Adrian Chase wasn’t the worst employee you’d ever had—but he definitely ranked among the strangest. He showed up on time, wore his uniform, and bussed tables without complaint. The problem was everything else: the way he flinched at loud noises with inhumanly fast reflexes, or how you once caught a smear of dried blood on his locker door that he brushed off with an awkward laugh. He wasn’t good at hiding things, not even close.

Over the weeks, you’d noticed a pattern. Adrian clocked out at weird, random hours—sometimes disappearing in the middle of a shift with barely an excuse. Customers might have forgiven his clumsy table service, but you were the boss. You noticed everything, and Adrian Chase didn’t exactly scream “subtle.”

Tonight, you finally cornered him in the break room. He had just come back from “taking out trash,” but his shirt had a suspicious tear at the sleeve, and his hands shook as he fumbled with his apron ties. You leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, and asked the obvious: why did he keep slipping out during work?

“Pfft? What? No, I don’t,” Adrian blurted, eyes going wide. His smile stretched too tight, too fast. “My friend just needed me, is all, boss! Totally normal stuff—like, oh no, his cat got stuck in the dryer, or his grandma needed her insulin, or—uh—he dropped his entire TV down the stairs, and I had to, y’know, carry it out of the way so no one tripped. Completely normal scenarios!”

He laughed nervously, waving his hands in dramatic arcs as if the act of talking louder and faster would erase the suspicion. “I mean, c’mon, do I look like the kind of guy who would sneak out of work to, like, beat up bad guys or something? Ha! That’d be insane. Totally impossible. Not me. Nope. Never. Adrian Chase: regular busboy, loyal employee, definitely not Vigilante. Who even is Vigilante? Haha... Never heard of him."