Chapter 6: Static
**[Alex Stone's Apartment, Aethelburg - 11:52 PM]**
The scanner app crackled like a dying fire, spitting out fragments of the city's endless misery.
Alex hunched in the dark, his laptop's pale glow turning his face ghostly. The apartment felt smaller tonight, the walls pressing in like a cell. He was a man drowning in silence, and this digital lifeline was all he had left of the world that had cast him out.
The stitches in his side pulled with every breath, a constant reminder of how far he'd fallen. Four days of suspension felt like four years. He'd tried reading, tried sleeping, tried pretending he was just another civilian taking some time off.
All lies.
The truth was simpler and uglier: without the badge, without the job, he wasn't sure what he was. The apartment around him felt like a museum display—"Here lived Detective Alex Stone, before he fucked up everything that mattered."
He filtered through the scanner's noise—drunk college kids pissing on public property, screaming neighbors who'd probably be best friends again by morning, fender-benders that wouldn't matter by sunrise.
He was hunting for something. Anything. Some connection to the world he'd been kicked out of.
The coffee had gone cold hours ago. His neck ached from hunching over the laptop. But he couldn't turn it off, couldn't face the complete silence that would rush in to fill the void.
Then a voice cut through the static. Young. Nervous. Probably fresh out of the academy.
"Dispatch, this is 2-Adam-14 at 3400 Westlake. We're on scene for that wellness check."
Alex's spine went rigid. Every muscle in his body snapped to attention like he'd been hit with a cattle prod.
"Copy, 2-Adam-14. What's your status?" The dispatcher sounded bored, probably working her third straight double shift.
"Uh, Dispatch... there's a hell of a smell coming from apartment 12B. Mail's stacked to the ceiling. Nobody's answering our knocks."
A pause that stretched like a held breath. Alex could picture the rookie standing in the hallway, probably covering his nose with his sleeve, trying not to puke.
"Permission to make entry, Dispatch?"
"Go ahead, 2-Adam-14. Use your head. Let us know when you're inside."
Alex leaned forward until his chest nearly touched the laptop screen. The open mic picked up the officer's ragged breathing, the jingle of equipment on his belt, footsteps echoing in what sounded like a narrow hallway.
Then came the splintering crack of a door giving up its secrets. Wood against metal, the sound of privacy dying.
Silence. Long enough for Alex's heart to hammer three times, each beat echoing in his ears like gunshots.
When the voice came back, it had changed. Gone shaky. Gone cold. The rookie had just gotten his first real education in what the job actually looked like.
"Dispatch..."
A longer pause. Alex could hear the kid breathing hard, probably fighting his gag reflex.
"Jesus Christ. Dispatch, we got a body."
"Need a detective and the meat wagon. Right fucking now."
The dispatcher's boredom evaporated instantly. "Copy that, 2-Adam-14. Securing the scene. Detective and M.E. are en route. ETA fifteen minutes."
"Roger. We'll... we'll wait out here."
Alex could hear the relief in the rookie's voice. Nobody wanted to stay in a room with death, especially when it had been sitting there for days, ripening in the summer heat.
The words hit Alex like a punch to the gut.
A flicker in his skull grew into a roar.
*[CrimeSync Alert: Pattern match confirmed. Probability spike from 0.01% to 12.7%.]*
Not a coincidence anymore.
A hunt.
And it was calling his name.
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**[Westlake Avenue, Aethelburg - 12:28 AM]**
This was career suicide, and Alex knew it.
A suspended cop lurking around an active crime scene was like throwing gasoline on his own funeral pyre.
But the itch was unbearable. The need to know clawed at him like a living thing.
He pulled on the most forgettable clothes he owned—black hoodie, dark jeans, baseball cap yanked low. Just another shadow in a city full of them.
Westlake Avenue usually slept peaceful and quiet, all respectable brick buildings and tidy little lives.
Tonight it looked like a war zone.
Police cars lined the street like wounded animals, their red and blue lights painting everything in sick, pulsing colors. Alex parked a block away under a dying streetlight and settled in to watch his old life from the outside.
It felt like watching his own funeral.
Yellow tape carved up the sidewalk into sacred geometry. Uniforms moved with that particular cop swagger, faces set in granite.
He was locked out of his own world, and the barrier felt as real as prison bars.
A black sedan rolled up, and Alex's stomach curdled.
