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Posts: 1673
Join Date: Jan 2008
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The police officers in Saint Katherine’s Bay are overworked and underpaid. That is probably the main reason that detectives Tony Stonecipher and Jackie Lawrence weren’t too happy to be outside a homeless shelter at 3 in the morning.
The ambulance had already hauled the body off to the morgue. Forensics did their best collecting the bits and pieces of evidence. But they weren’t hopeful. The only oddity was the bullet removed from the corpse. It was made of pure silver and that was just plain weird.
“This one will just be swept under the rug with all the rest” Tony stated to his partner.
Jackie wore a look of disgust on her face as she replied “every time that happens I think twice about why I’m in this profession.”
“I know but we do put away quite a few bad people even if some manage to slip through our fingers.”
“So what now” Jackie asked?
“There’s a 24 hour coffee shop just around the corner.”
“Let’s go.”
As the two homicide detectives left the scene to get some much needed refreshment Shadow Hawk swooped in and landed silently on the pavement. He ignored the yellow police tape that cordoned off the area and activated every scanner in his mask hoping one would pick up something forensics might have missed. The only thing he detected was some dried blood near the gutter and a couple of small hairs. He collected these in a plastic baggie and left, careful not to leave any traces of his being there.
It looked like he’d being playing detective this time. Not really his forte but what the hell? He couldn’t always show up in time to stop the bad guys. Sometimes he had to settle for catching them afterwards. Swinging back towards the Citadel he took a look around the city. Then he looked up in the sky. The moon was nearly full tonight. He couldn’t remember the name of the phase it was currently in.
It took him less than ten minutes to make it back to his base of operations. The Citadel, his own personal fortress of solitude, was an abandoned clock tower all but forgotten by the city. To think his sister once suggested he name it the Hawk’s Nest. Maybe he would change it one day. He wasn’t quite sure yet.
He took the lift up to the war room, the only floor they actually used, and dropped the bag in Sebastian’s lap “do you think you’re computer can get DNA off of this?”
“John, I told you, the Sentinel can do anything.”
The supercomputer took less than thirty seconds to analyze the hairs. Then it spewed forth a list of technical terms across its screen. John had a puzzled look on his face but Sebastian seemed to understand every word of it.
“Interesting” he said aloud for John’s benefit.
“What?”
“Look here at this strand of DNA on the left” Sebastian said pointing then “now compare it to this one on the right.”
“They’re different?”
“Exactly, the strand on the left shows a normal human DNA strand. The one on the right is from the hairs you brought in.”
“But I thought all DNA was different” John protested not yet comprehending.
“Yes, but the one on the right isn’t even entirely human. This section here” he said zooming in on a small two inch portion of the strand “this shows traces of canine DNA.”
“You mean a dog and a person did it?”
“No, gross John, even if that happened they wouldn’t produce offspring. No this is something more abnormal.”
Sebastian ran the strand through a few more checks and cross referenced it with a whole bunch of medical texts stored on the computers massive hard drive “it resembles something called the L-Strand.”
“L-Strand, what’s that?”
“I’m not sure yet” he said referencing a medical journal next “the L-Strand is the layman’s term for the Lupus Fenrirsulfr.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Lycanthrope” Sebastian said but upon seeing the confused look on John’s face changed this to “werewolf.”
“You can’t be serious the Wolfman? Come on I thought you were smarter than this.”
“I’m not saying a real werewolf but that is what the strand is named after. Whoever this hair belonged to has some wolf DNA in their system.”
“So is it the killer or the homeless man?”
“Well seeing as how the police recovered a silver bullet from the homeless man I’d say the hair belongs to him. I mean why would a Wolfman being using silver bullets to kill other people?” Sebastian said smiling at his little joke.
Meanwhile in a dark room somewhere in the city…
“What do you want from me?” Alicia asks her captors for the sixth time.
She was starting to shake from the chill of the cold room. They had stripped her of her super suit and taken off her mask leaving her in nothing but her underwear. They knew who she was now but she as yet had no idea who they were.
“No more talking!” the large African American man shouted at her “when the boss gets here all will become clear.”
There was a loud rapping on the metal door. The black man slid open a small rectangular slat and peered outside. Then he opened the door letting in the newcomer. It was the cyborg, Gray Mist, who entered the room. She ordered the man to leave and lock the door behind him. Then she turned toward Alicia and smiled.
“So if it isn’t Sojourn’s vice president? You are the one who gave me so much trouble. What a joke.”
“I know who you are Vicki” Alicia said enraged “just because we fired you, doesn’t give you the right to destroy our company!”
“Is that what you think this is all about? You are naive. What your mother didn’t tell you about what else she did to me? Of course not you were only twelve at the time.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Why don’t you ask your mom? Oh that’s right she’s dead now.”
“You b!&@#!”
“Feisty aren’t you? Let’s just say your mother stole some of my ideas. Who do you think designed the RPTR suit? Me! I also designed the hydroelectric propulsion system that Sojourn built for the space shuttle!”
“So that’s what this is about, you not getting the credit? My mother would never do that.”
“So loyal, yet so wrong that’s exactly what she did. Why do you think none of these were built until after I left the company? The robotic drones worked perfectly well too, but she used them as an excuse to get rid of me!”
“So what can I do to make it up to you?” Alicia asked trying to figure out what Victoria Vapor wanted.
“You can die just like your mother! But first I want you to sign Sojourn and everything it owns to me.”
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