“If you look closely at the trends of Impacted-related information in the media, you can see an odd drop around the beginning of 2004 and an even more drastic one in 2015. I’m not saying something’s afoot. But there is no way in hell those numbers are just a random occurrence.”

I panted hard as the man behind me cuffed my wrist to a metal chair. We were currently sitting inside one of the rooms in the warehouse. Contrarily to my expectations, the warehouse wasn’t full of cages and wailing people. In fact, aside from the dirty truck at the entrance, Alison and I hadn’t seen a single trace of the prisoners. They either didn’t use this particular warehouse often, or they cleaned the place up a lot. Had Alison been wrong? No matter, I need to focus on my current situation.

Alison’s unconscious body and I had been dragged into what looked to be an old office of some sort. The room we were held in was pretty clean, if a bit rustic. Aside from a couple of chairs Alison and I were currently strapped to, there was only an additional one behind a large metal desk. On it sat nothing but a crappy IKEA lamp and a bottle of Jack Daniels. Our new warden had come back with two other burly men after strapping us to the chairs, and they were standing behind Alison and me. One of them held a gun to Alison’s head. Speaking of which, Alison was currently blindfolded and apparently out of it.

I looked at the only person in front of me while my mind struggled to accept our current situation.

I’m going to die. They’ll put a fucking bullet through our skulls, and we’re going to die.

The man interrupted my train of anxious thoughts as he addressed me.

“To think you two would cause so much damage by coming here. I knew Fred had been taken out, but I wouldn’t have imagined they sent not one but TWO of your kind to deal with us,” he stated in a tired voice.

I didn’t reply. What was I supposed to say? No, scratch that. What was I even supposed to do right now?

“I don’t hope you’ll be willing to tell me who sent you…” he continued as he uncorked the bottle of liquor on the desk.

I stared at the man with intense focus, as fear of what lay behind me prevented me from turning my head. I didn’t even know the answer to that question. I didn’t even know who he was, to be honest. Although, after looking at him closely, I could conjecture that he fit the description of that De Sevin guy.

The man in front of me was of average height, dark closed cropped curly hair, and bushy eyebrows that gave him a perpetual scowl of repressed anger. He was currently sitting against the front of the desk, a bottle of liquor in one hand and a gun in the other.

He took a swig and sighed.

“Can you at least talk?” he asked with a frown.

“Y—Yes,” I stammered. My heart was pounding in my ribcage, and I did my best not to show how distressed I actually was.

“Who are you?” the man asked me, his frown deepening as he channeled all his attention to me.

“I—I’m A—” I stopped myself before giving them too much information. “Call me A.”

“Fine. A. I’m Inspector Arnaud De Sevin. And these two gentlemen behind you are Tarek and Michel,” he said, nodding towards the men I knew still stood behind me. I gulped.

“Seeing the way this conversation is going, I’m going to assume she’s the brain.”

I nodded in silence.

“And let me guess, you’ve been dragged into something way bigger than yourself?” he continued.

I nodded again.

“Do you know why she’s after me?” he asked, waving his gun towards Alison.

“I–” I got cut off as Alison grunted loudly.

“It’s me you want to speak to,” she croaked.

“And who do I have the pleasure of talking to? Wait, before answering, you should know that you have a gun trained to your head, so no funny business,” the man said in a steady voice.

“Call me A,” she said.

“That—you two go by the same alias?” De Sevin asked with a perplexed frown.

“Yeah,” Alison said, “A&A, like the AA.”

“Sure,” he replied after a pause. He looked more tired than annoyed at the current situation, which I found quite perplexing.

I wish I had the same level of detachment to this kind of craziness… Not the time, though, intrusive thoughts. I was in a very grave situation, and that kind of thought process wasn’t helping. Focus, Alex.

“Would you care to enlighten me as to why you’re here before we resort to rougher means of getting answers?” the man continued.

“You’re going to do what, get that rock-hard fellow to pummel me? Good luck with that,” she drawled.

“True, you did do a number on Serge. And I’m not risking approaching you any closer than strictly necessary. But we have the means to make you talk. I just wish it doesn’t come to it,” De Sevin said with a tired sigh.

“Jeez, so blasé, you lost your favorite toy or something?” Alison taunted.

I cringed at her words. Stop that. You’ll make him angrier!

“No. I lost someone very… important to me. And a big chunk of my current operations, thanks to you,” the cop said in a glacial voice. “Now, please abstain from making any more unnecessary remarks. Who sent you?”

