Corruption and Conversion

Chapter 5

"Hello my dear, it seems that you have been trying to look places you're not welcome. I thought I told you I liked you in one piece, though without a head you would be less nosy." Tye's jaw dropped hearing Hatter's bored voice at the other end of her phone.

"How did you get my number!?" She asked, panicked. How could he have her number and probably most of her contact information and she didn't even have his real name.

"Not important, but you would do best not to research The Wonderland. Take it as a friendly warning."

"If I don't then what? You'll find me and cut my head off yourself?" She asked, hoping he didn't hear just how shaken she was at the suddden intrusion of her personal life.

"Trust me, it would be much worse than a simple decapitation." He says, chuckling darkly.

Before Tye could ask anymore questions, she heard someone on the other end of the line.

The voice was muffled but she could make out the just of what they said. Something along the lines of 'these things won't steal themselves'.

Hatter had covered the microphone as she heard his muffled voice say that someone-she didn't quite catch the name-could wait a little while longer.

"Seems I must be going, heed my warning if you value your life. I would hate for my next meeting to be with a corpse. I would also greatly appreciate it if you didn't throw knives at my head the next time we meet." with that Hatter hung up the phone, leaving a confused Tye staring at her now black screen.

Her hands shook, and she had an unsettling urge to throw something. How could it be that these people knew her contact information, but she couldn't even find a lead.

She spent a good time fuming, though she knew it wouldn't get anything done.

With a sigh she decided to call it a day.

There was no one in the halls as she begrudgingly made her way back to the lobby.

Daro was still at the front desk, nose buried in a book, Tye wasn't sure he ever slept somehow always being at the front desk. She had once spent two nights without sleep to see if Daro ever left. He didn't, it was two nights of boredom she would never get back.

At this point she wasn't sure the man was a person, maybe an AI? Tye simply shrugged it off. There were a lot of weird characters working for Fenrir, Daro being one of the least concerning.

Tye was sure she had seen a half person, half bird walking around the halls when she had been spying on Daro. When she asked Tahara about it, the woman looked at her as if she had turned into a chicken that could speak. Another time Tye swore she saw a werewolf-like creature, again early in the morning.

She had seen so many of the creatures that she had become almost immune, even going so far as to give the recurring sightings names.

The bird was Joey, the werewolf was Daniel and the wendigo-ish creature was Carry.

With a quick goodbye, Tye went out to the parking lot, thankful that her motorcycle was still there.

She was in a daze on her way to The Wolves estate, barely noticing that she had already passed the Third Wall and missed the estate completely.

She quickly did a U-turn, the detour taking an extra half hour.

Tye trudged back to the estate, hanging her head in defeat. She didn't even bother knocking on Omega's door, just opened it and face planted onto her bed.

"You good?" Omega facing her friend with concern.

"Ya I'm just dandy, I sit down to do research, find nothing, then get a phone call from the people I was researching telling me to stop." Tye says, her voice muffled by her mask.

Tye feels the bed dip under Omega's weight, and a reassuring hand is placed on her shoulder.

"They called you?" Omega asks, her voice gentle.

"Yeah."

"I can track the number if you give me your phone." she says, hoping to cheer Tye up a little.

Tye looks over to Omega, pulling the older woman into a hug.

"By god's Omega, I don't know what I would do without you."

Tye quickly digs her phone out of her pocket, placing it in Omega's outstretched hand.

She watches in amazement as Omega plugs her phone into the usb port and gets to work.

Her hands flew over the keyboard, and a few minutes later she had pulled up a map of Zerence and found a search radius for the phone number.

"It's inside The Circle." Omega says, slight panic lacing her voice.

"Whatever they're doing, they need to be stopped." Tye says.

"Get Jasper,we're going on a road trip."

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A.N. 

Okay so this chapter was a bit shorter than my other ones because I didn't know another good place to stop until later in the story soooooo yeah. The next chapter will hopefully be getting the the main-ish part of the story. Hope you're having as much fun reading this as I did writing it,

Your friendly neighborhood person, Kiwi.

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