Miller climbed out like he was doing the world a favor, barking orders at a uniform before disappearing into the building. The investigation was already contaminated before it started.
Minutes later, the M.E.'s van pulled up. Dr. Finch shuffled out, looking like death warmed over, and followed Miller inside.
Alex's hands strangled the steering wheel.
Miller would see an old man who'd kicked the bucket. He'd look for signs of a break-in, maybe a robbery. He'd be fast, sloppy, and arrogant as hell.
He'd miss everything that mattered. He'd never even think to ask about the damn clocks.
Rage burned in Alex's throat like bad whiskey.
He was stuck out here, blind and useless.
Or was he?
Alex closed his eyes, shutting out the chaos. He'd never tried this before—reaching out with his mind instead of his hands.
He focused on the name, the address, letting them become a key in the lock of his thoughts.
*[CrimeSync: Remote query initiated... Stand by.]*
*[Target locked: Albin Croft, 3400 Westlake Avenue.]*
*[Scanning public records, city archives, social networks, academic databases...]*
The buzz in his head felt like touching a live wire.
*[...Processing... Match found.]*
*[Result: Albin Croft, 72 years old. Birth records confirm: Grandfather to Julian Croft.]*
The blood in Alex's veins turned to ice water.
Family. This wasn't random.
*[Profession: Retired electrical engineer. Former senior researcher, Aethelburg Polytechnic.]*
*[Specialty: Advanced chronometry, electromagnetic field theory, precision horology.]*
The words exploded in his mind like fireworks.
Chronometry. The science of measuring time.
Horology. The art of clocks.
Electromagnetic fields.
The stopped clocks weren't some weird detail for the evening news.
They were a signature. A calling card.
Someone had murdered Albin Croft with an electromagnetic pulse—a silent, invisible killer that could scramble electronics and, at just the right frequency, stop a human heart dead.
It was elegant. Terrifying.
And it would leave almost nothing for a mouth-breather like Miller to find.
Finch would call it a heart attack. Natural causes. Case closed.
And the killer would walk away clean.
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**[Westlake Avenue, Aethelburg - 2:49 AM]**
Alex sat in his car for two more hours, watching the grim ballet of police work.
He saw the neighbors getting interviewed, their faces mixing fear and that sick curiosity people get around death. They'd be talking about the smell, about how Mr. Croft kept to himself.
Nobody would mention electromagnetic murder weapons.
He watched them wheel out a body bag, just another piece of meat for the morgue. Albin Croft, the quiet man who understood time itself, reduced to evidence nobody knew how to read.
Nobody except Alex.
The frustration felt like a fist around his heart, squeezing until he could barely breathe. He had the key to the whole damn thing.
He knew the how. The how always led to the who.
But he was muzzled, leashed, powerless as a neutered dog.
Anonymous tips got filed in the trash. If he showed his face, they'd slap him with obstruction charges so fast his head would spin.
He was completely and utterly screwed.
The lights started thinning out as the circus packed up and moved on. Soon there was just one patrol car left, standing guard over yellow tape that would be gone by morning.
The city was already forgetting. Already moving on to fresher tragedies.
But Alex wouldn't forget. Couldn't.
He fired up his engine, the sound cutting through the night like a growl, and pulled away from his vigil.
If he couldn't be a cop, he'd have to be something else.
The APD wanted to hunt with a magnifying glass? Fine. He'd use a microscope.
He'd run his own investigation. A shadow operation running parallel to the official bullshit.
His first move was crystal clear.
He needed to know everything about the quiet old man who studied time.
And figure out what kind of work gets you killed by a ghost made of electricity.
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**DETECTIVE'S LOG: ALEX STONE**
**CASE FILE: 002 - The Clockmaker (Unofficial)**
**STATUS:** Body confirmed. Victim is Albin Croft, grandfather to Julian Croft. Official investigation underway with Det. Miller leading.
**KEY EVIDENCE (CRIMESYNC DATA):**
* Family Connection: Victim directly related to the Gilded Puppet killer.
* Murder Method: Targeted electromagnetic pulse (EMP) - explains the stopped clocks. Standard autopsy will miss this completely.
* Killer Profile: Highly intelligent, technically sophisticated, understands cutting-edge science.
**CURRENT OBJECTIVE:** Deep dive into Albin Croft's background, research, and enemies. Operation stays completely dark.
**End of Chapter 6**
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*"When you can't be the hunter, become the ghost that haunts the hunt."*
**To be continued...**