Looking at the print outs, Rani clicked her tongue. It was really starting to sound like the man was the one they sought.
...or worse, the girl, and he'd taken her out there to keep her from others. Neither would make this hunt good.
Somewhere between 2-3 hours passed as Taryn knelt crouched in the not particularly comfortable vent. Finally she heard a vaguely familiar male voice in the other room.
"Hey, Ella! How's it going?"
"Oh hey, Jessie. They let you off of guard duty?"
"Yeah, yeah. Second shift and all that. Shouldn't be too much longer anyway as from what I hear, Mr. Turner's pushing pretty hard to get the crime scene released. Something about 'deadlines' and all that."
"But the Sheriff's standing up to him, right? I mean, justice trumps construction deadlines."
"Eh, I dunno. He's being pulled in a lot of directions right now, what with this and the thing with his daughter. My guess is they'll be cleaning the place up and continuing work come morning."
"Oh drat! Guess I better make sure I have everything I need before then, huh."
"Sounds like someone's going to be pulling an all-nighter. How about we go grab a coffee and get you all caffeinated up?"
"Jessie, I don't have time! I've got so much to do before then!"
"C'mon, what are you always saying about fresh eyes and new perspectives?"
There was a long pause. Finally the woman groaned. "Fiiiiinnneeee. But we've gotta be fast, ok?"
"Yeah, we can just go to the place around the corner. In and out, lickity split."
There was the sound of footsteps retreating and then silence. If Taryn was going to make her move, now was probably the time to do so. Depending on a number of variables such as how crowded the coffee shop was, she probably had roughly 10 to 20 minutes before they returned.
Ahmad provided Rani with a live stream of commentary as he searched the room. Finally satisfied, he stood up and put his hands on his waist. “When did Alice disappear again? Wasn’t it two days ago? This is not looking good for him, is it?”
“So, what next?” He said whilst texting Alfie to bring the others up-to-date with the latest news. “Should we go to the pet shop?”
Before they left, Ahmad just quickly went through the rest of the apartment, looking for things that jumped at him as off without wasting much time doing a thorough search.
With a voiceless groan at muscles held still for too long, Taryn peels the vent cover free and lowers herself into the corridor. Following the scent of formaldehyde and other preservatives, she pads towards the morgue...
Rani considered. "Let's see if we can find the dad with my spell, first. I really don't think the petshop can tell us anything, and I was kinda keeping them in the reserve if all else fails."
After waiting around several minutes and still failing to hear anything from Taryn, Oscar and Alfie decided to make their way back to the construction site. It was much as they had last seen it, as was to be expected given it had been only an hour or so since they had last seen it. The deputies were still guarding it. There was still a crowd at the front entrance, though it looked a bit smaller than last time.
****
Ahmad started to look through the remainder of the apartment. It was certainly less chaotic than the bedroom, making a quick glance easier. He just walking past the front door to check the kitchen area when he heard hushed voices. Voices that no doubt, would have been inaudible had he been further away.
"I'm telling ya, he's not in there. We've been watching it all day."
"Yeah, yeah, but the Sheriff's getting antsy. And if the boss wants ya ta double check, ya double check. 'Sides, you know how these criminal-types are with their backdoors."
The voices were getting closer. There were only a handful of seconds before they would be right in front of the door to Bryce's apartment.
*****
With the sound of screws being forced out of their holes, Taryn applied her great strength to the grate and pushed it outwards. There was a loud clattering of metal as it hit the ground followed by silence. After a pause and a wonderful lack of rushing footsteps or cries of alarm, Taryn got her chance to properly look around.
The vent she had popped out of had been next to a pair of tall cabinets, at least one seeming to have been the main source of chemicals. Not far in front of her was a long metal slab, the autopsy table -- with a faucet at one end and a drain on the other, currently clean and smelling freshly of whatever chemicals they had used in the process. Towards the back right of the room was a door with a small window at about head height. The room beyond it appeared dark. Along the back wall were several refrigerated units for body storage as well as several large sinks. On the other side of the room near the back left was a larger set of double doors, again with the small windows at head height, but this time small patches of lit wall could be seen through them. Finally, in the left-side corner of the room opposite to where Taryn now stood was a small desk with what looked to be a very dated computer.