“I sent us,” Alison lied.

The man seemed to consider her words before answering.

“You’re trying to make me believe that you two kids are some wannabe super-heroes who decided to take us down all by yourselves?” he said with a flat voice.

“No, we’re not heroes. But I do have some issues with living trash like you and your dead buddy smuggling living human beings to the mob and worse,” Alison replied through gritted teeth.

“Smuggle human beings to—” the man stopped himself. “Wait, you think we’re slave traders?”

He let out a tired chuckle.

“No, girl, we’re not slave traders. The… Things we peddle is not for that kind of market.”

Alison started shaking. I could see her face twisting in anger under her blindfold.

“Don’t. Call. People. Things,” she simmered. As she shook in her bindings, a bolt of metal shot out of nowhere to embed itself in the wall behind De Sevin, missing him by mere centimeters.

BANG. I jumped at the unexpected sound. I hadn’t even noticed that De Sevin had raised his gun.

“Fuck,” Alison yelled as she doubled over and grunted, trying her best to grab at her wounded leg.

“Next one is for your head, don’t test me,” De Sevin said with a snarl as he lowered his smoking gun. “Now, please explain how you know about our operation.”

“Alright,” Alison whispered. “Alright, alright. I got word from one of your ‘suppliers’. He told me you guys paid them for people with no traceable background.”

“Ah, I feared the mob might not be my safest bet for supply. No matter, that loose end is tied now,” De Sevin said without emotion. “Now, give me a single reason I shouldn’t end you two right now.”

My heart was threatening to break my ribs. The already crappy situation had reached its grim end.

“Wait!” I called out in indignation. “Can’t we talk? Isn’t there a way we can compromise?”

“No. There isn’t.” Alison’s reply surprised me. I did not expect those words from her.

“Just please tell me,” she continued. “What’s your end game? You’re a decent inspector. I’ve seen your record. Plus, you have two houses and a family, and you definitely don’t have a gambling issue. Why go through with this inhumane crap? Aren’t there more ‘lucrative’ options for a dirty cop?”

De Sevin seemed to consider her words for a few seconds.

“I know you’re stalling, but I guess a few minutes won’t matter anyway. Help is not coming,” the man said. He took a deep breath and looked like he was about to shoot, then rolled his eyes in frustration. “Alright, you don’t deserve any explanation, but I want you two to know how wrong you are about me. I’m not the monster you imagine I am. Yes, I kidnap people and smuggle them. But not at all for the reasons you think. You see, most of the people we capture we feed and take care of; they don’t even have a place in society in the first place. We’re doing them a favor, really.”

“Riiiight,” Alison’s voice was ripe with disdain. “And the marmot puts the chocolate in the fucking aluminum foil. Gimme a break. Please keep your delusional bullshit for gullible idiots. C’mon, what’s the actual reason.”

The man looked like he was about to shoot her, but at the last instant, he sighed and dropped his shoulders.

“It’s a necessary sacrifice. It’s part of the contract I made with them,” he sighed again.

“Them?” I failed to prevent the question from exiting my mouth.

“Them. The IHI. Or whatever you want to call the sprawling entity that they govern,” he said tiredly. The man seemed to have aged a decade just by having uttered those words.

“What contract?” Alison asked, her brow slightly creasing behind her blindfold.

“They ask for a ‘tribute’ of people from ‘round here. If we don’t do it ourselves, they randomly kidnap people and use that thing that makes people’s existence disappear.”

“The Scanner…” Alison mumbled. “Shit. This is worse than I thought. I had a suspicion you peddled for the IHI. I didn’t know how bad it was, though.”

“I don’t know what you’re hoping, but you’re not getting out of here alive. There is no need to make any plans,” the man stated evenly.

“Alright. Alright. As a last request, can I get some of that? That’s booze, right?” Alison suddenly asked. “I heard you take a swig out of something earlier. At least let me go while I’m drunk.”

“This?” De Sevin asked in amusement, shaking the bottle at Alison. “Do you think I’m that stupid? No, this is for me and myself alone. Speaking of which.”

He took another deep swig out of the bottle.

“Alex, on him!” Alison suddenly shouted at me.

In what must have been the fastest instinctual reaction in my life, I jumped, still bound to the chair, and threw myself at De Sevin. In a split second, I was in direct line of sight between him and Alison.

