Heterodox (BOOK 2)

Chapter 9

~Finley~

Hours earlier...

Glass crunches under my boots as I walk on another of U.N.O's artwork. The deadly kind.

No casualties luckily, but the count of the injured would have risen over ten if we hadn't locked off this part of the highway. More damaged cars too. Multiple tire tracks drawn on the road from the disastrous ride these people had the unfortunate pleasure to partake in.

The firefighters are doing their job well, taming the flames coming from one of the many car accidents. Almost all are rescued and are tidying up in the two ambulances. Forensics are on the ground. Policemen are looking at the damages and trying to keep people from getting rowdy over their cars which they probably spent a lifetime pay for. Or in one's case a loan and no insurance.

Poor guy.

Smoke fills my nostrils as I continue to walk on the shards and splinters. No worries; my boots have done a nifty job protecting me so far. My mind goes back to when Chief Davis received the phone call. The scary part was that he was completely calm. I have no doubt that those drones would be flying over Vixen Vale tonight.

The news van just drove in with Ansel grinning widely. Too wide.

Gotta get to Mathias before they start haranguing me for answers.

When I get there, he immediately draws my attention to the screen where he's keeping an eye on a drone. We can see an efficient bird's eye view as it flies higher to capture the whole thing. Wordlessly, he uses the mouse to show me where we are standing. It's a bit confusing at first but then he zooms out. It opens my eyes wider than it should have.

"You see it?" Mathias asks.

"Yeah."

The glass isn't scattered randomly over the highway; it is in the dead center only taking up about seven kilometers. It's their name and the 'o' is the symbol. An extra touch would have been orange glass they broke and sprinkled but I guess they couldn't afford it. Just plain clear glass. But something looks slightly off about this one. It looks different from the one I first saw at their street mural.

"No rest for the wicked, eh," Mathias chuckles, taking a sip of his coffee.

"What time did they have to do all of this?" I inquire, scratching my head of blonde hair and peering at the screen. "This must have taken about an hour or more and it surely wasn't here this morning!"

"My guess is that they did this in the hours when everyone's at work," Ethan says appearing out of nowhere, "Barely anyone's on the road at around nine to ten A.M. Sorry for being late."

He's right. Around those hours, almost no cars are on the road and if they wanted to pull a stunt it was very easy. The bushes on the side of the highway could have been a good hideout if they saw any cars coming. I'll send some officers to look it over. That's right. Since Ethan and I are leading this case, we pretty much have an upper hand on anything going on with it. Crossing my hands over my chest, I raise a brow at him. "We came here in the same car. How can you possibly be late?"

"Ansel caught up with me with the rest of his camera crew. There seems to also be a few teenagers trying to get the scoop. I think they called themselves... The UNcover? They seem dead set on getting information and interviews for their YouTube channel."

Mathias and I look back at the little squabble of teenagers donning purple t-shirts and a white X over U.N.O's sign. The Parademics don't seem too keen on allowing them to interview the injured patients; hereby causing a loud argument amongst them.

"They are causing too much trouble for an interview," grumbles Mathias, "We should send some officers to control the situation."

"Do you think we should question them? Their motives?"