Biting my lip, I mutter, "Don’t you think we should…"
"No, Gabriel. It’s not who we are. Let’s show him mercy," he says softly.
His eyes drift across my face, carrying a hint of melancholy. I slowly nod and let out a sigh. Well, he’s right. I’m not Marcel, I won’t stoop that low and kill him when he’s defenseless. But that doesn’t mean I’m hoping for his full recovery.
Suddenly Blue lifts his head, a faint green pulse flickering across the surface of his glasses.
"I just got a message from Simon and Gerard. NFH left them sedated in the limousine on the roadside. Since they’re betas, they were obviously spared."
Glaring at unconscious Marcel, I mutter, "Good. They didn’t deserve any of this mess you dragged them into…"
One thing is clear, even if I spared him now, that doesn’t mean I forgive the bastard, but at this point it no longer matters.
At that exact moment I turn my head, because I can hear police cars approaching, and in the first one is Detective Arnold.
???
A few hours later, I’m still running on a dangerously high level of stress.
Blue spends nearly two hours talking to Detective Arnold, and I have to give my statement too.
None of it is pleasant, going back through everything that happened, describing all that insanity to the police like it’s just another normal case file.
I have to tread carefully with a lot of my answers because there’s no way I want to reveal my five-second ability to see the future. I grew up with one strict rule drilled into my head: hide talents like that whenever possible. Especially from the authorities.
In the meantime, Marcel is taken to the hospital under police escort, stabilized, and left in a secure hospital room under guard. Edgar is taken straight to jail, where his father, the head of the software company D-Project, immediately starts pulling strings behind the scenes and, unsurprisingly, trying to pin everything on Marcel. But getting Edgar out of this mess turns out to be far from easy, because the police quickly discover that the entire incident in the attic storage room was recorded by a hidden camera worn by Gunman, making Edgar’s involvement in everything, and the fact that he participated willingly, completely undeniable.
That’s also when we find out what happened to the bodyguards following the limousine.
Turns out those incredibly ‘brave’ alphas simply ran for it once the shooting started, hiding between random civilians’ cars out on the street. After everything calms down, they casually go back to Blue’s skyscraper and only then call the police.
Honestly, I’m not even surprised by the behavior of those idiots, but the most interesting part is still ahead of us.
I tell Detective Arnold that I’d noticed someone breaching Blue’s electronic glasses, and he promises to look into the logs, even though neither Blue nor I think it was directly related to the kidnapping.
Blue also mentions to the detective that one of the people he’s been suspicious of is a professor from the college we were about to visit. It sounds like a throwaway lead at first, nothing major, but it ends up being exactly what they need.
A few days later, the detective tells Blue that a quiet investigation into the professor’s activities uncovers strong ties to NFH. The police get a warrant for both his arrest and the seizure of his equipment, and once they go through everything, they find even more evidence proving he was the one who gaveNFH the date Blue was supposed to arrive on campus, along with the route he was expected to take.
As for the mysterious connection to Blue’s glasses, it turns out behind it was… Director Flanegin, the head of the IT department!
And indeed, for some reason, he had a transmitter on him, always taking it home.
He is questioned by the police, even though he insists that it wasn’t intentional and that it was just some kind of testing device designed to randomly connect to nearby systems with Wi-Fi access, but that excuse falls apart pretty quickly because they’re able to prove the activity was structured, targeted, and intentional. Still, he keeps denying everything despite the evidence.
Eventually, the investigation starts stalling out.
Nobody can figure out whether what he did was industrial espionage or something personal, something obsessive and deeply messed up, but either way, Malden fires him immediately.
He’s formally charged with illegal intrusion, and in the end he receives a sentence that includes a substantial fine and mandatory community service.
Even after all that, Blue and I are both convinced the investigation never uncovered the truth, and that Director Flanegin simply did too good a job covering his tracks.
After all, he was the head of IT. If anyone knew how to erase evidence and bury what they were really doing, it was him.
When it comes to me and Blue, I think I’m handling this whole situation worse than he is. For the first time, Blue explains his defense systems to me in detail, and it turns out the nanobots, fangs and metal claws were never his only options during the kidnapping.
One of his backup measures was protection against sexual assault, and what he describes sounds straight out of science fiction. He explains that nearly two pounds of nanobots are embedded inside his body, capable of moving anywhere they are needed and forming a thick metallic layer over his skin, even sealing his bodily openings shut completely.