The next instant, I saw a myriad of sharp objects flying in front of me in a large circle centered around Alison. A buzzsaw blade cut deep into my arm as it passed, sending a delayed wave of pain throughout my body. A gunshot then erupted from behind. A miss, presumably, as I saw something wedge itself in the wall in front of me. De Sevin took it as a cue to do the same, trying to fire at Alison but instead hitting me square in the shoulder.

“Fuck,” I swore as two pained yelps erupted from behind me. By the time I touched the ground, I could hear that the two men behind us had fallen as well.

As I lifted my eyes, I caught a glimpse of what I thought was a cinderblock flying at De Sevin, catching him in the arm and sending his gun flying back towards the other end of the room.

“Fuck!” De Sevin swore as he clutched his hand. The next instant, he had two pieces of rebar stuck into his chest and arm.

“You alright, princess?” Alison called from behind me with an unsteady voice.

“Yeah,” I called from the cold ground, spitting a glob of blood to punctuate my words.

I heard the sharp signature sound of Alison’s angle grinder grinding through metal.

She rose from her chair and walked to me, applying the same treatment to my own bindings.

I reflexively covered the now healing wounds on my forearm and torso with a wince.

“Fuck me, that hurt!” I hissed through gritted teeth.

“You’re alright. Good. Now please catch me,” Alison said as she suddenly staggered on her feet and fell towards me. I barely caught her in a clumsy move, the exertion making my hurt arm flare up in pain. I groaned in distress at the unexpected stress on my still unhealed wounds.

“Alison, are you alright?” I asked. She didn’t move a muscle, and her weight on my arms made me shake with exertion. The only thing I felt from her was the coarseness of her breathing.

“I— I’m f—Fuck. I might have overexerted myself a little bit right there,” she stammered. “Put me down, and take his gun.”

I let her down as gently as I could and quickly scurried to the handgun that still laid in the back of the room. I grabbed the weapon and stared at it. Am I actually touching a gun right now? This feels surreal.

I went back to where I stood a few seconds ago, between Alison and the cop, who was currently swearing and trying his best to unstick his arm from the piece of steel, pinning him to the desk.

I lifted the gun towards De Sevin and glared in an attempt to look intimidating. My guts were twisting themselves into impossibly tight knots in my insides as adrenaline failed to dull the seriousness of the current situation. My expression must have betrayed me as the cop turned his head to face me and took a sorry look.

“C’mon, kid, you’re not going to shoot. We both know that’s not the solution here,” he said with a pained yet somehow soothing voice.

I didn’t answer, anxiety freezing my words before they could exit my throat. I glanced down at Alison reflexively to find her slowly raising herself from the ground.

“Fuck,” she swore softly. “I’m not doing that again any time soon.

She got up to her feet with great effort and looked at me, then at the cop facing us.

She sighed and rubbed her eyes with a tired expression.

“Now, please spare me the ‘You’ll regret this!’ bit and answer me this:” she said as she stared at De Sevin. “Where is Sarah Millet?”

“You— What— I don’t know who that is. I don’t remember the names!” he let out in consternation.

“Then you’re of no use to me,” Alison said, as she popped ‘Grindy’ into her hands and advanced towards De Sevin.

“Wait! Stop!” I called out a tad louder than I meant. “We can’t do this. Not again. We have to call his colleagues. There is no way he’ll get away with this. We have proof and all.

“We already went through this, Alex,” Alison replied coldly with a side glance.

“No, we—” I started.

“Wait, wait, wait!” De Sevin cut me off. “You don’t have to do this. We can work together!”

“You and I could rule this city, Spiderman!” Alison replied in a mocking tone, still advancing with her buzzing power-tool in hand.

“I’m being serious! We both are working against the IHI. My method is just more… Subtle,” De Sevin let out in panic.

“Oh?” Alison asked with a quirk of the brow. “You think your crappy criminal human traffic operation compares with my magnificent plans?”

She lifted her chin and let out a laugh, an entirely faked and exaggerated one. With a snapping motion, she brought her head down and grinned. Then she jammed another piece of metal, a copper tube this time, into the man’s thigh.

De Sevin bellowed out in pain and clenched his teeth, spittle foaming at the corners of his lips from the agony.

“Alison, stop!” I cried out. “We don’t torture people. We don’t do torture!”

She shot me a death glare and snapped her gaze back at the man still heaving from the blow. She was breathing heavily, and I could see beads of sweat forming on her forehead. Her use of her power was reaching its limit.

