Page 10 of The Mountain Man's Curvy Trick-or-Treat

The smell hits first—metal, ozone, something burnt. My brain catalogs everyDatelineepisode I’ve ever watched before my feet can even move.

The small space bristles with wires and metal panels—half workshop, half crime scene.

Parts are strewn across the floor and piled on tables, every piece halfway between repair and ruin. A few mallets and hammers lie nearby like an open-ended question.

I feel his warmth behind me before he speaks. “Wrong room.”

“What is this?”

He shifts his weight, eyes grim. “The beginning of a rebellion.”

My forehead knits. “What are you, the Unabomber or something?”

“Couldn’t pay me enough to wear a hoodie,” he jokes, but I’m too busy surveying the scene to laugh.

“You stole this?”

“Stole it? Absolutely not. That would go against everything I believe in.”

“Then?”

He rubs a hand over his beard, gaze lifting to the ceiling.

“Wind and rain are dying down now. Maybe it’s time for you to get a move on.”

“Not until you explain …this.” I motion around the room.

“This is above any top-secret clearance you can imagine—better left unspoken.”

“But—”

“But it’s what happens when you stop believing in what you’ve been fighting for. These constructs,” he says, lifting the broken pieces of one, “were created by me to wage war.”

My eyes narrow; my hands plant on my hips. Does he really expect me to believe this? And yet …what else is there to believe?

“Only I started questioning who the real enemy is, which led me to this.”

He nods toward the hammer.

“Wait, you want me to believe you’re some super advanced alien being, yet you’re using a humble human hammer to get the job done?”

He shrugs. “Don’t have to explain field disturbances, energy fluctuations to my commanding officer.”

“So you’ve gone from creator to saboteur?”

“Only one true creator—not me. I just build what they tell me to.”

“So what is this for?” I can’t hide the horror in my voice.

“Hunting down Wildbloods and their mates,” he says, as if that should make sense.

Okay, he’s officially crossed from “hot weirdo” to “possible cult leader with great hair.”

“And what’s a Wildblood?” I’m about over this cosplay bullshit.

“Alien hybrid mixes. Corrupted blood. Not like us Sentinels.”

“I need to go. While this has been … interesting, I can only play DIY Comic Con for so long—especially the genetic-superiority version. Hasn’t been cool since Hitler, Space Boy.”