Cass sighed. Her hand paused mid-knock outside of Mark’s house. She glanced up at the night sky above. Nothing but stars and a stunningly beautiful moon. This was it, her last chance to simply go home. To go back to sleep and wake up like normal the next morning. Oh, and to maybe get the results from her interview. How exciting.

Well, better to get it over with and figure out what had Mark freaked out so badly. Her hand completed its arc in the air to strike against the solid oak wood door in front of her. Once, twice, thrice, until finally the handle to the door turned on knock number four.

Instantly Cass’s heart leapt into her throat. Mark was… not looking good. That was the nicest way she could think of to phrase it. The man’s squarish face was covered in a mask of congealed blood. His nose was scrunched up, but not like how it would be if he was irritated. No, it was scrunched up at an angle that would be physically impossible to reach if his nose wasn't broken. Which it was. Obviously so.

Not only that, but his eyes were blurry. Unfocused, vague, and visibly showing signs of some sort of a concussion. His brown hair was wet. Potentially with blood, unless Mark had recently shoved his head in a lake. Rather unlikely, considering the rest of his head didn’t look particularly wet. The palms of his hands were skinned badly, like they had been scraped against a rough surface at high speed.

“Holy moly Mark, did you lose a fight with a troll?” Were the first unfortunate, reflexive words out of Cass’s mouth. The moment the last word left her mouth, she immediately felt a pang of regret. They sounded a bit harsher than she intended.

Mark’s eyes wandered halfheartedly around the porch before focusing on her. His face radically changed, switching from the morose expression of someone who’d potentially just lost a fight with a troll, to the overpowering relief akin to what a parched man in a desert would have upon encountering the local watering hole.

“Cass!” Mark croaked out. She winced. Even his voice sounded raw and unfocused. Like he wasn’t even sure what was going on. The concussion probably wasn’t helping much with that.

“Cass you’ve gotta help me! This is majorly messed up. Majorly!”

Cass held out her hands in a placating manner. First things first, find out what the heck he was talking about.

“Easy there big guy. What happened to you? What’s going on? You need a doctor or a hospital or something!”

Mark frantically shook his head, causing tiny little splatters of blood to fly from his ruined nose to speckle the doorframe and unfortunately, part of Cass’s jacket with miniscule red particles. “No no no no no! I messed up! I’m so sorry Cass I messed up bad please just come in I need your help! This is crazy. Freaking crazy and I don’t know what to do!”

Each word of the frantic, run-on sentence that fell stammering out of Mark’s mouth was enough to convince Cass that while he seemed like a total loon right now, it would be better off if she just followed him to see what the big deal was. Otherwise, Mark was liable to accidentally hurt himself even more with how distressed he seemed. After that she could focus on convincing him to follow a sane train of thought.

“Alright.” Cass sighed. “Lead me to your problem. Then you’re going with me to the hospital, and no amount of arguing with me will change my mind!”

Mark nodded and jogged back into the house, with Cass speedwalking in an exasperated pursuit. He seemed to be heading straight for the garage. Making a complete beeline for it, in fact…

Cass's mind suddenly began to whir with suspicion as she slowly began to put together the puzzle pieces in front of her. The big piece was Mark's injuries. She was by no means a detective or even the brain of her class. But that didn't mean she was stupid. Nor had Cass ignored her dad whenever he tried to show her a few tricks. Forget losing a fight against a troll. Mark's injuries only made sense in two different scenarios Cass could conjure up.

Scenario number one was he pissed someone off mightily bad here in town. That scenario was also impossible. Everyone loved Mark, and the guy was built like a brick outhouse. Even if no one in the town cared about him, not a single soul would be plain old stupid enough to fight a guy like Mark. A guy like that could take the expression ‘fold you in two’ and physically do just that if he wanted to. And Mark would have had to be in that fight in Carlston.

