The farmland blurred pass as we headed back to the detachment. What could all this mean. What are these blue screens, and these monsters. This is giving me a migraine.

  I rubbed my temples as if I was trying to knead the logic of it all into making sense. Focus on the road. I chastised myself. Focus on anything but the blue screens and the magic swords and the fact that physics took a coffee break.

  Kira drove with her usual competence, but I saw the white knuckle grip she had on the wheel. I could see the way her jaw kept clenching and unclenching. We were both processing. Or trying to.

  “So,” she said, her voice carefully neutral. It was the tone she used when she was trying very hard not to let the world see her freak out. “We just killed dinosaurs.”

  “Yep,” I said.

  “and were rewarded magic swords and impossible strength.”

  “Apparently.”

  “And there was a blue screen. Multiple blue screens. Like a video game, but in real life.”

  “That about covers it.” I rubbed my temples, feeling the start of what promised to be a spectacular headache. Or maybe it was a brain tumor. A nice, simple, explainable brain tumor causing shared hallucinations would be a gift right about now.

  She let out a breath that was half laugh, half sob. “Okay. Good. Just making sure I’m not having a psychotic break all by myself.”

  The ambulance appeared ahead like a mirage, shimmering in the heat rising from the asphalt. At first, my brain tried to file it as normal, just another vehicle on the side of the road. Then the details clicked into place with a horrible, stomach twisting clarity.

  It was sideways. It blocked both lanes completely, a white whale beached on a sea of blacktop. The back doors hung open like a screaming mouth. Even from two hundred yards out, I could see the dark stains splashed across the white paint. Blood. That was a lot of blood.

  The crawling sensation hit me like a bucket of ice water down my spine.

  Not the subtle prickling from the farm—this was stronger, more insistent. The hairs on my arms stood rigid, and every muscle in my body locked up with a primal certainty that something was wrong. Not just the scene ahead. Something closer. Something watching.

  Threat Perception proficiency increase

  The notification flickered and vanished, but the warning didn't. It thrummed in my bones, a steady drumbeat of danger danger danger that made my hand drift toward my holster without conscious thought.

  "Slow down," I said, my voice tight.

  Kira's hand was already moving to her own weapon. She felt it too—maybe not the supernatural warning, but the wrongness that saturated the air around the ambulance like a toxic cloud.

  My eyes swept the scene with new urgency, cop training now amplified by whatever the System had awakened in me. The ambulance. The blood. The open doors. And the long, dark streaks leading from the vehicle into the ditch.

  Drag marks.

  But where were the bodies? Where were the paramedics? Where was—

  Movement. A flicker of shadow behind the ambulance that didn't match the wind.

  There.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  My hand closed around my AR’s grip, lifting it to a low ready position.

  Kira eased off the gas. “Is that them?”

  “Yeah.” I grabbed the radio mic, a useless habit. “Dispatch, A06, we have a 10-50 on Royal Avenue. Ambulance blocking both lanes. Looks like it could be a 10-54. Possible 10-55. Requesting backup and another bus.”

  Static answered. The same empty, mocking hiss. Of course.

  We rolled to a stop about fifty feet back, the cruiser’s engine ticking in the sudden quiet. Shattered glass glittered on the asphalt like a carpet of broken diamonds. There was no more movement. Was it a trick of the light? Or was it my own brain playing the tricks. The whole scene had that specific, terrible stillness that only comes with fresh death. My nerves were on fire with anxiety as I pushed myself to capture every little detail.

  I am going to need to check it out if I want answers.

  “Stay in the car,” I said. Though I already knew she would not listen.

  “Like hell,” Kira said, already opening her door. Her hand dropped to her holster with practiced ease. “You’re not going in there alone.”

  Stubborn. Always stubborn. But I was grateful for it, even if I would never say it out loud. We approached on foot, our boots crunching on broken glass. The sound was too loud in the unnatural quiet, each step an announcement to whatever had done this. My AR was already pinned to my chest, training keeping the muzzle low as I scanned for threats. Watch the shadows.

  The smell hit us at thirty feet. Copper and shit and something else, something sharp and chemical that burned the back of my throat. It was the smell of a slaughterhouse on a hot day. My stomach lurched, threatening to send my half eaten breakfast on a return trip. Don’t puke. Don’t you dare puke on a crime scene.

  “Jesus,” Kira whispered beside me, her face pale. She lifted a hand to cover her nose and mouth.

  The ambulance doors swayed slightly in the breeze, a gentle, horrible motion that made my skin crawl. As we got closer, I could see the metal was dented outward, the hinges twisted and half torn from the frame. Something had forced its way out from the inside. Or in.

  I moved to the driver’s side first, my training dictating the clearing pattern. The front cab was empty, but the windshield was a spiderweb of cracks. Blood, still wet, was smeared across the dashboard in long, desperate handprints. Someone trying to crawl away.

  I motioned to Kira. She nodded, taking up a covering position as I moved to the rear doors. Every step felt like walking through wet cement. It is just another call. Just another crime scene. You have seen bodies before.

  I reached the open doors and looked inside.

  The first thing my brain registered was red. So much red. For a split second, I thought someone had spilled gallons of paint. Then the smell, copper and bile and torn open guts, hit me like a physical slap, and my training finally caught up to what my eyes were seeing.

  A paramedic sat crumpled by the rear door, his chest a ruin of bullet holes. Martha Kent lay across her son’s chest, two neat holes punched through her back. Another hole in the back of her head had painted Michael’s tear stained face with a grotesque mask of her blood. His mouth was open in a silent scream, a single bullet hole between his wide, terrified eyes.

  A movement near the side door drew my attention. Jonathan Kent was curled in a fetal position, blood seeping from a wound in his upper arm, his eyes wide with a terror that had hollowed him out completely. He flinched at my approach.

  “Please,” he begged, his voice a trembling whisper that was barely audible. “Please, no more.”

  “Jonathan,” I said softly. “It’s me, Officer Stormson.” His eyes met mine, a flicker of hope flashing across his face before being extinguished by the fresh wave of grief that washed over him.

  “Officer Stormson! Thank god! You have to help Martha and Michael!” he stammered, trying to stand. I positioned myself to block his view of the carnage.

  “I’m sorry, Jonathan. There’s nothing I can do for them. But I need to bandage your arm.”

  I slung my rifle and grabbed some gauze from a case inside the ambulance.

  “No, no! They’ll be okay!” he protested, grief twisting his tone. He remained frozen as I stuffed gauze into his wound, then bandaged it tightly. “I need you to tell me what happened here,” I said, gently urging him out of the ambulance’s side door.

  “Two people, a man and a woman,” he said, his eyes still darting back toward the ambulance. “They demanded pills and… and then he just started firing.”

  Before I could say anything else, a voice called out from the side of the ambulance, sharp and laced with a strung out energy.

  I turned, cursing myself for ignoring the warning still screaming in my head, my hand instinctively dropping to my holster. A thin, scab covered man pointed a handgun at us. It was the guy from the diner parking lot. His tattered clothes were now spattered with blood.

  My fingers found the release on my pistol. Action is faster than reaction, I coached myself, watching the man’s pupils, tiny pinholes in his drug addled eyes. I began my draw, but movement behind him froze me in my tracks.

  Kira stumbled out from behind the ambulance, shoved forward by the woman from the diner. The woman now wielded Kira’s shotgun, its muzzle pressed firmly against her back.

  My blood ran cold as my gaze flickered to the woman’s finger resting on the trigger.