The Midnight Call That Changed Everything
The detectives now had a prime suspect, but no idea where to find him. The investigation was threatening to stall again until midnight on a stormy Friday.
The direct line on Smith’s desk rang. When he picked up, there was no standard greeting, only the sound of heavy, raspy breathing on the other end, accompanied by the distinct hum of industrial machinery in the background.
“Hello?” Smith demanded.
A distorted, mechanical voice—clearly masked by software—spoke in a terrifying whisper. “The water was just the beginning. If you want to see the truth, look where the old metal rusts.” The voice rattled off a single address before the line went dead.
It was an address located in an abandoned, decaying industrial zone on the absolute outskirts of the city, miles away from the disaster zone.
Against standard protocol, and without waiting for a SWAT backup that would take an hour to assemble, Smith and Peterson grabbed their service weapons and rushed into the pouring rain. They couldn’t afford to wait. If Elias was planning a second attack, every second counted.