She vaguely remembered hearing talk about Sandy’s mom seeing him just the other day. Or was it the other night? Not like it mattered. The point was that if Sandy’s mom had seen an injured Mark, everyone in town would have known by now. Sandy’s mom was a habitual gossip. It was her thing. It was what she did. Mark getting beat in another town didn’t fit. Carlston was just that far enough away from the other towns. Not too far, but far enough. If there had been another full day inserted into the mix? Well, then Cass could see that happening. But not in this timeframe.

That left scenario number two. A car accident. Given that Mark was definitely leading her to the garage, it was also the scenario Cass was leaning towards. That meant she had to start thinking. She knew Mark was a decent driver. A car accident would either be the other people’s fault, or he was an idiot and got drunk. It couldn’t have been too terrible of an accident, because even though Cass wasn’t his biggest fan, she knew Mark well enough to know for sure that he would have stuck around to help. To try and make things right. At the very least he would have called the cops to assist, which would also be another factor that would force him to stay on the scene.

What was he so freaked out about then? A car accident would be scary. No doubt about that. Given how messed up Mark looked, he was probably in shock. Combined with the concussion, that could lead to him being a bit freaked out. Not as much as he was at the moment, though. This was… worse. Like he’d seen something either life-shattering or so crazy he was doubting his sanity.

“Here here here.” Mark muttered frantically and opened the door leading out into the garage. It hardly seemed different from the multitude of other times Cass had walked inside of it, but she humored the man and followed him in. Mark groped around the wall for the light switch. It took a few seconds, but eventually he found it.

Cass gasped and her hands flew up to her mouth in shock. She’d thought earlier that Mark looked like he had lost a fight with a troll. His car, a beautiful old Corvette his dad had lovingly restored and gifted him a few years ago, looked like it had lost a fight with a giant the size of a building. The hood was crumpled like an empty bag of chips thrown to the side after a satisfying spot of lunch. Every speck of glass in the vehicle was shattered into a thousand pieces. The beautiful baby blue paint was scratched so thoroughly it was like some energetic little kid had taken razor blades to it. Cass began to open her mouth to voice the jumble of thoughts racing through her head, but Mark rapidly shook his head like a dog shaking a beloved chew toy and motioned for her to look behind the car.

She shot him a weird look but ultimately humored the man so they could get to the 'hospital' part of her plan sooner rather than later.

“I can’t see what you’d think is more important than a car wreck this bad…” Cass’s voice trailed off into nothing. Her eyes widened to be roughly the size of dinner plates. “Oh. Is that real?”

Mark nodded sadly. “Yeah.”

Tucked away neatly in the corner of the garage and standing completely stock still like a stuffed mannequin was a short, humanoid figure with a set of eyes that seemed to pierce down into Cass’s very soul with a dispassionate uncanny valley stare. However, the eyes and its vaguely humanoid appearance were where comparisons to a normal person pretty much ended. The rest of the… creature, yes, the word 'creature' would be a more apt description, was impossibly stick-thin to the point that it looked more like a rough children's doodle on the side of a school binder. A doodle with skin greyer than any human could achieve without serious amounts of paint and a ‘can-do’ attitude.

Yet, Cass couldn’t simply say the creature was a mannequin. It was breathing. Definitely breathing. She could see the slight rise and fall of its chest. The way its eyes blinked about once a minute. Nor could she say it was a human, for it would be impossible for even a person starved for years on end to have such thin limbs. Even if a person was nothing but skin and bones, a human's bones would still be larger than what the creature possessed.

“Mark?”

“Yeah?”

“Is this an alien?”

“I think so.”

“Oh fiddlesticks.”

“Yeah.”

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Cass and Mark spent a total of twenty minutes in a shared state of hyperventilation before they retreated from the garage.

“Oh fiddlesticks.” Cass repeated. Footsteps rang out against the wooden floor of Mark’s house as she paced back and forth, her hands mussing through her hair in shock, trying to find some way to explain it all. “And it just showed up in your garage after you woke up?” She double-checked.

