Page 59 of Remnants: Disruption
“So, you have nothing. Not only do you have nothing, but you’re tying her death to two other deaths that have no connection besides being committed by a Remnant.”
“How do you—” Bellick begins, but I hold up a finger. He lets out a squeak of pain when the bindings around him tighten.
“And then you decided to arrest and nearly kill an innocent woman this morning who had nothing to do with the murder. All because she, too, is a Remnant.”
“That bitch is not innocent,” he snarls, pain evident in the bulging veins. “And how do you know any of that?”
“Because I’m better at my job than you.”
I bring him closer and reach my hand through the darkness to find his phone and service weapon. They both clatter off the rooftop.
“You’ll fucking burn for this, Remnant,” he grits out.
“In hell?” I laugh out, making sure there aren’t any weapons hidden on his body. “Look around you, Bellick. Thisishell. We’re just waiting for the Devil himself to arrive.”
I tuck his tablet into the shadow space and turn to look back at the detective.
“Any last words?”
“You said—” the fear in his eyes is palpable as his body begins to hover backwards, now at least a foot past the edge.
Killing him would be so damned easy. The spirits gathering in the artificial, swirling darkness on the rooftop whisper their delight in the idea. Another to join their ranks.
Another soul to haunt me.
“Fuck,” I grunt, roughly slamming him into the ground at my feet where he lays motionless. Unconscious, but unfortunately alive.
A sickening crack reverberates when I level a kick at his ribs. Maybe he’ll die of internal bleeding if I’m lucky.
I step back into her office, the light still off and room otherwise unoccupied. Those files have to be here. She never took work home—it was one of her “things.”
Bellick would have tried the desk. So, she would have kept them somewhere else. Somewhere that only she would knowabout. I scan the rest of the office, trying to figure out why she’d felt it necessary to hide the files at all.
What has she learned in the time between the attack in the alley and now?
Then I see it. I see the framed photo of her unit before her injury. Before Omen.
The photo looks as if it’s from a different world. A different timeline where everything hadn’t gone so fucking wrong. She stands at the front, surrounded by the other Ursa Major forces. Decimated infrastructure and a desolate wasteland puts the photo somewhere out in the New Chicagoan Badlands.
My eyes find her face again. Younger. Eyes filled with something like pride. The honest woman whose entire outlook on life had yet to change. Had yet to sour.
Proud. Strong. Alive.
It’s difficult to breathe. So fucking hard to get air. I squeeze my eyes shut and focus on anything but the photo. My display blurs as my throat tightens.
The portrait lands across the room, glass shattering and probably making way too much noise when it collides with something else.
Behind it is a safe. An old safe from before the Second Disruption—one that works on levers and gears rather than Affliction and electronics.
Shouts echo from beyond the darkness and feel hands pushing at the shield. Then a bullet. This one normal and lead, but the next one won’t be.
Gripping the front of the safe, I tear it from the wall. It comes out easily, taking drywall with it. Tendrils seep between the creases of the steel front and that, too, pops off with ease.
Inside is a file folder. Just one.
I grab it and tuck it into the shadow space before falling into the shadows around me. Shouts and yells cut off as the portal closes.
Chapter 27
