The Spectral Agent is my first full-length novel and an experiment. We are independent creators, publishing chapter by chapter as a podcast and text. It’s designed to be heard. We’d love to receive your feedback so we can tell stories better.
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⚠️ Content Warning: This chapter contains discussions of death and suicide.
A new lead pulls Viktor into a forgotten corner of the city, where the remnants of the gang's past may hold the key to unraveling the present. Something about the place brings Chai into sharper focus and shakes something loose from his cloudy memory. But another dead end begins to tarnish Viktor's hope.
Chapter 6
I left the cafe with Kira’s words spiraling in my head. She smiled when we hugged goodbye, but her expression carried the weight of her own burdens.
For the walk home, I wanted to be lost in my own thoughts. Father. Mother. Olivia. Ben. Chai. How many of them were connected?
When I got to my apartment, I reached up to insert the earring. A trickle of blood fell as I forced it into the still-raw hole.
I already knew this was going to turn into a big habit. I hadn’t expected much when I touched it, just the usual snarky remarks or a half-formed suggestion. But today, Chai materialized in front of me, his full apparition clearer than ever before.
“Finally, man. My hair's not goofy,” he said, grinning.
"I was joking, and it is goofy."
“There’s something I need to show you.”
“What now?” I asked, still holding onto the earring like it was a headphone.
“A hideout." He sounded so very pleased with himself. "The gang used to run stuff out of there. Weapons, cash, info—whatever they needed.”
I leaned back against the door I just walked through, running a hand slowly down my face. “And you’re just telling me this now?”
Chai looked at me with his blazing red eyes.
“I just remembered earlier, while you were busy having your little sibling chit-chat. If only you had touched the earring then, we could have already been following this lead.”
I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. "What about this Ben kid, shouldn't we be investigating him?"
"Sure, maybe we'll find something about him there." Chai didn't sound very convincing.
Leads were scarce, and the weight of every dead end was pressing heavier on me, so I said, “It’s worth a shot.” I still had my coat on, but now I needed some gear. I pocketed my multitool and flashlight.
As we walked down the steps of the apartment, Chai told me where to find the hideout. It wasn't on the island, so we'd need transportation. It would be best to avoid taxis for a while.
Sometimes it seemed like Chai could read my mind because he said, "No one pays attention to people talking to themselves on the subway."
He had a good point.
✹✹✹
The hideout was tucked in a forgotten corner of Brooklyn, a dilapidated warehouse that leaned against the sky. The smell of rust greeted me as I pushed open the giant door, screeching it against the floor. I could already tell that nobody was here.
Chai appeared beside me, eyes scanning. “This is it.”
The warehouse had one large main room. Was it still called a room if it was as big as a basketball court? Aisles of bare metal shelving towered over us. It was vast, vastly empty.
I turned on my flashlight. L.E.D., aircraft aluminum, military-grade. Did that mean lowest bidder or highest quality? Marketing never seemed to agree with reality. It cast a narrow cone of daylight. Outside of the beam was total darkness except for Chai's eerie red glow.
The air was thick with dust kicked up by every step of my tactical boots. I moved cautiously, eyes darting to every shadow, every piece of debris that might hold a clue.
Stepping over scattered boards, I muttered, “Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in a while”.
Chai frowned, his apparition flickering for a moment.
“It wasn’t like this. This place was alive. People coming and going, deals happening in every corner. Now it’s… dead."
At the end of an aisle, a crate sat alone and forgotten. After clipping the flashlight to my coat, I fidgeted with my multitool's tiny notches to get a flat screwdriver out. I was glad I couldn't hear Chai undoubtedly laughing at my struggle.
I knelt to pry the crate lid open. Inside was nothing but remnants of packing material. No papers, no weapons, no sign of anything that could lead us closer to the gang.
My frustration bubbled up, but I swallowed it down, forcing myself to keep searching.
“There’s nothing,” I said, standing up and brushing the dust from my hands. I touched the earring, “Whatever was here, they cleared it out.” I saw Chai’s hands clench into fists at his sides.