Mark nodded his head dejectedly. “Yeah. Hasn’t moved a single inch this entire time. Or even spoken. It just watches me. Menacingly!” He buried his blood-soaked head in his hands and began to weep. “It’s all my fault I’m so sorry Cass pleas-“

Finger snapped repeatedly right in front of Mark’s face, and he looked up to see Cass looming over him.

“Can it!” She firmly stated, like it was an order and not a request. “Let’s go over everything one last time. I can think of a plan, but I need to make sure all the details are taken care of.”

Mark let out a miserable little shrug and cast his mind back to the blurred series of events he would rather forget.

“I was… I was driving on the highway. Headed straight out of town.”

“And drinking.” Cass butted in angrily. “Heaven’s above, if there wasn’t a freaking alien in your garage, I’d beat the tar out of you just for that!”

“And drinking.” Mark numbly acknowledged. “Then out of nowhere this black van shot right out of the darkness. No lights on or anything. After that… just a bunch of pain. I think I blacked out. The next thing I know, I woke up in my bed. My car must've worked just enough to limp home. I walked into the garage, saw that… thing, and called you right after.”

The sound of footsteps halted as soon as Mark finished recalling the events from earlier that night. He looked up to see that Cass had set aside her pacing to stare right at him with considering eyes.

She took a few more moments to gather her thoughts, moments in which Mark sat in silence to let Cass do her thing. It almost felt like the old days. Back when they were together, Mark and Cass united. Back in those times, it sometimes felt like they could do anything. Go anywhere. Cass the planner and Mark the muscles. Nice and uncomplicated.

Another string of rapid snapping noises broke Mark out of his haze of fond memories. Cass stared pointedly at him and snapped her fingers one last time for good measure, to make sure his attention was focused on her next words.

“Okay. Here’s the deal.” Cass began, crossing her arms and shooting a glance toward the closed garage door. “It isn’t unheard of for drunk drivers to limp back home right after an accident. Drink can make a body really durable sometimes. You were probably too out of it to do much else other than follow an instinct like that. I bet the black van was carrying that freako alien for some reason. Some bad or secret reason since the headlights were off. No sane person would ever do that normally, driving with no headlights at night. In fact, I’ll add an extra bet that says this is some weirdo government project. You’ve seen the movies. FBI G-Men would totally be interested in capturing an alien. The van was probably heading straight toward Area 51!”

Mark closed his eyes and winced. The way Cass's voice had slightly risen in volume near the end of her explanation kind of felt like someone was digging knives deep into his skull to the fleshy grey matter inside.

“Oh. Sorry.” Cass mumbled, instantly noticing Mark’s visible discomfort from his hangover. “Anyways, the government probably will want this thing back. The real question is if they’ll try and silence us. That always seems to happen in the movies. We need to get ourselves separated from this alien as fast as possible. Preferably in a way that no one knows we were ever with it.”

Mark hoarsely chuckled. “Should we abandon it on the side of the road then? Toss it out the window? I could see about sending it off with a nice spin like it’s a football.”

“No.” Cass shook her head. “This is a small town, the people around here love gossip, and you coming back from college is the new hot topic. That means all eyes are on you all the time. Then add in that we used to be together, so people are going to be curious to know if I have any info on you. I’ve already had a few questions like that pop up. All eyes are on you, on me, on both of us until the town gets bored in two weeks. We could dump it in the woods, sure.”

Cass took a deep breath before continuing to think aloud. Mark was following along, though barely.

“The problem is with so many people paying attention to what we do so the gossip machine can be fueled, is that someone’s likely to see us either in the act or leaving the area. That thing would get found in the woods given enough time no matter what. Rumors would abound about how weird it is and when the government comes in to take that creature, all they have to do is track the rumors to the source, make us disappear, make the one or two people who saw us with their own eyes disappear, and claim the rumors are nothing but a rumor to everyone else. They would only have to get rid of three, maybe four people tops.”

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“What is it, three in the morning? Or close to, at least.” Mark countered. “Which town gossips would bother sticking their heads through the blinds in their windows at this hour?”

