The Thread

It's been a miserable few weeks. I think I've seen more blood in the past thirty days than in the rest of my career.

I scrub the back of my hands over my eyes and let out a long sigh. It's another late night. I've been having too many of those lately. Standing up to stretch, my eyes fall onto the board where all my information is pinned up. The guys make fun of me for being so old-fashioned, but having the low-tech stuff makes me feel better. More secure, I guess.

I mean, look at these victims. Some of the brightest minds in modern science, gone just like that. Like they'd never even existed.

Thirty days. Thirty victims.

God, it's driving me crazy.

I pull down two of the photos to compare. Day 16 and Day 23, the crime scenes.

Elias Green. Got his stomach torn open and throat slit. Evidence suggests he was conscious until he died. Blood all over the ugly upholstery.

Scarlett Caldwell. Hung from the ceiling by her wrists and beaten, then suffered a cracked skull on the floor. Heavy internal damage. Our perp took the time to raid her fridge on the way out.

We've got video for all thirty of them.

Normally it'd be our saving grace. Now, I think it's the worst part.

We don't have ID. We've got the top half of a face and hours of useless surveillance. Androgynous body type, slim and wiry. Short dark hair or a hat, maybe. Dark eyes, light skin.

Normally, the top half of a face would be enough. More than enough. We'd have ID within seconds and bada bing, bada boom, our guy gets caught on his way home and we don't have to worry about him anymore. I don't have to work 20 hours of overtime a week because everyone this side of the Mississippi is paranoid they're next.

We've got next to nothing. He's random, unpredictable. He strikes fast, hard, and messy, like he's got a vendetta. He's not worried about leaving signs. I mean, look at Day 4. Joey Brooks, cut up in little pieces and scattered around his own apartment. The carpet had squished under my boots.

I need a drink.

I'm craving shots — it feels like a bad-idea type of night — but I've got bourbon stashed under my desk already.

Where's the thread? What connects them all? I mean, unless the guy has been-

I freeze, already halfway through my pour. I set the bottle down roughly and turn back to the board. Profiles. I need the profiles.

I snatch the short descriptions pinned up next to each victim and lay them out next to each other.

Day 4, Joey Brooks, PhD in Developmental Biology.

Day 9, Olivia Gilmore, doctorate in Neuroscience.

Day 16, Elias Green, doctorate in Robotics and Biotech.

Day 23, Scarlett Caldwell, PhD in Biomedical Engineering.

Doctorate, PhD, PhD, doctorate, doctorate, PhD.

A thread.

No, the beginning of a thread. If our guy has it out for scientists, there were easier, higher-profile targets. I mean, Olivia Gilmore lived in rural Missouri, real catfish country. Well, she lived in New York for a bit, but it was a while ago.

A while ago.

"Ailee?" I ask aloud, activating the AI built into the office. Everyone's got a different activation phrase for her, and she reacts anywhere in the station.

"Yes, Officer?" her smooth voice responds.

"Run a few calculations for me. I want to know how many of these victims lived in NYC from-" I check Gilmore's profile. "-2004 to 2015."

"Right away, Officer," she says. I start pinning the descriptions back onto the corkboard, but I'm not even through five before Ailee's back. "I have found records that several of the victims were present in New York City during the timespan you requested."

"How many?" I press, staring at the board.

"Thirty." I sit down, all my breath leaving me in a whoosh.

We have a thread.

Now, what exactly were they doing in the city that put them on our perp's hit list?

You're so close, my mind whispers.

The door behind me creaks shut. Weird. I always keep it closed.

I whip around to see a slim person with pale skin, dark hair, and dark eyes. They look almost wild.

"You're so close," they whisper again. Their voice is softer than I expected. Higher, too. They'd never spoken in any of the surveillance videos.

"Officer," says Ailee. "I am having some difficulty identifying your visitor."

"Find them. You can find what they've done, I know you can," whispers the murderer who I've been looking for for weeks. I swallow hard, my throat suddenly dry.

"And what is that? What did they do?" I manage to ask. My voice doesn't even tremble.

"Officer, based on visual cues, I recommend you remove yourself from this situation," Ailee says, a little louder.

"Experiment X," mumbles the murderer, almost to themselves. They swayed a little where they stood. "Subsection H-131. Status: Successful. Classified. Highly dangerous. Updated status: Loose."

"What are you saying?" I ask, stepping forward. "What does that mean?"

My movement seems to jolt them into awareness, and before I can say "whoops", they're gone.

"Ailee, did you get what they were saying?" I ask. I slide back into my seat behind my desk and down my poor abandoned bourbon.

"I did, Officer."

"Cross-search that with our victims. What was it, Experiment X, subsection something something..."

"Subsection H-131," she confirms. "I have found sources that possess the names of the victims and the key phrases. I'm afraid that they are behind a firewall. They are labeled as highly classified."

"Can you fix that?" I ask.

"Of course." My tablet pings with an Ailee message, and I pull it up.

"What is this stuff?" I ask under my breath, scrolling through the documents. "Ailee, send this to the chief. Make copies. We can't lose this stuff."

The logo at the top of the document strikes me as vaguely familiar. Slowly, my eyes drift to the corkboard.

Day 1.

Norman Crowell.

Right next to his picture on the board is the logo of his company, Crowell Corps. They make most of the ID tech that goes into surveillance equipment. A decent amount of that equipment, too.

Crowell Corps' logo is front and center on the document. Right above the bold text that reads "Experiment X".

"Ailee, what connection do the victims have to Crowell Corps?" I ask, already dreading the answer.

"It appears the victims were involved with this Experiment X. Many of them were influential in its functioning."

"And what is Experiment X?"

Ailee pulls up one of the documents I didn't get to.

It's a picture of a child.

Gaunt with wide dark eyes and lank dark hair, the child stares into the camera. The picture is labeled "Experiment X 2011".

"From what I have been able to discern, Experiment X was an experiment by Crowell Corps to produce a subject resistant to their identification technology. It was originally started to locate weaknesses in their technology, but as the experiment progressed and a successful trial was obtained, the directors of the experiment suggested using the experiment to further their own agenda. The experiment was trained in combat, but on the date of the test deployment, went rogue and attacked Norman Crowell."

My phone beeps with an incoming message from the Chief. "Detective, whatever this is that you've sent me, it can wait. We've got another victim."

"Twenty bucks says this one's also involved with Experiment X," I murmur.

"All due respect, Officer, but I'm not taking that bet," Ailee replies.