As I pulled up to the Liberty and Love, the streets were blocked entirely by yellow tape and filled with confused and scared folks being interviewed and medically examined. I parked my car just off to the side, and walked up to an officer, holding out my badge.

  “Agent Anwyl, here to look around,” I say without making eye contact.

  “Uh... Yes sir, right over here,” said the officer, raising the tape.

  I walked under and moved into the scene, the awkwardness of the scene rolling off of me like water off a duck. I had always had trouble with faces and names, conversations and small talk. It never made sense to me, all the unspoken rules that felt like a minefield you had to walk every day just to be a normal person. I had given up on the prospect of trying, sticking instead to what I’m good at, and by doing so I had flourished. Did I feel lonely sometimes? Unmistakably so, but being good at what I did was worth the trade.

  I saw the people, almost entirely human, being interviewed one by one, asked about what they saw. I could intuit from the symbolism they wore that some of them were members of the Lonely Hearts Club, a gang that was into drug trading, sexual trafficking, and more violent crime. I had no idea what any of them had done specifically, but judging from the bits I heard from their conversations and their body language that they were terrified and in shock; not the vibes of people who were in control, who were hiding that they were in a gang war and had just been hit by a rival or something like that. No, something else had happened here, and I’m sure someone would help me figure it out.

  I watched them bring a tank with a pink fluid in it out; within it was a woman, striking and beautiful, but sickly and frail. A siren, siphoned dry of their vitality. But bubbles formed from their mouth, meaning they still clung to life. I continued through the scene until I found someone interesting, a taller stalwart officer speaking to a woman, curled up and small, sitting on the curb.

  “Agent Anwyl, are you the officer in charge?” I asked, trying to have a polite yet succinct tone.

  “Aye, that’s me,” they responded. The officer was an Othersider, some sort of Amazonian woman with striking white hair done in braids. “This is the one who called it in, lady named Maria, turned in her whole operation. Even willing to go into WitSec, go against some of her ol’ gangers. Ain’t that right, sweetie?” She kneeled down to Maria’s level, a condescension to her tone.

  I didn’t wait for a response. “I’ll talk to her myself, thank you. Give us some space,” I spoke frankly. The officer looked at me with a derision in her eyes, before moving on to her other obligations. I knelt down to be at eye level with Maria, and waited for her to look at me before speaking. “Hello, my name is Bryn Anwyl, I’m an Agent with the Coalition of Othersiders Enforcement, and I wanna get an idea of what happened here. I think you can give me the best idea of that, before I head in myself.”

  Maria softly looked down, before speaking. “I… I’ve done horribly things. I want to do right.”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “I understand that,” I responded immediately, “but what happened here?”

  “Oh… uh… I was doing my job, managing the club. We had a secret backroom drug operation, we were making Siren’s Song out of a dozen sirens we had captured and were bleeding in the back rooms. It was a pretty thorough operation; we used some of our… indentured servants… to make the drugs, and some of our guys to watch over. Plus we had a little place for folks to sample.” She shuddered a bit before continuing.

  “It was just another night, but then someone, something, just walked in. It was human-looking, but the way it moved, it was an Othersider for sure. It ripped through five of my men in hand-to-hand combat like it was nothing, and then when we started shooting at it… Oh God, it moved so quickly, I couldn’t track it completely. It had killed half of my gunmen before they could empty their clips, and none of them even hit it. And then, when it finished with them, it dashed past my bouncer and grabbed my face…”

  She paused for a moment, and I saw her eyes flick back and forth, as if she were scanning her entire life in these moments.

  “What happened when it grabbed you? Did it hurt you?”

  “No, no, it let me go. But I felt different afterwards. I felt lighter, like I could be better, but I also felt the weight of all my sins begin to crush me, things that never bothered me before. But my bouncer stabbed it, and then it… It lit him on fire with this black magic. But then it went to me, and asked me what I was going to do. When I said I’d turn myself in, it let me call you, and left.”

  She was in tatters, barely holding it together, so I sat next to her. “I know you must be going through something horrible right now, and you have a whole life of looking over your shoulder ahead of you. I’m sorry you are in this situation. But please, if you could tell me what this person looked like, it would help us immensely with this investigation.”

  She just sat silently for a moment, before muttering something. “I didn’t get a good look at it. It wore a disguise that covered most of its body. But… Its smile. It had a smile so genuine and sadistic as it tore apart my men. I know it was doing the right thing, saving those sirens and letting me see the light of day again, but… To enjoy killing and revel in suffering so much… What could do that and still sleep at night?”

  I stood up from my seat on the curb, and thanked Maria for her time, before moving on to the only other surviving gang member. Their story was combative and unhelpful; they went into the supply room and were knocked out cold almost immediately. But their life itself raised more questions than answers: why was he alive when everyone else died, and what caused this hit in the first place? As I entered the den itself, I had to pause a moment to take in the sight of the massacre around me. Blood splattered the walls and floor, and blanketed bodies lay strewn about; two pink tanks remained, their sirens being tended to by medics.

  I sat and pondered, frustrated that the club had no camera system to rely on for identification. We would have to get our chronomancer in to look back and see the order of operations, but the one assigned to my case was severely lacking: we would never be able to ID anybody due to the muddy nature of the images. This mystery was impossible to solve as it was; everything pointed to a rival gang of Othersiders sending in a heavy hitter to take out the competition. But why leave two alive? Why let one of them turn themselves in and start turning in their companions? And who even has the power to do that? Throughout all of my studies of Othersiders, there wasn’t a single person who could Geas someone with a touch, let alone influence them so drastically.

  The only solution was that there was a new player on the scene, and I was going to figure out who.