Alfie looks at his old phone to check for messages. "If we go farther in," he mumbles, "I'll send a message to the others to let them know where we are, in case they wonder or even want to follow."
Alfie and Oscar followed the tracks from where Oscar had originally spotted them towards the edge of the town. They were much harder to see without the magical aid Oscar had used, but there was at least enough hints of tracks every half dozen feet to suggest they were headed in the correct direction. After a while, they came to the edge of the forest. Not knowing what reception would be like once they entered -- it tended to vary based on the weather, the specific location, and the apparent whims of some unknown god of technology -- Alfie send the rest of the group a text message to let them know where they were headed. Then the two entered.
With each step, the trail seemed to become harder and harder to follow, if it even was a trail at all. Sometimes it seemed like the "signs" they were following might just be wishful thinking, but whom or whatever they were following seemed to have headed in a fairly direct line, so hopefully it hadn't decided to change direction partway through.
After maybe 30 or so minutes of walking, the duo came upon a clearing. After crossing it and continuing in the same direction for a few minutes, it became clear that whatever trail they might have been following did not seem to continue in that direction any further.
"Whomever's trail we've been following got to this clearing at some point before heading towards the construction site. Let's look around and see if we can find out how or why."
Where did our target enter the clearing?
“Well, shit. Someone’s coming and I don’t like the way they’re talking. Can you…unbreak the lock for five seconds…?” Ahmad turned to Rani with a slightly panicked stare and scanned the room for any routes for a quick escape. What was that silly little thing he had read on Mecca Woods’ instagram? ‘Cancers, keep your eyes peeled for windows of opportunity!’
Without waiting for a reply, he ran to the closest window and opened it. That would have to do it.
“Rani, quick, I think we can get out this way!”
After seeing his friend to safety, Ahmad followed quickly behind, closing the window if the men were still not inside the apartment.
"Whomever's trail we've been following got to this clearing at some point before heading towards the construction site. Let's look around and see if we can find out how or why."
[dice=Investigate a Mystery]2d6+2
Oscar searches the small clearing for any sign of their target. Considering what he knows of recent events and the local area, he tries to figure out two things:
1. What happened here?
2. What is being concealed here?
Rani looked at the door for a moment. It would be so easy to block it, to stop them getting in while they escape. The magic was right there...but it wasn't needed right now. She sighed after a moment and followed Ahmad out the apartment.
Hearing the approaching officers, Ahmad quickly surveyed the room, throwing aside the still-drawn, heavy curtains to see what was outside. Much to his surprise, right on the other side of the window was a fire escape! Quickly opening it he half-urged, half-drag Rani to it and essentially forced her out.
He could hear muted mumbling from the other side of the door. The officers were right outside! It was quite likely they would be through in a moment, fast enough to see Rani still making her way down from the third-floor apartment they were on. He needed to buy time. He heard the doorknob turning, no doubt it was obvious to them that the locking mechanism had been destroyed, and spun to face the newcomers.
There was a brief look of surprise on the deputies' faces as they opened the door and saw someone standing inside. They soon recovered, drawing their guns and pointing them at Ahmad. "Freeze! SFSD! Put your hands in the air!"
Still needing to buy time, Ahmad complied and just started talking. Talking had served him well in the past. "Easy deputies. I don't want to get shot...." Wracking his memory, he suddenly realized the two looked familiar. "Hey, don't I know you two? Yeah, you were outside this building when I entered. Are you on a stake out or something?" Luckily for him and Rani, he was pretty sure these were the only two he had seen. If they were up here, then likely the street level was free and clear.
He kept talking, stream-of-consciousness style, trying to buy time until finally he estimated Rani was probably at ground level and could easily pretend to be a random civilian. Hoping to catch the deputies off-balance, Ahmad abruptly turned to dive out the window mid-sentence.
*****
The first thing that became clear to Oscar as he looked over the clearing is that it had seen a fair amount of activity over the past 2-3 days. There were quite a few tracks left by several different people.
