand—who, or what, was the woman standing before him?
Or perhaps—was Elena even there at all?
The balcony was cold. The chill snapped Zack back to his senses.
He pulled himself out of his momentary terror.
He understood that no matter what, this was a vital experiment.
The old man was still at large. Only if Zack genuinely developed a will to die could they confirm whether Six Degrees Murder was viable.
He leaned over and looked down. Sure enough, a few floors below, a net had been stretched across—its structure looked sturdy.
Zack turned back to Elena. Beneath her uncanny visage, the lethal suggestion began guiding him.
16
The guilt of childhood wasn't enough to kill a man pushing thirty.
But the pain buried deeper could.
Through Elena's guidance and her cold, clinical reconstruction, Zack was dragged back into his memories once more.
He stood before his father's body. Adults told him it wasn't his fault—his father would have taken that road back to the hotel no matter what.
Whether or not he bought the toy, the tragedy would have happened.
For years, that was what Zack told himself, too.
But ever since he'd come to the provincial capital as an auxiliary officer, he couldn't help averting his eyes every time he caught a map on a directional sign.
He'd long since memorized the local geography. That day on the phone, his father, unable to resist his pestering, had gone out of his way—taken a detour—just to buy him that set of toys.
If it hadn't been for him, his father would never have died.
It was all his fault.
In a trance, Zack became that child again, standing before the body, tears streaming.
He should have atoned long ago. Instead, he'd been running for years.
Snowflakes drifted onto his feet. The air was growing colder. He stood barefoot on the balcony tiles, the biting chill pulling him back.
His expression was still dazed. Deep in his subconscious, he clung to the thought that this was a crucial experiment, that he had to get back quickly...
Zack's eyes flew open in sudden horror!
He whipped his head around, looking down frantically. He could see snowflakes drifting onto that sturdy safety net—
But they weren't stopping. They passed straight through and fell away.
If he hadn't been jolted back to clarity by the freezing air, and had followed the lethal suggestion over the edge, he would have shattered every bone in his body!
And—last week, it was unmistakably summer. How could half a year have passed without a single memory of it?
Six months—just vanished into thin air?
Zack forced himself to stay calm. Without betraying a thing, he turned back around, one hand gripping the aluminum railing of the balcony with everything he had. The cold seeped into him. A splitting headache struck, and a piercing hum filled his ears.
A thunderous roar—like his eardrums had exploded.
Zack stared straight ahead. The memories came flooding back.
They were memories of an entirely different sort—memories that nearly made his blood run cold with terror.
17
The experiment to verify whether Six Degrees Murder was viable—Zack and Marcus had already conducted it once, half a year ago, on a summer night.
That night's setup was similar to tonight's. The difference was, Elena standing before him had been the real Elena. Under Marcus's hypnosis, she had delivered the exact same lethal psychological suggestions to Zack.
And the trigger word for atonement was "redeem," planted in Elena's mouth.
Even as a child, Zack had understood that only death could bring true redemption.
After running from it for so many years, after every psychological defense was stripped away on that balcony that night, atonement was the only thought that filled Zack's mind.
He leaped from the balcony and landed on the net they'd set up in advance.
He was uninjured, but it still took a long time under Marcus and Elena's care before he pulled himself together.
Back then, Zack was genuinely grateful. He could finally face that part of his past without flinching.
He'd always assumed the improved Six Degrees Murder was purely a killing technique. He never imagined that if you survived it, it could be a genuine rebirth.
After cheating death, he proposed to Elena.
And Elena, like the duty officer, had no memory of being hypnotized. She only knew that Zack had been depressed for a long time and finally pulled himself together.
She said yes.
18
The old man was still walking free. But what came next fell into place as naturally as dominoes.
One autumn morning, Zack was at the precinct organizing case files, seated close to the dispatch desk.
The phone calls he overheard were the usual—civil disputes, noise complaints, the ordinary rhythms of the job.
Zack brewed himself a pot of hot tea. Then the dispatch phone rang again. The voice on the other end was panicked.
An old man had killed himself. In his own home. He'd hanged himself with his belt.
Zack set down his tea. Without a word, he walked to the bathroom and dialed Marcus's number with trembling hands.
When the call connected, neither of them spoke for a long time.
Zack and Marcus both understood—they had done the one thing they could do for Marcus's daughter.
19
Their lives could now settle into calm.
Zack was busy studying for his civil service exam and planning his wedding with Elena. Marcus opened a shop, went into business, and through his old social connections, the enterprise grew steadily.
But as winter drew closer, a destabilizing element crept between them.
The number of suicides in the city had risen.
Each one followed the same pattern: a relative's careless remark, magnifying the victim's inner despair and shadows, compounded by verbal provocation—until death seemed like the only liberation.
The pattern was unmistakable. Zack didn't need to dig very hard. Every victim's social circle contained either a business rival of Marcus's or someone who had crossed him.
Zack asked Marcus to meet and told him to stop.
Marcus cut him off. He said he had no idea what Zack was talking about.
Zack refused to let it go: We're auxiliary officers. Auxiliary officers are still police.
Marcus paused. Then said: We were. Not anymore.
20
When winter came, Zack had a premonition.
Marcus knew Zack had been investigating him. And Zack held the complete blueprint for the killing method. If he turned it over to the police—
The chances were slim. But in their line of work, they both knew: any percentage, no matter how small, eventually becomes a certainty.
To Marcus, Zack was now the unstable element.
