Chapter One: Blood On The Streets

Part 2

“Best we can tell, this room was the point of entry,” Detective McKinley said. Glass crunched beneath her boots as she carefully wound her way to the center of the room.

Tolson let out a low whistle, grabbing the frame and peering out the broken window. “How’d she get up here?”

“Window-cleaning suit, probably.”

“There’s an occupation that takes some guts.”

Leo peeked into the small office, eyes taking in as much of the scene as he could focus on despite the itch at the back of his mind.

Tolson leaned out a bit further, and Melissa stiffened even more. “Tolson, do you have to stand so close to the ledge? I don’t want the guys below to have to scrape you off the street too.”

“You realize he’s gonna take that as a challenge, right?” Leo asked, fingers tapping the side of his leg.

Tolson grinned, but stepped away from the window. “Not sure why you’re worried. Snepards always land on their feet.”

“Tell that to Lortran,” Leo mused, noting an evidence tag next to a small metal canister by the wall. He knelt down to get a closer look. The tip had been chewed off, and whatever had been inside was gone. There was a faint residue clinging to the inside, that glinted almost like specks of glitter. Well, the witnesses had all agreed—the killer’s eyes had been glowing like she was on Fractal.

“That’s what I mean,” Tolson said, grin widening, “Lortran did land on his feet. His feet just shattered on impact.”

Melissa let out a groan. “A man is dead, Officer Grey. I know it’s hard for you two, but try to show some respect.”

Tolson’s hand shot to his forehead in salute. “Yes, ma’am!”

“Not to me, idiot.”

Leo walked to another evidence tag. This one marked some russet fur in the carpet fibers. Snepards had white fur with grey and black spots. The canid-featured Mnolves, on the other hand, tended to have fur in various shades of brown and black.

They already knew a Native was the killer. Again, the witnesses’ stories had agreed. A Mnolf of indeterminate age, with feminine build and voice, typical Mnolfan accent, close to six feet in height, eyes glowing with a prismatic spread, and a weapon that shot lightning in a way no Electrum-taser ever could. Same description they’d run into every time they got called in to investigate the death of one of the Thirteen. This was her sixth victim. Seventh, if you counted the guard who’d been shot during the attack on the Minister of Commerce.

He cut off Tolson’s reply by asking Melissa directly, “So she entered through the window, scattering everything on the desk, and…then what?”

Melissa’s tail swished as she exited the room. At her gesture, Leo followed. “She dropped the first guard right here, with some kind of Electrum discharge.” She pointed at a nearby evidence tag, “There’s Electrum crystal fragments there, but no battery casing for it.”

“Alchemy?!” Tolson asked, voice rising to the same pitch as a kit receiving a present.

Leo sighed, “Alchemy is something Medics practice and factory workers do to make batteries. People don’t use alchemy to attack other people. We have guns for that.”

Melissa grimaced, prompting Leo to speak again. “Oh, come on, Mel— Detective McKinley,” he corrected himself. “Don’t tell me you’re going to side with Tolson on this. I know you’re obsessed with disagreeing with me on principle, but you know I’m right.”

Her whiskers bunched together as she scrunched up her nose. Her ears flattened a bit, but not from aggression. “Normally, I would agree with you. And with other attacks, it’s been easy to write it off as some kind of special taser or experimental weapon. But the evidence from last night? It’s…odd.  Like, ‘making grenades from things that should be too small to be grenades’ odd, or weaponizing steam despite shutting off power to the sprinklers beforehand. Not to mention, she launched a desk the size of most dining room tables out a window with enough force for it to land in the street, nearly 200 feet away from the building. She didn’t just toss it against the window like someone tossing a chair. She launched it.”

Tolson’s eyes were aglow. “That’s amazing.” The reverence in his tone was that of a child being shown a water park for the first time.

“It’s unnatural,” Melissa corrected, before walking down the hall and gesturing for both of them to follow. “Regardless, best we can tell, after incapacitating the guard here, she broke into this floor’s electrical closet and took the active batteries. According to the janitor, she took the spares too.”

