Pitbabe S2, Chapter 24 pg 7

 Pitbabe S2, Chapter 24 pg 7

   I grabbed my wallet and car keys, then locked the front door. The sound of the lock clicking signaled I was ready to go, but the sound of a car pulling up at the front gate delayed my plans slightly.

   “Hey, old man.”

   And seeing who was behind the wheel made me even less sure I’d be able to pick up Jeff on time.

   “Can I come in? I am good today.”

   Winner.

   What’s that annoying kid doing here?

   

   CHARLIE:

   “Two hours.”

   That was the greeting Dr. Chris threw at me the moment I stepped into the lab.

   “Did you move to another province or something?” he said sarcastically, his deadpan face at odds with his crossed legs and the coffee mug in his hand, making him seem less annoyed than he actually was. But I knew he was pissed that I was two hours late. “Couldn’t reach you. Thought you were dead.”

   “Almost was,” I replied flatly, dragging my feet to place my laptop bag on my desk.

   “What’s that supposed to mean?”

   “Got a little company on the way.”

   Dr. Chris went quiet when he heard that. I hoped he’d feel a twinge of guilt for chewing me out about being late, but honestly, he didn’t. His silence was probably him piecing things together.

   “Again?” he asked. Of course, it was a big deal, but not exactly shocking. This wasn’t the first time I’d been tailed or targeted with superhuman tactics like this. “Same people?”

   “No idea. Too many people have their sights on me,” I said, slumping into my work chair, exhausted. Two hours of driving in circles drained me more than I’d expected. “But definitely not ordinary people.”

   “What’d they do?”

   “Created a loop. I was stuck circling the same intersection for two hours.”

   “For real?”

   “Mm,” I nodded slowly, flipping open the laptop lid and waiting for the system to boot up. “It was intense. Thought I wouldn’t make it out.”

   “How’d you escape?”

   “Ran a red light, crashed into a truck.”

   “Yep, if you weren’t that crazy, you’d probably have died in there,” Dr. Chris said, his face showing little surprise that I’d made it out, though he looked a bit creeped out. He always acted like I was some freak whenever stuff like this happened and I survived. “Honestly, you’re the scariest one.”

   “Had to do it or die,” I replied. “But I’ve never seen a sense like that before. They can do this kind of thing now?”

   “Hmm… maybe even more than that,” he said, grabbing his phone and tapping away, like he was looking for something. My spy-doctor pal had clearly stumbled onto something big again. “Check this out.”

   Dr. Chris tossed his phone to me like it was a baseball. Luckily, I caught it just in time—otherwise, we’d be out a few tens of thousands. But of course, that wasn’t the main point.

   “There’ve been a string of weird assaults and accidents lately. Mostly local politicians, business owners, and political activists. The methods don’t look like ordinary crimes, but the police insist it’s definitely not the work of people with senses.”

   “But no matter how you look at it, regular people couldn’t pull this off,” I said, scanning the images from the news sites Dr. Chris had compiled. There were inconsistencies everywhere. A gold shop owner suddenly stabbed himself in the neck, critically injured, with no history of drug use or mental issues. A district MP was found dead in his car, reeking and decomposed, even though his family swore they’d parted ways just half an hour earlier. And plenty of other stories with no clear origin, all closed by the police in bizarre ways. “Where’s this stuff coming from?”

   “From…” Dr. Chris snatched his phone back, tapped and scrolled a few times, then handed it back with an image of someone on the screen. “This guy.”

   Even though it was a blurry, secretly taken photo, I recognized the person instantly. My heart raced—not from shock that it was him, but from how eerily accurate my own guess had been.

   “Knew it,” I let out a bitter laugh, unable to think of anything but how this was some dark irony. We’d busted our asses trying to take down a cancer like him, but in the end, it felt like we got nothing. “That bastard’s got thick skin.”

   It was a photo of Tony getting into a car, heading somewhere.

   The old dog wasn’t dead.

   “This was taken two days ago. Before that, he was probably holed up in his house, which is why no one ever saw him.”

   “Two years…” I mumbled, the single image giving me chills. Just thinking about all the possibilities of what could’ve happened in the two years we all thought that scum was dead made my skin crawl. But the truth was, he’d been moving the whole time, just underground, in the shadows, silent as a ghost. Instead of playing human like before, he’d fully embraced being a specter. “We’re too late… he’s already made a lot of moves. This isn’t good. He might’ve succeeded in some already.”

   “Could be,” Dr. Chris nodded slowly. “But we believe not everything’s done yet. It’s like he’s waiting for something.”


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