>>A bitter wind blew through the dark city night, biting and stinging the flesh of the few still out at this late hour....etc....etc

I cant say I like this sort of thing much. Its way too poetic. Needlessly so, People don't talk like that in real life, and its just not necessary in a novel or story. Its like Grandiose . Overdone. Even Cliche .

But this is just:: IMO, some people like that stuff, im sure.

>>158
I'm doing some Lovecraft meets hammer horror shit here, you can't give a literal description of things beyond human comprehension. You need to be poetic.

Text doc because I've done some editing and will continue to go back and do edits once Pandora caps me again. Don't have the focus to write without music but I can still edit.

Well, i'm going to have to applaud you, CH33353, as this might be the first post I've seen here that shows some semblance of actual talent. Well done. I don't have any actual critique, other than for you to watch your repetitive phrasing; "black ichors" and the last sentence, "He donned the glasses once more, hiding once more behind their dark glass." is almost palindromic.

>A bitter wind blew through the dark city night,
There's a lot of redundancy here. I understand that you're going for poetic and vividly descriptive, but it's too much; it's overwrought. Cut back on the adjectives upon adjectives upon adjectives.

>>182
I feel like it would be better as a graphic novel since it's hard for me to paint a mental picture of the protagonist or the antagonist.

Something like enter the sandman, except not awful.

>>185
>>186
I tend to do most of my writing between midnight and 4 am, being verbose or redundant is a side effect of the caffeine running thin. I occasionally go back and edit while more awake but I am trying to focus on getting new material down first. I have a team to introduce, a plot to uncover, a village of mutant cultists to blow up, and a masquerade to stretch thin. Planning on having a vivisection in there somewhere too.

>>190
I'll spare you all my feeble attempts at drawing, but the main character is an animated mummified corpse wrapped up in a few miles of gauze. Think Joshua Graham for Honest Hearts with Imhotep from The Mummy underneath. There is no central antagonist introduced yet.

>>155
I really liked it, and would like to read more of the story.

There's some minor proofreading stuff, but nothing that calls into question the quality of the writing.

I don't think ichor has a plural form, nor am I sure the word needs repetition.

Like Lucif3r said the last sentence doesn't really work. Unfortunately, it sticks out pretty badly, because the rest pretty much kicks ass.

>>200
I looked it up, (http://www.memidex.com/ichors+greek-mythology), ichors is the plural of ichor. The text docs contain some mildly edited versions and expanded versions. I'm fleshing out some dialog at the moment, and once that is done I'll post the latest version.

Current part 1, and past 99chan's character count so I'm posting in text again. I'm still not completely happy with the dialog at the end, but for now it it what it is.

A bitter wind blew through the dark city night, biting and stinging the flesh of the few still out at this late hour. It carried with it dirty ice and snow from the deep muck blackened snow banks, reducing visibility to a couple of blocks at best. The few working streetlights managed only to create glare to blind unfortunate travelers. Bundled within layers of clothes to fend off the bitter cold a traveler walked. With every gust, he felt the chill cut through his flesh and into his bones. He tightened his bundling and strode on as the decaying brick buildings glared down upon him. Until now, it had been a good day for him. He had taken a mental health day to escape life, and spent the day going from museum to museum all about town. A morning at the aquarium with breakfast at a greasy spoon diner lead to an afternoon browsing fine art with lunch from a street side hotdog vendor, and an evening at the science museum with Chinese for supper. Now he made the slow trek home, looking forward to the bundle of heated blankets and space heaters at his apartment.
However, his return was delayed, not by the hostile cold, but by the stranger that had been following behind him. He had made several extraneous twists and turns in his route to be certain there was no odd coincidence at work. Sometimes when turning he caught a brief glance of the man stumbling after him. His gait was odd, not the loose stumbling of a drunk but something quite different. His legs seemed too stiff and his back too loose, causing the man to sway and lurch with each step while as his arms hung limply by his side. He also seemed to be making strange snorting and gurgling noises as he went, the sounds echoing down the streets. Not wanting to lead his stalker to his home the traveler dragged his feet, taking as long as possible and with as many detours as he could to extend the commute. Running might lead to a chase, and there was no predicting how that would go. Confrontation it would be. Taking a sharp corner the traveler opened his coat and drew his black ceramic pistol from its leather holster in his armpit, and moved it into his coat pocket before sealing himself back up to ward off the bitter chill. Up ahead was a dead end alley, most importantly with no windows overlooking it. The perfect place for a good day to end poorly.
The pursuer entered the alley after him, pausing at its apparent emptiness before stumbling toward its end, haphazardly poking amongst the refuse searching for the one he had been following. The pursuer slumped face first against the brick wall at the alley’s end, sniffing the air and scratching his nails against the bricks as he let out a low growl, frustrated at lost prey.
“I do not believe we have met.” The traveler said in a deep and gravelly voice that echoed in the mind, suddenly in the middle of the alley where nothing had been before. His gun was in his hand at his side as he tapped his gloved trigger finger against the weapon’s side. “I don’t suppose you wo-” He was cut off as his stalker lurched into motion with a loud shriek and charged arms outstretched, desperate to grab a hold of his prey. Two shots rang out, sending hot lead through cold flesh and spraying the alley’s wall in black ichors from the stalker’s body that hissed as they burned into the brick. Stumbling, the man’s hood fell and revealed his twisted face; his flesh was shrunken and pale, with red and inflamed sores covering the exposed skin of his face, his lips were a bloody mess from chewing them to shreds, his remaining teeth black and rotted, his hair stark white and stringy, and his eyes bloodshot and yellow. Letting out another high-pitched shriek he charged again, two more bullets tearing through to little effect before a third carved out a chunk of his face and he collapsed to the ground. The traveler let out a sigh of relief, too soon as his stalker gurgled and struggled to stand once again.
“What in the hell?!” The traveler yelled as two more rounds ruined the remains of the stalkers skull and left him twitching for a moment on the ground. The traveler approached cautiously, firing his last two rounds into each of his fallen pursuer’s knees for good measure and reloading with a fresh magazine. Stepping on the corpse’s back to hold it down he began searching its pockets and inspecting the body, tossing aside a wallet and set of keys to look at better later. The first thing he noticed was the black ichors draining from the corpse when there should have been blood, and how white the exposed innards were in comparison. Strangest of all was that he confirmed his first shots were dead on; they had all struck the man in the center of his chest, undoubtedly repeatedly striking the heart with what should have been an instantly fatal wound. That most certainly did not bode well. He stepped back and rolled the body over, giving the entry wounds and ruined face a good look. The man’s condition made all but the vaguest guesses about his identity impossible, the details of his face so warped.
Three shots rang out as the corpse again began to hiss, but this time it did not spring into motion, but its skin cracked, split, and crumbled as the corpse liquefied into a thick black muck, oozing from the crumbling skin and melting his clothes and burning into the ground. A terrible stench, like foul eggs, filled the air. Spooked the traveler quickly collected the man’s wallet and keys, along with his own spend shell casings and left as quickly as possible, watching for any signs of witnesses or the sounds of sirens approaching. He made one last set of detours before his return, still nervous of pursuit, his nervous excitement turning every howl of the wind into another dangerous stranger as he counted the casings to be certain he got them all. He was certain he fired eleven shots, and counted eleven cases. The Traveler was long gone from the scene and his trail cold by the time officers arrived to investigate the reports of gunfire.
The traveler liked to think he lived in one of the areas nicer apartment buildings, the elevator worked more often than it was broken, nothing leaked, and there was not much noise. The traveler hurried up the elevator and to his door, quickly opening the many deadbolts he had added to his door. It was not until those deadbolts were locked behinds and he was enveloped in the apartment’s heat that he let out a sigh of relief. The apartment’s other inhabitant made herself known by meowing at the emptiness of her food dish, his pudgy tabby cat did not appreciate his late return. He removed his boots before serving a can of food to the pushy feline who showed her thanks by trying to stick her face in the can as soon as it was open. The traveler hung his coat to dry and set to shedding his unnecessary layers and putting on something more comfortable. He donned a simple long sleeved button up shirt and khaki slacks, taking a moment to double check his appearance in the mirror.
The traveler, Ka Ahmose, or as his Anglophone acquaintances call him, Amos, was a slender man, and stood a little over five and a half feet tall. But with his winter layer shed his most prominent feature was revealed, the bandages that covered him head to toe with slits for eyes, ears, mouth and nose that allowed only slivers of his black and shriveled skin to show. He even wore dark glasses to obscure his eyes. Or rather, where his eyes had once been. Now the glasses lay aside as he straightened his attire in the mirror, and upon his face sat two dark and empty sockets. His vision did not mourn to the loss of its once related organs, much as his voice did not mourn the absence of a tongue in his mouth, his breath did not mind his lost lungs, or his breast the beating heart that had once been all that stood between him and death. So many pieces of himself gone and yet here he stood, no worse for the wear. However, Ka himself was known to mourn such losses at times if he allowed himself, those seemingly small sacrifices made for such a great reward. He donned the glasses again, hiding his inhuman nature behind behind their dark lenses once more.
Catherine was much friendlier now that she had been fed; rubbing against his legs and purring loudly until he knelt down to give her a pat, which prompted her to flop onto her back to further solicit a belly rub. How nice it must be Ka mused, to be so blissfully separated from the struggles of the world. He tended to her litter while she smugly watched, and waited to soil it again when he was done. He retrieved his weapon and the spent casings and took them into his walk in closet, fighting his way through racks of old and faded clothes until he reached the small wall safe at the back. It softly beeped as he entered the long combination on the key pad. The wall itself hissed and clicked, swinging outward as the florescent lighting on the other side sprang to life, reflecting brightly off the white floor and walls. He set the weapon and casings down on his workbench for later, he did not know what the night’s business had been about but he was damn well going to find out.
The four large monitors of his computer stared back at him as he his seat, flickering to life as he turned on the tower and logged in. He set aside the updates of stock market reports and predictions that had piled up in his absence, and launched a connection to an onion proxy network and adjusted his data encryption. Anyone trying to trace the signal would fight through layers of firewalls and red herrings to find him. Ka liked his privacy, and the fewer people who knew where he was, the better. From the computer’s speakers came the synthesized sound of a phone’s ring.
“Hello this is eye-eye-aye-dee division chief Drew Willows’ office, how may I help you?” Drew Willows poor secretary Harriet. She had a security clearance most would kill to have, and yet she had been sitting at the same desk under different bosses for half a century.
“Yes, I’d like to order a large cheese pizza.”
“Ahmose, right? I’ll get him for you.” He heard her shout something in the background about his ‘mummy’ calling before transferring the call over.
“Mother how did you-“
“Hello Drew, how are you?” A pause and a sigh over the line.
“What do you want Amos?”
“I can’t just call to chat? Why do I need to have an ulterior motive?”
“Because you are you, get to damn the point.” Drew Willows was the division chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s vaguely titled inter-service investigation & analysis department. The ‘IIAD’ had been called and posed as many things since its first conception, but currently the division’s purpose was to sift through the reports of other divisions and even other agencies, looking for missed connections or patterns. It guided the flow of information between government agencies to keep anyone from darting along the peripheral vision of the United States government. There was however, a second hidden purpose. Hidden among the endless reports were hints of things far beyond the expertise of normal investigators. Forces and beings that did not inhabit the same world as humanity. Many, monsters best left out of human consciousness. Most of these creatures have always been happy to oblige the separation, others, such as Ka, instead exist on the edges of society, harmlessly hiding in plain sight. Others still however are not able to exist peacefully. That is when IIAD would step in, and follow the trail of blood and misery to its heart.

