162 Is KK!

"I'd actually always been curious about something."

Carl stood at the edge of an abandoned high-rise in Dogtown. The night wind swept sand and dust through rusted rebar. She bit down on the end of a chocolate bar, its cloying sweetness spreading through her mouth as she kept talking with Kenichi Shiro and Slider over the comms.

"After deciding to make a move, I spent some time carefully studying Aguilar's movements and kill records." Carl bit through the last piece of chocolate and casually stuffed the plastic wrapper into her pocket.

"I found at least twelve incidents attributed to Aguilar with subtle contradictions. When you put those details together, something feels very wrong."

"Subtle oddities?" Kenichi Shiro's voice came through the comms. The faint current-like sound of surveillance screens switching could be heard in the background. He was confirming the Akechi Squad members' movements. Everyone was resting in their assigned areas as ordered; no one had approached the surveillance room where he and Slider were.

Carl lightly tapped the cracked concrete with the tip of her boot. "The most obvious issue is the time gap. Three sets of cases took place on the East Coast and West Coast less than two hours apart, but the straight-line distance between them was over four thousand kilometers. If those jobs were really done by the same person—"

Carl paused. "Either Aguilar can teleport like Superman, or we're dealing with more than one Aguilar."

"Superman?" There was a rare hint of teasing in Kenichi Shiro's voice. "That superhero from ancient Old America comics? It's rare for you to mention something I know." The blue light of the surveillance screens reflected off his face, illuminating the slight lift at the corner of his mouth. He gestured for Slider to pull up the database, his fingers