“What the hell are you?” I demanded, keeping my voice low in the hope that I wouldn’t draw attention from the cops outside. “Why are you doing this to me?”

But the specter didn’t respond, merely curling one corner of its wispy mouth up into a sneer.

“Answer me!” I roared into the reflection. I lunged to my feet, straining against my bonds with everything I had.

A commotion sounded from the hallway on the other side of the door, and the specter faded back into nothingness. I growled in frustration. I didn’t know what the hell that thing was or why it was tormenting me like this, and, if the reaction of my lawyer was any indication, I was apparently the only one who could see it.

The door opened, and a pair of cops rushed in.

“That’s enough of that!” one of them yelled, working his way around the other side of the table and coming up behind me while his partner came in from the front.

“No!” I shouted. “This is bullshit! I didn’t kill my wife! I’m being framed!”

“Yeah, yeah,” the guy in front of me said dismissively. “That’s what they all say. Now put your hands on the table, spread your legs, and don’t move.”

I complied, but every fiber of my being was demanding I fight my way out of there. Given the forged evidence that’d magically appeared in record time, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that someone at this precinct was dirty and working to put me away. I still couldn’t fathom why, but supposed it was entirely possible I'd made an enemy somewhere along the line—either during my time in the Marines or, more likely, my tenure with the SRT. Maybe one of the thugs I'd put down over the years was some politician’s kid or related to a cartel boss. Who the fuck knew? Regardless, I could already tell I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a fair shake around this place. Unfortunately, escaping custody isn’t exactly as simple as the movies make it look, and unless I was okay with trying to get ahold of a gun and shooting my way out, I was likely fucked for the time being.

The two cops unchained me from the floor, then escorted me out of the interview room and back toward my cell. As they rounded the corner into the hallway with the offices again, my ears twitched. That song was still playing, but this time it sounded more like it was emanating from the very building itself, rather than a speaker on someone’s desk. It was also faint—barely audible above the din of a busy police station first thing in the morning.

The words drifted into my mind and settled there, playing on repeat over and over again. Certain lines seemed to take on a greater emphasis, like my subconscious was trying to pull my attention toward them. I forced my chaotic thoughts to the back of my mind, allowing the meaning of the song’s lyrics to permeate my brain. I didn’t understand why, but the notion that literally nothing else mattered in that moment was nearly overwhelming me.

My thoughts angled over to Tim, and what he’d told me about the meaning of the song. We’d hit the links just two days before Tim’s death, wanting to get one last round of eighteen holes in before the fall weather took a turn toward winter and the courses closed down for the season. Tim’s playlist had included a few tracks by Judas Priest, but when Spectre came on, he’d made it a point to expound a little on the nature of despair and what it can do to a man; how giving in to it leaves you open to attack, and gives the devil a foothold in your soul.

My eyes flew wide open.

I jerked to a stop right in the middle of the station, eyes darting around. A chill shot up my spine when I realized the entire place had suddenly gone silent as the grave. Every eye was staring directly at me… crimson light burning behind them.

For a long moment, nobody moved or made a single sound. I swept my gaze around slowly. Terror gripped my chest at the realization that whatever kind of unholy abomination had its claws sunk into me, it was somehow in control of all these people. Or maybe not. Maybe I was actually dead, and this was some kind of hell that’d been created with the specific purpose of tormenting my mind for eternity. Maybe I'd actually been killed right alongside Tim.

“What the fuck are you?” I said in little more than a whisper.

My only reply was two dozen sneering smiles.

Without sparing another millisecond for thought, I allowed my fight-or-flight response to take over my actions. I bullrushed the cop in front of me, driving him to the ground. While we were still falling, I tucked my legs and slipped my cuffed hands around my feet. It wasn’t ideal, but now I at least had limited use of them for the fight. I landed hard, but not as hard as the cop who’d broken most of my fall. My hands moved in a blur, grabbing the keyring hooked on the cop’s duty belt and ripping it free as I twisted my body away and rolled to my feet.

I sprinted past the bullpen and through a bundle of cubicles, toward the security door leading to the main entrance. Cops were closing in from both sides, attempting to cut me off, but something about the way they moved was unnatural. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that every single person in the place was moving with an otherworldly fluidity, like they were flowing through space and time rather than running, but they were also slower than they should have been.

The bizarre nature of both their unnatural movement and inexplicable silence sent panic coursing out from the more primal parts of my brain, and I put on a burst of speed I didn’t know I was capable of. The door loomed, and the tide of hellspawn was nearly on top of me.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

I launched myself in a flying kick toward the latch, which, conveniently, was a panic-rated bar-style exit latch. My foot smashed into the bar, and the door blasted open. A cop on the back side of it caught the slab of steel straight in the teeth and went flying. I crashed to the floor on the other side of the door and scrambled to my feet, stealing a quick glance over my shoulder and immediately wishing I hadn’t.

The crush of bodies pursuing me pressed together and melded into one giant mass of flesh as it squeezed through the opening, before splitting apart and reforming individuals on the other side. It was like some kind of nightmarish, flesh-based T-1000 was after me.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I screamed, back pedaling a step before spinning on my heel and bolting for the glass front doors just a few paces away.