>>217
Ka shifted in his seat, debating how much information to give up. Even asking questions could give clues, either about how much, or how little one knew. “I’m looking to see if you have picked up hints of anything unusual recently. Can’t tell you anything I’m looking for specifically though.” Drew burst into hysterics, hand slapping his desk as he leaned back in his chair.
“Thousands of things catch our attention every day. Yahoos reporting UFO’s, whack jobs reporting bigfoot, and the shitty cell phone videos they post online where you can’t tell which one of the two they’re supposed to be. And you’re going to try and be cryptic so we’ll have less of a lead on where to find you, so I can’t help.” Ka sighed, disappointed. Make your questions too vague, and no one has a clue.
“Anyone’s body liquefying after being killed, turning into awful smelling black sludge. Really awful smelling, like rotten eggs. Someone with their blood turned black, and acting very strangely, even violently. The smell is probably from high sulfur content, though that is speculation on my part.”
“When did this happen? And I’m putting you on speaker.” This had Drew’s full attention. He sounded nervous or excited, Ka couldn’t tell but it at least showed that something was going on. There was the sound of shuffling papers in the office.
“Earlier tonight, but quid pro quo Drew.” Drew was on his feet, pacing as he read from the case file.
“Two months ago an undercover DEA agent got a meeting with a man trying to unload a lot of methamphetamine. When the cavalry went in for the bust it all went to hell, the supplier fought back. Three tazers did nothing, and a dozen agents had to shoot him to bits after he ripped an agent’s throat out with his teeth. His corpse promptly liquefied too, and no DNA or anything to help ID him survived. It was destroyed by enough sulfuric acid to burn right through the floor. When tested the meth showed some weird impurities, mostly sulfur. The black crap he turned into matched the composition of some residue found last year on a wrecked fishing boat, the crew was missing but from all the bloodstains, they have to be dead. Fish wasn’t all they were catching either, the hull was filled with destroyed containers of heroin. The only link thus far seems to be the narcotics, possibly something supernatural throwing its hat into drug trafficking. You run into any signs of that?”
“Hold on…” Ka fetched the pilfered wallet and began ruffling through it. Sure enough, hidden amongst credit cards and old receipts was a small clear plastic baggie, and in it fine crystals of what Ka could only assume to be meth. “Maybe meth in the wallet. But judging from how little cash he had or any signs he was spending it on himself I’d wager he wasn’t a seller, but a buyer. So either there is a ring dealing to people that have been supernaturally mutated, or it is the drugs causing the mutation.
“And since only a fraction of the drugs the supplier said he had were seized and the manufacturer is still out there we could have a horde gathering. You said you had a wallet? Please tell me it had an ID.”
“Driver’s license, credit card, hell even pharmacy and doughnut shop rewards cards. Do you have some place you want me to mail it?” Ka wondered how easily he could get the package postmarked form somewhere on the other side of the country.
“No, someone will be by to collect them and interview you. Stay where you are please, I’d rather not have to chase you around for too long.” Ka swore and quickly checked through his electronic security measures for a leak. Nothing obvious.
“Bull, you have no idea where I am.”
“How often do you think police report responding to sounds of gunfire in an alley only to find bullet fragments in the walls and bits of cloth floating in toxic waste? You may have cleaned up after yourself but you left a bullet casing. I prefer a .45 myself, but a 9mm can get the job done too, eventually. Give us some time to chase the serial number down and I can even tell you where you bought the ammo.”
Ka grumbled angrily “Does big brother always spend so much time chasing people around or should I accept this as a romantic gesture.”
“Uncle Sam prefers to keep tabs on the one sorcerer we know of that can peer into the future with anything resembling accuracy. From what I hear, the CIA has the SEC chasing down all your stock portfolios looking for any fluctuations that may be predictions of natural disasters or terrorist attacks. Even second hand and unfocused, your predictions have saved lives. We can’t just let you slip away so easily.
Now Ka had reason to pause. “This incident today, it is not how you found me. I never managed to shake you in the first place; you just let me think I had.”
Willows let out a hearty laugh. “You should have seen the look on that judge’s face the first time we got our wire tapping warrants. Nothing quite like the revelation of the existence of the supernatural to get a judge’s signature. Every time you moved, we followed the money trail to your new hole. You’re good Amos, but we’re better.”
“Why are you telling me this? You’ve tipped your hand.” Drew sat back down and looked down on the phone.
“Because Amos, the implications of this case scares the living shit out of me. Do you know how widespread methamphetamine use is these days? Now we have someone putting a new variation out that turns its users into monstrous freaks. If this spreads, it could turn an epidemic into Armageddon. Our best clue at this moment is what you’ve found, and we have no idea how useful that will be. What we really need is someone of your abilities who can skip the legwork and give us a big break. What do you say; you’ve served this country before, why not again?” Drew was almost friendly, but clearly a little desperate.
“You want me to go running around, chasing drug addicts and telling fortunes for federal agents, not giving myself the proper time to monitor my stocks and at best getting shitty government pay? Not a damned chance. Find someone else.” Drew’s false cheer picked up an almost malevolent edge.
“Now Amos, it isn’t the pay that is important. It is the benefits. Healthcare, dental, retirement. However, since you likely won’t make use of those, I’ll have to find some special ones just for you. Like not tipping off the IRS about the various fake identities you’ve been conducting your trading as to hide your income, tax evasion and fraud. How naughty. You also always seem to have some uncanny tip on how stocks are going to go, might be worth an insider trading investigation. All moot of course, since your brokers will be sad to find out that you’re dead, I’m sure they’ll shed a tear as they lay claim to your assets. But those are minor, white collar issues. The elephant in the room is your confession that you shot and killed a stranger tonight. You claim it was self defense, but then why did you not contact the police, flee the scene, remove evidence, including the poor man’s wallet. It is beginning to look more and more like you may have killed and robbed that man. Add possession and you are looking at some very serious criminal charges. Of course a normal prison couldn’t be expected to hold someone like yourself. The bureau would have to take you. We have some interesting theories about ways to block the use of magic. I wonder how they’d effect someone whose life is tied to it. And who would feed your poor Catherine? She’ll be so lonely without you.” Ka sat, mouth agape at how far Drew was willing to go on this.
“You are a damned bastard. I hope you are proud of yourself.”
“I’m not, but I swore to protect this country. I’ll be damned if I’ll let your greed and laziness get in the way of that. Agents are already in state, and are on their way to you. So I need to know, are you in, or are you out?”
“I’ll dance to your tune, for now.” Ka grumbled as he severed the connection. Drew smiled, it was tenuous cooperation, but it would have to do. Using his computer, he quickly checked the location of the GPS transponder that had been installed in Ka’s cat. It would be rather embarrassing if they had the wrong address after all this.