Sighing, I stepped away from the crate. “They probably abandoned this place a while ago, after you—”.
“—after I died?” Chai finished for me. He stared coldly and hissed, “Yeah, I got that.”
Sometimes his voice sounded like a phone call from across the ocean. I didn’t respond and turned my attention back to the warehouse.
I had hoped to find something—anything—to justify the trip. But it was all just another dead end. I had too many questions and not enough answers. I had to ask.
“Chai, what was it like?”
“What was what like?”
“When you died. Did you possess Olivia right away?”
His frustration turned to confusion. “I think so… I don’t exactly remember.”
“So, does that mean Olivia was nearby?”
“Um, maybe…" Static flickered across his apparition. "Yes! She was there with... someone.”
I thought about what he said, it didn’t make a lot of sense. Why would Olivia be at a gang shootout? I’ve known her for five years and we spent a lot of time together—that is, when I wasn’t held up at the police station.
She was a kind-hearted soul. I couldn’t see her getting involved with a gang. She was a nanny, watching kids for a living. How could that lead to a life of crime?
Unless… ”Chai, was she there with Ben?”
He snapped his fingers. “Yes! They were both there.”
“Ok, so Olivia was taking care of Ben. That has to have something to do with her murder.”
“Yeah, probably. The old man wasn’t the type to let loose ends unravel.”
I didn’t like the thought of that. But it gave me something to go on. The gang was now the top suspect for her murder. I had to file that away for later, though. Since Chai seemed to be able to recall some things, I wanted to see if he could remember anything else.
“Why was Ben there?”
“I dunno man, likely psychic stuff.”
”Alright. So, you possessed Olivia because she was nearby when you died. Why did you possess her and not someone else?”
Chai stood there perplexed. “I guess so. I didn’t really have any control over it. I’m not sure I can just possess anyone. I tried.”
“You tried? Before I showed up?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t sure how I got there. I was kinda pissed. I died, and nobody asked me if I wanted to by the way, and then I didn’t end up in Heaven… or Hell, I guess that’s where I should be. But I was just in some babysitter’s head.”
“Did you try to talk to her?”
”Sure, at first. But I could only appear as a crow—like before you found my cross. Do you know how hard it is to try and mime as a crow? She probably just thought she was seeing things.”
He paused and looked at the warehouse ceiling. I didn’t want to interrupt his thoughts as it could make him lose his grasp on this moment of lucidity.
“I was stuck as a crow. I even began to think like a crow. Man, Viktor, I tried to pick up shiny things and eat bugs, that's how bad it was. I didn’t want to become a bird brain. So, I left."
For a blink, I saw the crow staring at me with cunning, but animal red eyes. I blinked again, and he continued in human form.
"I tried to jump into other people, but it never worked, no matter how hard I tried. Instead, I tried to end it, just go towards the light at the end of the tunnel, you know? I left her body, then….”
He stared off into the distance, face twisted in pain. Before he could get lost in the darkness, I prodded gently, “Where did you go?”
He sighed. I could tell he was winding up for an explanation.
“I went to a place… but it was nowhere—a ‘nowhere place’. I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear… couldn’t feel, yet I could see, hear—feel—everything.
You know how those white noise apps block out sound, but they do it by making more sound? It was like that. Everything all at once, but too much noise to get a clear signal.
I expected to pass on to the afterlife, but I ended up in an abyss. A thousand years of silent-screeching had passed before I could remember who I was.”
To me, that sounded like a monotonous, yet torturous existence. However, something didn't add up. “But that was only a year ago, and somehow you were in Olivia the night she died.”
“Yeah, well, it must be one of those Einstein relativistic things. One year here, a thousand years there…wherever ‘there’ is. Being happy and sad, or in agony and ecstasy, or dead and alive for a thousand years was worse than being a crow."
Chai seems to be a bit of an idiot most of the time, but then he says something like that. How much of him is an act? How much did he suffer in this place that was nowhere?
I didn’t get a chance to ask because he continued.