Zack knew Marcus would eventually turn Six Degrees Murder against him. But he also couldn't go to the police.
His life was just beginning—his marriage, his official badge...
Marcus was right. Hot blood is easy—but then what?
And he couldn't bring himself to use Six Degrees Murder on Marcus. So he made up an excuse and sent Elena out of the city.
He had no family in this city. A pitiful auxiliary officer with no friends and now no Elena beside him—without Elena, Marcus couldn't trigger the core condition for perfect deniability: a relative's careless remark.
Marcus also had a life to live. He wouldn't take that kind of risk to kill.
All Zack needed was to hold on until he got his civil service position and then request a transfer to another city.
Until the day before the first snowfall, when Marcus said something had happened and asked Zack to meet.
21
To this day, Zack still couldn't remember what they'd talked about the day before the snow.
Six months of practice and multiple murders had honed the techniques from that paper to a razor's edge.
Marcus knew Zack had been through the Six Degrees Murder experiment once and would have some degree of resistance.
So under Marcus's hypnosis, Zack was made to temporarily ignore the season and the winter coat on his body.
In that moment, Zack believed tonight was the first experiment.
Under those conditions, Marcus barely needed to exert himself.
Zack would actively absorb the lethal suggestions on his own!
If Marcus hadn't miscalculated the snowfall, Zack would never have resisted at all!
Standing on the snow-covered balcony, Zack realized there was no one in front of him.
Only then did it hit him—he'd been holding his phone the entire time, and the voice of his "Elena" was unmistakably Marcus's voice on the other end of the line.
The root of it all was his belief that tonight was the first experiment.
His subconscious, guided by Marcus, continuously drew on memories of the original experiment, reconstructing the scene before him.
As for deniability—Zack had completely forgotten that, in a way, to the outside world, Marcus was already his family.
That could still count as Marcus's careless remark!
22
Zack scanned the skyline. On the rooftop of a nearby high-rise, he could make out a figure holding a phone.
The voice on the other end had gone silent. Neither of them spoke.
How things had come to this—Zack didn't know. But they both understood that the other had grasped the situation.
One of them had to die.
From Zack's end of the phone came a scream. After another bout of agonized wailing, Zack forced himself to speak—his cadence strange, distorted.
Zack said: Marcus, did you know? When I was reading that case file, I found the most interesting detail.
The killer said the perfect crime wasn't Six Degrees Murder at all.
It was using Six Degrees Murder to threaten a victim's family member—to control the victim.
Zack paused, as if seized by pain, then steadied himself and continued:
I still don't understand hypnosis. I only used Six Degrees Murder once—on the old man.
Marcus, I'm not as good as you at most things. But there's one thing I seem to be better at.
My loved ones, my family... none of them are as desperate as your daughter.
We both want to kill and walk away clean. So tell me—who's faster?
Through the phone came Marcus's furious curses on the snowy balcony.
But Zack was bleeding from both ears. He couldn't hear Marcus at all. He clutched the fountain pen in his hand—its tip was slick with blood—and kept talking:
I'm deaf now. Whether you curse me, hypnotize me, or try psychological suggestions, none of it works.
So you can agree, or not agree.
Whatever terms you offer, whatever compromise you want—
I can't hear any of it.
I'm giving you one minute. Jump from that building. And I'll leave your daughter alone.
You can come down here and take us both out right now. But you only have one minute. After that, Six Degrees Murder begins on your daughter.
You can leave whatever evidence you want before you die. But I'm still a police officer. The moment things look bad, I move first.
Too bad, Marcus. Because of your daughter's despair, I'll always be one step ahead of you—whatever I want to do to her.
Or I can choose to do nothing at all.
You have one minute.
Zack lifted his gaze with effort, looking toward that high-rise in the distance.
He couldn't see Marcus, but he could see the figure pacing, raging, his mouth forming countless words of negotiation, then trying again and again to launch verbal hypnosis—but Zack heard none of it.
Zack leaned his head against the aluminum railing. The cold dulled the pain a little.
On the phone, the minute elapsed.
And Zack watched as the figure slowly walked to the edge of the high-rise. His silhouette cut a single arc of despair through the air before vanishing into the snowy night.
Soundless.
Only Zack's muttering: This is the one thing I can do.
Zack sat on the balcony, thinking.
He had reason to believe that for his daughter's sake, Marcus would have already destroyed every piece of evidence that could expose Zack before he died.
But he thought back to that case file he and Marcus had first studied together. One line kept circling in his mind:
"The perpetrator stated: I possess an eye that can see how the despair of others comes into being."
The Six Degrees Murder documented in that file had come to pass—even in his improved version.
If that eye had seen the old man's body, and Marcus's body—
Could it possibly see Zack's own hand in all this?
Zack knew that whatever the probability, it would eventually become a certainty.
And he knew the only way to reduce that probability to absolute zero was to make sure that eye never opened again.
23
Half a year later, Zack's wedding went ahead as planned. It was everything the bride had dreamed of.
Outdoor Western ceremony. Seats filled with family and friends.
The only thing that dampened the mood, from Elena's perspective, was that even as they were about to walk down the aisle, Zack was still poring over a killer's case file.
At the same time, in a prison on the outskirts of town, an inmate in leg irons and handcuffs—plus a specially made, unremovable patch over his left eye—was brought before a female detective.
The inmate seemed to have many questions for her. But she cut him off.
She had only one thing to say to him:
Ian Ashford. Someone improved your Six Degrees Murder.