Chapter 30 Ch. 20.2
Ivanna stood, folded the referral, and slipped it into her purse. “Yeah. Sure.”
But even as she walked out of the office and back into the hallway, her thoughts weren’t on the paper in her bag.
They were on the boy in the news.
And that strange feeling in her chest that told her she’d seen him, or someone like him before.
But where?
She continued down the hallway and then waving the secretary a goodbye, she stepped out into the hot afternoon breeze.
Ivanna was halfway through the hospital parking lot when her phone rang. She checked the caller ID, sighed, and picked up.
“Hello,” she said flatly. It was none other than her very wonderful editor.
“Where are you?” he asked, skipping the greeting like usual.
“Just leaving the hospital.”
“Turn around. You need to come in. Right now.”
She stopped walking and shut her eyes. “It’s supposed to be my day off.”
“And yet the world doesn’t care,” he said. “You want to keep your job, right?”
She didn’t answer him because the words that were going to come out of her mouth was going to be very colourful.
“Then get here,” he added. “It’s a shitstorm, and you’re the only one I trust to shovel through it.”
He hung up without even waiting for s response.
Ivanna stared at her phone for a few seconds, then shoved it into her back pocket and waved down a cab.
She got to the office a little over twenty minutes later, and she didn’t even get the chance to drop her bag before she was called into her boss’s office.
“Take a seat,” he said, gesturing to the chair.
Ivanna sat and crossed her legs. “What am I cleaning up now?”
He tossed a file on the desk. “Ethan Moreau.”
She blinked. “The runner?”
“Yes, the very fast, very suspicious teenage runner. Beating an Olympic gold medalist? Yeah, it's crazy suspicious."
She opened the file and saw screenshots from news blogs, press conferences, and a couple slow-mo race replays.
"Didn’t he just like... Take a drug test?"
“Yeah,” her boss said. “And he passed it, which makes him even more interesting. No steroids. No enhancements. Just blurring through the finish line like a Marvel character.”
Ivanna flipped through a few more pages.
“You think he’s cheating?”
“I think something’s off. And I think if there’s anyone who can find out what it is, it’s you.”
She leaned back in her chair. “You’re giving me a teenager?”
“I’m giving you a potential goldmine,” he said. “Think about it. If he’s clean, he’s the youngest natural phenomenon we’ve seen in years. And if he’s not…” he smiled a little. “You get your own podcast.”
"But he passed the test."
"Did he?"
"You think it's forged?" Ivanna rolled her eyes but stood up. “Fine. I’ll look into it.”
She went straight to her desk and opened her laptop. It didn’t take long before she was knee-deep in video clips and articles. She watched race after race, paying attention to every frame. There was something strange about the footage that didn’t sit right. His body didn’t just move fast. It blurred sometimes.
She paused and rewound. Watched it again. And again.
It wasn’t just motion blur. His arms and legs almost… faded for a split second.
“Okay,” she muttered, grabbing a pen and jotting that down.
Then she opened Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Reddit—every hole she could dig through, she did. She read threads on speed training, conspiracy comments under YouTube videos, and gossip tweets from people who claimed they “knew someone who saw Ethan at a blood bank once.”
One Reddit thread caught her eye. It was posted by someone with the username xBleeder69x, which was already enough to make her doubt their mental stability. But what they wrote made her stop scrolling.
“I swear I heard someone say one of the athletes at our school is a vampire. Not even kidding. Apparently he’s super strong, never gets tired, and there was this one time he got in a fight and healed like… right away. Idk if it’s Ethan or not but he’s too chill in the sun for it to be true. Still… makes you think.”
Ivanna sat up straight.
She read it again and again.
Then she clicked on the user’s profile. Nothing useful. Just weird posts about garlic bread, conspiracy podcasts, and one questionable meme about lizard people in politics.
Still, she copied the thread and pasted it into her notes. Then she leaned back in her chair, staring at the ceiling.
Her boss was looking for a story on a forged drug test, but what if it was crazier than that?
What if the other rumours were true?