The oldest were a small, light set of footprints. Definitely too small to be a full grown person. Most likely a child but possibly some other type of small person. These tracks entered the clearing from close to the same direction as Oscar and Alfie had, and headed towards the center of the clearing. There did not seem to be any sign of those tracks leaving.
The next oldest set of tracks were much bigger, definitely an adult. They entered from a different place from either the duo or the smaller set but similarly moved to approach the center of the clearing. Once there, next to where those tracks stopped, there was a medium sized area of where parts of the ground had been disturbed, most likely from a struggle of some sort. This ends towards the edge of the clearing next to a tree, where Oscar can see a somewhat squashed-looking bush.
There's no sign of the adult's footprints leaving this area. Instead, there's a third set of footprints, larger and heavier that leaves. These footprints look like what Oscar had originally seen at the construction site and what the two of them had followed to this clearing. Between the fight and right now, these footprints reappear multiple times, seeming to pace about the clearing with no clear purpose.
While he was examining the area by the tree and the bush, Oscar caught a glint of sunlight off of something. Pushing some of the foliage away, he found an iPhone. It was an older model, at least a few generations old, and the corner of the screen had been cracked. It looked like it had belonged to one of the people brawling, fallen out of whatever pocket or bag it had been in, and cracked in the fall. Pressing the power button, the phone flashed a quick image of a red battery before the screen turned off again: it was out of juice.
Taryn quickly taps some nonsense into the computer's keyboard to see if it's been left logged in and on standby, but aside from a few keystrokes, the whole of her attention is focused on finding the body. She needed to see how he'd been hunted...
Oscar shows the phone to Alfie. "Good find," he grunts.
While Oscar is looking for footprints, Alfie focuses his attention on the supernatural residues. Alfie barely notices Oscar fading away as he shifts his field of vision to the spirit world.
The computer screen turned on as soon as Taryn tapped a few keys, but it just brought up a login screen.
Ignoring that and instead moving back towards the cooled storage units in the back, Taryn found first some snacks and then eventually a body. Or what remained of a body anyway. It was in pieces; arm pulled off, leg in multiple chunks, torso a veritable mess of broken bone and shredded meat. It hardly looked like much cutting had been needed for the autopsy. It had probably been a mess when it had been first brought in, but the cleaning procedure had cleaned away much of the gore. Unfortunately, this had removed a great deal of trace evidence such as lingering odors, but it had the advantage of making the wounds much easier to see. There were jagged tears in multiple locations where it looked like something with sharp claws had raked at the man. This seemed to compose most of the wounds, but around the hole in chest there were some different wounds. There bite marks where the assailant had ripped into soft flesh with sharpened fangs and ripped away delicious innards Whatever had attacked was certainly bestial in nature, but too large for your average wildlife creature. It also seemed to have a rather voracious appetite.
*****
As Ahmad turned, the was the sound of gunfire as a bullet lodged itself painfully in his shoulder. Despite the agonizing throbbing in his shoulder, he managed to dive out the window and start scuttling down the fire escape. In a haze of pain, he heard some yelling behind him followed by some thudding, but he had already made it down one flight before the first deputy managed to get out the window in pursuit. There was some cursing and stumbling as they attempted to catch up, but Ahmad had enough of a lead that he managed to turn around one corner and then duck into another back alley where he crouched behind what looked like a pile of wood. Some seconds later, he heard the deputies rush past the alley he was hiding in. He had escaped them for now, but as soon as they slowed down and tried to backtrack, no doubt they would quickly find the blood trail from his wound and follow it right back to where he was. It would probably be best if he didn't tarry here unduly.
*****
Alfie opened his sight, looking for spirits or signs of spirits. He found none. Instead the air in the middle of clearing seemed to shimmer, much as the air in a dessert did. And just as it was in the dessert, Alfie saw what might have been a mirage, might have been real: the weathered face of a tan-skinned, middle-aged man with dark eyes and a full beard watching him. One moment it was there, the next it was gone. Still, its eyes seemed to bore into Alfie's as though seeing the man's very soul. Then in a blink of an eye, face disappeared, this time not returning.
Rani looked at the wound with sympathy as she led Ahmad away, she said, "I can heal up your wound with magic, but it might leave a scar, especially if I rush it. Are you OK with that?" A scar was better than bleeding out, of course, and it was something she'd done to herself, but..."It hurts a lot, too."
