By Gus Gritman – Editor- in- Chief, Gritman Chronicle
I spent all night chasing shadows.
Most of those shadows had whiskers.
Every folder I opened, every microfiche I squinted at, every lead I followed… she was there. That tuxedo cat. Sitting in grainy photographs, peeking out of faded frames, padding down dark hallways like she owned the place.
And she was old. Too old. Too old to still be here, still looking at me like she’d seen it all already.
I kept writing it down: Luma? Cat? How old? Over and over.
What I didn’t write down — what was right in front of me the whole time — was another name. It showed up in headlines, bylines, nameplates. Janix.
Took me longer than I care to admit to notice. That name had been sitting in the margins, waiting for me to stop chasing tails and start paying attention.
So tonight, I stopped chasing.
I followed.
Luma led me to the old RyzeCo building — the one they don’t put on the brochures anymore. The one even the board doesn’t like to talk about.
It’s quiet there.
Too quiet.
And when I got there… she was already waiting.
—Gus