The gun store clerk looked over Ka’s gun permit and the long-winded documentation from a doctor stating that he had a legitimate reason for his face to be hidden under bandages and had to wear dark glasses. He of course did, just not the one in the paperwork, and this half-truth was moot by the fact that the permit was for one of Ka’s many false identities. The clerk found his concerns about the validity of the documents kept slipping out of his mind as fast as Ka could subtly ply his will into the man’s mind. He could walk out with the full contents of the store if he chose and leave the clerk clucking and convinced he was poultry if he so chose, but such an overt show of the supernatural could bring a world of hell crashing down on him if the man reclaimed his mind and remembered him. On the other hand, subtle manipulation meant the clerk would remember him as just another uninteresting customer. The clerk finished entering Ka’s information into his computer, set the permit down on the counter, and shook his head.
“Now pardon me saying this, but you don’t look like one of the typical punks that come in here because he saw one of these in a movie.” He indicated to the large automatic pistol Ka had selected for purchase. Normally his 9mm would have been sufficient for anything short of WW3 breaking out in front of his building, but it had taken an entire magazine to put down the man he had encountered the night before. If he had encountered more than one junkie, he would have been overwhelmed. The stopping power of a .50 AE round would be more than able to do the job. Ka originally intended to purchase a more recent incarnation of the M1911 that had been the 9mm’s predecessor, but he’d be damned before he’d follow Drew’s advice. Tragic really, he had received the .45 as a gift and used it for fifty years before decades of barely compatible replacement components caused the gun to fire half its magazine from one trigger pull before misfiring a round out the ejection port and exploding. Somehow.
“Those punks are the problem, body armor became a fashion statement somewhere along the line. They make armor now that looks just like normal clothing.” Ka had even ordered a few outfits, including a tailored suit, online the night before. One advantage of un-death was that your measurements didn’t change. “If someone breaks in I don’t want to have to use an entire magazine to beat them to death with bullets. Meanwhile his buddy has turned my living room and myself into Swiss cheese with a submachine gun. Terrible times we live in.”
“Uh huh.” The man clearly was not buying the story. He had no problem selling the gun, he just wanted to give Ka a hard because it looked like he was just out to buy a penis extender, and with a rather bad excuse to boot. “Protecting your home is a noble idea and all, but if you have a group breaking into your house armed with automatic weapons you should be concerned with who you pissed off so badly. I’d also suggest you file a police report, maybe update your life insurance. A handgun might not be your best option either, would you like to add some real power to your home defense?” The clerk indicated to the shop’s displays of long rifles and carbines, and Ka did not miss the push to get him to buy more. He however had a slightly better plan, the FBI would conceivably be bringing in firepower greater than he as a civilian could purchase. He wanted to get a look at what he could get from them free first.
“No thanks, I prefer to avoid being put on a federal list, and I already have a rifle. Speaking of which, I will also need some .308 cases, primers, bullets and some powder. My reloading supplies are a bit low.” The clerk shrugged and followed him to the reloading supply display after locking up the handgun.
“So, what king of rifle do you have?” The clerk asked as he unlocked the case displaying the plastic containers of gunpowder.
“A re-chambered Garand, possibly a couple of them if I find all the parts I swapped out over the years. The oldest parts would be dangerous to use at this point though, I have had the thing since the Second World War.” The clerk whistled as he relocked the case after removing Ka’s selection as Ka drifted into memory lane. This left the clerk a little too clear headed.
“Wait, how could you have gotten it then, you were only born in 19-” The clerk froze in place as Ka snapped back to attention, the tendrils of his mind freezing the clerks as he ripped away the memories of the slip-up in his story. “-A modernized M1? Let me guess you ruined a classic by sticking some ridiculous scope on it and replacing the beautiful wooden body right?”
“Guilty as charged, but she’s still a beautiful beast.” Ka smiled as the clerk grumbled and rang up the order, thoughts of why Ka carried so much cash on his person whisked away.



Ka sat staring out his window. A black SUV with out of state plates and heavily tinted windows had driven past twice now. A white van branded with a company name and logo he did not recognize had slowed to a crawl as it passed his building. Some putz in a Japanese import skidded into a parked car and drove off. Predicting the future always was a tricky thing, the most common method was to summon spirits from another realm to interrogate, beings from places where time flowed differently than in the physical world. Some of the more alien beings had the best view of the fourth dimension and could be targeted to look where you needed them, but lacked the human perspective to be able to recognize and use our more abstract concepts. A great fire, flood, or act of bloodshed was universal for them to recognize, but the names of locations, the parties involved, or the distinction between the corporeal living and incorporeal dead. Human souls, the aforementioned incorporeal dead, could distinguish nations and individuals, and describe events in human terms. Those terms however were limited to the terms of that person’s life. A farmer from antiquity would have no way of distinguishing the make and model of a person’s car, and could only describe it in the most metaphorical of terms. A spirit describing a great flying beast breathing forth fire and death could as easily be a warplane as a dragon, and if they mistook something modern for a mythical beast, they could have a wildly inaccurate idea of what those mythical beasts were actually like. Even through this, the spirits of the dead had trouble distinguishing the past, present, and future from the cheap seats. Ka had to nail a soul to the wall to get it to stop babbling about a wave that washed away everything it touched that would strike long enough to get it to just tell him that two agents would be arriving and a range on when they would arrive. He would look into the wave later.
The house phone buzzed, someone was calling him from the front door. Ka let it sit for a minute before answering.
“Who is this?”
“Ka Ahmose?”
“No you are not.” There was grumbling and whispered background conversation.
“I am special agent Berry Litchard with the federal bureau of investigation’s inter-service investigation & analysis department. You’re Ka I assume?”
“Feel free to assume whatever you like. I’ll buzz you in.” Ka sat in a recliner facing the door. His new gun sat loaded on the table to his right, the old holstered on his shoulder. He wore his Sunday best for the occasion, a grey sweater vest over a white shirt with khaki slacks, black socks and brown leather shoes. He had left his face un-bandaged, the black and dried skin stretched tight over preserved flesh. It was little more than a wrinkled brown wrapper around his ancient bones, with patches where even that had worn thin and bits of bone showed. A few scant wisps of hair clung to his head, showing the outline of what had once been eyebrows, a beard and the hair upon his head. His cheeks had split, leaving white teeth gleaming through their gape. His lips were the least damaged part of him, having been maintained through magic to allow him to retain a limited degree of facial expression. Black and empty sockets stared at the door as he waited. There was a knock, his guests had arrived.

So I'm essentially using 99chan to back up my work right now, and I have been slacking off, but here is the latest. Does anyone know a good site for getting feedback of writing? This place is a little dead. By a little dead I mean very fucking dead.