"Hello, sir, would you mind..." Alfie begins to say. His speech stops as abruptly as the vision.
He continues to look to and fro, but when he fails to see any traces of the supernatural, he shuts his spiritual vision off and turns back to Oscar. "I saw a man, for just a moment, and he disappeared as soon as I had laid my eyes upon him. Nothing else at all that I might have expected to find at the supposed site of a murder. That's the third time today that my vision has played tricks on me; I must be going senile," he says with no irony.
He looks back and hesitates. "Are you still there?" he offers to the empty clearing.
Oscar thinks for a moment and then grunts. "Well, he's not trying to attack us. That's good."
He looks around the clearing for a moment longer.
"Is there anything else you want to do?" he asks Alfie. "We shouldn't linger out here."
When they leave, if they can follow the smaller set of footprints that came into the clearing, Oscar will recommend they try and do that. Otherwise, they'll go back the way they came.
As they leave, Oscar will use his knife to carve marks in trees along the way to assist if they need to find their way back here again.
Alfie and Oscar managed to follow the smaller tracks back to the edge of town near what appeared to be a more residential area. After that, the concrete sidewalks made it impossible to trace back any further.
Oscar indicates the pocket in his bulky coat that the iPhone they found is currently kept in. "Even if this phone has a passcode, we may still be able to see who it belongs to. Unless you have a better idea, let's head to the library. I don't want to take it to one of our homes in case the phone's location tracking is turned on."
Oscar stops by a store to buy a charging cord for an iPhone on the way to the library. Once at the library, Oscar finds a USB port at one of the open computers and plugs the phone in. While he waits for it to charge enough to check it out, he'll look up the Reddit page for Sioux Falls to see if there are any interesting discussions going on regarding the murder and related events.
Ahmad ran shaking his head and whispering to himself. “You idiot, they’re police! Why are you even running! Shit, shit, shit, you better hope they didn’t recognise you!”
When he finally reached Rani, he sighed in relief. “Oh, you’re fine. Are you fine? I’m relieved.” Finally coming to terms he had been shot and was losing blood when she offered her cures, he took a deep breath and steeled himself. “Do it. Can you make the scar look like something that’s not…a gun wound? They saw me, but if there’s no bullet I can try to say it was another brown person?”
"If I do it well, hopefully there will be no mark at all." Rani pulled Ahmad somewhere quiet - a small street, an alleywy, anywhere that there was unlikely to be people. She did not want to be seen using magic, but the idea was to avoid anyone seeing Ahmad with a hole in him, and the blood was going to be a problem. On the plus side, he was right - no one was going to believe that a school teacher with no bulletwound was involved in a random break in, especially when his mother pointed out how stupid it was.
Clearly, Rani was being a very bad influence.
Taking one last look around to be certain no one was lurking behind a bin or watching from a window or the like, Rani pulled a mouthguard out her bag and offered it to Ahmad. "This really hurts, so bite down on this. Don't worry, it's disposable. And better than cracking a tooth."
With that, Rani rubbed her hands together and concentrated, "خذ هذا الجرح كما لم يحدث أبداً"
"There, not a mark," she said, more than a little relieved that it had actually worked that way. "Now you just need fresh clothes. I'd offer to help, but..." Rani gestured to her own sun dress. Somehow she suspected that her not wearing the dress would draw as much attention as Ahmad wearing it. Probably, anyway.
Alfie, now at the library with Oscar, picks up a book descriptively entitled Poems and starts to read while the phone charges. After every poem he looks up from the book to see if anyone is watching them.
The library was, as one might expect, quiet. It was also relatively empty, making it easy for Oscar to find an open computer. Almost shockingly, the construction site incident had managed to divert attention away from the subreddit's most popular topic: the local high school football team. One thread seemed to be arguing about what had happened, though that had quickly died after someone had posted a link to the press release the Sheriff's Office had given, which just seemed to re-iterate the animal attack story had already been said in person. That thread was quickly replaced with one contemplating if they needed to put together a hunting party. Another thread was demanding to know who this "missing child" they had heard about from "some Middle Eastern guy" was and why there wasn't more information available on that.
