Carwell was pinned to the floor by Grace. Moments later, backup arrived and broke open the door, getting Mr. Virg and his daughter to safety. While Grace was still handling and talking to the officers, she saw Basil staring at something in the room.

  "You ok?" She asked from across the basement, now lit with flashlights.

  "Yup! Just." He paused, "You go first, I'll catch up."

  While Grace shrugged and left, Basil was staring at something. An old TV, tucked neatly in the corner, just beside the doorframe. His eyes shifted from the boxy TV to the VHS tape beside it, with the words "play me" written on it with white marker. Basil was curious, how could he not be? This must be a message from Q, but Basil knew Q usually leaves messages via kills and the symbol, but this time, the symbol is there, but Carwell isn't dead.

  Slowly, he picked up the VHS tape and slid it into the VHS player. The screen flickered for a moment before a video of a woman appeared onscreen. In her hands was a piece of paper, from which she read from it... unsteady.

  "I predicted that Carwell may fail." The woman read with his hands shaking from distress and fear, "perhaps I didn't stop it because I thought it would be interesting, seeing him crumble in fear. I was going to kill him, but it doesn't seem like I have to."

  Basil watched the video, analyzing it. The woman, from what it looks like, was a missing person reported a few days ago. But what had Basil puzzled was what Q said. Based on past experiences, Q was a man of elegance with crime. He would never break his own "code" because to him, that was elegant. But this case was different.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The women continued. Her eyes shifted upwards slightly, and a few tears ran down her cheeks. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Basil M. House. I hope you're ready for what's going to happen next."

  Then, the screen went dark, not off, dark. The muffling sounds of a woman screaming is heard? Followed by a gunshot.

  But Basil didn't focus on the matter. What was running through his head was that they finally had a live person working with Q, which meant more information.

  Outside, Carwell was cuffed, being taken to a police vehicle. Grace was speaking with another fellow officer about what had happened both prior and post bombing incident. But what she didn't know what that Carwell had a knife hidden in his sleeve, slowly, he took it out and jammed and wiggled the blade into the cuffs. Slowly, one after another, the cuffs loosened.

  The whole thing happened in a few seconds. Carwell lunged forwards towards Grace, holding a knife and swinging it, but before Grace could pull out her gun, Carwell was shot dead on the floor, by not a police officer, but by Basil himself. Grace turned to see Basil standing there, innocently holding the same gun Carwell had used. He froze in that moment, he watched Carwell's blood spilling on the floor, and his eyes shifted to Grace, who also looked at him in shock. Quickly, he tossed the gun to the ground as if grossed out by what he just did. He stood there for a few moments, processing what just happened, before he remembered.

  "I was going to kill him, but it doesn't seem like I have to."

  "Damn it." He thought.