Alice stood on the landing above, surveying the scene below her with a mixture of pity and exasperation. It seemed that someone had decided to use one of their warehouses for what seemed to be a trade-off gone wrong, and their workers had to pay for it.

She looked down at the grotesque mess below her: blood and body parts splayed over wood and metal. She had already searched the rooms before coming to this point, and had seen what happened to the shift supervisor. It wasn’t too difficult to piece together what happened, or what was going to happen. From this point of view she could see crates of defeated-looking, emancipated men and women clawing desperately at their cages while the sound of sirens increased with each passing second. Human traffickers. It wasn’t her place to decide what was right or wrong in the world, but she definitely was leaning more towards the ‘wrong’ side of the spectrum.

Alice made her way down to the main floor, the heels of her steel-toed boots not making whisper. She was careful to avoid leaving any sign that she was even there, her suit would ensure that no biological trace can be detected even by the best of trackers, and her years of discrete work enabled her to be observant, yet silent. She ignored the desperate cries of the captured men and women, she could do nothing for them that the authorities could not to better, so she left them be. It was almost deliberate mess left behind by the workers’ killer (or killers) that she wanted to study. Judging by the ballistics and trajectory of the shrapnel, Alice knew that this was the work of one person. Tall too, a few inches taller than Alice by the looks of things. She traced the steps of her mystery killer, wanting to understand the psychology behind this person. He or she had not hesitated, and the choice of weaponry felt almost personal, a flechette. Alice sighed inwardly, there is a certain sadistic tendency behind using a flechette. The way the steel projectiles tore through flesh made things a lot messier than bullets would, and this meant that her killer had no qualms in taking a life, and perhaps even enjoyed it. Those kinds of people are the most dangerous because they typically have no regard for anything, even themselves. 

Taking out a tweezer, Alice picked up a stray shrapnel from the ground and placed it in an evidence bag, before pocketing it. Forensics would tell her a little more. She knew that this wasn’t the first warehouse to be hit like this, but this is the first for Lucracidy, and it was up to her to make sure it was the last.

The sirens were becoming precariously close now, it was time to leave. She looked down at the dead eyes of a young, blonde worker at her feet. He was handsome and tan, with blue eyes frozen in fear. He was one of the unlucky few that died knowing what was coming. Death was not something that remotely bothered her, but the taking of lives needlessly drew emotions of pity. Bending down Alice ran a hand down his face, closing his eyes with her gloved hand. Shouting started outside as the sirens came to a stop. It was her time to leave.

Alice made sure to give herself a few feet of distance between herself and the warehouse, but close enough to observe what was happening. Letting out a low whistle, a black shadow emerged from the wall behind her, so camouflaged that the creature appeared to melt from the shadows. She gave her best friend a little rub on the neck, before taking out an earpiece and putting it into her right ear.

“Gabriel.” 

“Hey Angel, what did you learn?” 

“Human traffickers.”

“Ah.”

“I’m sending Killer over with some evidence I want you to look over. See if you can find out if it’s from the same weapon that hit Aurora’s a week ago.”

“On it.”

Without saying goodbye, Alice removed the earpiece and took out the evidence bag she previously picked up. Crouching down so that she could look at Killer eye-to-eye, she handed him the bag, which he took gently in his mouth. “Hand this to Gabriel sweet, and come find me after.” Her German Shepard-wolf hybrid nudged her cheek with his wet nose, before disappearing into the shadows once again. As long as she stayed within the city, Killer will be able to find her no problem, their decades of teamwork ensured that.

Sighing, Alice stood back up, watching as the police storm her warehouse. She could no longer do any good here, it was time to see what else she could find out.