June: The Breathless

“HE wasn't here.”

I closed my eyes, trying to pierce through the white noise filling the room. It felt like pushing through a garbage pile with no gloves on. I had to brush each piece of trash away with my bare hands, and for each I threw out of sight, three more fell at my feet. It was hard, exhausting and gross – but not impossible. With enough practice, you could get used to it.

I'd practised garbage diving for my whole life. Few piles of trash that smelled as horrifying as this one.

“Are you sure?” Dan's voice was soft, there wasn't an ounce of doubt in it. Still, after a year and a half, I'd picked some of his patterns and habits.

“There's no trace of him.”

“Check again, just to be sure.” Sure as egg in egg, Dan double-checked everything. It was his work ethics. As his partner, I was supposed to adapt it. Better safe than sorry, he claimed, and I couldn't argue. It was a wise policy, especially to a police detective.

Also, it was mighty convenient since he dumped the nastiest parts of the job on me. I didn't think he'd ever realised that, and I doubted he ever would.

I sighed, closed my eyes back and dove head-first into the garbage pile.

The first layer was a dark rusty brown – a thick crust of dried blood. Traumatic blood, rich with haemoglobin and platelets, full of adrenaline, cortisol, catecholamines and other stress hormones I couldn't name. The high-charged blood spilling out of a critically injured body, desperate to survive. It was everywhere, covering the room like a shroud, mixed up with terror, aggression, violence and pain.

Sweat filled with testosterone, fear and a cocktail of chemical poisons, covering the bodies in a layer almost as thick as the dried-up blood. Torn flesh and ruptured organs, the faintest trace of burned flesh where super-sonic bullets pierced through. Just beneath that, an unmistakable trace of smokeless gunpowder, oil and overheated metal. A lots of it, from both sides, both the vestibule we were standing in and the devastated interior. Broken wood. Torn leather and sponge filling. Burned plastic, smashed electronic circuits still going live.

The carnage was so intense it covered everything else in the room.

To convince Dan, I had to prove that I got to the bottom of the pile. I had to smash this filthy carapace into finer details. Concentrating my sense, I began to drudge through.

At first, I didn't discover anything my sight wouldn't reveal. I could point to all four bodies with my eyes closed. Show both the biggest pools and the finest splatters of blood, find each bullet-hole in the wall. That wasn't enough, however. I brushed it aside and-

- ah, there it was.

“There was a survivor.” I opened my eyes and walked into the crime scene, careful to avoid trampling down evidence. “He's wounded, not critically, though. A flesh wound, most likely. He...” I leaned forward, searching for the track, “... escaped through that window. The splatters on the frames are his, we'll most likely find more down there.”

“It's the second floor,” Dan pointed out.

“That it is,” I agreed. “He was desperate and there's a garbage bin down there. It might have cushioned the fall, somewhat. Most likely, he's in a really bad shape.”

“Is he still down there?” one of the forensics asked with audible sarcasm. “Maybe he broke his neck falling?”

“No.” Even with all death filling the room, his blood would be as bright as a beacon. “There's just trash down there. He made it and ran.”

The forensic looked out of the window and cursed under his breath, shaking his head. Dan gave me a light smile. “Go on.”

I walked towards the window. “An attacker... Attackers... Took a few shots at him from here.” Gunpowder, burned steel and tortured plastic again.

“Did they hit?”

“Please. I'm not that good,” I replied, perfectly frank. He acknowledged it with a nod.

“Hicks, Quinn, search the alley. He may be lying somewhere around.”

“Aye, detective.” The two uniforms rushed down the staircase. I closed my eyes and strained my sense once again.

The second layer was the residual aura of the room. While not as striking as the carnage, it still obscured the faint, elusive clues I was looking for. Still, it contained a gold mine of information I never wanted to know.

The tobacco smoke pervaded the wood and plaster, thousands of cigarettes leaving an eternal stain on the walls. A sweet, sickening trace of cannabis was mixed in, along with sour, badly metabolised alcohol. A monotonous barrage of Hawaiian pizza, the cheapest sort, with cheese analogue, canned pineapples and ketchup instead of tomato sauce. Deeper inside, a toilet that wasn't cleaned in over a year and a leaky shower, corroding the walls with moisture and mould. And, of course-

“They were making meth here,” I stated.

“No kidding.” Dan wasn't impressed. “I don't need you to tell me. That room reeks.”

“Upstairs. There is a hidden room somewhere, perhaps with a ladder-”

“It's empty, though. Just furniture,” one of the uniforms pointed out.

“They were doing it for a long time,” I replied. “Half a year at least. The room is saturated with it.”

“Where did it go, then? The lab, the ingredients, the products?”

“I don't know,” I confessed. “They weren't carried through the front door, that much I'm certain. I can go to the back room and check if you'd like-”

“That's none of our business. Just stick to things here.”