“Then give me a reason, Arnaud, give me a fucking reason as to why I shouldn’t kill you right now?” she spat.

Her tone had been death cold. She had reached her limit, and so had I.

I put a hand on her shoulder.

“A word?”

She silently followed me outside of the room into the dimly lit concrete and steel hallway.

“If you try to tell me this guy deserves to live, you’re the next one on my list,” she seethed, pointing at the door we had just closed.

“You wanted me here,” I started. “Now you face the consequence. You how I want stuff done. We don’t kill without reason.”

“Is this, she started, gesturing at everything. “not reason enough?”

“No. Reason enough is when our immediate life is at risk,” I said coolly. “He’s not a threat now.”

“What would you even want to do with him? We’d get worse than him if he squealed in front of a tribunal.”

“Wouldn’t the scanner be a worse issue?” I voiced out the intrusive thought by reflex.

“No. They won’t block something like a trial. I don’t think it works like that.” She took a deep breath. “Assuming we actually lived to face trial, I expect the contents of that truck outside would be enough to get him a few years. But that’s beside the point. Handing him to the cops would assuredly result in our own arrestation. And we’d be royally fucked.”

“I have trouble believing you this time,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I now realize I’ve been taking a lot of what you tell me for granted. Not the wisest decision in my life as far as I can see.”

I slumped against the wall in genuine exhaustion.

“I know you’re not like that, but I genuinely think we should limit the wanton killing, and that starts with studying the options. What would happen if we handed him in and told him to divulge a specific sample of info. To be sure he complies, we can hold some of the most damming proofs. Think of it as… blackmail of sorts.”

“This is literally the definition of blackmail, Alex,” Alison said with a flat look. “Plus, how do we know he won’t cooperate with the prosecution and get a deal in exchange for handing us in? This won’t work.”

“Alright,” I said as I tried thinking hard about a possible non-lethal outcome. “How… how about we hold officer De Sevin ourselves until we figure it out?”

“And add kidnapping of a police officer on our long list of crimes?” Alison replied derisively. “And who would watch him? In case you didn’t know, prison cells aren’t part of my arsenal. Superpowered or traditional.”

“Alright, that’s a start. So, can we get your boss or whatever to take care of him?” I tried.

She snorted. “If you think he’ll be more likely than me to let De Sevin live, you’re on for a ride.”

“Alright, what about asking him for a cell and a guy to watch him, for now? Not telling him who it is,” I asked. My mind was struggling to construct a scenario where the man would live, but it seemed that I had a lead.

Alison frowned and scratched her nose in thought.

“That… could actually work,” she reluctantly admitted. “But you’ll have to figure out what we do with him afterward. We’re not keeping him forever.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” I said and let out a sigh. “Now, how about we just ask him some questions without stabbing him with power tools?”

“Fine, let’s just fucking get this over with,” she replied with a grunt.

We made our way back into the room to find the man in no better state than before. He was still pinned to the desk, but he now had chosen to accept it and had tried to awkwardly sit on it so that the rebar wire in his arm wouldn’t hurt too much, most likely.

He cast a sideways glance at us, and I could see that his face was dripping in sweat and that he was was in much more pain than I initially thought.

“Are you alright?” I asked in concern.

“What does it fucking look like, you cunt?” the man spat.

Yikes, I probably deserve that.

“Now, now, this is no way to talk to your savior,” Alison said in disapproval.

“My savior? Oh, that’s fucking rich,” the man hissed after his chuckle seemed to send a jolt of pain through his abdomen.

“Without little A here, you’d be dead right now. So now, please. If you answer all our questions, you will live.”

“Come on now, Al—A. What did we say about torture?” I said with a wince.

“We? I don’t remember saying anything,” she said in a cold voice. “Now, who’s your contact with them? With the IHI? And who else is involved?”

The man glared at us, boiling hate plain in his eyes. His mouth contorted into a half snarl but quickly morphed into a wince as his nerves reminded him what state he was currently in.

“Etienne. Don’t know his last name. He works with the R&D of the local IHI branch. The Alpine Siege,” he answered in a small voice. He shifted his gaze to look at Alison in the eyes. “And the only other person in the know, asides from those you killed, was Martel.”

“Thank—” I started as Alison cut me off.

“Who manages the logistics? You two cunts couldn’t have been doing this whole thing with all other actors blind.”