A gunshot boomed in the confined space, and the bullet snapped past the left side of my face. I flinched away to my right instinctively, which saved me from another trio of shots that passed through the space I'd just been in, before shattering one of the big plate glass panes of the front entrance. I took one more step, then threw myself through the air.

More shots rang out, and bullets snapped through the air all around me. My shoulder smashed into the ground on the other side of the door, and my momentum carried me over the lip of the top step and tumbling down the short concrete staircase to the sidewalk below. The adrenaline dump I was currently riding blanked out any sensation of pain from the fall or bullet wounds I most certainly had, and I shot to my feet as soon as my uncontrolled tumble slowed. Tires shrieked as several cars out on the street slammed on their brakes when a man—me—was chased out of a police station by a swarm of hot lead.

My feet pounded on the pavement. Thankfully, I was still in my boots after having spent the night in a holding cell and not having been fully processed yet. I tore off down the sidewalk, expecting the sharp sting of bullets tearing into my back to hit at any moment, but it never came. As I reached the end of the block, I stole another look over my shoulder.

The entire population of the police station was standing out in the street. Every one of their burning red eyes were locked onto me as I fled, but none of the cops were attempting to pursue.

I didn’t stop to ponder their bizarre lack of action, and instead continued running. The sea of red eyes disappeared from my vision as my movement interposed the building on the corner between myself and whatever the fuck that’d been back there.

I didn’t stop running for damn near three miles, and by the time I did, sweat was pouring down my face and soaking my shirt through. I didn’t have a clue where I was. None of the streets I’d passed had been familiar to me, making me wonder if I’d even been taken to a Detroit PD precinct in the first place, or if they’d hauled my ass my well outside the city limits.

While I’d been running, a few people had taken notice of me, but their attention quickly faded. Seeing some dude running down the sidewalk in street clothes wasn’t all that unusual, and my rapid pace made it unlikely that any passersby would be able to identify the stains on my dark hoodie and bluejeans as blood. Now that I’d stopped, however, I was getting some looks.

With my hands still cuffed, I couldn’t slip them into the warmer pocket on the front of my sweatshirt, so I instead reached under the hem and rolled the bottom of my hoodie around my silver bracelets. Keeping my head down, I quickly walked a little farther down the sidewalk until I came to an alley between a pair of two-story brick buildings, then I hooked a right and disappeared into the shadows. I still had the cop’s keys clutched tightly in my hand, and once I was far enough into the alley that I didn’t have to worry about prying eyes, I went to work unlocking my cuffs.

The handcuffs were standard fare—nickel plated Smith & Wesson model 100-1s—and I quickly ID’d the correct key. A moment later, my hands were free and I slipped both the keys and the cuffs into my pants’ pockets, then took a few seconds to massage my bruised and bleeding wrists. I hadn’t noticed it at the time, but struggling against my bonds in the interview room, followed by my fight to escape, had left angry red trenches in my skin from where the steel had cut into it.

As my body began the crash down from the adrenalin high, I was quickly realizing exactly how many parts of me hurt like hell. Both shoulders were throbbing from the beating they’d taken during multiple falls onto hard surfaces, I was going to have a whole menagerie of bumps and bruises from my trip down the concrete steps, and my left ankle was some serious kind of pissed at me—most likely sprained. Still, I was amazed to discover that I’d somehow come through the whole thing without any bullet wounds, which seemed damn near impossible, given how many shots I was sure I’d heard.

After I took stock of my physical condition, my mind turned to the question of what I should do. I couldn’t go back to work—there was no way the guys back at the station wouldn’t have been alerted to what’d happened—and I couldn’t just go home, what with it being a crime scene and all. The thought of home stopped me in my tracks. The memory of Lynn’s lifeless body cradled in my arms slammed into me like a dump truck, and tears stung the corners of my eyes. I didn’t have time to wallow in my grief again, but it was impossible not to think about it.

I struggled to put it out of my mind and focus on what I needed to do next. My heart wanted me to go find my kids and tell them I hadn’t done it. Thinking of my children brought Cassie to the forefront of my thoughts, and the urge to rush to the hospital and wrap my little girl up in my arms was almost overwhelming. She must already feel so alone and scared, and now her mom was gone…

I knew Lynn’s parents would take good care of the girls until I could safely contact them, but the utter sense of helplessness threatened to break me. I knew on an intellectual level what the right move was, but it sure as hell wasn’t the easy one to make at that moment.

I needed allies. I had a few friends I could contact—some on the force, others that were either still in the Marines or had moved on to some of the three-letter agencies. Some of them I’d known for ten years or more; others I’d only known a short while. I was sure they would all drop everything to help, especially if I told them what happened to Lynn, but I needed to be smart about contacting them.

Now that I was in the wind, whoever was after me would definitely be monitoring all my known associates. But if I could find a way to get even one or two of them in my corner, they could help me figure out what was really going on, expose it, and clear my name. That was my immediate priority.

After that, I was going to hunt down every last son of a bitch that was responsible for my wife’s murder, and I was going to make sure they took a very, very long time to die.