Cass shrugged. “You’d be surprised. Juicy gossip like this is rare and in a town like this, people get bored. Plus the bar on Main Street is still open.”

Mark made a sound of understanding. “The bar. Eh, yeah. The regulars would still be out and about.”

“Plus, there’s whoever was driving the van.” Cass wrinkled her nose in distaste. Scary black vans were never good news, not in the movies, not in real life. Not ever. “They might have seen your face. Even the make and model of your car would work. Not many people around here have a car as nice or flashy as yours. They track the car, they find you.”

Cass glanced at her keys. Mark’s car was no good, so they would need to take hers.

“No, we need to get this to officials we can trust, and make enough of those officials know about us so that if we disappeared, people would ask questions. That would get the alien away, keep most the people in town unaware, and give us a safety net when something inevitably goes wrong because this is life and everything goes wrong.”

“Your dad?” Mark instantly guessed.

Cass nodded in confirmation. “Yup. I think he’s still at the station doing some late-night work. His car wasn’t in the garage when I left. We need to get this alien to the precinct and tell my dad everything. A group of hard-working G-Men might be able to make the two of us disappear without a sweat, but an entire police station? We live in the boonies, but that’s a good number of officers since our station is the hub point for the surrounding towns. Ten armed men who saw it with their own eyes are a lot harder to simply vanish into thin air. Something like that would make even more people start asking questions, and that's if Dad's guys don’t resist. And they would. It would probably be easier to force us all into an NDA.”

“NDA?”

Cass chuckled. The sound was out of place in the bleak confines of Mark’s house. It bounced across the walls like the very building itself was trying to pretend that this wasn't a completely freaky and potentially deadly situation. The two of them began to walk back to the garage door. Slowly, but surely. As if any minute they could put off the inevitable was a minute well-spent.

“Non-disclosure agreement. Basically, if we talk about the alien after we sign, they can throw us in the slammer for life. I’m talking about the full might of the U.S. law crashing onto our heads. They can just claim we fell into something freaky like an official secrets act and even if someone investigates, all they’ll find is that we violated the NDA. Heck, they might just file it under espionage. No one would ask questions about that. Anyway, having to stay quiet is way better than getting thrown in some hole, or worse, killed.”

Cass, of course, left her other thoughts unsaid – that she was hoping her dad would figure out a better plan than her slapdash decision, and that hope was the main force between her desire to get the two of them, along with the alien that served as physical proof, to him safely with as little left to the fickle winds of chance as possible. Simple plans were the best. There were fewer moving parts that could go wrong. Get it to the station without it being seen and tell her dad. That’s all there was to it.

However, Mark didn’t need to hear anything about her concerns. The guy was about a half-second away from fainting via hyperventilation. The fear was clear in his eyes, fear mixed with the haze of whatever alcohol was still in his system and the pain of his hangover. At this point, it was clear that Mark wanted to think Cass, still clad in her Superman pajamas and windbreaker, was swooping in to save the day from his goof-up, so that’s what he would get. Any overestimation of her abilities was a-okay at this point as long as it kept the big guy calm. Scared people messed up and got kidnapped by some creepy FBI agent, never to be seen again.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

“ACHOO!” The sound of Mr. Moon sneezing echoed around his car, causing Dag to start slightly in surprise, his closed eyes shooing open in less than a second. The miles had all begun to mesh together in a hazy blur. A hazy blur which was all too good of a reminder that in times like these, if you weren’t driving, you should be snoozing. Sleep would allow for strength to be saved for the future. If that future had the possibility of extreme violence, well, then sleep would prove to be even more important. A well-rested mind was a powerful mind. Dag had more than a few weird sayings like that from his days in Quantico, the FBI training facility. His old instructors always liked to parrot them out. Over and over and over again until they stuck to your skull like they were superglued to it.