“Any chance she’s using the Electrum batteries for her weapon?” Leo asked.

Melissa shrugged, “Could be, but there’s crystalline fragments left behind everywhere she used it. Not sure how she would have gotten the casing off a battery so quickly. That, or Electrum batteries are inherently more dangerous than I realized.”

“Most batteries tend to have pretty low power ratings anyway, so the average Snep doesn’t electrocute himself or combust while changing a lightbulb,” Tolson mused. This earned him a look from both detectives.

“What?” he asked, raising his hands in a shrug. “I loved science in school.”

They rounded a corner into a large seating area. All three wrinkled their noses at the same time. The burned husk of something vaguely couch-shaped sat off at an odd angle. Several nearby walls had holes or dents.

Melissa pointed at the couch. “According to the guards, she tried to sneak up on them in the dark. But they saw her, so she took cover behind the couch. When they got close, she set the thing on fire. And I’m not talking just lit a corner of it. They said the couch burst into flames all at once, from the bottom up.”

Her finger pointed at several different evidence tags. “We found shattered remnants of a Firum crystal, again with no battery casing, including a chunk as big as my fist over there.”

She held up a finger, “But that’s only half of it. After that, she threw something at them that exploded like a grenade. Once again, no metal casing left behind. Just large chunks of a light brown crystal.”

“Aurum?” Tolson offered.

“Yeah, probably.”

“How many guards?” Leo asked, trying to find any topic that could distract from the itch. He flexed his claws, using the motion to keep his hand from traveling to his jacket. He could almost taste the stick.

“Three encountered her here. Accounting for that dent, and that hole. Third one didn’t hit a wall, so she zapped him instead.”

Leo glanced back at the couch, noticing the evidence tag calling out scuffs on the floor. The couch had been scooted several feet by the explosion. And based on the dent whichever poor guard had left in the elevator door? Yeah, this was something more than a concussive grenade. That frightened him, and not just because it might cost him lunch.

She walked them through the rest of the areas of importance. There was another discarded bottle in the elevator, presumably Fractal. She pointed out where the killer had climbed into the elevator shaft when Lortran’s men had killed power to it.

Lortran’s office was a warzone by comparison to the rest of the tower. The minibar on the side had numerous bullet holes, and several different alcohols pooled together on the floor. Broken glass littered the wall and floor in that area.

Then finally, the back window. There was no glass inside. It had certainly burst outward.

“Ok, ok, ok. Please tell me she broke the glass by throwing the desk into it.” Tolson was nearly bouncing in place.

Melissa sighed. “We’re not sure yet. With as many shots as were fired in here, it’s possible the glass was compromised first. Or, maybe she just launched it with enough force that the desk itself broke the window. There is a sizeable chunk of brown crystal left over where the desk probably used to be. It’s similar to the one from downstairs, but larger.”

Tolson bounded over to the window, ears folding back against the top of his head as he peeked over the edge. He was peering down over the end of his nose, as if that would help him not lose his balance.

Melissa’s gaze returned to Leo. “What do you think?”

What he thought was that if he had to go another minute without smoking a Necral stick, his thumb would wear through the spot at his hips he was rubbing to keep his hand busy, but he couldn’t tell her that. He sighed, “I think I’m going to have to buy Tolson lunch today.”

She raised an eyebrow at this. “Because…?”

“It’s probably Alchemy. Which means we’re way out of our depth.”

She nodded, “That’s an understatement, Le–, Detective.” The formality stung, but he was too distracted to care. She continued, “I told the chief as much and apparently he sent for an expert.”

The elevator door dinged, and both detectives looked towards it. An officer stepped up, escorting– a Native?!

        Her long legs, dark fur, bushy tail, and slender canid snout immediately identified her as a Mnolf. She was an adult, though Leo had no idea how to tell how old she was. She towered over the officer escorting her, and looked to rival Tolson for height. Maybe he had some Mnolf heritage somewhere that no one knew about, though the concept of “slender” was certainly missing from his genetics.

