ch. 10 The Supernatural?

~Arizona, on a secluded highway.~

Jack had just sent his first girlfriend home, and was now talking on the phone with his second girlfriend while driving his car. In the dark night, the car lights flashed, only just barely illuminating a sign beside the road

[Route 28]

The two lovers were deep in conversion, making arrangements to see each other and hook up, when suddenly the phones signal was interrupted. Immediately afterwards, the car radio began to make a crackling noise.

Jack frowned and turned off the radio, only to then find that his breath had condensed into a white mist as the temperature in the car had dropped, even though it was the middle of the summer.

The lights in the car flickered a few times, when suddenly a woman's voice came from right behind Jack: "Please...send me home."

Jack felt every hair on his body stand up as the car suddenly drifted on the highway, finally stopping in the road with great difficulty.

After taking a few breaths, Jack turned his head to look back, only to find a youngg blonde woman in a thin white pyjamas sitting in the back seat, with a pair of beautiful green looking him in the eyes.

"You...you..." Jack stammered, "When did you get in the car?"

The woman leaned forward slightly, revealing a beautiful face and a curvy body underneath her thin slightly see through pyjamas.

"Please...send me home!"

The shoulder strap of her pyjamas slipped down to her arm as ack swallowed hard, using every ounce of willpower to look away from her chest "Okay, but where is your home?"

The woman leaned back into her seat, and said quietly, "Forward."

Jack licked his lips lightly as he tried to calm his mind, and restarted his car and drove forward.

After droving for more than ten minutes under the guidance of the woman in white, Jack finally drove the car onto a very dilapidated steel bridge.

Jack leaned out from the window, looking around at the desolate surround and the danger looking bridge, only to frown and say, "Are you sure this is the right way? It doesn't look like a place anybody could live."

As he said this, Jack turned his head, but the unknown woman had appeared in the passenger seat next to him without making any noise, frightening Jack again at her sudden appearance.

But this time before Jack could speak, the woman rushed over, pressed her body against Jack, and put her small hands into his clothes.

Though after a moment, the car shook violently as a pained scream echoed out.

Though after a few more dozen shakes, the car returned turned quite.

Deathly quite.

***

Nick was driving a black SUV, this was an undercover police car for N.I.A. agents in the field, outfitted with minor bullet proof protection and a prisoners partition.

With Willies recommendation and Nick's credit earned on Flight 121, he has successfully got promoted to a special agent.

Unlike independent Agents who can take on any case ranging from grave robbery and disappearances to murder, Special agents are expected to take on the more violent case. Beside that, there really wasn't much difference besides being assigned to investigate anomalies every now and then.

Almost a month has passed since the snake-infested flight incident, Edward Kim was never arrest and it was estimated that he had gone abroad. Therefore, Holly's protective house arrest on Nick was also cancelled.

During this time Nick was not idle, except for eating and sleeping, he almost lived in the shooting range and the gym. After continuous training, he felt like he completely adapted to his new body and it's upgrades.

His new body had been specially trained by the N.I.A. and had mastered shooting and fighting skills, but under the influence of his absorption ability, Nick's strength was much stronger than it had been before.

He didn't know if it was the overall boost in ability that the human had given him or the steadyness of the snake, but Nick realized he could draw his gun far faster than most normal humans, and his accuracy was tremendous.

---------

After driving for a few hours, Nick was finally approaching the location that he had found suspicious.

Approaching a steel bridge, he saw warning tape had been put up on the road, blocking his car from getting any closer. The local police were at the scene, either searching the area for evidence or walking police dogs along the river in search of anything of important.

Parking his car, Nick pulled out his ID and hung it on his neck as he walked over to the taped off crime scene.

'This makes the fifteen disappearance of men who parked near this bridge within ten years, no suicide note or body to be found to be found for any of them. Something ain't right about this.'

Walking towards the crime scene, Nick flashed his ID at the man near the tape before walking over to the man clearly in charge of maintaining the crime scene "Special Agent Nick, N.I.A."

The police officer glanced at the ID on Nick's chest before raising an eyebrow slightly surprised: "Is the N.I.A. so bored that they send three of you? Two of your colleagues left as soon as you arrived here."

Nick followed the police officer's line of sight, he saw that not far away, two tall men were walking over to an old Chevrolet Impala. Unlike Nick who was forced to wear a suit and tie, these two seemed to have causal everyday clothes.

'Strange, must be a local branch or something, maybe undercover?'

"What's the situation?" Nick said as he remembered the two men for later.

The police officer led Nick to the car on the old bridge "The car is still there, but the people are gone. No traces of blood or signs of a struggle was found, so the preliminary guess is that driver got out of his car and jumped off the bridge to commit suicide"

Nick leaned over, from outside of the car window he could see that the car key were still inserted in it.

'If this truly was a regular suicide, then why no note and why this spot in particular? This man was a twenty three year old gun owner and this bridge isn't very tall, so why would he risk it by Jumping and possibly suffering a broken back before drowning after minutes of agonizing pain instead of just using his gun, making it quick and painless? There's better ways to kill yourself than to jump off a mildly tall bridge, there's got to be more to this case!'

"Has the corpse been found and have you ran the plates?"

The police officer shook his head, "The river under the bridge is very turbulent, so it may have rushed downstream. The car belongs to a man named Jack George"

Putting on a pair of gloves, Nick gently pulled open the car door, only for him to come to a stop and frown. Raising his nose to the air and taking a deep sniff, Nick didn't smell the usual fragrance of cheap car freshener or fastfood that one woukf expect from a car, but instead an incredibly faint fishy smell.

The officer looked at Nick weirdly, but he wasn't paying attention.

Closing the car door, Nick asked "So what's do we know about Jack George? Can I have his file."

"Well he's a 21-year-old male, a local who lives in the small town not far away." A middle-aged man walked over and reached out to Nick, "Owen, local sheriff."

"N.I.A. Special Agent, Nick." Nick shook hands with Sheriff Owen as the sheriff took out a folder from his binder and handed it to Nick, sighing loudly.

"I knew Jack personally...that boy. His social life was good, but his private life was very messy. He's known around town for being a playboy and that got him in a heap of trouble, we've had to stop husband's and boyfriends from trying to beat the boy senseless be he doesn't learn. Here's everything we've got on him."

"Thank you very much sheriff Owen", Nick gave a charming smile before handing over his business card to Owen, "I will read over this document first, before I go investigate. Please let me know if the search team makes any progress."

Owen begrudgingly took the card. Dealing with this string of disappearance was already tricky, but now there are three N.I.A. agent who had intervened, so he didn't have much choice but to comply with them.

After leaving the crime scene, Nick drove to the town that Jack is from. After entering the town Nick planned on going to the police station, but after seeing an old school diner by the road, he decided to go and eat first.

Before Nick had died, he was going to college to become a lawyer, once again following after his Aunt Holly's job as he didn't have any aspirations. Despite what people might say, looking attractive helps win case which meant that he had a strick diet of very healthy and awful tasting food.

After pushing the door of the diner, Nick looked around the shop habitually, but his attention was attracted by two young men sitting up by the corner.

Thinking back to the crime scene, it seems that these two men were also N.I.A. agents and a thought occured to him.

'Is this just a coincidence....Or is my danger attraction acting up?!'