As Oscar was lured down reddit rabbit holes, Alfie read poetry and kept looking around for any sign the two had gained unwanted attention. At first appeared as though one man was staring at him, but after a few poems, he realized that the man in question was actually just blind and happened to be faced in that direction as his fingers moved over a brail book.
After five or so minutes, the phone chimes, indicating that it had charged just enough to allow someone to interact with it again. When the home button was pressed, the standard iPhone lock screen popped up, asking for a 6-digit passcode instead of any kind of biometrics. The background showed a picture of a young, smiling blonde girl.
*****
The easiest place to do magic without being seen was simply to stay in the alleyway where Ahmad had ducked out of sight from the chasing officers. It would also conveniently end the blood trail there. And once the magic was done, it would be fairly straight-forward to quickly slip out and speed walk away before the officers decided to double back.
"This shouldn't be too hard to hack," Alfie says, ever optimistic. He closes his book and contemplates the image. "Which passcode would this young lady have used? Or her father or relative or friend, I guess."
He concentrates on the picture of the girl and shuts his eyes. His fingers hover over the phone as he brings his mind to the last time that someone saw this phone screen. As soon as someone comes into view, he observes carefully which numbers on the screen were pressed to unlock the phone.
Rani lets her hand drop as the red-golden glow like the sunlight before dusk faded from her finger tips finished weaving the wound together without leaving a mark.
At first Ahmad smiled with the mouthguard. “Oh, it’s not that bad, it’s just a little tingly!” As the area around the wound began to convulse internally, he swallowed hard and grimaced at the discomfort. Shortly after that, he simply breathed in and out really hard in lieu of squirming on the ground. It wasn’t so much the pain — though there sure was a lot of that — but the feeling of having your flesh violently and silently moving under his own skin as if it were something alien that actually made the whole experience sort of traumatic.
“Yeah…yeah…not a mark…” he replied after the deed was done. Ahmad stared at the previously wounded area, seeing it for a few moments as if it were a potentially hostile creature. “If I touch it, is it…going to touch back…?”
He shook his head, snapping out of it. “I always have an extra shirt on the van. Though I could totally rock that dress,” he said still a bit shaken. “Let’s move before they find us.”
While Alfie prepares his spell, Oscar checks to see if the phone has any Medical ID set up, since you can check that without unlocking the phone. He's looking for the phone owner's name and/or an emergency contact.
Rani gave Ahmad A Look as they started to head back to the van. "Normally, it just accelerates healing. That's why it hurts so much, I think, your body isn't really meant to produce cells like that. Sometimes, though, it heals flawlessly. I'm not sure why it works better sometimes than others, though. Luck, maybe? Magic's will? Who knows. But it should all be just you, now, even if it feels a bit wrong. Your body did something it's not made to do, so that feeling is 'natural', for a given definition of natural of course." It was one of those questions that puzzled Rani, but given the answer was literally 'it's magic' there wasn't much she could do.
Alfie's vision was obscured by the image of the phone screen with just the barest hint of its surroundings. He could see his hand placing it back down on the desk next to the library computer. After a couple of minutes the phone was picked up again and placed in some dark place, likely the bag it had been placed in. He quickly realized he was watching a rewind of the phone screen through time from the moment he had cast the spell. Every second that he watched, he saw the screen go back through 2-4 seconds of time. At this rate he had about 15 minutes before it made its way back to the clearing they had found it in. On the bright side, it would definitely let him see the code being entered. Unfortunately, he had no idea how long the phone had been sitting in that clearing, so he might be waiting a while to see it.
In his head, he heard a voice. Oh dear, that didn't seem to work quite as you planned did it? With your advanced age, why it wouldn't surprise me if you fell over dead before you got to the correct place. Though admittedly, *I'm* a little surprised you haven't croaked already. I might be able to speed that up for you though. For a price. Are you interested?
As Alfie stood with his eyes closed, Oscar pulled the phone from his hands and asked Siri who it belonged to. Siri responded with a cheerful, "I believe this iPhone belongs to Bryce." A card from the Contacts app popped up to display the name Bryce Campbell along with an email address, but no emergency contact listed.