Dag blinked sleepily once he verified that the gunshot-like sound was simply a sneeze and nothing to be worried about. A flick of his eyes confirmed that the surveillance van with Ms. Miller and Steve was still rumbling steadily along in the rearview mirror, with the only difference being that it appeared Ms. Miller had traded out as driver with Steve at some point during Dag’s nap. A normal action that even he would have preferred to do in their car if Mr. Moon wasn’t insane enough to prefer doing all the driving himself. Well, what could you do? He was the boss, after all.

Satisfied, Dag stealthily patted the right side of his suit to feel the reassuring black metal lump of his Sig Sauer, and the left pocket of his suit to brush his hands over his pair of brass knuckles. A shifting at his waist allowed him to confirm the location of his hunting knife, along with the extra mags for his handgun. None of the weapons were particularly needed at the moment, but by now his movements were nothing more than pure habit developed by his many years working the counterterrorism beat day in, and day out. An ill-prepared man was a man reduced to several fleshy chunks on the pavement, as his old instructor at Quantico would always scream (usually from about one inch away from his ear).

Finally, content that all was currently right in the world, he closed his eyes once more and fell straight back into Snoozeville – population, Dag.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Bright sky, day sky. The sun was in the air, that oh-so-burning, hot sun. It pounded down on Jack's forehead like a judgment from the gods of the sky. All the way through the windshield of his truck, of which he sat in the cab. Not driving, not at the moment.

Stationary. Frustratingly stationary. It was not his choice. Jack had been moving. He was moving right along, humming to the beats that screamed at him from the truck’s radio. The trees along the interstate highway had rushed past, nothing more than green blurs. No mere car dared to stay in his path.

At least, until those irritating blue and red lights flashed in his rearview mirror. Jack had been irritated. A stop, this early in his journey? He’d only passed through one or two states by now. Maybe three? He wasn’t paying much attention. The journey was long, that was all he knew for certain.

Still, Jack had stopped. He didn't know for sure why. The person in the police car behind him was unlikely to be interesting, or particularly strong. No point in fighting him if that person did not possess either of those two qualities.

He saw the drivers-side door to the cop car open in his rearview mirror to allow a man to step out. It was a man dressed in the tan uniform of the highway patrol. Black leather boots, a belt around his waist containing many different items, and a star on his chest. Oh, and a hat, too. A rather nice-looking hat, now that Jack thought about it.

Now that he was thinking about it… what would he look like with a hat that spiffy around his head?

The cop came closer and motioned for Jack to roll down his window. Jack wordlessly obliged. His arm sank to the halfway point between the top of the door and the floor to grasp the crank that controlled the window. A few pumps and the window creakily slid down.

“Do you know how fast you were going?” The patrolman spoke the usual tired words. Jack had heard them time and time again. Enough that he could quote them in his sleep. Those, and the words that would follow.

The cop huffed in annoyance at Jack’s non-answer. “One hundred and fifty miles per hour is what I clocked ya’ at. Interstate speed is eighty.”

Jack smiled and held up his driver’s license to allow the man to take it. Not those words. The next words. The words that would follow in five… four…

The cop turned back to his car to mark down Jack’s information.

Three… two… one…

Once the cop made it precisely four paces away from the truck, Jack threw open the door and launched himself at the cop. The cop tried to turn, but in a flash, Jack was upon him.

“Son of a-!” The cop shouted. Jack matched that shout with a scream that was part rage, part fearless joy. Two bodies collided. For a precious moment, they both teetered where they stood, a tangled mess of limbs. The cop's hand flew toward his gun at the same time as his hat flew off his head.

It was funny. At least to Jack, that was. The funny thing was that on a standard cop’s duty belt, there were many useful items. The most useful being the gun. However, the fact was that there was also a leather strap on that specific part meant to keep the gun in place if the owner was in a tumble or something similar. Usually, it took the form of a piece of leather that looped over the grip of the gun. That piece of leather, while not difficult at all to brush aside with a thumb in a normal situation, became a lot trickier to cleanly and quickly remove when a screaming madman was grappling with you on the side of the road.

