DING DONG

"Coming!" A man opened the door to his house after hearing the doorbell ring. "Um, how can I help you, sir?"

"Hi. My name is Jin Telegard, I'm with the Aegis Corps." Jin showed his badge. While he didn't care to work with them anymore, he sure as hell was going to exploit their benefits.

"I'm here looking into the disappearance of your wife. Are you able to answer any questions?"

"Yes! YES! Please, come in!"

Jin was led inside the house, being directed to the living room. The man asked if Jin would like something to eat or drink, but he declined.

"So, can you tell me what exactly happened to your wife from your perspective?"

"Y-Yes. So, we had just come back home from anniversary shopping, and that's when we saw the news about the prison break. We were horrified! B-Because of that, we activated our house's maximum security just in case anything happened."

"I see." Jin was getting all this down in his data logs.

"After that, we started watching everything go down on the TV. Thankfully, our area wasn't affected, but my wife, s-she wanted to help. I begged her not to, and she agreed, saying that she needed to be here to protect me. B-But when we were heading to our panic room, she vanished. At first, I thought she had left, so I called her phone, but it was still here at the house."

"What powers does your wife have? Maybe she teleported away or ran off if she had super speed?"

"N-No. She can invert the senses of a person. Making them see upside down or feel as if they are being spun really fast. That sort of thing. I checked the camera footage we have, but it doesn't show her leaving the house. Please, you have to believe me!"

In all honesty, this sounded like bullshit. But because of how bullshit it sounded, Jin believed the man.

"Take me to your security room and show me the footage of that day."

The man nodded and directed Jin to the security room.

In there, Jin reviewed the footage and even plugged into the computer to allow his own computer to run an analysis. At first glance, nothing looked out of the ordinary, but then Jin noticed something in the corner of one of the security camera screens.

"A shadow?" He muttered under his breath. "Computer, play this video back by five seconds."

The video started playing back.

"Pause."

The video paused.

"Zoom in on the bottom left corner."

The video zoomed in.

"W-What are you looking for?" The man asked

"Tell me, in this video, where were you and your wife at the time?"

The man looked at the camera angle and the other cameras that matched the timestamp."

"The kitchen. We were both packing up the groceries."

"So why would there be a shadow in this video right here?"

"M-Maybe the sun?"

"Let's test it out."

Jin went to the exact same spot in the house and angled some light where the sun had shone in that direction, completely mimicking it. The shadows did not match.

"Someone was inside this home." Jin voiced his thoughts out loud. He pulled out a metallic disk, tossing it onto the ground, and a red light beamed across the room, scanning the entire house.

"W-What are you doing?"

"Scanning the house for supernatural activity." Jin answered

"Wouldn't that be redundant? My wife has powers."

BEEP BEEP

"Really? So, tell me why my scanner just picked up on two abilities being used in the house?"

"W-What? H-How?"

"Don't know. Computer, see if any footage in the cameras has been looped. If so, restore the original footage."

[Scanning....Loop found....Restoring original footage.]

In the original footage, a shadow moved across the room into the kitchen, merging with the wife's shadow. When they made their way to the panic room, the woman sank into the shadows before the husband could even realise what had happened.

"Well damn. I guess you can say that she was...sucked in. Ha." Jin tried to lighten the mood, but the husband was not having it.

"My bad. I'll get to the bottom of this." Jin packed up his equipment and then headed to the next house on his list.

For the entire day, Jin went from house to house asking them similar questions. All of them had similar stories about their spouses or other loved ones just vanishing out of nowhere.

Unfortunately, not all of them had security cameras for Jin to check out, but those who did, he saw the same pattern of a shadow swallowing up the people.

When he looked into the backgrounds of the people who were taken, he saw nothing that could give him any leads. One person would be pretty wealthy, while another would be working at the local energy station (gas station, but fuck gas! energy all day bitch!)

The only thing that stood out to Jin was that the people who went missing were equally split between 250 women and 250 men.

"Thank you for your time." After visiting the last house of the day, he headed back to his apartment, where he took a shower, then crashed onto the bed from exhaustion.

He wasn't that tired, but the feeling of relaxation made it feel as if he had been working harder than he actually was.

"Jin."

"Hmm?"

"We're going on that date tomorrow. I already booked us a reservation at a restaurant. Wear your best suit." Addison informed him without even asking his opinion.

"Okay. Sounds good." He didn't mind it. It was good to take his mind off work and enjoy himself for a bit. Besides, he knew he would be having sex after the date, and he loved having sex.

"By the way, did you find anything during your search?"

While he was out, he had gotten a call from Addison, and he explained what he was doing.

"Only that the people who were taken were swallowed by a shadow, and that there is an equal number of people who were taken. Other than that, nothing. I'm back at square one."

"Why don't you see who has shadow powers?"

Jin frowned. "Really? Do you know how many people in this city have shadow powers? It's in the millions!"

"No, I was talking about the people outside the inmates."

Jin shot up from his bed. "Shit! You're a genius! I can't believe I didn't think of that."

A smile crept onto Addison's face. She was glad that she could be helpful. "This is why it's good to talk with people about things like this. No matter how smart you are, it's normal to overlook things."

Jin couldn't deny what she said. "Very true."

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