Clay leaned back against the trunk of the tree he sat in, overlooking the burnt remains of his house. He had spent the past couple of hours searching all over town for any signs of his family, or Rose and Uriana, but had come up empty-handed.

Sitting here looking at the remains of your house probably isn’t healthy. Especially considering you sat in there for an hour talking to yourself.

“Where else would I go? I figure if there’s a chance any of my family survived they would come by the house at some point.”

You’re just not going to address you going crazy?

“I’m not going to argue with the voice in my head about my sanity, no.”

What’s the plan? Last time around you got arrested and ended up getting a job out of it.

“I… don’t know.” Clay rubbed his face in frustration. “I want to focus on finding Uriana and Rose, but I already deviated from the previous timeline and everything is way worse now.”

Clay watched as several NDSA cars pulled up to his house. “Looks like they’re just investigators.”

If nothing else, they will probably have answers on the rest of your family.

“Yeah, I had the same thought.”

Clay stepped down into his front yard, most of the investigators having already gone inside. One was still out front though, faced away from him jotting notes.

“Hey,” Clay said as he approached. The investigator turned to him lazily.

“This is an active crime scene, please back…” His eyes went wide with surprise. Dropping his clipboard, he pulled his sidearm, pointing it at Clay.

“Put your hands up!” His shouts drew out more of the investigators. Clay complied as they pushed him to the dirt, cuffing his hands behind him.

This is a familiar sight.

…

The investigators pulled him into a familiar beige room, sitting him down on a metal chair and removing his cuffs. Having seen the entire building before, he knew all the interrogation rooms were nearly indistinguishable, but it felt like he was in the same line as before.

Should you yell at me like last time?

“It’s definitely tempting, but I’m not an actor, I couldn’t mimic how freaked out I was then if my life depended on it.”

Several minutes passed before an older, well-dressed man entered the room. The same man as last time, so far everything was progressing more or less the same.

“So Clayton,” the man began as he sat down across from him “What have you done with Uriana?”

The question took Clay completely off guard “What?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, we found your blood at the scene, on your father's body, and on the knife you used to kill him. So just be honest, is she still alive?”

So much for following the script.

“I didn’t do any of that, it was Rose. The blood on the knife was when she stabbed me.”

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

“Ah yeah, Rose too, we found her fingerprints on the knife, our current theory is that she tried to fight you off, but obviously didn’t succeed. Did you dump her body somewhere?”

“I told you, she was the one who did it..”

“I heard what you said, but you look remarkably uninjured for a man who got stabbed. Mind showing me the wound?”

“I… I died, that's why the wound is gone.”

The man gave Clay a look of disgust “I’ve heard some crazy shit in my time here, but I’ve never heard someone claim to be dead right in front of me. Do you think this is some kind of joke?”

Clay slammed his fists onto the table, his anger boiling over at the accusations thrown at him. “Will you shut the fuck up for a second.” The man sat unphased, but he stopped talking to allow Clay to speak.

“I know it sounds crazy but I’m telling you the truth, something possessed Rose, she went crazy and killed my dad, and killed me. I still don’t know how exactly it works, but I can’t die, I keep coming back. I’ve been killed five times now, and every time I wake up several hours later in the bedroom of my sister.”

Clay sat back waiting for the detective to respond.

“Do you have any proof?” The man asked, raising his brow at him.

“I mean I guess you could put a bullet in me to test it out,” Clay responded.

“Well, you’re currently facing three counts of homicide, so you might get an opportunity to test it considering you’re facing the death penalty.”

Clay perked up “Only three, so my mom and brother are still alive?”

This took the detective by surprise “Yes, we put them in protective custody since we didn’t know where you were or if you would strike again.”

Clay sighed in relief. “Well, at least I got my main question answered. This wasn’t a complete waste of time.”

The detective gave him a confused look. “Let’s focus on something else. We found some traces of unidentified blood on the knife, any idea where that came from?”

Clay debated answering the man, they already thought he murdered his own family, should he tell them he really did kill a bunch of elves?

“Yeah, they’re elves, they were going to kill me and kidnap Uriana, so I killed them. You can find their bodies in the woods on my street” Clay answered plainly.

The detective scoffed, clearly thinking Clay was joking. “Right, let's get back to the matter at hand…”

…

Clay sat leaning back in his chair, staring at the clean white ceiling. They had spent nearly an hour going around in circles. For the last 10 minutes, Clay had been ignoring the man's questions, staring at the ceiling and not responding.

“Well, I think that’s enough for today, I will get some officers to escort you to your cell.” The man stood up, collected his things, and opened the door to the interrogation room. As it opened Clay sprang to his feet, specter stepping up to the detective and stealing the id badge hanging from his waist.

Clay specter stepped away as the detective shouted after him. It would only take a minute for them to sound the alarm and start locking the building down, but with the badge and Clay's speed he would be long gone by then. But first Clay stopped by the armory, using the badge to let himself in, he grabbed a couple pistols and a bunch of ammo, before continuing with his escape. As he pushed through the front door, he heard the siren of the alarms go off.

…

“Hey Valerie, did you gather the others?” Cedric asked, leaning back in his office chair.

“Yeah, they’re right behind me.” She answered as she took her seat. With Cedric, Valerie, Lauren, Paul, and Phil all in the room, Cedric's small office was feeling extremely cramped.

Cedric passed out a beige folder to each of them. “I’m assuming you all heard about the fiasco earlier today, apparently some kid managed to escape custody, inside a damn interrogation room. And get this? The kid apparently applied here yesterday, and had some of the lowest mana pools on record.”

Valerie flipped open the folder, looking at a collection of pictures of Clay’s trip around the building. “These time stamps, how fast is this kid?”

“Supposedly he wasn’t running, he was teleporting, or something. That's what the report says anyways” Cedric answered.

“Aren’t interrogation rooms warded? They say even an elf couldn’t use magic in the room” Valerie said as she and the others flipped through the file.

“Yeah, that’s got everyone baffled. So much so that finding and taking him back into custody is now a priority, even the feds are spooked by this. Our team is going to be taking the lead on this.”

Valerie finished flipping through the folder, looking back up at Cedric. “Sounds fun.”