I wasn’t quite finished with the story I was telling by the time 2025 ended and so decided to continue it until it reached an ending point. Then I will start a new one. Besides, I kind of want to see where Penelope ends up. And so we have…
Day 223: She found the anomaly and extracted it.
She found the anomaly and extracted it. The item was small and appeared to be made of metal and plastic. ‘Or maybe glass,’ she thought. It was so small it was hard to tell. It looked like a little narrow pill. It was almost as long as her thumbnail, but slimmer than a pill of equal length would be.
She didn’t know much about electronic gismos of this sort but it looked like a tracking device of some sort. “It had to have been added at the doctor’s office,” she realized. Penelope set it down on the towel and picked up her water bottle. She emptied the second bottle she brought with her and reached for the third. She sipped on it slowly as she thought.
When she was taken to the doctor her arm had just been broken in Peter Sinclair’s attack. She was fairly certain she was in some sort of shock and she knew she was in a great deal of pain. Not only did the movements of her arm hurt but it felt like every breath sent shockwaves of pain through her. After the X-rays the doctor had to set her bone. She was already medicated at that point so the pain was a distant thing with several layers of cushioning stuffed between her and it, but the way her arm was moving made her stomach churn. She remembered looking away as he did the final setting and began adding the cast to her arm.
‘He could have added it then,’ she thought. With the cast in place, it would have hidden the insertion and I would never know.’
Penelope was sure that when she did have the cast removed it too would be healed over and if any scar remained, she would have thought it a holdover either from the car exploding or Peter Sinclair’s attack. She didn’t think she would have questioned it.
‘After all I have more than a dozen small cuts and bruises in other places.’
It would seem a logical conclusion. It was only through magically healing her arm that she knew it wasn’t. Penelope stared at the little item sitting on the towel. Agent Michaelson had been standing next to the doctor as he worked. He didn’t need to look away as it wasn’t his arm and such things on other people didn’t seem to bother him.
‘He would have known about it,’ she concluded. Penelope finished her water. “At least I know not to fully trust him,” she said. She had no doubt that if she brought it up, he would claim it was for her own good and a protective sort of measure. She was also pretty sure he would believe that.
“But he didn’t ask,” she thought.
Penelope gathered the items she brought with her. She could now use her no longer broken arm. There were no twinges or problems with it. With the case still on it was awkward, but without the pain it was less problematic. ‘And I don’t have to lose time being knocked out with those pain pills.’
As she gathered her things into the basket to take back downstairs, Penelope thought about those pills. Were they just pain pills or something else? Was the little metal bit she was certain was a tracker causing her to be paranoid or did the pills have an extra purpose?
Ten til Midnight 