Taking the initiative to attack shattered the mental suggestion cast by the invisibility spell, leaving Bella's position fully exposed.
The Invisible Man hit the deck with an agility that belied his identity as a scientist. He rolled onto his back, drew a gun, and fired repeatedly.
He was shooting from the ground up at a sharp thirty-degree angle—an awkward, tricky shot. Yet, it didn't seem to affect his aim at all; instead, it made things incredibly difficult for Bella.
Her target had vanished from her line of sight the moment he dropped. With her lack of combat experience, she didn't react fast enough to deliver a kick.
By then, the bullets were already flying.
The man's sudden maneuver caught her completely off guard. Bella scrambled back awkwardly, diving behind a metal rack before letting out a sharp whistle.
"Got backup?"
Hearing a noise behind him, the Invisible Man didn't hesitate. He fired three shots blindly toward the sound.
The bullets passed harmlessly through the body of the Truck Ghost. No blood, no impact—not even a tear in her white dress.
Her pale face drifted closer to him. Her colorless lips inhaled ever so slightly, and the Invisible Man felt his heart skip a beat—literally.
"Fake! It's all fake!"
Scientists are usually creatures of supreme confidence—especially someone who had reached the pinnacle of optical physics. When superstitious old women screamed about ghosts, he scoffed. Ghosts? Please. Just high-tech trickery.
His mental arithmetic was frighteningly precise, and he had an instinctive feel for light refraction and reflection.
He spun around and spotted a steel plate standing behind him. Convinced he had identified the source of the projection, he fired several furious shots at it.
Bella stared blankly. Who the hell is he shooting at?
She didn't waste the opening. Keeping low, she circled behind him and drove a fist straight into the base of his neck.
In movies, a single chop to the neck knocks a person out cold. In reality, it's much harder. Without strict training, most people can't pull it off. Hit too hard, and you kill them. Too soft, and you just make them angry.
Bella didn't care about the precision. Whatever—if she couldn't knock him out, killing him worked just as well.
Besides, legally speaking, the man had already "committed suicide." What was one more death?
The Invisible Man collapsed, the optical lenses covering the back of his neck shattering across the floor.
Bella grabbed the rope he had used on his wife earlier and hogtied him. Only then did she wave the Truck Ghost back to the vehicle to rest.
"T-that… that thing just now… what was that?!"
The middle-aged woman was terrified. Even seeing the husband who had tormented her for over a month lying defeated on the ground couldn't stop her uncontrollable shaking.
"Fake. All fake. Just your imagination," Bella soothed repeatedly, finally managing to calm her down.
She found the Invisible Man's hospital-grade stealth suit and quietly stowed it away.
It wasn't particularly useful to her—she believed in strength that came from within. Optical cloaking was fragile; one hit and you were exposed. Too many flaws.
But handing such advanced tech over to the government? That felt like a waste. Might as well keep a set for herself.
Bella didn't know any high-end scientists. The only person remotely qualified was Miss Natasha—well-read, versatile, and seemingly knowledgeable about everything. Maybe she'd understand optical cloaking?
After Bella sent the signal, Claire and Chris arrived in quick succession.
Humans are strange creatures—terrified one moment, brutally calm the next. As soon as she recovered a fraction of her composure, the middle-aged woman snatched the gun from the floor and—bang, bang, bang—emptied the clip into her husband, the Invisible Man.
Chris let out a long, defeated sigh. A month of hard work, turned to dust. He had hoped to extract clues about Flight 180 from the scientist.
The woman, however, calmly stated she would turn herself in. She refused to drag the three of them down with her.
The trio could only express their regret. Legally speaking, she was already a mentally unstable offender—she had killed her sister, and now she had killed a husband who, according to public records, was already dead. Technically… was this even a murder case anymore?
With the Invisible Man incident wrapped up, the three said their goodbyes to the woman and returned to Phoenix.
Less than twelve hours had passed—Death's pace was accelerating.
The siblings prepared to gather the remaining survivors to protect them, while simultaneously hunting for the mastermind behind the design.
Bella secretly drafted her own plan to kill Death itself. But first, she needed all the survivors in one place.
She and the siblings split up to make contact, trying to bring everyone together. But the damn American obsession with "freedom and liberty" became a massive obstacle.
One person was "busy." Another had to "take the kids to school." The rest were busy cursing the White House and the state government for failing to catch the killer. The underlying message was the same: they didn't believe the trio, didn't want protection—they just wanted their freedom.
Bella realized she'd been too naïve. Her reputation wasn't enough. To corral all these survivors, she needed the iron fist of authority.
Despite the siblings' desperate efforts, the victims kept dying.
A teacher who had survived the crash collapsed while cooking in her kitchen. A knife slipped from the magnetic rack behind her, impaling the back of her head and exiting through her eye socket—death was instantaneous.
Bella and the siblings rushed to the teacher's home to investigate for signs of "the enemy."
The house wasn't big. She had a husband—but their relationship was strained. She had a child—but the kid was rarely home. A neighbor's dog had smelled blood and alerted the police.
By the time the trio arrived, the area was already cordoned off with yellow tape.
Chris flashed his FBI badge to get the briefing. The police reported no leads. No signs of forced entry or robbery, no evidence of domestic violence. Preliminary conclusion: accidental death.
"That guy gives me a very cold feeling." Bella pointed toward a tall, gaunt Black coroner standing just outside the tape.
The teacher's death was gruesome. The knife was still embedded in her skull; vitreous fluid mixed with brain matter and blood smeared across her face. Even the officers wheeling the body out looked green.
But the coroner's expression didn't shift. In fact, he seemed intrigued, examining the angle of the knife with a detached, professional curiosity.
If Bella hadn't pointed it out, Claire and Chris wouldn't have noticed. Coroners dealt with corpses daily—having a somber demeanor was normal. Being cheerful would have been the weird part.
But once she mentioned it, the siblings took a closer look—and yes, something was off.
The coroner was too cold. So cold he looked at the body not as a person, but as an object. Like a broken toy. Or a pinned insect.