The cop’s hand scrabbled closer to his gun and the first mistake was made – in the heat of the moment, he appeared to have forgotten about the strap. That mistake was one that Jack instantly capitalized on, raising his meaty fists to slam once, twice, and thrice onto the cop’s chest to knock the wind out of his body. A nasty gasp of air was spat out onto Jack’s face as his ploy succeeded.

The cop’s hand moved again, this time brushing the leather strap off the grip of the gun. The hot sun beat into Jack’s back just like how his fists beat into the cop’s body. Two brutal strikes were enough to break his enemy’s right arm. Another strike dislocated the man’s jaw. By now all resistance from the cop was like a weakening bit of prey in the jaws of a savage wolf. A hand beat against Jack’s face but he pushed through the distraction. The fingers of that hand weren’t aimed at his eyes, so there was no point wasting the time or energy blocking the blows.

With the cop’s dominant arm broken, unable to remove the handgun from its holster, Jack moved his efforts to other places.

Namely, the throat. His two hands, almost large enough to completely obscure the man’s face, moved around the cop’s throat. Tight. Tighter. The cop, of whom Jack didn’t even know the name of, weakly and ineffectually beat his face in an attempt to loosen Jack’s vice grip. The sun bore down on his back. Sweat dripped off Jack’s skin onto the uniform below him. The cop weakened. Hands beat at his face. The cop weakened more. Hoarse breaths tore out of the cop’s ruined windpipe.

Tighter. The cop’s eyes began to bug out. Jack could hear the radio in his truck screaming out for blood. “Do it Jack! Do it!” The radio’s contorted voice howled with joy. “Destroy the weak, one so arrogant as to turn his back to a true champion! Tear out his eyes and spread his profane viscera across the stinking asphalt!”

Tighter. A feral grimace of pure elation slid across Jack’s face. This was it. This was the moment. Life simplified into one simple concept of deciding an order – who was strong, and who was weak.

Tighter. The cop’s hands finally began to move toward Jack’s eyes. He was beginning to fight as a strong man should, but it was far too late by now.

The man fell silent. His hands slipped away from Jack’s face. His eyes became glassy. Lifeless.

Jack smiled. He stood up and stepped away from the cop’s body, stooping soon after to grab the fallen hat and the handgun from his belt. Another movement saw his fallen driver's license flicked back into his pocket from the ground where it had fallen. The hat flipped on top of his head as he took a measure of the new weapon. It was a standard-issue Smith & Wesson M&P revolver that the majority of the police forces around the country preferred. Slick silvery steel metal, six shots, four-inch-long barrel, and it took .38 special cartridges.

Very standard, but quite useful. The cartridges themselves were hollow points, meaning the bullet literally had a hollowed-out cavity at the tip. This cavity meant the bullet would rapidly expand on impact with the target for quicker impact and more stopping power. Easy to fire, easy to draw. His other hand cased the rest of the service belt, grabbing the spare .38 special cartridges, a bottle of pepper spray… and a walkie-talkie.

Interesting.

Jack’s eyes flicked over to glance at the now-unoccupied squad car parked a few feet behind his pickup truck. A walkie-talkie alone wasn’t particularly useful. However, if his instincts were correct, a standard cop car would possess a radio setup in the dash near the driver’s side.

He stood up and began walking over to the car. A working radio setup would be quite handy. Not only would he be able to listen in to police communications, but he could also potentially use it to narrow down the location of his mission. As his friend told him at the beginning, Kansas was a big state. Kansas had a lot of small towns. With a police radio to scan the airwaves, he could listen in and wait for something interesting to be reported that could potentially point him in the right direction.

Yeah. That could work. Jack smiled and uncapped the bottle of pepper spray, downing it in one satisfied gulp that saw his eyes water momentarily as soon as the kick from the delicious drink hit him. The empty bottle was tossed aside and Jack tore open the door to the police car.

"Don't mind if I do…" Jack hummed to himself. There it was. A police radio set into the dash just like he thought there would be. It was a squarish black device, a strange gizmo bolted to the dash with a corded doodad attached to the side. Doubtlessly that was the end you could speak into.

