by Captain Sammitch
NYPD Fourth Precinct HQ
"Anyone care to guess how this all fits together?"
Lieutenant Robert Gant stood at the head of the table in the briefing room, surrounded by the NYPD's best detectives and forensics experts - and a few very conspicuous guests from the FBI. The evidence was on the table - actually, on the projector screen at the head of the room - but it seemed that everyone was having a hard time putting things together.
"It's a bang-up job, no question," ballistics expert Rick Patterson pointed out. "The rifle shot was amazing, in the league of a Delta Force sniper possibly. Instant kill, no damage to the videotape in the camera, the round goes straight into the bricks. We can identify the caliber and grain of the bullet, but not the make or model of the rifle. And the rifling marks are too heavily distorted to match this bullet to anything in the database. Pistol rounds, however, we could clearly identify. Problem is, the ballistics data doesn't match any registered weapon in our database - or Interpol's either."
"We're currently attempting to match it against our database," the normally quiet man in the charcoal-grey suit said. "In case none of you have spoken with me yet, I'm Special Agent Steve Fisher, and I've been tasked by my superiors with tracking down this new suspect."
"I thought the FBI was only after the Colombians," Gant said. "Homicide can handle the sniper."
Fisher smiled. "Our profilers have linked this incident to the incident in Buffalo last month. We're not dealing with your average, run-of-the-mill sociopath killer here. I would say even the NYPD forensics division is in over its head."
"I don't see where you're going with this," Patterson insisted.
Fisher stood up and began walking around the table. "Judging from the information we have, the sniper who fired this shot was the same person who shot and killed the other six men, and very likely the same person who knifed Hector Vargas in that room. Now, from what we know, it is very probable that this same individual delivered the little girl and the videocamera to your front door. What we're dealing with here, gentlemen, is a vigilante. But an especially capable - and driven - vigilante. Someone with intense firearms training, hand-to-hand training, and the ability to escape or at least delay detection. Add to that a very self-contradictory morality that can inflict tremendous amounts of pain on those viewed as guilty while being very sensitive toward their victims, and we have a vigilante completely different from any you've encountered."
"We've run into plenty of vigilantes over the years," Gant protested.
"Most vigilante cases don't involve this level of professionalism," Fisher insisted. "You've got worried fathers of kidnapped children who go after the suspected kidnappers with a Saturday-night special. You've got angry mothers running down drunks in the street to supposedly avenge their kid who happened to be killed by a drunk driver. You've got street preachers trying to infiltrate prostitution and drug rings, to purge the evil from their communities.
"Those cases have a lot in common. The people are emotionally unbalanced, haunted by losses and damage done to them by the people they go after. This suspect, on the other hand, has no apparent connection to any of the kidnappers or their victims. The vigilantes you've encountered are amateurs at murder and subterfuge. They can barely aim a gun, and they usually have no idea what the hell to do in the rare instances they accomplish their objective. This guy tied up all the loose ends, he killed eight men without blinking, and he got out largely undetected. And the vigilantes you deal with all end up either caught or dead, the same as the people they hunt. Unless this guy seriously blows it, he may not suffer either fate."
"There's more to it, though," Patterson said. "There were no fingerprints, and no signs of forced entry, except for the room Vargas was in. Same as Buffalo."
Fisher nodded. "You're not only dealing with a professional, you're dealing with a-"
"Metahuman," Patterson said.
Every head in the room turned, and every pair of eyes locked on Fisher.
Fisher smiled. "Correct."
The room erupted in a cacophony of shouting and arguing.
"We're not prepared for this!" Gant said. "We saw what happened in Chicago!"
"We can't let New York be overrun by metahuman serial killers," an NYPD detective insisted.
"Metahumans are all dangerous, and this proves my point!" an NYPD sergeant declared.
"We have no way of dealing with a metahuman threat," Patterson lamented.
Fisher held up a hand. "Quiet, please. Now you see the real reason the FBI has focused on this suspect. We are dealing with a telekinetic, possibly a telepathic, individual with military or possibly intelligence training. But don't be alarmed. We have a special division, recently formed, with metahumans as its only subject of investigation. I have been named the head of that division, and I have been coordinating with other metahuman affairs entities on this case. This is a perfect example of why you need our help with this. If we work together, we can catch this guy, and possibly the rest of the Colombians too."
"So what should we do now?" Gant asked.
"Just what you've been doing." Fisher said. "Good old-fashioned police work. Find out as much about this guy as you possibly can. His habits, his idiosyncracies, his modus operandi, and anything else you can figure out. We need to know what makes him tick. I will handle the metahuman aspect of this case. You just worry about the human factor."
Gant nodded.
"Let's get to work."
33rd St. subway station
"This is real bad, ese," Alfonso lamented. "Whoever the bastard is, he's a damn good shot with a rifle, and a ruthless pistolero too."
"All four dead," Roberto added. "And four innocents too. All over two little girls." He swore and flipped his cigarette into a corner long forgotten by the janitors.
