An old man, a dead faced young girl, and a little boy turned to a police station. The stopped and a gelatinous blob of psions flew through the wall, pored through a guard’s memory and extracted the wifi password.

She tapped open the world app, connected to the wifi and found the computer the cameras report to, not that it was hard considering it was the only computer which wasn’t powered down for the night.

“Tch, they’re not using password as their password this time,” she grumbled.

“Try superman or iloveyou,” the old man said.

“That didn’t work either,” she said.

“Throw every word in the dictionary at it, try it with and without random numbers on the end,” he said.

“Doesn’t work,” she said.

“Hm… This is a tricky one, we could use the world app’s… No, I have an idea… Try… iamawesome.” He said.

“It works, I’m in.” She said and she tapped the mobile several times.

“They’re streaming the footage of the cameras to a random server… lolcats.xyz...” She said.

“lolcats.xyz… That’s… Completely obvious. Too stupid. Okay, we need to cut that off, and then wipe the data after we’re done in there.” He said.

“I have a better idea, we could repeat the footage over and over like in one of those movies, or use footage from last week,” the little boy said.

“I mean, surely someone would catch onto that… I guess, we could make it look like the internet connection is patchy and splice it in.” The old man said and he scratched his head.

“I know who’s watching us,” she said.

“What?” The old man said.

“I placed bugs on everyone earlier, every person in the area, just to be safe. And one of them is watching the footage from a hotel room… Right now.” She said.

“Psion bugs? Ahahaha, that’s perfect.” The old man said.

“According to what he said to the receptionist, his name should be Paul… And… I have an idea of what he looks like… I just need to… Get the footage from the hot-” She said.

“No, I have a better idea… A much much better idea...” The old man said.

“Fine... Okay, the footage is looping now.” She said and then, the trio walked towards the door, as they opened, a tendril shot into the police officers and projected the image of an empty room making it look as if they weren’t even there.

“Their psions have been disturbed… Someone was definitely here and messed with their heads…” The old man said and paused before saying, “Heh… We’ve finally found another rival...”

The boy grinned and they continued through the hall. They stepped into an area full of cells and walked up to a sleeping Kevin, a tendril snaked its way in and entered his head. He trembled as it rifled through his thoughts and memories.

“Arrogant jerk. Probably killed by the same one as last time… And I have his name now… ‘Matt’.” She said as the tendril violetently retracted making him froth at the mouth.

“Matt… I see.” The old man mumbled.

“Kill this man. We’ll blame it on this ‘Paul’, overwrite their memories with an image of him killing them, you know what he looks like, right?” The old man said and a large hand shot out of her and tore into his mind.

He screamed as his mind cracked and broke apart and the pieces were consumed by the hand. And as he gasped his last breath, she ran up to him, pulled out a small handgun and shot him over and over.

“He’s the story. This ‘Matt’ provided the group with a highly potent drug and this man called Paul ran into the police station with a gun and two thugs, intimidated the officers, injured one, and killed this man.” The old man said before shooting a guard in the leg, the guard screamed in pain and couldn’t understand how a shot could come out of thin air.

He tripped and crawled towards the exit when another hole opened up in his leg and a memory of Paul shooting him surfaced.

“Fuck, that psychopath… Ag-” The police officer said as the old man hit him on the head and he collapsed.

“Hm, okay… No, that’s not enough, we need more casualties… To make it look authentic...” The old man said as he pored through the minds of the prisoners painting a horrific scene of Paul shooting a guard in their minds.

“We also have to deal with the doctors who tested his body for drugs...” The boy said.

“Ah yes, of course, we can’t forget that,” the old man said as the three left the corpse behind. They stepped into the lobby and the hand once again lunged out, this time at a bored guard. He trembled as his innermost essence was ripped to shred and begged his friend for help.

The other guard was confused, but had a horrified expression was his friend collapsed. He ran forward, checked his pulse, but discovered that he was… Dead.

“What the hell?! Did he just have a heart attack?” The guard thought as he quickly pulled out a phone to call an ambulance, but as he did a piece of lead opened up a hole in his leg. He screamed and stared at the empty space.

“What are you?! Some sort of evil spirit?!” The police officer screamed and backed away.

“Oh yes, I’m an evil spirit alright,” a voice spoke out of the void.

“And I’ve come for your soul.” It spoke again and the officer screamed and ran for the door.

“You won’t get away...” The voice said and footsteps echoed behind him.

The officer leapt at the door, trying to push it open only to discover it’s a pull door, and desperately pulled for his life. As he did, a sinister aged cackle echoed out before and he felt a warm breath on his neck.

“Hi.” A little boy’s voice said and he screamed and leapt out of the station, but as he was in mid-jump a hand dragged him back into hell.

“You didn’t think you’d get away, did you?” The aged voice said.

“Let me go… No!” The officer screamed.

“Hah, fool. Humans are such foolish creatures, watch him squirm… But don’t worry… You’ll become one of us soon enough… You’ll get to cast your weak mortal shell behind...” The voice whispered.