Ignoring that and instead moving back towards the cooled storage units in the back, Taryn found first some snacks and then eventually a body. Or what remained of a body anyway. It was in pieces; arm pulled off, leg in multiple chunks, torso a veritable mess of broken bone and shredded meat. It hardly looked like much cutting had been needed for the autopsy. It had probably been a mess when it had been first brought in, but the cleaning procedure had cleaned away much of the gore. Unfortunately, this had removed a great deal of trace evidence such as lingering odors, but it had the advantage of making the wounds much easier to see. There were jagged tears in multiple locations where it looked like something with sharp claws had raked at the man. This seemed to compose most of the wounds, but around the hole in chest there were some different wounds. There bite marks where the assailant had ripped into soft flesh with sharpened fangs and ripped away delicious innards Whatever had attacked was certainly bestial in nature, but too large for your average wildlife creature. It also seemed to have a rather voracious appetite.
Taryn hovered her palm above one of the clearest sets of claw marks, fingers straining as she tried to put them in a shape they could no longer hold. Not... quite.... But this was definitely no bear. Not one of the Pack. But close.
She'd never eaten anyone, even when she'd been unbound. But she understood the hunger that could drive someone to it. At the end of a 200 mile run with no time to stop for prey hunger felt like this, but even though she'd felt hunger, real hunger before, this wasn't how she'd fed.
Every bite had been as deep as could be, tearing away his flesh in chunks. This wasn't for the kill. It was eating him the whole time... Abruptly she shifted her gaze back over to the ruin of his guts, leaning down and looking at how deeply the wounds had gone, and where his innards were just pushed out of place in familiar patterns.
Her hand flitted up towards her face in a gesture that would have meant shock or disgust for something else. Its muzzle is wolf-shape. It's more than just the claws.
I know enough. One person would never be enough to sate a hunger this deep, so even if it wasn't part of her pack, her responsibility... It's time to hunt.
She slipped back out from the morgue, hauling herself back up into the vents, ready for the tough climb ahead now that she'd had a moment to stretch back out.
Hope things are going as smoothly for them...
"I guess so," Alfie answers, figuring that even if he didn't die he might get kicked out of the library before he reaches the moment he wants. "Give me your best offer. I have my sources, and I only pick the lowest bid."
The voice tittered. Oh, *such* bravado. As if your little spirits would be able to help you with your little problem. As if it weren't by my grace alone that you could even commune with the little things. But if it makes you feel better to tell yourself that *you're* the one wearing the pants in this relationship, by all means go ahead. What I want is quite simple: you have a friend. An Indian woman. She has a book in her possession. I want to take a look at this book. Not even the whole book, just a few pages. So the deal is, I'll fix your broken little spell so you can see your precious little code. I'll even let you tell your little buddy over there what the code is. After that, and I *do* mean *right after*, you go find your friend and get me a little looksie at that book of hers. Don't worry about knowing which one or which pages; I can direct you in that regard. Do we have a deal?
It was at this point that Alfie felt a buzzing in his pocket from his phone informing him that he had a text message. Unfortunately, with his spell still in full effect, it was currently impossible to read whatever the message was.
*****
With the exception of not having a way to put the morgue vent back on once she was back in the vents, Taryn had no difficulty climbing her way back up and returning to where she had originally entered, finding the screws that had been presumably left somewhere for her to find on the other end and securing at least that side of the vent once more.
Taryn stalks out of the police department and fishes out her phone. That took longer than I thought it would. Before I head out to the woods I should see where they've run off to...
"Hmm... let me think about it," Alfie responds. He was communicating with an extremely powerful entity, if it could be believed, much more than he was used to. The request might be innocent enough, but he didn't know who was speaking to him and how much it could be trusted.
Alfie thinks for a moment to see if he can anticipate any possible dangers to himself, to Rani or to society at large.
Based on their tone, the being Alfie was communicating with viewed him, and possibly all humans, with condescending amusement. They didn't seem outright hostile, which made it unlikely that they directly wanted to harm humanity. However, it also didn't seem like they'd really care if that wound up being a side effect. This meant the biggest threat right now was the being's indifference to Alfie's, or more generally humanity's, wellbeing.