Chapter 1: Cold Open
A bitter wind blew through the dark city night, biting and stinging the flesh of the few still out at this late hour. It carried with it dirty ice and snow from the deep muck blackened snow banks, reducing visibility to a couple of blocks at best. The few working streetlights managed only to create glare to blind unfortunate travelers. Bundled within layers of clothes to fend off the bitter cold a traveler walked. With every gust, he felt the chill cut through his flesh and into his bones. He tightened his bundling and strode on as the decaying brick buildings glared down upon him. Until now, it had been a good day for him. He had taken a mental health day to escape life, and spent the day going from museum to museum all about town. A morning at the aquarium with breakfast at a greasy spoon diner lead to an afternoon browsing fine art with lunch from a street side hotdog vendor, and an evening at the science museum with Chinese for supper. Now he made the slow trek home, looking forward to the bundle of heated blankets and space heaters at his apartment.
His return however was being delayed, not by the hostile cold, but by the stranger that had been following behind him. He had made several extraneous twists and turns in his route to be certain there was no odd coincidence at work. Sometimes when turning he caught a brief glance of the man stumbling after him. His gait was odd, not the loose stumbling of a drunk but something quite different. His legs seemed too stiff and his back too loose, causing the man to sway and lurch with each step while as his arms hung limply by his side. He also seemed to be making strange snorting and gurgling noises as he went, the sounds echoing down the streets. Not wanting to lead his stalker to his home the traveler dragged his feet, taking as long as possible and with as many detours as he could to extend the commute. Running might lead to a chase, and there was no predicting how that would go. Confrontation it would be. Taking a sharp corner the traveler opened his coat and drew his black ceramic pistol from its leather holster in his armpit, and moved it into his coat pocket before sealing himself back up to ward off the bitter chill. Up ahead was a dead end alley, most importantly with no windows overlooking it. The perfect place for a good day to end poorly.
The pursuer entered the alley after him, pausing at its apparent emptiness before stumbling toward its end, haphazardly poking amongst the refuse searching for the one he had been following. The pursuer slumped face first against the brick wall at the alley’s end, sniffing the air and scratching his nails against the bricks as he let out a low growl, frustrated at lost prey.
“I do not believe we have met.” The traveler said in a deep and gravelly voice that echoed in the mind, suddenly in the middle of the alley where nothing had been before. His gun was in his hand at his side as he tapped his gloved trigger finger against the weapon’s side. “I don’t suppose you wo-” He was cut off as his stalker lurched into motion with a loud shriek and charged arms outstretched, desperate to grab a hold of his prey. Two shots rang out, sending hot lead through cold flesh and spraying the alley’s wall in black ichors from the stalker’s body that hissed as they burned into the brick. Stumbling, the man’s hood fell and revealed his twisted face; his flesh was shrunken and pale, with red and inflamed sores covering the exposed skin of his face, his lips were a bloody mess from chewing them to shreds, his remaining teeth black and rotted, his hair stark white and stringy, and his eyes bloodshot and yellow. Letting out another high-pitched shriek he charged again, two more bullets tearing through him to little effect before a third carved into his forehead and he collapsed limply to the ground. The traveler let out a sigh of relief, but too soon as his stalker gurgled and struggled to stand once again.
“What in the hell?!” The traveler yelled as he fired two more rounds that ruined the remains of the stalkers skull and left him twitching for a moment on the ground. The traveler approached cautiously, firing his last two rounds into each of his fallen pursuer’s knees for good measure and reloading with a fresh magazine. He kicked the corpse’s legs apart so it could not roll over and stepped on its back to hold it down he began searching its pockets and inspecting the body, tossing aside a wallet and set of keys to look at better later. The first thing he noticed was the black ichors draining from the corpse when there should have been blood, and how white the exposed innards were in comparison. Strangest of all was that he confirmed his first shots were dead on; they had all struck the man in the center of his chest, undoubtedly repeatedly striking the heart with what should have been an instantly fatal wound. That most certainly did not bode well. He stepped back and rolled the body over, giving the entry wounds and ruined face a good look. The man’s condition made all but the vaguest guesses about his identity impossible, the details of his face so warped.
Three shots rang out as the corpse again began to hiss, but this time it did not spring into motion, but its skin cracked, split, and crumbled as the corpse liquefied into a thick black muck, oozing from the crumbling skin and melting his clothes and burning into the ground. A terrible stench, like foul eggs, filled the air. Spooked the traveler quickly collected the man’s wallet and keys, along with his own spend shell casings and left as quickly as possible, watching for any signs of witnesses or the sounds of sirens approaching. He made one last set of detours before his return, still fearing pursuit, his nervous excitement turning every howl of the wind into another dangerous stranger as he counted the casings to be certain he got them all. He was certain he fired eleven shots, and counted eleven cases. The Traveler was long gone from the scene and his trail cold by the time officers arrived to investigate the reports of gunfire.
The traveler liked to think he lived in one of the areas nicer apartment buildings, the elevator worked more often than not, nothing important leaked, and there was not much noise. The traveler hurried up the elevator and to his door, quickly opening the many deadbolts he had added to his door. It was not until those deadbolts were locked behinds and he was enveloped in the apartment’s heat that he let out a sigh of relief. The apartment’s other inhabitant made herself known by meowing at the emptiness of her food dish, his pudgy tabby cat was not appreciative of his late return, nor particularly interested in any excuses for why her dinner was delayed. He removed his boots before serving a can of food to the pushy feline who showed her thanks by trying to stick her face in the can as soon as it was open. The traveler hung his coat to dry and set to shedding his many layers and putting on something more comfortable. He donned a simple long sleeved button up shirt and khaki slacks, taking a moment to double check his appearance in the mirror.
The traveler, Ka Ahmose, or as his Anglophone acquaintances call him, Amos, was a slender man, and stood a little over five and a half feet tall. But with his winter layer shed his most prominent feature was revealed, the bandages that covered him head to toe with slits for eyes, ears, mouth and nose that allowed only slivers of his black and shriveled skin to show. He even wore dark glasses to obscure his eyes. Or rather, where his eyes had once been. Now the glasses lay aside as he straightened his attire in the mirror, and in his face lay two dark and empty sockets. His vision did not mourn to the loss of its once related organs, much as his voice did not mourn the absence of a tongue in his mouth, his breath did not mind his lost lungs, or his breast the beating heart that had once been all that stood between him and death. So many pieces of himself gone and yet here he stood, no worse for the wear. However, Ka himself was known to mourn such losses at times if he allowed himself, those seemingly small sacrifices made for such a great reward. He donned the glasses again, hiding his unnatural nature behind their dark lenses once more.
Catherine was much friendlier now that she had been fed; rubbing against his legs and purring loudly until he knelt down to give her a pat, which prompted her to flop onto her back to further solicit a belly rub. How nice it must be Ka mused, to be so blissfully separated from the struggles of the world. He tended to her litter while she smugly watched, and waited to soil it again when he was done. He retrieved his weapon and the spent casings and took them into his walk in closet, fighting his way through racks of old and faded clothes until he reached the small wall safe at the back. It softly beeped as he entered the long combination on the key pad. The wall itself hissed and clicked, swinging outward as the florescent lighting on the other side sprang to life, reflecting brightly off the white floor and walls of his hidden chambers. Against the far wall was a desk loaded with electronics and computer, to his right his workbench he used when hand loading his munitions, and to his left another white door, perfectly flush with the walls and with no visible way of opening it. He set the weapon and casings down on his workbench for later, he did not know what the night’s business had been about but he was damn well going to find out.
The four large monitors of his computer stared back at him from the far end of the room as he took his seat, flickering to life as he turned on the tower and logged in. He set aside the updates of stock market reports and predictions that had piled up in his absence, and launched a connection to an onion proxy network and adjusted his data encryption. Anyone trying to trace the signal would fight through layers of firewalls and red herrings to find him. Ka liked his privacy, and the fewer people who knew where he was, the better. From the computer’s speakers came the synthesized sound of a phone’s ring.
“Hello this is eye-eye-aye-dee division Chief Drew Willows’ office, how may I help you?” Drew Willows poor secretary Harriet. She had a security clearance most would kill to have, and yet she had been sitting at the same desk under different bosses for half a century.
“Yes, I’d like to order a large cheese pizza.”
“Ahmose, right? I’ll get him for you.” He heard her shout something in the background about his ‘mummy’ calling before transferring the call over.
“Mother how did you-“
“Hello Drew, how are you?” A pause and a sigh over the line.
“What do you want Amos?”
“I can’t just call to chat? Why do I need to have an ulterior motive?”
“Because you are you, get to damn the point.” Drew Willows was the division chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s vaguely titled inter-service investigation & analysis department. The ‘IIAD’ had been called and posed as many things since its first conception, but currently the division’s official, albeit classified, purpose was to sift through the reports of other divisions and even other agencies, looking for missed connections or patterns. It guided the flow of information between government agencies to keep anyone from darting along the peripheral visions of the various agencies of United States government. There was however, a second even more classified purpose. Hidden among the endless reports were hints of things far beyond the expertise of normal investigators. Forces and beings that did not inhabit the same world as humanity. Most of these creatures have always been happy to oblige the separation, having too little in common with humankind to seek interaction. Others, such as Ka, instead existed on the edges of society, harmlessly hiding in plain sight. Others still however are not able or willing to exist peacefully. That is when IIAD would step in, and follow the trail of blood and misery to its heart.
Ka shifted in his seat, debating how much information to give up. Even asking questions could give clues, either about how much, or how little one knew. “I’m looking to see if you have picked up hints of anything unusual recently. Can’t tell you anything I’m looking for specifically though.” Drew burst into hysterics, hand slapping his desk as he leaned back in his chair.
“Thousands of things catch our attention every day. Yahoos reporting UFO’s, whack jobs reporting bigfoot, and the shitty cell phone videos they post online where you can’t tell which one of the two they’re supposed to be. And you’re going to try and be cryptic so we’ll have less of a lead on where to find you, so I can’t help.” Ka sighed, disappointed. Make your questions too vague, and no one has a clue.
“Anyone’s body liquefying after being killed, turning into awful smelling black sludge. Really awful smelling, like rotten eggs. Someone with their blood turned black, and acting very strangely, even violently. The smell might be from high sulfur content, though that is pure speculation on my part.”
“When did this happen? And I’m putting you on speaker.” This had Drew’s full attention. He sounded nervous or excited, Ka could not tell but it at least showed that something was going on. There was the sound of shuffling papers in the office.
“Earlier tonight, but you will have to go first if you want anything else Drew.” Drew was on his feet, pacing as he read from the case file.
“Two months ago an undercover DEA agent got a meeting with a man trying to unload a lot of methamphetamine. When the cavalry went in for the bust it all went to hell, the supplier fought back. Three tazers did nothing, and a dozen agents had to shoot him to bits after he ripped an agent’s throat out with his teeth and bit several others trying to save that agent. His corpse promptly liquefied too, and no DNA or anything to help ID him survived. It was destroyed by enough sulfuric acid to burn right through the floor. When tested the meth showed some weird impurities, mostly sulfur. The black crap he turned into matched the composition of some residue found last year on a wrecked fishing boat, the crew was missing but from all the bloodstains, they have to be dead. Fish wasn’t all they were catching either, the hull was filled with destroyed containers of heroin. The only link thus far seems to be the narcotics, possibly something supernatural throwing its hat into drug trafficking. You run into any signs of that?”
“Hold on…” Ka fetched the pilfered wallet and began ruffling through it. Sure enough, hidden amongst credit cards and old receipts was a small clear plastic baggie, and in it fine crystals of what Ka could only assume to be meth. “Maybe meth in the wallet. But judging from how little cash he had or any signs he was spending it on himself I’d wager he wasn’t a seller, but a buyer. So either there is a ring dealing to people that have been supernaturally mutated, or it is the drugs causing the mutation.
“And since only a fraction of the drugs the supplier said he had were seized, and the manufacturer is still out there we could have a horde gathering. You said you had a wallet. Please tell me it had an ID.”
“Driver’s license, credit card, hell even pharmacy and doughnut shop rewards cards. Do you have some place you want me to mail it?” Ka wondered how easily he could get the package postmarked from somewhere on the other side of the country.
“No, someone will be by to collect them and interview you. Stay where you are please, I’d rather not have to chase you around for too long.” Ka quickly checked through his electronic security measures for a leak. Nothing obvious.
“Bull, you have no idea where I am.”
“How many times a night do you think police report responding to sounds of gunfire in an alley only to find bullet fragments in the walls and bits of cloth floating in toxic waste? You may have cleaned up after yourself but you left a bullet casing. I prefer a .45 myself, but a 9mm can get the job done too, eventually. Give us some time to chase the serial number down and I can even tell you where you bought the ammo.”
Ka grumbled angrily “Does big brother always spend so much time chasing people around or should I accept this as a romantic gesture.”
“Uncle Sam prefers to keep tabs on the one sorcerer we know of that can peer into the future with anything resembling accuracy. From what I hear, the CIA has the SEC chasing down all your stock portfolios looking for any fluctuations that may be predictions of natural disasters or terrorist attacks. Even second hand and unfocused, your predictions have saved lives. We can’t just let you slip away so easily.
Now Ka had reason to pause. “This incident today, it is not how you found me. I never managed to shake you in the first place; you just let me think I had.”
Willows let out a hearty laugh. “You should have seen the look on that judge’s face the first time we got our wire tapping warrants. Nothing quite like the revelation of the existence of the supernatural to get a judge’s signature. Every time you moved, we followed the money trail to your new hole. You’re good Amos, but we’re better.”
“Why are you telling me this? You’ve tipped your hand.” Drew sat back down and looked down on the phone.
“Because Amos, the implications of this case scares the living shit out of me. Do you know how widespread methamphetamine use is these days? Now we have someone putting a new variation out that turns its users into monstrous freaks. If this spreads, it could turn an epidemic into Armageddon. Our best clue at this moment is what you’ve found, and we have no idea how useful that will be. What we really need is someone of your abilities who can skip the legwork and give us a big break. What do you say; you’ve served this country before, why not again?” Drew was almost friendly, but clearly a little desperate.
“You want me to go running around, chasing drug addicts and telling fortunes for federal agents, not giving me the proper time to monitor my stocks and at best getting shitty government pay? Not a damned chance. Find someone else.” Drew’s false cheer picked up an almost malevolent edge.

