[AMY IN DISPATCH (2025)] CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Woof, woof!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Robert Robertson III pushed through the door, a grocery bag balanced on one hip. “Didn’t know missing lunch would make you so damn cranky.”

“WOOF!”

“Alright, damn. Fair enough.”

He set the bag down on the small kitchen counter and took in the familiar mess of the place he was still learning to call his apartment. After all the years and all the work he’d poured into building his alter ego, living as just Robert—plain, “ordinary” Robert—still felt like wearing someone else’s clothes. 

The space reflected that discomfort. There were a few sad decorations, half-unpacked boxes slumped in corners, and the kitchen still carried the clean bite of fresh paint and lemon-scented cleaner. A lingering reminder that someone had tried to make this place livable before he’d moved in.

Across the room, the source of the barking skidded slightly on the hardwood floor, claws scratching for purchase as he paced in impatient, circling loops.

“Relax, Beef.” Robert crouched, the joints in his knees popping in quiet protest, and scooped kibble into the metal bowl by the wall.

The small and stocky dog practically vibrated in place, his entire body tensed toward the bowl with laser focus. And when the  kibble hit the metal, Beef launched himself into it with the dedication of a creature who genuinely believed, with every fiber of his being, that this meal might very well be his last.

Robert leaned back against the counter with a tired sigh, pressing two fingers to the bridge of his nose. The migraine that had started that morning made itself known behind his eyes with a dull, persistent throb.

Field work again.

He’d spent the better part of the week chasing a chemical trail through three abandoned labs, two fake shipping manifests, and one extremely unpleasant storage locker that he’d rather not think about ever again.

As it was just him these days, that meant longer days, worse coffee, and a mountain of paperwork that seemed to reproduce overnight when he wasn’t looking.

He pushed off from the counter and grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair, the worn fabric cool against his fingers.

“Don’t destroy the apartment while I’m gone,” he told the dog.

Beef paused mid-chew, a few pieces of kibble tumbling from his mouth back into the bowl. He looked up at Robert with an expression of such complete, manufactured innocence that it circled all the way back around to suspicious.

Robert pointed a finger. “I mean it.”

Beef resumed eating with the unhurried confidence of someone who absolutely, definitely, under no circumstances meant it.

Robert sighed. “Yeah. That tracks.”

He grabbed his keys and headed out the door, the lock clicking shut behind him.

. . . . .

Twenty minutes later, Robert guided his sedan through the industrial district with the radio off and his fingers tapping an offbeat tune against the steering wheel.

He didn’t particularly miss the old Mecha Man vehicles. Sure, they’d been faster, more dramatic, and occasionally capable of launching rockets at the push of a button. But a normal car had its advantages, like not attracting every single goddamn camera in the city the moment you turned the key in the ignition. 

The warehouse district rolled past outside his window in a blur of rust and neglect, with rows of brick buildings stretching toward the night sky. Most of them were abandoned, their windows dark and empty. The rest squatted in the gloom, repurposed into storage units or logistics hubs, their identities reduced to faded numbers stenciled above loading docks.

One of them had its lights on.

Robert slowed, scanning the building as he approached. It was single-story, with corrugated metal, and a loading bay with the door pulled half-down. Light bled from the gaps around a smaller personnel door to the side, painting pale yellow lines on the gravel.

He pulled into the lot and cut the engine.

For a long moment he sat there, listening to the brief ticking of the cooling engine and the soft rasp of his own breathing. Then he reached over, grabbed the duffel bag from the passenger seat, and stepped out into the cool night air.

The metal door groaned softly as he slid it open, and inside, the air hit him all at once, thick with rust, concrete dust, and something else underneath. Something acrid and chemical that stung the back of his throat.

“Hey there,” Robert called casually, his footsteps echoing as he walked deeper into it. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

The figure tied to the chair in the center of the room jerked violently against the restraints, the metal legs scraping against concrete.

“YOU—!”

“Easy now.” Robert dropped the duffel bag onto a nearby table with a heavy thump. “Let’s not get too excited.”