The woman was dressed in a sharp red jacket that hugged her relatively slim figure. It was missing sleeves, exposing dark arms that transitioned from russet fur at the elbows to charcoal by the fingertips. Various crimson feathers were pinned decoratively to her chest and in her hair, which ran down ungathered just past her shoulders.

She clutched to a large bag that threatened to upset her balance, and her eyes had the look of a scared rabbit.

“Officer Broadstone, who is this?” Melissa stepped forward and folded her arms. She looked the newcomer up and down with a disapproving eye.

Broadstone saluted, earning an eyeroll from Melissa and a grin from Tolson. “Chief said to introduce her to the detectives. Said she’s the expert witness he found. Someone who can help with, um…Alchemy.” He said the last word as if speaking it aloud would draw some curse upon him.

Melissa blinked. Apparently, she hadn’t been expecting the chief to send a Native either. She recovered quickly.

“Excellent! Well then, let me introduce Detective Leo Parsons, head detective on this case!” Turning, she gestured to Leo like she was introducing royalty. Before he could interject, she continued, “Please direct all questions to him. He’ll be delighted to help you.”

The woman tilted her head, but acknowledged Leo with a slight nod. Her eyes were starting to lose their nervousness, and she gained a small smile. It was almost like she’d peered right through him into the secrets he hid even from himself.

Or, maybe she’d just seen his picture from that unforgivable time he’d made the news.

Leo cleared his throat. “Uh, Detective McKinley? Shouldn’t you…”

Melissa cut him off by literally walking away. She called back over her shoulder, not so much as even looking at the Native, “I’ve got to check in with some of the other officers and see what they’ve found. Officer Broadstone, would you like to come help me…with that thing? Now’s a good time, I assume?”

The officer looked more relieved than if someone had told him he’d been cured of some disease. He nodded eagerly and fell into step with the detective. Melissa stepped into the elevator, then had the audacity to wave as the doors closed. And had that been a wink?

Just like that, Leo was left alone with Tolson and the chief’s supposed expert.

She stood there, one hand on the bag’s strap and the other on the flap keeping it closed.

Looking between the two officers left in the room, her smile stayed, though she looked like a child entering a new school on the first day of class.

“Detective…?” her accent was a light thing, springing from her mouth. Her gaze, however, was suddenly sharp and focused, whiskers twitching at the end of her too-long nose. “I’m sorry, what was your name?”

Leo hadn’t had any more coffee for almost an hour. He was just as far past when his body was telling him it needed a Necral fix. And it was slowly sinking in that Melissa had just forced him to wait even longer by dumping this Native in his lap. She knew what she was doing. She had to know the torture he was being put through right now.

He forced the best smile he could muster for that awful period of time that existed prior to Midday. “Leo Parsons.” He thumbed over his shoulder, “This is officer Tolson Grey. And you are…?”

“Naira. I’m a teaching alchemist at the university.”

Leo should have guessed that. Instead, he opened his mouth and inserted his foot past the ankle. Of course, she would be a Rescue—an orphan rescued from outside the Bulb.

She wouldn’t know her parents. He had meant it as a polite nicety, something to hopefully push this conversation along so he could go smoke. Instead, he was saying dumb things because he was distracted.

Thankfully, Tolson saved him. “You teach alchemy?!” There was that wholesome eagerness again. So much like a kit, but in the good way that filled your heart with warm fuzzy stuff. It almost helped Leo ignore the additional burden that had just been left to become his problem.

Naira nodded, readjusting her bag on her shoulder. “I do.”

“Like, actual alchemy? Making raw crystals and stuff?” He took a step closer with each question, eyes traveling down to her bag.

She rotated protectively, as if shielding the bag’s contents with her own body, but she nodded again. “Yes sir. It is just simple chemistry.”

“And magic!” The words tripped out of Tolson.

Her smile grew a bit at that. “And magic,” she repeated.

Leo reached up to pinch at his nose. Lunch couldn’t come fast enough...