“I tried to go back and wander the earth, haunt a few people who did me bad. But I couldn’t find my way out. I began to think about all the people in my life. Nothing happened.
That is, until I remembered Olivia. Just then, a red star caught my eye—a pinprick in the haze. I pulled it close and looked through and there she was, sitting in her apartment. But I watched her way too long, she was pulling me down. So, I went back to her.”
His explanation was poetic and vaguely familiar, like a song I can't ever remember the lyrics to. I couldn't even begin to process what existed beyond death—no time for an existential crisis. Instead, I focused on the case and returned to my questions.
“The cross—that somehow made you appear human again. How?”
“That was my Mom’s. I wasn’t really religious or anything, but it’s all I had left of her. She used to wear it as a necklace under her shirt and say I love you so much, I'll cross my heart and hope to die. So that's where I put it, close to my heart.”
"So, the cross must have allowed you to become whole again. Your… soul, for lack of a better word, was fading, and the cross grounded you here like an antenna struck by lightning."
He nodded, all talk had left him. After hearing Chai's story and seeing how important the cross was to him, I realized I complained about wearing it as an earring, and I now felt like an absolute idiot.
I could see the area around his eyes was red, even with his aura casting a red glow on the warehouse floor. I couldn’t bear pressing on him any further.
“That was a long enough walk down memory lane for one night. Let’s get out of here.”
✹✹✹
The silence stretched between us as we stepped back into the night. The city lights blinked in the distance, a sharp contrast to the desolation we’d just left behind. With no new clues to investigate, I figured I might as well go home.
Chai walked beside me, his apparition subdued. I was still holding onto the earring like it was a lifeline. For a while, he didn’t say anything. Just as we reached the subway entrance, he stopped.
“Wait!” he said, his voice low and urgent. “I just remembered something.”
I turned to him, my brow furrowed. “What is it?”
“There was a guy in the gang—Lenny, I think they called him—not high up."
As Chai spoke, his expression lit up with recognition.
"He wasn’t exactly loyal. There were rumors he worked with the cops, feeding them scraps in exchange for staying out of trouble.”
The pieces clicked into place in my mind. I remembered a detective working with an informant for a case against the gang.
“It's not uncommon for low-level thugs to make deals with the police,” I replied. "But those people usually end up dead under mysterious circumstances."
Whether those circumstances were because of the police or the gang was something I didn't want to ponder aloud.
Chai barged into my thoughts, "Yeah, buddy, that's above my pay grade. Did you know him?"
"Yeah, I remember. There was a guy who informed on the gang, but I didn't work on that case or talk to him. They used some codename for him so he wouldn't be found out."
I glanced down at the subway stairs, the faint hum of an approaching train vibrating through the ground.
“Do you know where he’d be?” Chai asked.
I thought for a minute. I could call Zoe and ask, but she already helped me find Chai's identity and wouldn't be up for any more of my off-duty shenanigans.
I snapped my fingers, “I might know where he works.” I started down the stairs. “There’s an office in Midtown that I heard he’s been seen around. They're watching to see if he'll do something stupid. But so far, it just looks like a cover job. Let's start there.”
As I waited for the train, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this lead will go nowhere like all the rest.
What was I doing? What was the point of all this searching? Olivia’s death was probably a suicide. I barely even knew Chai. Why did I even care about his death?
The Chief's words echoed, Viktor, you’re one of my best. That must have been a cruel joke. How could I ever be a detective? I've been stumbling from one clue to the next. No intuition. No deduction. Just dumb luck.
Maybe I'm losing my touch.
Maybe I'm just losing my mind.
"Hey man, I've got a good feeling about this. It might finally crack the case open." There was Chai again, paragon of optimism.
I couldn't decide if I hated him or loved him for it.
The doors to the train slid open, and I stepped inside. The faint warmth of the car was a welcome reprieve from the cold.
As the train lurched forward, I leaned against the window. My reflection stared back at me. Red eyes glinted faintly, a reminder of the ghost who shared my path.
Continue to Chapter 7.
