Globe Tracers 6: Chaos Storm

Chapter 4: Secrets Within Secrets

December 1995

Beaverton, Oregon

72nd Precinct,

Case File Alpha 22

Jaden:

I stayed in the shadow and just observed for the moment. It would be fifteen minutes until the other members of the department would show up. I sat some twenty feet up on a fire escape, overlooking the dark alley that housed our crime scene.

A female wild man had been attacked in an alley by a local gang of hooligans- they got more than they bargained for. The woman had refrained from killing any of them, just a few broken bones- three femurs and a shoulder is holding back. The blood stains were few in the end, but there was evidence of strange goings on regardless.

Of course, no one was going to listen to a gang of thugs and their wild stories of an intended rape victim ripping them apart with her bare hands. That is, no one would listen if they didn't see the street light with a trash can lid embedded in its base, or the shoe print in the solid pavement.

The alley passed through two ten-story office buildings, me just sitting and watching over the area to make sure no one arrived to make a record... hello... Here came a man with a camera now.

I leaned on the railing of the stairs and watched as he snapped several pictures of the street light and photographed the shoe print next to his own hand. His head was down over his notepad as I jumped over the fall guard straight down into the street.

The man jumped, quickly turning around, his notes flying into the air and his camera dropping to the ground. He was a small Asian man in a button-up shirt and blue jeans, shaking as he saw my size and my casual way of carrying myself after, from his perspective, dropping in from the sky. "Hello there," I said. He dropped to his butt and crab-walked back, quickly grabbing his camera from the ground and holding it to his chest.

"Oh, it's not that bad." I said as I looked over at his discarded notepad. "Keep that. But I do want the camera."

"What is all this?" he asked.

"You don't need to know," I calmly informed the man.

"Don't need to know?" He spat. "I know a stooge when I see one. You think I escaped your kind in China to stand by while you take over here too?"

"I look like a CCP agent?" I asked, using my fingers to outline my white face.

"Evil knows no color."

"Well- money knows green."

"I don't know what happened here-"

I bent over the man and snatched his camera as he spoke. I tore open the casing, dropping film on the ground and crushing it underfoot. "And you won't." I threw a roll of cash at the man.

"Your evil will be stopped, and God help me, I will be part of how that happens." He screamed at me.

I paused, slowly looking over my shoulder with a raised eyebrow. He jumped to his feet, turned, and ran, having lost his precious evidence, his story now just hearsay. Maybe the CCP had taught him when running was the better option.

I moved back into the shadow of one of the buildings.

In minutes a small werewolf troop had arrived, all tall and well-built white men, all in jackets with the insignia of the FBI. Police siren lights filled the alleyway. My superior, officer Jones, patted me on the shoulder as I handed him the camera.

"How did it go?" asked the clean-shaven man.

"Where is the woman?"

"She's fine. She's being moved to Arkansas so she won't be recognized by her attackers. You had an interloper?"