SHIFTER ─ marvel

VI. Animal Attack

The officer takes me to the chief, who smiles at me genuinely. He extends his wrinkled hand out towards me. "It's lovely to see you again, Ms. Soroya."

The chief and I had worked together during the blip. I have come to deeply respect the old man. "I wish it were in better circumstances, Chief Alfred. I want to help...Hamburg is my home."

He nods. "Of course, right this way." He says, gesturing towards the entrance to the building.

Even from the outside I can smell the amount of blood. I can tell Alex does too. I stop our pace for a moment, holding a hand out to the chief. I turn back to Alex. "You don't have to go in there if you don't want to—"

"I've seen just as bad," Alex says. "You don't have to protect me."

"I'll always protect you."

"You're not going in alone. Now come on, he's waiting." Alex says, and I can tell he's serious. I nod to him, following the chief through the glass double doors.

The scene I see is enough to make my stomach churn. The entire ground floor is littered with dead bodies, making a once white tiled floor look completely crimson. I find myself covering my nose; the metallic stench of new blood being too much for my heightened senses. There's one woman lying a few feet from me; with her brown hair beginning to stiffen and her pearl necklace splattered with specks of blood.

I want to look away, but I force myself to keep my eyes on all of them. I walk deeper into the room, trying to assess the situation before me. This was definitely a genocide, but if it was by one person or several is unclear.

"Security cameras?" I ask without looking back.

"Destroyed."

"Was the door to the building locked?"

"It was. The people working on the other two floors heard of the attack and tried to escape. Some did through the back door right through there. Others weren't so lucky."

"This person bothered to lock the front and not the back door? Did the people who escaped describe what the person looked like?"

"One of the survivors, a woman named Sally, described a black woman in her mid thirties. The other three men and woman said they didn't get a look at her."

I look over the bodies again. These wounds aren't from bullets or knives; they're bites. I search the bodies of each victim and it's all the same. I look back at Alex, whose heartbeat sounds like beating drums to my advanced hearing. He knows what a mauled person looks like all too well. I can see his hands begin to shake at his sides and he balls them into fists, trying to stay calm.

"These people look like they were killed by an animal not a person."

"They could have done this on purpose. Try to make it look like an animal attack."

I look back at the chief, shaking my head. "No. No I know what an animal attack looks like, trust me. You can't replicate bites and tears like this. You say one of the five people who escaped described a woman being in here? Obviously there was because of the cameras and the front door. But then why didn't she lock the back door? Why didn't she secure the rest of the building? It's like..."

"Like she wanted to get caught." The chief finishes for me.

I nod, trying to wrap my head around this. I feel my powers begin to go haywire again, like they're giving me another warning. I take in a deep breath, trying to see if I can get the scent of the woman at all, but there's way too much blood.

Did this woman have an animal she released on these innocent people? Why did she want to be found out? I have so many questions running through my brain right now and not enough answers.