“Now Amos, it isn’t the pay that is important. It is the benefits. Healthcare, dental, a pension. However, since you likely won’t be making use of those, I’ll have to find some special ones just for you. Like not tipping off the IRS about the various fake identities you’ve been conducting your trading as to hide your income. Tax evasion and fraud, how naughty you’ve been Amos. You also always seem to have some uncanny tip on how stocks are going to go, might be worth an insider trading investigation. All moot of course, since your brokers will be sad to find out that you’re dead, I’m sure they’ll shed a tear as they lay claim to your assets. But those are minor, white collar issues. The elephant in the room is your confession that you shot and killed a stranger tonight. You claim it was self defense, but then why did you not contact the police, flee the scene, remove evidence, including the poor man’s wallet. It is beginning to look more and more like you may have killed and robbed that man. Add possession and you are looking at some very serious criminal charges. Of course a normal prison couldn’t be expected to hold someone like yourself. The bureau would have to take you. We have some interesting theories about ways to block the use of magic. I wonder how they’d effect someone whose life is tied to it. And who would feed your poor Cat? It’ll be so lonely without you.” Ka sat, mouth agape at how far Drew was willing to go on this.
“You are a damned bastard. I hope you are proud of yourself.”
“I’m not, but I swore to protect this country. I’ll be damned if I’ll let your greed and laziness get in the way of that. Agents are already in state, and are on their way to you. So I need to know, are you in, or are you out?”
“I’ll dance to your tune, for now.” Ka grumbled as he severed the connection. Drew smiled, it was tenuous cooperation, but it would have to do. Grumpy as Ka could be there was a decent human being buried in him somewhere, hopefully they could dig it out of him for this case. Using his computer, he quickly checked the location of the GPS transponder that had been installed in Ka’s cat. It would be rather embarrassing if they had the wrong address after all this.


The gun store clerk looked over Ka’s gun permit and the long-winded documentation from a doctor stating that he had a legitimate reason for his face to be hidden under bandages and why he had to wear dark eye concealing glasses. He of course did, just not the one in the paperwork, and this half-truth was moot by the fact that the permit was for one of Ka’s many false identities, this one conveniently a New Hampshire resident. The clerk found his concerns about the validity of the documents kept slipping out of his mind as fast as Ka could subtly ply his will into the man’s mind. He could walk out with the full contents of the store if he chose and leave the clerk clucking and convinced he was poultry if he so chose, but such an overt show of the supernatural could bring a world of hell crashing down on him if the man reclaimed his mind and remembered him. On the other hand, subtle manipulation meant the clerk would remember him as just another uninteresting customer. The clerk finished entering Ka’s information into his computer, set the permit down on the counter, and shook his head.
“Now pardon me saying this, but you don’t look like one of the typical punks that come in here because he saw one of these in a movie.” He indicated to the large automatic pistol Ka had selected for purchase. Normally his 9mm would have been sufficient for anything short of WW3 breaking out in front of his home, but it had taken an entire magazine to put down the man he had encountered the night before. If he had encountered more than one junkie, he would have been overwhelmed. The stopping power of a .50 AE round would be more than able to do the job, and getting it only took a short teleport across state lines. Ka originally intended to purchase a more recent incarnation of the M1911 that had been the 9mm’s predecessor, but he’d be damned before he’d follow Drew’s advice. Tragic really, he had received the .45 as a gift and used it for fifty years before decades of barely compatible replacement components caused the gun to fire half its magazine from one trigger pull before misfiring a round out the ejection port and exploding. Somehow.
“Those punks are the problem; body armor became a fashion statement somewhere along the line. They make armor now that looks just like normal clothing.” Ka had even ordered a few outfits, including a tailored suit, online the night before. One advantage of un-death was that your measurements did not change. “If someone breaks in I don’t want to have to use an entire magazine to beat them to death with bullets. Meanwhile his buddy has turned my living room and myself into Swiss cheese with a submachine gun. Terrible times we live in.”
“Uh huh.” The man clearly was not buying the story. He had no problem selling the gun, he just wanted to give Ka a hard because it looked like he was just out to buy a penis extender, and with a rather bad excuse to boot. “Protecting your home is a noble idea and all, but if you have a group breaking into your house armed with automatic weapons you should be concerned with who you pissed off so badly. I’d also suggest you file a police report, maybe update your life insurance. A handgun might not be your best option either, would you like to add some real power to your home defense?” The clerk indicated to the shop’s displays of long rifles and carbines, and Ka did not miss the push to get him to buy more. He however had a slightly better plan, the FBI would conceivably be bringing in firepower greater than he as a civilian could purchase. He wanted to get a look at what he could get from them free first.
“No thanks, I prefer to avoid being put on a federal list, and I already have a rifle.” This reminded him, he was low on ammo for said rifle. “Speaking of which, I will also need some .308 cases, primers, bullets and some powder. My reloading supplies are a bit low.” The clerk shrugged and followed him to the reloading supply display after locking up the handgun.
“So, what king of rifle do you have?” The clerk asked as he unlocked the case displaying the plastic containers of gunpowder.
“A re-chambered Garand, possibly a couple of them if I find all the parts I swapped out over the years. The oldest parts would be dangerous to use at this point though, I have had the thing since the Second World War.” The clerk whistled as he relocked the case after removing Ka’s selection as Ka drifted into memory lane. This left the clerk a little too clear headed.
“Wait, how could you have gotten it then, you were only born in 19-” The clerk froze in place as Ka snapped back to attention, the tendrils of his mind freezing the clerks as he ripped away the memories of the slip-up in his story. “-A modernized M1? Let me guess you ruined a classic by sticking some ridiculous scope on it and replacing the beautiful wooden body right?”
“Guilty as charged, but she’s still a beautiful beast.” Ka smiled as the clerk grumbled and rang up the order, thoughts of why Ka carried so much cash on his person whisked away.