“We did, though,” the man said with a tinge of pride. “The mob thinks we’re smuggling guns and just handle the competition. The ‘mercs’ we pay think we’re extraditing captured freak—Impacted people to the Geneva Vault, and the small gangs kidnap migrants from the outskirts of town, thinking we are doing this to scare them off. They know nothing about the others. Most don’t even know that they’re working together with the other parties.”

The realization that this man was even more dangerous than a human trafficker hit me like a sack of brick. This man, along with his formerly alive associate, was a cartel leader.

“You’re leading the mafia, the local gangs, and the IHI in some kind of fucked up underground slave trade. This is not a criminal operation. This is the beginning of a criminal empire,” I let out in disbelief. My voice must have been ripe with it as the man seemed to pick up on it.

“I’m not as short-sighted as you seem to think,” he said, flicking his gaze between Alison and me. “I’ve got plans too. Good plans. Plans to make society work, despite… All that’s going on. But for that, I need power. And this is as good a way of getting it as any.”

“Oh please,” Alison snorted loudly. “Spare me the righteous motives bullshit. We’re all pieces of shit in this room. When I talk about my magnificent plans, it’s more about the quality and scale of them than… virtue.”

“So you truly are a nutjob, as they said,” De Sevin said sourly. “And here I thought you actually had managed to convince yourself that you cared about your fellow humans.”

“Oh, I do. I consider all you flailing idiots my flock. It’s just that when I come across a rabid sheep, the most humane choice is to put it down,” Alison spoke slowly as she materialized a nail gun in her hand and waved it for emphasis.

“Alison, stop!” I shouted.

“You two are looking more and more like a crappy good-cop bad-cop parody here,” De Sevin spoke.

“Shush,” Alison said, as she shot a nail just a few centimeters to the right of the cop’s hand. De Sevin winced as the nail embedded itself in the solid metal table.

Could a regular nailgun do that?

“Now, how long has this been going on?” Alison continued her interrogation.

“6 years. 11 if you count the time I covered for the IHI.” De Sevin answered after some hesitation.

“Who are you currently smuggling?” Alison asked. “ I will check later, but if I can know now, it could avoid you some pain later.”

The officer frowned at the implied threat.

“Two guys and a girl. We had a second one, but she got… lost during transit.”

Both De Sevin and I started as Alison shot another nail at his feet. He let out another grunt of pain.

“Careful with the wording,” Alison said in an icy voice. “Now, where do you keep the logistics? The paper trail and all that.”

“That’s not—” he started, then immediately snapped his jaw shut as Alison lifted the barrel of her tool towards his crotch. “Alright, Jesus fuck! It’s here. That’s why we were here. We didn’t want you or whoever you work for finding the documents in this room. In this desk you so gently pinned me to.”

He tapped the top of the metal desk with his free hand.

Alison nodded towards me, and I carefully stepped around it to open one of the four big drawers that hung underneath. I withdrew a fat stack of A4 paper. The pages were roughly similar in content, some regular written documents, and some large pictures on glazed paper.

As I flipped the pages, images far grimmer than the ones we had found at Martel’s house flooded my mind. The pictures here depicted dozens of people in dark cages. All of them were chained and in seemingly poor health. One of them, a woman, was bleeding and laid on the floor of her cell with a hand over her stomach. The sight revulsed me. These were people, for fuck’s sake. My hands started trembling as I flipped the pages in the stack I was currently holding. I warily made my way back next to Alison.

I flipped one more page with growing fury and lifted the gun I had picked up earlier towards the man’s face.

“A? What’s with this?” Alison asked with a raised eyebrow.

“There is a little girl on there,” I said in a cold voice. “I know you guys were scumbags, but why would you kidnap children? What the fuck? How can you possibly ever justify this?”

“Wow, calm down there, buddy,” the poor excuse for a human being in front of me said. “We couldn’t risk hurting them. They’re given to the CPS afterward.”

“After being locked in a fucking cage like an animal!” I cried out as I shook the picture for emphasis. In it laid the frail form of a young girl, probably no older than 9, hugging a teddy bear and weeping. I flipped another page with a shaky hand and snapped.

I silently raised the gun I was holding and pressed the trigger.

BANG.

The sound was deafening, and a splatter of gore painted the back of the room in a violent shade of red. The most violent act in my life had barely lasted more than a second, and the numbing silence that followed was the loudest one I had ever experienced. Right now, though, I couldn’t care less. My senses were overwhelmed by the raging inferno of emotions I felt on the inside.

