Page 58 of Remnants: Disruption
Clouding darkness that had begun to spread across my vision recedes as my heart rate regains a more normal rhythm. I force my attention to return to the evidence board.
The title of “Suspects” sits beside the victim photos.
And there’s only one.
Me.
Not even Omen. Not even the other Remnant that I know, for a fact, Bellick and McRoberts are aware of. I shift to peer closer through the window, but movement catches my eye.
Bellick strides towards her office, his attention on the dPad in his hands. With nowhere else to hide, I move to the corner opposite of the door and wait. It swings open and Bellick reaches for the light switch.
On instinct, I flood the space with darkness. A tendril closes the door behind Bellick, and, to the others, it looks as if the room is still unoccupied.
A tentacle wraps itself around Bellick’s torso, the dPad flies from his hands, landing a few feet from me. Another flash of darkness covers his mouth, jaw, and lower half of his head. He drifts into the air, his feet a few inches off the ground.
Bellick’s eyes flick around the room, the earlier mania now full-on panic. When he finds me in the corner, all struggling ceases.
“Bellick,” I say, voice deeper from the mask.
I bend down and pick up the dPad.
“You’re looking for me, I hear?” I ask, knowing he can’t answer.
The information is fairly basic. A synopsis of the current case handed over to Remnant Crimes after the attack last night. Nothing new here that I didn’t already know. But the tablet itself does contain the NCPD registry and other case files.
I glance up to Bellick, his eyes now full of rage—or maybe hate.
“If you try to yell or call for help, I will tear out your spine. They will never catch me, and you will be dead. Your wife won’t even be able to recognize you.”
Slowly the layer around his mouth slides down and merges with the growing tendrils around his torso.
“You’re a fucking murderer,” he hisses, apparently not questioning how I know he’s married.
“I am, but not hers,” I say, then gesturing at him with the tablet. “Is this all you have on this case?”
“You think I’ll help you?”
“I think you hate Remnants so much that you’ll do anything to pin this murder on the easiest solution. I think you’re a dirty cop with an inferiority complex.”
“I’ll fucking—” his voice rises too much for my liking. The wrap reaffixes itself to his head and we drop through the shadows coating the room.
The darkening sky greets us atop the roof of a building across from the main NCPD entrance. I step from the shadows and Bellick follows behind, body still suspended in the inky binding.
The wrapping slowly lowers again, and I can’t hide the grin in my voice as I say, “try that again and I will kill you, Bellick.”
“That’s all we have,” Bellick huffs, voice much less confident and angry. “De Luca had mostly paper files, but we don’t have access to them.”
I wave the tablet at him. “What’s the password?”
His glare is fiery as his jaw ticks.
“If I have to ask again, I’ll remove a vertebra from your spine.”
A blade of darkness presses into his upper neck. Blood beads at its edge before he grunts in submission and rattles off a sequence of numbers. I load the data into my mask’s display before nodding.
“And you don’t know where these paper files are?”
He shakes his head mutely.