Ka sat staring out his window. A black SUV with out of state plates and heavily tinted windows had driven past twice now. A white van branded with a company name and logo he did not recognize had slowed to a crawl as it passed his building. Some putz in an import skidded into a parked car and drove off. Predicting the future always was a tricky thing, the most common method was to summon spirits from another realm to interrogate, beings from places where time flowed differently than in the physical world. Some of the more alien beings had the best view of the fourth dimension and could be targeted to look where you needed them, but lacked the human perspective to be able to recognize and use our more abstract concepts. A great fire, flood, or act of bloodshed was universal for them to recognize, but the names of locations, the parties involved, or the distinction between the corporeal living and incorporeal dead. Human souls, the aforementioned incorporeal dead, could distinguish nations and individuals, and describe events in human terms. Those terms however were limited to the terms of that person’s life. A farmer from antiquity would have no way of distinguishing the make and model of a person’s car, and could only describe it in the most metaphorical of terms. A spirit describing a great flying beast breathing forth fire and death could as easily be a warplane as a dragon, and if they mistook something modern for a mythical beast, they could have a wildly inaccurate idea of what those mythical beasts were actually like. Even through this, the spirits of the dead had trouble distinguishing the past, present, and future from the cheap seats. Ka had to nail a soul to the wall to get it to stop babbling about a wave that washed away everything it touched that would strike long enough to get it to just tell him that two agents would be arriving and a range on when they would arrive. He would look into the wave later.
The house phone buzzed, someone was calling him from the front door. Ka let it sit for a minute before answering.
“Who is this?” A man’s voice
“Ka Ahmose?”
“No you are not.” There was grumbling and whispered background conversation.
“I am special agent Berry Litchard with the federal bureau of investigation’s inter-service investigation & analysis department. You’re Ka I assume?”
“Feel free to assume whatever you like. I’ll buzz you in.” Ka sat in a recliner just out of sight of the entryway. His new gun sat loaded beside the wallet of the man who attacked him on the table to his right, the old holstered on his shoulder. He wore his Sunday best for the occasion, a grey sweater vest over a white shirt with khaki slacks, black socks and brown slippers. He had left his face un-bandaged, the black and dried skin stretched tight over preserved flesh. It was little more than a wrinkled brown wrapper around his ancient bones, with patches where even that had worn thin and bits of bone showed. A few scant wisps of hair clung to his head, showing the outline of what had once been eyebrows, a beard and the hair upon his head. His cheeks had split, leaving white teeth gleaming through their gape. His lips were the least damaged part of him, having been maintained through magic to allow him to retain a limited degree of facial expression. Black and empty sockets stared toward the door as he waited. There was a knock, his guests had arrived.
The locks clanged loudly as they all opened in unison and the door swung open. The agents hesitated, already unnerved by Ka’s parlor tricks. They entered, hands on their weapons. One of them, the same as before from the voice, spoke;
“Ka Ahmose? You here? Don’t play games.”
“No games.” Ka said, closing the door behind them as the agents came into view. The color drained from their faces as they saw Ka’s, giving him a moment to properly assess them in person. Both had a head of dark hair and light skin, were clean-shaven, and wore a suit under a heavy winter jacket. The one that had spoken, Berry, was a couple of inches shorter and thinner than the other agent, and had a shorter and wider face. They appeared closer in height due to the slouch of the taller agent, and Berry’s stiff upright posture. All that was missing was a pair of mirrored sunglasses and they would look like the most generic federal agents on Earth. The only thing of note was a strange flow of the ether about them.
A voice from somewhere Ka could not see spoke, a husky older woman’s voice.
“Relax; the cocky bastard is trying to psych you out. Now sorcerer, I believe you have a something for us?”
The voice came from behind the two men, through the gap between them.
“Nice trick, hiding like that. Why don’t you take your coat off, stay a while?”
“It doesn’t turn off. Is that suspect’s wallet?” The swirls of ether shifted, Ka caught what must have been the outline of an arm pointing toward the table besides him. The more he focused the extent of the ethereal disturbance became, he could just see the woman’s vague outline now. He tossed the wallet to her, but the male agent who had yet to introduce himself intercepted it with a gloved hand.
“Everything is in there in the same places as when I found in, but first stop tracking muck around my damn house. Leave it on the mat by the door and grab a seat.” The agents grumbled to themselves as they set aside their footwear, the indignation at the games Ka was playing rising from the two agents minds and filling the air, the female agent’s mind remained hidden from Ka’s prying however. He watched her carefully, trying to peer through the void in the ether she left. Anything that was within a few inches of her disappeared from his vision, but quickly returned as she moved away and the ether returned to normal. A spot on the wall she touched came back into focus in an instant, but the shoes she removed barely reappeared at all.
The agents all sat on the hideous brown couch that was the only other seat in the room, a relic that had once been fashionable decades ago. The agent holding the wallet sat farthest from Ka as he began examining the contents, the woman sat closest, leaving the appearance of a gaping hole in the couch, and finally the agent who had given his name sat in the middle as he set an audio recorder on the coffee table and pulled out a handheld tablet.
“Ok, so I am special agent Berry Litchard, this is special agent Ruth Blount.” He indicated to the hole in the ether that was the female agent. “And special agent George Lombelon.” The male agent copying down the personal information from the cards in the wallet nodded. “Interviewing witness Ka Ahmose. Now what can you tell me about the, uh…” He hesitated. “Individual, you encountered. Any details you can remember will help us identify what we are dealing with. Where did you first see them?”
“It was late last night, between 10:30 to 11. I was walking home from the bus stop 15 minutes away when I spotted him. I do not know exactly when he started following me, but we were about halfway here and he was following by a hundred or so feet when I spotted him.”
Agent Litchard nodded. “Now, considering your, um, reputation, is there any reason you didn’t notice you were being followed?”
Ka laughed. “If my abilities granted me omniscience you people seem to think I have do you think you would have ever found me? For one I simply was not looking out for any pursuers at that point, it is difficult to spot what you are not looking for. Visibility was also terrible, the wind had whipped up the snow enough that even the ether was cloudy, and…” Ka thought for a moment, searching for the proper words. “It was like his mind was suppressed, most people’s thoughts tend to radiate out for anyone that knows how to hear, but his where distorted. People can block themselves from broadcasting their thoughts, anyone with a good poker face can do it almost instinctively, but that is not what this was. It was more like he was broadcasting just below the lowest frequency on the dial. Could have been the drugs, could be from a preexisting mental retardation, could be anything.”
The agent looked more confused by the talk of the mystic. “Uh, OK. Now, what happened next? He was following you and? Anything odd you noticed about him?”
“I took a few extra turns and doubled back to make sure this wasn’t some odd coincidence. He kept following. His gait was odd, he stumbled a lot. Not a drunken stumble, he was walking more like a zombie, too stiff in some spots too loose in others. When the wind died down I could hear him making some odd sounds too.” That got their attention, making them all respond in near unison.
“Zombie!?”
“Like a movie zombie, not an actual zombie, sorry. The classic shambling type. I take it you have been having problems with people making zombies recently?”
“Some of the South American cartels have been using them to in their drug farming operations.” Ruth sat up as she answered.” Cheap labor that doesn’t ask for vacations or blab what is going on. We helped deal with them target the Bokor, and brought in some Houngans to exorcise the zombies, but they were too brain damaged to be released. For now, we have them contained and under observation in a special facility in Louisiana, but it is already over capacity. But, back to last night. You were being followed, and?”
“Right, well I know the area pretty well so I lead him toward a dead end alley and teleported to safety once-“
“You can teleport?” Agent George Lombelon interjected.
“Yes, I can teleport, I also read minds, summon the spirits of the dead, and can rain fire and lightning upon anyone who interrupts me. Any more questions?” George shook his head no. “Well once he was all the way in the alley, sniffing the walls too I think, I confronted him. Teleported back into the alley between him and the exit, but he wasn’t interested in talking. He let out this inhuman shriek and charged me. Shooting him in the chest barely slowed him, shooting him in the head worked a little bit better. I shot him in the knees after he stopped moving just in case and searched him, found that wallet and a set of keys, though he melted before I could search him too thoroughly. After that happened I grabbed everything and left, or I thought I had grabbed all of the casings. Went home, fed cat, made a phone call. Any other questions?”
“Did yo-“
“Where’s the cat?” George interrupted Berry’s next question. Ka laughed.
“You like doing that to people don’t you? She is in her carrier for now; I am going to be boarding her while I am being dragged around the state hunting bogeymen . Next question? Something more relevant this time perhaps?” George did have a relevant question this time.
“Uh, well, where there any odd identifying marks or characteristics on him that you saw? A tattoo or marking, a physical deformation or oddity, or a bite mark? What did he look like?”
“His face was a mess, covered in sores, his teeth were all rotten and his lips looked like he had tried eating them. His eye’s looked jaundiced, and his hair had turned white, even his innards looked oddly pale other than the black blood. It was almost white with just tinges of pink. That was all I saw before he began liquefying from the inside out, next question?”
“How many times did you shoot him, where and with what?”