If there had been a reason for me to keep this fucking monster alive, it had died when I had seen the contents of the next page.

ITEM 223:

Abused by staff. Staff reprimanded. Item lost in transit.

Note: keep that idiot away from minors.

They had raped and killed a kid. I couldn't see the line separating the right from wrong in my moral code that had prevented me from actually killing someone until now, but I cared very little about that. Everything was grey.

“And look at that, you’ve broken your own rule,” Alison deadpanned.

“Not now, Alison. Not FUCKING now!” I yelled as I slammed the butt of the gun on the metal desk. In my anger, I miscalculated the force of the blow and let the weapon escape my grasp. It clattered to the ground, thankfully without firing itself like I had seen happen in movies.

“That fucker… That… That monster was fucking allowing rapists to smuggle kids. This is worse than a fucking pedo ring now!”

“Oh, good call, then,” she replied with an exaggerated nod.

The casualness of her reply and demeanor set my blood on fire.

“How can you be so flippant? How do you fucking dare turn this into a shitty joke? These guys were fucking monsters!” I screamed.

“You think I didn’t fucking know that?” Alison yelled back. “I’ve been trying to put an end to this for four years. FOUR. FUCKING. YEARS, Alex! You don’t get it. I simply can’t go without cracking a joke every time something gets to me anymore. It’s either that, or I shoot a fucking nail through my eyeball. Cracking shitty jokes is my coping mechanism. Don’t you fucking dare try to think I do it because I don’t care.” She was panting and grunting, as if the effort had taken more out of her than the actual fight. She caught her breath and continued. “Be mad at them for what they did, not at me for not being appropriate. If you don’t like it, fucking leave. I’m not stopping you.”

There was so much that I wanted to object. So much I wanted to get out. So many ugly things I wanted to scream at her. But she was right about one crucial thing: she wasn’t the source of my rage. So instead of giving into my emotions as I had done at Martel's house. I simply closed my eyes.

Fuck this life.

I took a deep breath and nodded. This would have to be addressed someday. But not here, not now.

Now, we need to finish the job.

I made my way around the table again to check all the other drawers’ contents and ended up pulling out a hefty stack of paper that I took with me when we exited the room, carefully stepping over the dead bodies near the door.

As I tried my damned hardest not to dwell on somber thoughts, Alison and I quickly made our way to the entrance of the warehouse, where the truck was still parked.

Alison fiddled with a greasy button next to the back door to let the ramp down, and our eyes were cursed with the grim sight of three human beings in cages. I set the heavy stack of paper on the ground and made for one of the cells in a hurry. I leveled my gun at the lock, closed my eyes, and pulled the trigger. The man inside recoiled in fear at my gesture but quickly began speaking a language I didn’t understand when he saw I wasn’t one of his captors.

“Yes, I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re saying. We’re here to get you out of here,” I said in what I hope was a reassuring voice.

I put the barrel of my gun to the man’s cuffs and fired again. The bullet must have just grazed it because it stayed locked when I tried tugging on it.

“Here, let me handle that part,” Alison said with confidence. “You pop the other two cages open.”

After the two men and the woman were set free, Alison and I stood in solemn silence as they thanked us and cried together. None of them seemed to speak French, but the woman let out an approximative ‘Thank You’ in English as they left. As a precaution, I had given them one of the dead men’s burner phones, which was thankfully unlocked.

At first, the act had elicited an objection from Alison on the grounds that it might serve as a potential lead, but a quick inspection showed that it had been barely used, and the only number it had in its history with was De Sevin’s. It felt wrong letting them go on their own after what they’d been through, but Alison and I were not done here.

The only thing I felt was an odd mix of numbness and anger. Thankfully, though, the tenseness of the current situation helped me take my mind off the elephant in the room.

Well... At least enough so that I don’t snap. Again.

My actions would undoubtedly cause some serious existential dread in the future, but I forced my brain to focus on one task and one task only: sweeping this place for clues—or worse, more bodies. And maybe go looking for that bald Impacted guy that we had taken out earlier. I didn’t know if he was still where we had left him, but not knowing whether he was awake or not was a knot in my stomach I was itching to untie.

After dealing with my own emotions, I’d have to have a serious talk with Alison about her ‘magnificent plans’. I didn’t know what she had planned on doing after dealing with those guys, but I doubted it stopped there.

The work wasn’t done yet. We had cut off a gangrenous limb. Now, the bleeding had to be stopped.