Broken Storm Part One by May C. West Page B

mysteriously.
    Chase got up from his chair. ‘Did you really drag
me out to see this? She is obviously off screen.’
    ‘She is not off screen. She was standing right in
front of me,' he pointed out carefully.
    ‘Victor, I'm looking at the footage now, there's
nobody there,’ Chase said through an exasperated breath.
    ‘But there was somebody there, that's what
I'm trying to tell you, she was clearly in shot, she is just not... on the
footage,’ he managed. Then Victor, a man fiendishly hard to rattle, looked up
at Chase with a shaky expression.
    Was this some kind of game? Was Victor trying to
distract Chase away from his guilt?
    ‘What the hell are you talking about, Victor?'
    'I don't know. All I know is that she was standing
right in front of me. She was in line of the cameras. She should be on the
footage. But she’s not.’ He looked up sharply.
    Silence spread between them.
    Chase could hear the wind outside, however mutely,
as they were protected from it by thick, reinforced windows.
    It caught his attention.
    Did it blow harder and faster in that moment?
    Chase was not a suspicious man. He was a man of
science. He'd wanted to devote his life to being a doctor, after all.
    He was not religious, and he always wanted
something to be proven before he tried it.
    Nonetheless, Chase had gotten stuck up in this
world. The mystery of Aiko.
    And despite the fact he kept on telling himself,
trying to prove to himself that he certainly was not superstitious, the wind
outside clearly blew louder, buffeting against the windows despite their
strength.
    There was no such thing as a goddesses of the
elements or spirits of nature.
    They were relics from histories long past, myths no
longer needed in the modern age.
    Yet Chase Harlow, 15 years ago, had been sitting in
his father's office when a statue of Aiko had exploded.
    Some things could not be explained, and right now as
Victor looked up at him, his expression certainly not one of jest, Chase realized
this was another one of those things.
    Swallowing hard, he tried to comprehend what he was
being told.
    She was in view, she couldn't be seen.
    What the hell did that mean?
    Chase knew that there were certain technologies
being developed by the military that would allow the wearer to scramble footage
taken of them. But they wouldn’t disappear. The footage itself would simply
become filled with static. It was interference, not this , whatever this
was meant to be.
    ‘I'm telling you, she was in view,' Victor assured
him again.
    Chase shivered. His whole body felt cold, from his
skin to his very bones.
    He didn't know what to do with this fact, because
he had no idea what it meant, and no idea whether it was true. Perhaps Victor
was mistaken. Perhaps she hadn’t been in view or perhaps he had brought up the
wrong footage, some other moment of Victor tugging open the door to shout at
some unfortunate person along the corridor. It wouldn’t be the first time,
after all, that Victor Woolworth had let loose with his trademark bluster.
    But no matter how hard Chase tried to convince
himself that this was nothing, a strange feeling niggled at his gut.
    He backed off, heading towards the door. 'I don't
know what this means,' he said very honestly and candidly.
    'Neither do I,' Victor confirmed.
    'Just make sure...' Chase trailed off as he latched a
hand onto the door and opened it.
    Make sure of what? That Victor wasn't mistaken?
    How could he do that? Chase only had his friend’s
word here, and though Victor was trustworthy, what he was suggesting seemed
ridiculously fantastic, beyond the realms of science, into an area Chase was
not and would never be comfortable with.
    'Are they any closer to finding her?' Victor asked
in a low, respectful voice.
    Chase shook his head and finally walked out.
    No they weren't.
    But he knew enough to realize that the longer this
drew on, the more time would run out for Keiko.
    The Sect were not forgiving. They were not
incompetent, and they