“I emptied the magazine into him, nine 9mm rounds, plus a few more when he started melting. The first several rounds where center of mass, and when I checked him out after it looked like I hit his heart, which should have killed him almost instantly, but he kept coming so I shot him in the head. I had to do that again when he tried getting up again, and shot out him knees just in case to finish the magazine.”
“Are you absolutely certain you hit the heart? The holes you left in the alley indicate the rounds went clear through; they should have hit the spine too. Surviving massive amounts of physical damage, even to the brain, and not being killed by the shock is certainly impressive and something we should worry about, but to stay mobile with a hole in your spine spits in the face of biology. Are you absolutely, positively, certain you hit where you thought?”
“I saw the wounds afterward, my aim was spot on. I cannot say if the bullets damaged the spine or not, but if there is some sort of possession involved here that could explain some of the durability. Anything else?”
“Is that the gun you used there?” He indicated to Ka’s holstered 9mm. Ka nodded. “Have you cleaned it? We’ll need to take it as evidence for now, run ballistics and such. You only get so much special treatment, you stilled shot someone, justified or not. Hand it over.” Ka drew the weapon, ejecting the magazine and clearing the chamber before dropping it into the clear plastic evidence bag Berry was holding out.
“I haven’t cleaned it, and you are going to get ammo for your tests yourself. Is the Q&A done yet?”
“For now, yes.”
“Well that is all I know, so what exactly do you expect me to do to help you here?” The female agent spoke up.
“You are a necromancer, we want you to summon the man you killed and make him talk. If possible, we want you to do the same for the pusher killed in the incident with the DEA. I don’t pretend to understand how your ability to magically peep works, but if it can track where things have been we could find out the source. Or if you can use your abilities to tell us anything about this crap they’re trying to push, all the more advanced tests that were run on the DEA’s samples were inconclusive.”
“Inconclusive?” Ka asked curiously
“They made the samples explode.”
“Wait, wait. What? How does that happen?”
“We don’t know, they ran some basic chemical tests on the samples that went fine but when they put it in some of the big testing machines to find out what all the strange extra chemicals in the drugs were the sample exploded, wrecked multimillion dollar equipment, terrified a lot of lab techs, and produced a lot of toxic fumes. You might be able to tell if there is something supernatural going on with this stuff.” Ka rose to his feet and started to the kitchen.
“I’ll take a peek; I only took a brief look before and saw nothing special. Let me get a pan to do this in before I lose my security deposit.” Ka returned carrying an iron pot, and directed the agents to put a small sample of methamphetamine into the pot. He put the pot down on the floor in the entry hall, and took several steps back. The tendrils of his mind delicately reached forth, seeking the sample. He could barely even find it, it seemed to have far less ethereal presence than it should have, perceived nothing abnormal about it, no hint in its presence in the ether that it was anything other than what it seemed to be to mortal eyes. “I don’t see anything odd yet, this might be regular meth. Hold on.” He dug deeper into the ether looking for more. The pot sang every it’s detail, he saw it’s every flaw and perfection, and knew every detail of the pot’s creation from when the iron was mined to the casting, but the meth remained oddly silent. He decided to apply a little persuasion, energy flowing from his mind toward the sample to force its secrets out if it. The sample began to glow as the ether around it was sucked into the sample as it rapidly gained energy. “Or not.” The sample released the accumulated power in an explosive burst that left the mortal agents ears ringing and a flash that left their eyes in shock, causing them to stumble as they attempted to jump to their feet. The pan jumped, acrid smoke flowing forth until Ka trapped in it within the pot with a wave of his hand and his will. He picked up the pot and washed the smoke down the drain leaving the pot in the sink.
“You find anything?” Berry asked him when he returned.
“No, but I have some ideas of how to dispose of this stuff when you find it. As soon as I applied force it exploded, this might make scrying junkies interesting but it will be no help initially finding them.”
“So if you started randomly, what did you call it, scrying? Scrying a neighborhood you could blow up a building if they had a stockpile there? Shit that isn’t good, can you warn any other of, ah, you types around here about that?”
Ka waved off his concerns. “It only blew up when I tried to force it, not from just looking at it. It barely seemed to be there before I poked it too, if I had not known it was there to start with I could have missed it. I am afraid you will not be getting any shortcuts from me to finding more; it seems whoever is making this stuff is doing their best to hide themselves from being tracked using magic, sorry.”
Berry shook his head. “Well we know more than we did before. How long would a séance take to conjure up the dead guy? We need to find a hotel and get to our meeting with the State police and DEA, so will you need long? We can come back.”
“Local police tend to get irritable if you don’t run everything by them.” Quipped Ruth. “If our investigation is going to go smoothly we’ll need to keep them informed and co-operative. They don’t need to know everything, but we need to tell them something.”
“Well the summoning won’t take long at all; the ritual only takes me a moment and I already have everything prepared to perform it. How long it lasts is only a matter of how many questions you have for him and how willing he is to answer. I make no promises that you will learn anything, the dead are not a reliable source of information; they tell plenty of tales but few good ones, and this one probably will not like me. Now, follow me and I will take you to my summoning facilities.”
He opened his closet and went inside, hesitantly fallowed by the trio of federal agents. “Beware strange women offering candy.” He said as he opened the hidden door. The agents stumbled as their eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness as they entered Ka’s office.
“Is any of this even legal?” Berry asked eyeing the workbench covered in ammunition loading materials.
“I almost miss when they would have sent spooks.” Ka said as he ignored the question and closed the door. “They asked less questions because they knew they might not want the answers. What happened to that?”
“People got suspicious when CIA agents took over domestic criminal investigations.” Berry said, looking over the amassed equipment. “It’s easier to keep up the illusion that nothing strange is going on if you don’t send the men in black to handle it.”
“We’re still the men in black to most people. The truth is that the CIA thought the whole thing was more work than it was worth, this was back before computers when they needed to have teams manually read through every single report, and nothing was digital so it could take months or even years for a reports to make their way in. The CIA just dumped the load they didn’t want on the FBI.”
Ka placed his hand against the second door, causing it to glow faintly for a moment before it slowly opened out into a long hallway even more white and sterile than the first chamber. “They probably thought it was hilarious.” He said as he led the agents toward the large door at the end of the hall. It stood unique amongst the other doors, a vault like limestone behemoth, a foot thick and reinforced with iron bars impossibly placed within the solid stone, sealed with a dozen two inch thick foot long steel deadbolts, all operated by the large wheel located at the door’s center.
“How do you fit all this into an apartment?” George asked, his brain reeling to comprehend the architecture that surly had them currently standing somewhere outside the building that housed it.
“A staggering amount of lubricant.” Ka snarked as the wheel turned on its own, bolts grinding free. The door opened into a large circular chamber about 50 feet across, constructed of the same reinforced limestone of the door and lit by electric lights along the wall. Every inch of wall, ceiling and floor was covered in strange geometric patterns. A fence of steel bars separated the main chamber from the walkway and seats around it. In the middle of the chamber, cordoned off by the fence that was a smaller triangular chamber whose walls were made of glass covered in inlaid iron of similar patterns as the outer walls. Under all the smaller arcane symbols sat a great seal of thin concentric right triangles, each carved into the floor and offset from each other by only millimeters, and inlaid with iron. At their center was a large glass sphere, inlaid with iron like the rest of the glass, mounted upon a marble platform, the platform’s runes inlaid with more precious metals to direct the flow of arcane energies, channels of copper, silver, gold and even platinum all carefully laid to channel the most energy possible. On the floor before the platform were four small triangular cushions on the floor each at ninety-degree angles from the center and sitting over a congruent triangle inlaid on the floor. In front of each cushion, was receptacle, two which were empty and two which contained a small nozzle and lever to control it. A profoundly over engineered masterpiece of arcane design.
Berry whistled in awe.
“It appears you may be what you say you are after all.” Ruth said, unimpressed. Ka glared at her, or tried to. In the chamber with its countless layers of supernatural protection just standing a few steps further in made the ether impenetrable around her.
“People have offered me millions to get the designs for this chamber. Every detail, from the composition of the inlaid metals to the voltage running through them has decades if not centuries of dedicated research and experimentation pushing it toward perfection. There is not a more efficient and effective design in the world. Plus the sheer amount of experience I have means I can bring forth and command beasts from the far ends of the cosmos that possess power beyond imagining. I am not to be trifled with.”
“It seems I injured the braggart’s ego.” Ruth said blasé as she took a seat. “I believe we mentioned having a timeframe we need to work within?”
Berry and George took a step back, not wanting to get between the woman and the wizard she was antagonizing. Ka considered justifying their concern, but decided against it and turned his attention to his task. The door shut and locked, the echo reverberating in the chamber. There was the sound of stone scraping on stone as a limestone block slid aside to reveal a small staircase to under the chamber.
“How are you doing that?” George asked, as he peeped down into the revealed chamber.
“Magic. Oooooh.” Ka walked up to the wall and flipped open a hidden panel, revealing a series of switches, before shutting it again. “Magically flipped electrical switches. Now once I start do not touch anything. The metal inlay will be electrified. Once our friend arrives I’ll turn on a microphone in the central chamber so you can hear him better. The speakers are in the headrest of the chairs, there are microphones for you on the railing in front of the seats, push the button to talk. No flash photography, hold your applause until the performance is done.” And with that Ka went down into the chamber below, sealing it behind himself. The agents, not quite sure what to expect, took their seats and watched the chamber’s center apprehensively. Below Ka was downright bored. Such a simple summoning would pose no challenge to him, only the headache of a mentally unstable and uncooperative spirit, and a freshly dead one too. That would leave it with more willpower and focus than normal, making it even less cooperative. Given time he could break any spirit, but these agents wanted things done quickly.
Ka took a moment to center himself and focus. Trivial as this may be it was no time for stupid mistakes. He collected a lighter and two marble bowls, the first one he filled with water from a tap, and the other with dirt from a bag of potting soil. The second door to the hidden room opened, this one within the glass chamber. Ka exited into the central chamber and sealed the door behind him. Setting his implements beside him he knelt for a moment before platform on the cushion. The chamber already hummed with energy, pumped from the generators and through the inlaid metals of the chamber.
The agents watched the necromancer closely as he performed his ritual. They could see the movement of his lips, but could not hear what he said. He rose from his seat, opened a small hatch on the sphere, and placed the keys within. Closing the hatch he picked up his implements and walked around the chamber clockwise, kneeling and leaving the bowl of water in the first receptacle. He continued his incantation, repeating the same procedure to place the bowl of dirt at the next receptacle. The third contained one of the nozzles, which released a rush of compressed air when opened. He returned to his starting position, incanting as he held the lighter over the final receptacle and igniting the flammable gas coming from its nozzle. A faint smoke began to fill the sphere, intended to highlight the appearance of the spirit. The smoke began to shift and swirl, moving into strange patterns and displaying incomprehensible symbols.
George sat on the edge of his seat fascinated by the display, while Ruth watched disinterested and Berry looked for hints at how the trick was done. Ka wanted to know the same thing, at this point the summoning should have been complete, and the soul of the man who attacked him should have appeared, but instead…
Ka flipped open a small panel on the floor in front of him and pushed the button activating the microphones. “Something is not right here, it caught something but it is not what it was supposed to. Give me a second to-” He cut short as the keys leapt up into the air, splayed out and spinning in the sphere’s center. Ka watched fascinated as they begun spinning faster and faster until in a flash they splattered molten against the glass. There was not a moment to process this before the smoke was sucked out of the sphere through an unseen vortex in the sphere’s center and the glass began to vibrate and strain. Cracks began to spider web across the glass. Ka cut the power flowing into the pedestal fueling the ritual and turned up the power across the protective runes in the glass, but this only caused the glass to shake more. Pieces of glass began coming loose, being sucked into the sphere and disappearing into the growing orb of darkness at its center. The very air from the room was being sucked through the growing holes with a hiss.
“Door! Now!” Ka barked as he threw his hands up, lending his power to reinforce the rapidly failing seals. The agents scrambled to their feet and began struggling with the heavy door. The sphere was stripped bare, only a sagging and warping skeleton of iron remained, being drawn inescapably inwards. Ka stood as the air whipped around him, exerting every ounce of his will into the tortured iron to make it hold. It had to hold. It would not hold.
The iron screeched as it tore loose and was sucked into the darkness. Nothing stood between it and Ka but his will. He struggled to step back moving toward the exit tunnel as it opened. The outer shield of glass was rapidly disintegrating and shelling his back with small shards of glass. The agents finally got the door open, but Ka was only able to afford them a brief glance as he turned and ran down the exit. It was like a wind tunnel, the air being sucked out as he ran in. The door ahead of him opened as the door behind ceased to exist within the darkness engulfing the chamber. There was a great crash as the glass above failed. Ka ran for the great door, the agents struggling on the other side as it was forced farther open by the forces tearing everything apart. Ka made it through and grabbed the door, pulling it shut with an immense boom as the second layer of iron inlay ripped free. But the door continued to howl and shake even after it being sealed. Swearing profusely under his breath Ka pounded on the door three times, each blow resounding even over the shrieks of the expanding abyss beyond the door. The wheel fell free with a resounding clang as the extremely spooked agents scrambled back.
They stood silently, hearts racing for a moment until they realized the noise had stopped.
“You have explaining to do sorcerer.” Ruth said breaking the silence. Ka shook his head in disbelief.
“When people die their souls normally pass into what you might call the netherworld. Some who bargained their souls away to some power may go elsewhere. Worst case for the latter is the ritual either fails or you summon whatever they made their deal with. What just happened, that was neither of those.”
“Well where did you call that would cause that?” George spoke up this time. “That would tell us what kind of cosmic entity or entities are supporting these guys.”
Ka shook his head. “If it was a function of wherever the ritual was trying to pull the spirit from there would not have been that delay with the symbols in the smoke. What just happened could have been intentional.” He leaned against the wall stroking his chin for a moment. “It is entirely possibly that was retaliation. I take their pawn and they try and take me. It was at least an attempt to prevent any summoning from taking place.”
Berry Sighed. “And now they know we’re looking for them and we have a wizard. There goes the element of surprise.”
“Not necessarily.” George interjected. “They know a wizard was investigating, but they wouldn’t necessarily know that we were there. They might even think their trick killed the nosey wizard.”
Ruth snorted indignantly. “So there is a chance that our wizard here’s error hasn’t harmed the investigation too much. Wonderful news.”
“We know more than we did before Ruth, that’s something.” Berry said to her. “But now we should get moving toward our meeting. Ka, you should come to get introduced to the local officials so they know you are with us, we’ll be calling you a special consultant and contractor for the Bureau for now. We’ll fill you in on some of the speculation about the mutations that have popped up on our end, see if you can add anything.”
Ra sensed a knock at the door.
“And my cat’s ride is here, excuse me gentlemen…”


“The resistance to tazers might be part of a general resistance to electricity, possibly from some odd chemistry in their bodies, or some redundancy in their nervous system boosting the signals from their brain over the impulses sent by the tazer.” Ka sat in the back of the agent’s minivan as Berry drove them to city hall for their meeting. Ruth was in the front passenger’s seat arguing street directions with a GPS while George read off some of the theories the FBI had come up with from his tablet.