“No! I don’t want to die!” He screamed and he struggled trying to break out of his grip, but the old man was too strong. My body has been enhanced by the world app, you think you can essscape?!

“Listen… While I’d love to separate your soul from your body right now… I’ll give you a chance, I’m a reasonable man...” The voice said.

“Really?” The officer said.

“Oh yes… Now die.” He said as he was shot once again and collapsed.

“Is he dead?” The boy asked.

“No, I just knocked him unconscious. I’m going to wipe that little episode and replace it with Paul, haha I haven’t had so much fun in ages.” The old man said.

“Next… The watcher who watches the watchers...” He muttered as they headed upstairs, they shoved open the door of the small security office, the man inside screamed and picked a club but spotted no one there.

Three sets of footsteps echoed out and the man leapt at them with the club, only to be blocked by a strong sturdy hand.

“Fool.” An aged man’s voice said and the watcher lost consciousness. The girl walked up to the computer, fiddled with it and started wiping the past week’s worth of recordings, while the boy tied the watcher up and the old man started smashing random objects to make it look as if a struggle happened.

“The computer told me which doctors… diagnosed our friend Kevin...” She said.

“Excellent, we’ll pay them a visit after we… cause a little more damage to make it look like a battle happened, and then… We can… Arrange some ‘accidents’ for some of our other friends...” The old man said.

“Okay, I’m done.” She stepped away from the computer and they stepped out of the office, closing the door and leaving the unconscious guard behind. They walked down the stairs and started smashing chairs and other objects with clubs.

Here’s the story. A man called Kevin bought a highly potent drug from a drug dealer called Matt, but to afford the drugs, he had to take a loan from a local gangster called Paul. After reneging on the debt for months and taking more and more, Paul broke into a rage and came here with several heavily armed underlings to kill him, it’s perfect.

Melodramatic and ridiculous, but since it’s in their memory, there cannot be any doubt. No matter how ridiculous it is, if everyone saw it, then it ‘happened’. Without the camera footage, no one can prove it any other way!

Paul! You’re finished! You will be pursued from one side of the country to the other, sure you could hypnotise people, but the traces will eventually get the attention of a king, no matter where you run, you’ll be finished all the same. And you, Matt… I have far bigger plans for you...

The old man smiled in satisfaction at the destroyed before strolling out with the other door, as they did, a man jogged past them and a tendril slithered it’s way in to erase their presence from his mind.

In addition to that, the boy tapped on the device and the appearances changed to that of a middle aged woman, a handsome man in his mid-20s and a fat man in his mid-forties. This was only an illusion however, their real appearances remained the same.

The trio casually strolled down the road, occasionally encountering a person who they hypnotised, and stepped into a well hidden car before shooting away.

“Where does the doctor live?” The old man asked as he turned left.

“145 McVallen Street. There’s another who lives at Turdsridge.” She said.

“I see, McVallen is closer, we’ll pay that one a visit first… And the person who came up with the name Turdsridge should be shot… Or hypnotised into thinking he’s a chihuahua for the rest of his life...” The old man chuckled as he made another turn, and then another before eventually pulling up to a yellow brick home.

The three put on three balaclavas, picked up two clubs and a shotgun, and stepped out. A small beetle crawled out from between her eyebrows, flew up to a slightly open window and crawled.

A short man still asleep got up from the bed and walked to his bedroom door before opening it and heading down the stairs. After that, he opened the front door, his eyes still closed.

A tendril shot out from the old man and starting poring through his mind for several seconds before finding the ones where he diagnosed the man which changed to include the startling discovery of a horrifying drug.

“Now that I think about it, there are a few officers we’ll have to brainwash who heard the original ‘clean’ diagnosis… We’ve already changed the data on the computer… Yes, we’ll deal with them first, this is quite the busy night.” The old man said as he waved off the man back to bed.

The three stepped back into the car and the old man sat in the driver’s seat as he fired up the old reliable once more. I was prepared to stage a break-in, but I guess we didn’t need these balaclavas after-all.

The car shot off towards Turdsridge, stopping at several lights, and even passing by Matt’s decrepit building. As they drove, he turned on the radio and listened to classical music before switching to the late night news.

“Breaking news, just in. A man went insane in the Purtsridge Hotel, he started walking on all fours like a dog and started licking people, he even urinated on the floors. We’ll keep you updated as the story progresses.” The reporter said.

“That’s… The hotel that Paul went to.” She said.

“I see… Was that him with the brainwashing power? No, it couldn’t be, no one would do something that meaningless, there are far more subtle ways to get back to someone, even if they give you bad service.” The old man said.

“It was. He climbed down a gutter in a hurry and looked like he was running for his life.” She said.

“Why? Did he lose his mind?” The old man asked.

“Monty scared him with a little message saying he knew who he was.” She said.

“Ah, you really shouldn’t do that, it’s best not to give him a heads-up. Still, it doesn’t really matter, in fact if he panics then it’ll increase the chances of getting caught, especially if it was him who messed with that guy’s head.” The old man said.