Two bolts fixed the radio to the dash. Jack looked at them both and shrugged. He had no tools. No wrenches, no hammers. Nothing that would be particularly great for getting that radio out. So, he did what he could. His fists hammered into the dash, denting it with the first blow. Another blow sent plastic splinters flying, and then his hands closed around the radio. He pulled with all his might, grunting and groaning until finally the radio came free of its plastic and metal prison.

The radio was carelessly tossed into the passenger seat of Jack's truck. It wasn't in a usable state right now. He would need to figure out how to hook it up to his own vehicle, how to get it power, and all that. But that could wait. Now he needed to take care of his other business.

His hand darted into the passenger’s seat. Not to grab the radio, but to grab ol’ Fairbairn. Good ol’ Fairbairn-Sykes. The double-edged fighting knife that had been with him since ‘Nam. It was a special knife. A seven-inch blade, four-and-a-half-inch grip, and a smile only Jack could see.

Per usual, Jack smiled back at his friend. He could hear its sweet voice. Oh, how it sung to him. It sang its sweet siren song, telling him of all the adventures ahead. It greeted the new friend in Jack's pocket, Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith, of course, was a polite lad who chirped a greeting back at the friendly knife.

Jack’s smile widened. It was always nice seeing his friends get along. Then he walked over to the fallen officer and dropped to his knees. The man had fought well. It wasn't a difficult fight, per se, but the guy had at least tried. He tried and almost got there in the end. That was all that mattered. Fairbairn sang in agreement and Jack nodded. It was unanimous, no contest.

Winchester cheered from the cab as Fairbairn descended into the cop’s unmoving chest, cutting through his ribs and to the still heart below with only some amount of effort on Jack’s part. Then Fairburn pulled away. The next bit would be up to Jack. He slipped his hands into the large gash in the cop’s chest, wiggling his hands to fully grasp his heart. It pulled out nicely. No complications, no veins trying to drag the organ away from Jack’s gentle grip. It simply slid out.

The heart was simultaneously ugly and beautiful. Of course, it was nowhere near that of the common depiction of a heart, like what one would see on a mushy Valentine's Day card. No, this was a proper working man's organ. A lump of flesh and muscle that pumped hot blood through the chest on a hot day for hard work. It was a powerhouse. Fiery. Fierce. The key to a man’s purpose in life. The key to a man’s strength.

Without a heart, a man was not a man.

Jack took a moment to stare at the red piece of muscle resting in his hands. At the slight marbling of fat on the sides. The thick blood vessels near the top of it, cut oh so neatly by reliable Fairbairn. He smiled. This stop truly was a fortuitous piece of luck.

Then Jack raised the heart to his mouth and took a large bite. Still-warm blood trickled down his chin. Another bite saw half the heart disappear. Another. And another. The heart was gone. His hands were empty. Yet, in his belly, he could feel the cop’s strength being added to his own. It was like warm fire kindled his abdomen. Meager strength, but strength nonetheless. He had a hard road ahead of him. Any amount of extra strength could be useful for future trials.

Jack looked up and down the road. For an interstate highway, there hadn’t been a speck of traffic since the cop first pulled him over. However, that could change in a heartbeat. He had to clear up the scene before anyone could see and report him.

The cop car was still running, so all Jack had to do was yank the wheel to the right and place a stone from the side of the road onto the accelerator. The engine did the rest, rocketing the car into the side of the ditch where it would hopefully go unnoticed for at least a few hours. The cop’s body was similarly easy to dispose of. Jack simply heaved it over his shoulder, tossed it in the back of his truck, and slipped inside the cab. A rustle of movement came from the back and the cop’s body twitched in the rearview mirror. A flash of scaled dark grey flesh poked out from under the various stuff he had in the back of his truck.

Jack simply smiled and nodded.

“Enjoy the meal buddy.” He laughed and floored the gas pedal on his truck. “Enjoy the meal.”