HUMAN

Chapter 43 - Smoulder

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. . .

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BANG!

BANG!

BANG!

BANG!

BANG!

CLICK - CHACHINK!

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!-

Bullet casings dropped on the ground as Ms. Holmes emptied her second magazine. Vincent's breath hitched.

The body of Sinclair was riddled with bullet holes. A display of blood and gore exploded beside him as the bullets cooled down from the touch of cold flesh, smoke emitting from Sinclair's unrecognizable cranium. The black ooze - nanotechnology that Sinclair used - had completely stopped functioning as it oozed out of her corpse. Finally.

Their trembling didn't waver even when Ms. Holmes lowered her gun to her hip and let out an exhausted sigh. Vincent looked up at her, confused. Why didn't she continue?

Something had quickly gone through her mind while the gun was on Vincent's temple. Vincent saw it too. It was brief, but something changed within Ms. Holmes. Something had knocked her into an unexpected trajectory as she held her gun at Vincent.

The impulse of pulling the trigger and deciding to just end Vincent was there, she must admit. But her best course of action was to unload all that frustration, all those nights of chasing up paper work, those nights of finally receiving news from the operation to find the human only to discover that they had found nothing and were running out of funds, were poured into Sinclair's corpse instead.

There was a voice in her head that whispered doubt. The drive to find the human overshadowed it, but when she least expected it, it spoke to her sometimes.

Ms. Holmes had known Vincent was a human for a while.

The hints were in plain sight. When Vincent wouldn't be looking and is too focused on having conversations with his colleagues or doing his job as an intern, she noticed small things that stood out. Most of them feeling forced, as if Vincent was desperate of trying to blend in.

But she knew Vincent was really trying to be normal. Be like them. . .not worry about his responsibilities. She saw that despite being a completely different, an extinct species, he was just trying to live. And what's wrong with that?

She'd realized that fact too late.

It also happened to be just perfect coincidences and reasons as to why she couldn't find much about Vincent's previous social life during his high school days, and the behavior he displayed at work, and most importantly, the presence of the A.I. - Anna. Coincidences don't work with her, no. Absolutely not.

There must be a reason.

Even with those factors considered, there really was no solid evidence to back this up. But one night changed that, when Ms. Holmes managed to pull Vincent out from the background and bring him to her place. He'd noticed Vincent snooping around for something, but she wasn't clear with what it was yet.

Only acted drunk and oblivious to bring his guard down and lower his suspicion that Ms. Holmes might be onto him. Then her first solid evidence came in light. If she wasn't aware and vigilant about it, her thoughts never would've settled.