Countless cracking sounds started occurring around the storage room, as well as the entire precinct. Aimee looked around and all she could see was that there were patches of the wall, the ceiling and even the air becoming slightly brighter bit by bit, as if there were a bunch of "filters" in the air that were peeling away. Some kind of weight also seemed to be lifted from Aimee's back and shoulders, and the dim light in the storage room was almost as warm as the sun up high in the clear sky.
Detective Lee woke up with a series of hoarse coughs, and when he was helped up by Aimee, the other officers in the storage room also started waking up.
"Are we safe now?" Detective Lee asked.
"Let me go check." Aimee took a look at Mr. Night Owl, who was now back into the size of a normal cat and no longer had the dark tears in the eyes: "Stay here. Lock the door behind me."
When Aimee came out of the storage room, she found that many of the officers lying on the floor were also waking up, the smoke and fog on the floor was mostly dissipated. The officers started to wake up one by one, and they stumbled towards each other to hug in celebration with tears running down their faces.
"Jason! Jason?" Aimee sped up her steps towards the evidence room.
"Bang!" the door of the evidence room swung open forcefully and banged on the wall, and Jason came out of it with an officer holding him by his arm and shoulder. This officer seemed to have recovered more than Jason, who's right eye turned grey and pale and seemingly not able to see.
"Where's Detective Parlov and Officer Jain?" Jason asked while looking around: "Where are they?"
"Hold on, hold on." Aimee went over and helped Jason stand straight: "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, I am okay." Jason seemed anxious and worried: "Where are they?"
"They're… they're here." one of the uniformed officers came to Jason's side and told him in a trembling voice.
The detective and the uniformed officer were on the ground, with calm facial expressions on their faces. They were still breathing, but Jason could easily tell that they would probably never wake up.
Jason's body fell onto the ground so fast, that neither the uniformed officer or Aimee was able to catch him. Tears filled up both his eyes and started dripping down, the exhaustion from the fight seemed to have finally caught up with him, and his heart and stomach instantly tightened.
"Look, man, you did the best you could." one of the officers standing nearby tried to console Jason: "They were swallowed by that monster before you even found us. There's nothing you could do."
"Wait, what?!"
"Captain!" just this moment, a detective came down from the third floor and ran to the captain: "The perps in holding … I think you should see this."
Jason looked at the detective, and after a short moment of hesitation, he followed the captain and the detective up through the stairs with Aimee and Detective Lee and a mostly black cat with small patches of white fur.
According to the captain, the overflow holding room on the third floor was used to hold especially violent or deranged suspects before they were fully booked or processed. And before they even stepped into the third floor, all of them smelled blood and other foul things in the air.
"Fucking hell..." even the captain covered his nose when he looked into the holding room - inside the room there were around ten people in there, all of whom were lying on the ground in the same condition as other officers who lost their lives in the limbo, except for one - one of the perps with lots of tattoos on his skin was sliced cleanly in half from the middle of his body, and his internal organs were all over the place on the ground: "What did this? Who..."
"I think I did it." Jason said with a frown on his face: "The thing that created the limbo - I killed it this way. And what happens in crossover limbos can physically affect the real world as well - so I think this might just be it - or him - in the real world."
"We found him wandering the streets, carrying a severed human hand." the captain said: "The only thing we have on him is a partial fingerprint, but that print was collected in another crime scene about six-seven decades ago, so we sorta ruled out the theory that they're the same person. Now? Now we're not so sure."
"I need to bring him with me." Jason turned to the captain and said: "This guy - this guy's not human."
"I - um - we need to think about this..." the captain was still hesitant.
"Meow." the black cat walked over between the captain's feet and purred in a soft tone.
"But - I mean - did you just say this guy's not human?" the captain rubbed his temples and said: "You know what? We can't process a non-human perp. It's just way above our pay grade. Can you let me know what you find out about him when you're done?"
"Sure. Sure." Jason and Aimee both took a quick look at the black cat.
"You're welcome." a female voice resounded in Jason's ears.
Just this moment, the captain's phone rang.
The captain picked up, and after a short while, he put down the phone and held it to Jason: "Yeah, sorry, this person says he needs to talk to you."