“Yes, sir.” Now that I had the second layer down, I could brush it off and reach the final one. The fleeting tracks left during the carnage, but not by it. The tiny cues the attacker carried on his body, like a second skin. Ones that could tell me who he was. During my first dive I just skimmed through it, looking for the familiar mark. This time, I examined them carefully.

He wasn't there.

The dog trainers often say that every human has their own scent. That's a gross understatement, much like saying that every human has their own appearance. Physical looks are a sum of small details. Race, body build, hairstyle, hair and eye colour, complexion, facial features, gestures and body language, fashion sense – our looks are made of all these, and more.

The same goes for our personal smell. It's a fine mesh of tiny cues. Humans just lack the scent to notice them all.

I was an exception.

I found this fine, personal mesh in the final layer. More than one, in fact. I could feel the shreds of the victims' smells, as well as others, strangers whose scent wasn't saturated in trauma and death. With my eyes closed, I was able to reconstruct various details.

None of them were his, however.

No trace of inflamed wounds, clumsily sewn together with a metal wire, or skin burned with antiseptics. No leukocyte-rich blood, sweat saturated with amphetamine and testosterone. No tell-tale signs of sickness and self-destruction, of fever, internal damage and antibiotics consuming his life. None of the strange fragrance I came to associate with cold blood and relentless determination.

Most of all, none of that unmistakable, unnatural scent. No smell of a supercharged organism, of strained organs secreting hormones and enzymes unknown to mankind. No trace of inhuman metabolism dissolving harmful substances at an impossible rate, casting fatigue and pain out in sweat. No ruined tissue burned like trash, no bursts of protein growth to replace it. Whoever had caused this carnage, they were perfectly normal human beings.

'Normal' wasn't in our scope of interest.

“There were... Three attackers. At least,” I said. “All male, in their twenties. High as hell. Meth mixed with alcohol.” I turned towards Dan without opening my eyes. “You know he never drinks.”

“M-hm.” My partner sounded more convinced, if not happy.

“My guess is another copycat attack,” I continued. “A gang hit or a resource raid, masked as-”

“No one asked for your guess, detective Sun.”

It was his tone that hurt the most. If he scolded me hard, I could cushion the humiliation with anger. However, Dan was soft but assertive, like a parent gently rebuking a child. It only rubbed the salt deeper.

He was right. Not because my guess was wrong, but because it was out of turn. There was time for guesswork and brainstorming in detective work. Now was not that time.

“I'm sorry, sir.” I hung my head, finally opening my eyes and staring down at my boots. More to avoid looking at the massacre than out of embarrassment, to be frank. I didn't want to examine it with my sight. Exploring it with my nose was bad enough.

“And he's not here,” Dan finally asked in a conciliatory tone.

“Not even a trace.”

My partner let out a heavy, tired sigh.

“All right. We'll have to wait till forensics have the results, but... I'll call homicide and tell them we'll probably shove this their way.”

I rose my head up. “We're not going to dwell on this,” I confirmed.

“No, not for now. We've got a ton of work, and,” he looked at the bloody mayhem in the room, “there's no point wasting time on this crap. At least, until we get some clue on the contrary.” He gave a small nod to the forensics, then wiped his forehead.

“A hell of a morning. Wish I didn't breakfast,” he muttered.

“The scary thing is, how fast you get used to it,” I added quietly.

“Well, we don't get a gung-ho homicidal psycho every year, if that's any consolation. That's my first, actually.”

I just nodded. It was my first too, not that it mean much coming from a detective of my experience. Not that it could be helped. Something like this was bound to happen, sooner or later. It'd just happened sooner than I'd have liked.

To a cop in the Empowered Crime Squad, 'extreme' was a part of job description. Whether it was a trigger-happy vigilante, a titan who could punch through steel, a burglar passing through solid walls or a freak jumping two stores high – it was just another day of the job. Of course, some days were worse than the others.

This was a quintessential bad day. Four men gutted with bullets before lunch.

Again.

This was my fourth slaughterhouse in the last few weeks. Or was it the fifth? Sixth? Nor counting the times when he'd left no crime scene, of course. Literally. Sometimes he'd blow up the entire building or burn it down to the ground. His one-man war against crime had claimed over thirty victims by now, counting only those he'd killed personally.

If we didn't resolve it soon, I'd get completely desensitised.

“I'm going back to the precinct. You coming along?” Dan broke me out of my dark thoughts.

“Ah, no. I'll stay and take a sniff around, give the forensics a few tips.”

“I'm sure they'll appreciate it,” he replied with barely audible sarcasm.

“I'm sure they will,” I repeated after him, with equal enthusiasm. The forensics were always happy for my help, even if they weren't keen to admit it.

Relying on an Empowered human was just a hair's breadth above their dignity.