The man in the chair was thin, pale, and bald, his scalp gleaming with sweat under the single bare bulb hanging overhead. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt—which seemed wildly inappropriate for someone who’d spent the night in a chair against his will—and greenish stains marred both sleeves where corrosive chemicals had eaten through the fabric earlier. The chemical smell radiating from him was almost overwhelming this close, a cloying mix of industrial solvent and burnt plastic.

“You can’t just kidnap people!” The bald man snapped, straining against the zip ties around his wrists.

Robert unzipped the duffel bag calmly, the sound oddly loud in the enclosed space. “Technically,” he said, not looking up, “I arrested you.”

“You broke into my lab!”

“You were manufacturing airborne corrosive agents.”

“That’s not illegal!”

Robert paused, his hands stilling over the bag’s contents. He lifted his head slowly, fixing the bald man with a look of mild disbelief.

“…You want to try that sentence again?”

The bald man glared, his jaw working silently, but he remained quiet.

Robert pulled a folding chair from against the wall, set it down across from his captive with an intentional scrape, and sat. Up close, Toxic looked even worse than he had the night before during the takedown, which was really saying something. Dark circles ringed his eyes, a thin sheen of sweat covered his face, and the chemical burns on his sleeves had started to flake at the edges.

“You know,” Robert said conversationally, leaning back in his chair, “normally I’d just turn you over to the authorities. I’ll file my report, wash my hands of it, and go home to my very demanding dog.”

“Then do it!”

“Normally,” Robert stressed.

The bald man’s frown deepened, confusion evident behind the defiance.

Robert leaned forward slightly, resting his forearms on his thighs. “But see, the problem is you weren’t just making chemicals.”

The man’s jaw tightened.

“You were selling them.”

Silence settled between them.

“And I’m very curious,” Robert continued, his voice still calm, still conversational, “who you were selling them to. Or maybe for. Better yet, in whose name, if you want to get poetic about it.”

“I’m not telling you shit.”

Robert nodded slowly, as if that were exactly the answer he’d expected. “Yeah. Figured.”

He reached into the duffel bag and pulled out a small sealed container. It was made out of metal, unmarked, and about the size of a lunchbox. He set it on the table between them with a soft click.

The bald man’s eyes flicked to it immediately. “What’s that?”

“Insurance,” Robert said. He leaned forward, folding his hands in front of him. “Here’s how this works. You tell me who your buyer is, who you’re working for, and who placed the order.”

“Or what?”

Robert pursed his lips, considering the question as though it had been asked in genuine good faith.

“Well,” he said, “I could hand you over to the authorities.”

The bald man snorted, a wet, contemptuous sound. “Do it.”

Robert tapped the metal container lightly with one finger.

“Or,” he continued, “I could arrange for a medical demonstration.”

Toxic blinked. The defiance in his eyes shifted, just for a moment. “You’re bluffing.”

Robert smiled slightly, the expression not quite reaching his eyes. “Maybe.”

He leaned forward even more, elbows on his knees this time, close enough now that the chemical smell was almost overpowering. But his voice was still calm.

“But here’s the thing. If I hand you over to the authorities, you get a lawyer. You get due process, years of appeals and paperwork and all the lovely protections of the legal system.”

The bald man swallowed hard.

“If I bring you somewhere else…” Robert paused, letting the weight of the unfinished sentence hang in the air between them. Then he smiled again, that same small, empty expression. “There would be no lawyers and no recordings. Just you, me, and whatever’s in this container.”

He tapped the metal box again.

“And I find out why someone was trying to buy enough corrosive compounds to melt through reinforced steel.”

The silence became almost tangible, filling the space between them.

The bald man shifted in the restraints, the chair creaking under the movement. Sweat traced a slow path down his temple.

“…You’re insane.”

“Maybe.” Robert leaned back in his chair again, folding his arms across his chest. “But you’re still going to answer the question.”

He let the silence hold for another long moment, watching the play of emotions across the captive’s face.

“So let’s try this again.” His gaze locked onto the man’s, unblinking. “Where. The fuck. Is. Shroud?”