“Redundancy might explain how they could stay standing after being shot in the spine.” Ka said, rubbing his chin in thought. George nodded and noted that down, ideas flying back and forth from IIAD’s headquarters deep in the basement of the FBI’s headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington DC.
“Possibly, some extra branching nerve passages to bypass any break in the spine. They seem to be built to take a lot of punishment. They don’t show signs of shock you would expect from severe injuries. You shooting one in the heart should have caused it to lose consciousness from the loss in blood pressure, but something also prevented that.”
“If they have something blocking them from losing consciousness it could prevent them from sleeping, slowly drive them insane from sleep deprivation. That might explain the odd behavior of the guy that attacked me.”
“Possibly, though it would be hard to prove.” Berry said from the front seat. “Meth isn’t kind to the psyche normally, and extra parts being added to the nervous system, plus anything else supernatural could all be influencing their psychological state. Plus your guy might have been the only crazy, we only have solid proof of two of them, and the guy the DEA ran into acted relatively normal for someone trying to offload a truckload of narcotics.”
“Until he started biting people.” Ruth quipped. Berry could only shrug.
“You got me there.”
“I am pretty sure the one I killed was trying to grab me when he attacked, he could have intended to bite me. It might be some sort of instinctive reaction, to bite when fighting. What we have to worry about is if they can spread their mutation via a bite. It does not make much sense as a combat strategy otherwise.” Ka shuddered inwardly at the thought, not sure if these creatures were more horrifying as violent zombies or bodysnatchers.
“The injured DEA agents got a thorough examination after the incident; they went looking for the presence of anything viral or chemical that may have been transmitted and found nothing other than some normal mouth bacteria. They even spent some time in quarantine just in case and nothing showed up. At any future checkups they will double check all of that, though their first concern is HIV and infection, not mutation. George, show him the medical reports.” George search through his tablet’s memory for a moment and passed it over to Ka.
“Medical records are supposed to be private you know.” Ka said as he took the tablet and skimmed the report. The only symptoms noted were a slight fever, redness and swelling from a small infection in the bite area, which quickly passed as doctors bombarded the DEA agents with a variety of antibiotics and antiviral medication. Four agents were bitten, though only one fatally. The fatality was from the first agent bitten, whose throat was torn out, and the others received superficial bites on their arms and hands as they tried to pry the attacker off their comrade. However when dealing with meth users the major concern is that the attacker is HIV positive, the drug had the side effect of greatly enhancing the user’s libido while impairing their judgment, leading to frequent STI transmission caused by unprotected sex among users. They were fortunate he did not appear to be, otherwise there would have been four fatalities because of the incident.
Berry waved off his comment. “We only get free access to government employee records, everyone else requires a subpoena signed by a judge. You can stop pointing out every time we go into a constitutional grey area; we know what we’re doing. The department plays pretty cautiously with the Constitution. Of all the things to get us revealed to the public we don’t want it to be the ACLU dragging us before the Supreme Court.”
Ka handed George his tablet back. “And are there any theories on why they melted?”
“The massive amount of acid they produce when they die probably.” Said Ruth waving her hand dismissively, cutting off George’s response.
“Could you possibly be any more condescending? I did not ask you.” Ka shot her a nasty look, their mutual dislike compounding with every interaction.
“Of course I could be, but I wouldn’t waste it on you sorcerer.” Ka could perceive her disturbance in the ether as a close outline of her, and she looked to be turned to glare at him now.
“Children…” Berry growled from the driver’s seat.
“Anyway, the melting thing.” George dragged things back on track. “Other than as a self destruct mechanism we’ve got nothing. A living one might store the components for their cells to make the acid that kicks in when they die. We think there might be a dead man’s switch that stops broadcasting when they die that sets the process off. Either the storage or some imperfection in the activation could explain the discolored blood, cells prematurely activating the process and dumping the acid into their bloodstream. Or something. We aren’t even sure that the acid is the only thing responsible, it should take a lot more of a much stronger acid than is produced to dissolve a body that fast. Perhaps the chemical reaction cannibalizes the cell and the acid is a red herring to the whole process. If we could grab a couple lives ones we might be able to get a better idea of how this all works.”
Ka snorted, intentionally given how he had to manually cause any sounds his throat might make, and shook his head indignantly.
“So the plan is to capture a few American citizens, who are apparently immune to less than lethal weapons and quite prone to violence, and cut them open while they are still alive, and possibly immune to general anesthesia and unable to lose consciousness, so we can peek around and find out what makes them tick?” He looked around the van at each of the agents, daring them to explain. There was a moment of silence as the agents were confronted with the details of their plans. George was the first to offer a response, his nervousness about the implication betrayed by a cracking in his voice.
“Well, ah, no. Not entirely at least. An MRI could suffice for most of the anatomical details. We might end up having to have some exploratory surgery to if we can’t tell what something is, but nothing like a full blown vivisection. They can wonders with those little cameras these days, probably nothing that would be too dangerous to the subject.”
“Your certainty is relieving to say the least.” Ka said sarcastically, chuckling.
George shrugged. “We’ll do what we have to. Lesser evils and such.” There was a long moment of awkward silence, finally broken by Ka. He leaned in toward George, close enough for him to not how much Ka smelled like mothballs.
“So, George, I take it you are the smart guy, off in the lab or something figuring out what is going on while everyone else shoots everything.”
“Um, sorta. I mastered in history and did a lot of studying of mythology. Normally I’m responsible for figuring out what we’re dealing with, what kind of monster is running amok and any special way of killing it.”
Ka nodded and turned to talk to Berry in the driver’s seat.
“Berry, you seemed to actually know what you were doing when you started interrogating me, and you were the first one to walk in the door and talk. Seems like you have experience in normal police work, and that you lead this motley little crew from the front?”
Berry shrugged and kept his eyes on the road.
“Something like that. I got into the FBI after college, three years later I was transferred to IIAD after an investigation I was on stumbled across a human trafficking ring being run by a trio of vampires.” Berry paused, remembering the nasty details of the case, his jaw clenching at an old anger. “Women were paying them to smuggle them into the country, they had the women act as mules on the way in and sold them to pimps once they got here. Nasty stuff.” They slowed to a stop before a red light and Berry turned to address Ka with a smirk. “And yes, I am sort of the unofficial leader here, and your attempts to exert control by analyzing us to get under our skin aren’t going to change that. So, here is my analysis of you. You act haughty and aloof to fight against the fact that you don’t have control of your situation right now. You have spent most of the last millennia living in complete solitude in a tomb and your social skills reflect that. I’ve read your files, you thought it was a good idea to sneak into a military encampment and reveal yourself in the command tent with smoke and roaring thunder while not speaking a word of English. They shot the hell out of you before you knew what was happening, and even after flying the white flag and trying for diplomacy you still tried to lord over everyone. You need to realize that your abilities only buy you so much leeway. Being an anti-social arrogant jerkass is going to come back to bite you, so what do you say, want to play nice and be friends with everyone or what?” Berry extended his hand to Ka and smiled, making an honest attempt at friendliness. Ka crossed his arms over his chest and glared.
“I will give it some thought.”
Berry shook his head and turned back into his seat, somewhat disappointed. At least it was not an outright no, and the bottomless pit that was Ka’s ego could not be bridged so easily. The lights changed and George cleared his throat to break the silence.
“So, back to the investigation?” He asked with fake and nervous cheer.
“I’ve got one last question.” Ka uncrossed his arms and stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets. “What are you planning on telling people? I assume the truth is not an option.”
“Well…”

Chapter 2:
“…Highly toxic additives in the narcotics that strengthen their addictive properties…” Berry stood behind a podium, operating a projector displaying cherry picked reports and crime scene photos detailing the events that had brought the FBI’s attention here. The assembled audience of political figures and law enforcement representatives sat in silence as they were fed the lurid details of unsubstantiated theory being passed off as fact. “…After prolonged use the body begins to dissolve itself if the drugs are not actively circulating through the addict’s bloodstream, making withdrawal substantially more severe and easily lethal. Hospitals should be looking for patients with patches of necrotic tissue all across their body…”
Ka could not help but wonder if it was necessary to include a slide demonstrating necrosis in the presentation, a though shared by a gubernatorial aid who had been eating.
“The details you put into any official statements are up to, but we would prefer you avoid any mention of the presence of federal agents or details about what intelligence we do have on these people. If we can maintain some element of surprise, we will be able to conduct this investigation much more efficiently and contain this problem as quickly as possible. Now, are there any questions?” One of the state police representatives spoke first.
“We trust that the FBI will be keeping us informed on what its agents are doing while in our jurisdiction?” He put quite the emphasis on exactly whose jurisdiction they were in.”
“Of course” Berry said nodding, a facetious smile on his face. “The FBI has stepped in because of all the jurisdictions this crosses and agencies that are involved. It’s just a matter of ensuring it is clear exactly who is in charge so we can avoid any interservice friction. And since the DEA made their bust in Rhode Island, the coast guard found a ship registered in New Hampshire state washed up on a Maine beach, that makes this case actually fall under federal jurisdiction. But we will be keeping you all up to date with any relevant details of the case.” The governor cleared his throat to attract attention before speaking up.
“You seem to have skimmed on the details a bit, such as why you already had an agent in the state before you officially launched this investigation, and why they saw fit to flee the scene after shooting and unarmed man?” Now Berry was clearing his throat to buy himself seconds to pull an acceptable answer out of his ass.
“He’s not an active agent, or even an actual FBI agent. He worked as a special consultant for our department in the past, but had been semi-retired for a while and living in the area. The incident he was involved in was just a coincidence, we were already on the way. As for fleeing the scene-”
“I do not carry a cell phone.” Ka interrupted from his seat. “I live nearby and did not want to catch whatever had made that man start to liquefy. So I went home and called an old friend in the bureau because hell, how often do bodies just liquefy like that?”

FUCKING SIZE LIMITS

I filled in some spots I previously skipped over, not thrilled with it and haven't done any editing on them yet.