The two Colombians were sitting on a bench in the station well away from the flow of traffic. The ring was now without a leader, and their sponsors in equally disreputable yet much more lucrative enterprises were reluctant to continue their support. Alfonso and Roberto were the only major players left, and they had met to discuss the future of the venture - and the fate of the remaining kidnapped girls.
"I think maybe it's time to get out of town," Alfonso said after a long pause.
"You serious, man?" Roberto asked. "We got time to do more work, amigo. The cops are after the sniper now."
"I don't wanna take any chances. I sure as hell don't want that guy coming after me."
"You're scared of him," Roberto said challengingly.
"Damn straight I am!" Alfonso shot back. "He killed eight men without breaking a sweat, all because Hector got nervous and killed those two girls without thinking about it. Hector was the man, 'Berto, and you better not forget that. Hector was untouchable, and the bastard did him with a knife." Alfonso absently played his fingers across his own stubbly throat. He looked down. "We gotta get out of here. Lose the girls, trash the cameras and computers, and go."
Roberto finally gave in. "Okay, okay, you win. But what do we do with the other girls?"
"We turn 'em loose and let 'em wander off," Alfonso decided. "If they're smart, they'll go to their parents or to the hospital, and if not, we're improving the gene pool, mano."
Roberto laughed. "You're a sick bastard, Fonso." He stood up. "I'll tell Jorge what to do, and if he doesn't listen, it's his own head." He walked off.
Alfonso watched him go, then stood up and turned to go. He took about three steps before colliding with an impeccably pressed navy-blue uniform.
"Scared of that sniper, Alfonso?" Lieutenant Gant asked. "You come downtown and have a little talk with me, and you just might get out of something even scarier - a long time in maximum."
4th Precinct/FBI field HQ
"What kind of weirdo doesn't leave fingerprints?" Patterson asked Fisher from across the forensics lab.
Fisher smiled. "You're an NYPD detective with eleven years of experience under your belt. What kind do you think?"
Patterson shrugged. "Logic would say either someone wearing gloves..."
"Or?" Fisher stared at him.
Patterson shook his head. "Even gloves leave prints sometimes, unless you're really careful putting them on - you have to touch them with your bare hands at some point. Some perps try to wipe their prints away, but you need either rubbing alcohol or a weak acid or alkaline solution to do that, and the pH tests on all the surfaces we looked at came out neutral. Some people can have their fingerprints surgically altered, or else they apply a temporary silicon overlay like in Gone in 60 Seconds. But even then, there's something left behind, an unmistakable trace of human hands. In this case..."
Fisher nodded. "Nothing."
Patterson looked at him. "Is it possible... is it possible for there to be such a thing as a person with no fingerprints? And no identifiable prints on the palms of the hands either? It sounds like something out of the X-Files."
Fisher thought a moment. "It's entirely possible. Surgically removing fingerprints is extremely difficult, painful, and expensive. It's not as simple as burning them off like in Men in Black. However, there are extremely rare circumstances where people have been born without fingerprints. But those instances are usually rare genetic mutations that occur alongside other severely debilitating mutations such as missing limbs or severely retarded brain development. Our suspect obviously has no such infirmities. But on the other hand..."
Patterson looked at him intently. "What?"
Fisher shook his head. "It's nothing."
"It could be a lead," Patterson insisted.
Fisher sighed. "The alleles that generate fingerprints were isolated back in the sixties, when karyotyping of the genome was nearing the complexity it has today - out of view of the public or the scientific community outside of intelligence. Some of our predecessors discussed the possibility of inducing a point mutation where the alleles for fingerprint generation could be altered sufficiently that the skin cells of the subject would "forget" the pattern of the prints, and after the surface layer of cells was changed a sufficient number of times, any fingerprints would essentially disappear."
"Do you think that the FBI or CIA could have developed that idea further?" Patterson asked.
Fisher shrugged. "The FBI and CIA don't get along very well, as I'm sure you're aware. You never heard this from me, but we acquired the information on the fingerprint-erasure idea essentially through espionage. We spied on the CIA and found out they had stolen the idea themselves."
"Stolen it from whom?" The hairs on the back of Patterson's neck were beginning to stand on end.
"From a team on Soviet geneticists on retainer with the KGB," Fisher answered. "And nobody had any idea how long ago they had acquired that data in the first place."
"So did the CIA do anything after the fact?" Patterson asked.
"I've already told you more than anyone outside of intelligence knows," Fisher answered. "Not even the President - or any of the Presidents before him - were told about those experiments. I could tell you more, but..." He gestured towards the Beretta in his shoulder holster.
Chills ran down Patterson's spine. A lump the size of Jersey had formed in his throat. He nodded, his legs shaking visibly now.
"I'm not sure if we can do anything about this guy," Fisher concluded. "From what we know, he must be a product of some top-level intelligence people. Add the metahuman factor to that, and that seriously narrows down the number of people we could be dealing with. Narrows it down to exactly zero - among known individuals."
Fisher went back to examining some fiber samples. "We're dealing with someone - or something - we didn't even know existed. Until now."