Poison City

 

Inside Kevin’s locked office, Marcus and Kevin sat side by side, both staring at the screen. Kevin’s right hand hovered over the keyboard, his trembling index finger clicking the “N” key whenever he and Marcus were done reading the content of the pages shown. What they were reading right now were the files from the hard drive given to them by Captain Ko. These were scanned copies of recent cases, all of which were multiple homicides. And they were described as “homicides” because the departments in charge of investigating them were not able to find proof of murderous intent, at least by now. Although the gruesome nature of the deaths should be indication enough.

 

And one other disturbing thing that caught their attention, yet neither of them wanted to bring up right now, was the fact that all of these cases involved families or groups that had children or young teens with them. Most of them were deaths of entire families with multiple children, and the others were just groups of children that initially went missing and then found dead in strange places.

 

“Fire.” After a long and grueling silence, Kevin pointed at one of the pictures, one that depicted the face where the flesh was almost completely melted and was also showing exposed, charred bones of a body: “We just read what, five cases already? And three of them involved some kind of burning. So fire being the element, it means our theory’s correct. It’s going through the cycle of elements.”

 

Marcus sighed. He was pretty certain of this by now, and he believed there was no reason for Kevin to still have much doubt about it. It seemed that it was just Kevin trying to find something to talk about in order to break the chilling and depressing silence.

 

“Yes. Yes.” Marcus nodded, appreciating the chance to talk about something else: “But, there are still other cases. No? Looks like the other two were - ”

 

“Water related.” Kevin seemed to have let out an exhale of relief. Then he clicked through the files and opened a page they just went through: “You see? ‘drowned in their own bathtub’, and ‘drowned in the family pool’. Everything’s water related.”

 

“Yes, it’s like what happened to that family’s house.” Marcus nodded: “The spirit that tried to pull you into the bathtub. ”

 

“The woman you and Keryn blasted to pieces and saved me from.” Kevin nodded: “So, the theory is - ”

 

“Some remnants from the last cycle have seeped out into this cycle?” Marcus sighed.

 

“Yes, no - not really.” Kevin nodded then shook his head: “You know what? This is kinda weird, but - with what you saw last night, there are pretty good indications that the cycle and the paranormal killings are not done by the same entities. And I use ‘entities’ because I want to be accurate.”

 

“Yes, I know.” Marcus nodded: “At least, from what I can deduce. The cycle might have been perpetrated by organized humans, and the entities - spirits - ghosts, whatever you call them. They’re possibly the result of that.”

 

“Which would make sense.” Kevin scrolled through a few pages back and forth, then turned to Marcus: “IF that is the case, and that’s not a super far-fetched of an IF - then we are dealing with a super messed up vicious cycle: these folks did some shit in the last cycle, then the results were left in the city and continued to plague everyone till the next.”

 

“And I’m afraid that could be what we’re dealing with.” Marcus looked up at the ceiling: “I’ve already dealt with ‘wood’, haven’t I? I wonder if one day we’ll see some ‘metal’.”

 

“Yeesh. Let’s hope not.” Kevin shrugged.

 

Someone knocked on the door to Kevin’s lab, and Kevin immediately turned off the computer screen. It was Mick, who was not in the precinct as early as he usually would be this morning. Right now he was waving at Marcus and Kevin, with a small USB drive in his hand.

 

“So, everyone’s got a drive today.” Kevin chuckled.

 

“Hey Mick, what’s up?” Marcus opened the door and asked.

 

“Okay, I got back the security cam footage back from the city.” Mick showed Marcus the drive, visibly excited: “Kevin, do you have video analysis software here? I’d try to use my own computer, but it’s still going through compliance inspection, so I can only use authorized machines to - ”

 

“Of course, let’s plug it in.” Kevin turned on his computer once again, and closed the files with lightning speed.

 

“What were you guys looking at?” Mick asked, with a curious tone: “Something I can help with?”

 

“Maybe later. It’s kind of a need-to-know case. We don’t even have many clues on it yet.” Marcus shrugged: “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

 

“Well, I took a quick look while I was in the city. Nothing that caught my eyes.” Mick said: “And it’s actually really long and boring. So I just need to analyze it first before I watch it in full - yay fun!”

 

“Well, good thing that we just got some better video analysis software recently.” Kevin smiled and plugged the drive into the computer and clicked open a software. He then typed in some commands, clicked through some tool items and finished his operation with a loud tap of “Enter”.

 

The software took around five minutes to complete the analysis of the first video in Mick’s drive, one with Carl Benson’s car front and center, along with some other items on the side. And it spitted out three clips of various sizes and lengths. 

 

“Woah, what is this?” Marcus leaned back a little: “What did it do?”

 

“Just a quick visual continuity analysis.” Kevin shrugged: “Since it’s just security cam footage, this will be the simplest and best preliminary analysis it can do. Basically it analyzes abrupt changes to the visuals, like things of people appearing or disappearing from the screen, sudden change in lighting, abrupt movements, etc. Now let’s see…” He clicked on the first clip.

 

The first clip was the smallest in size and was only 15 seconds. It depicted a small moving shadow with a long tail on the ground. It moved slowly at first, then something seemed to have startled it and it ran out of the screen, away from the car.

 

“Okay, interesting.” Marcus nodded: “I understand what you mean now. Cool.”

 

The second clip was the second largest in size, and was 33 seconds. It actually showed nothing of significance, but just some flares and flickers on the screen. There seemed to be no explanation on how they occurred or what caused them. The entire clip showed nothing but these and finally they stopped appearing.

 

“Hmm.” Kevin and Mick huffed at the same time, appearing confused.

 

“There’s only one clip of this?” Marcus asked with a frown.

 

“Yes.” Kevin shrugged: “I mean, the full footage was about 2 hours long. There might be more.”

 

The final clip was the second longest, only around 26 seconds. It showed a faint white shadow on the screen. What was strange about this clip was that the shadow did not show any sudden movements or flickers, yet it was still picked up by the software.

 

“This is - weird.” Mick asked, frowning: “What happened?”

 

“Possibly a bug. It can happen sometimes. Small changes in light or air getting picked up by mistake.” Kevin appeared to be slightly nervous, yet he still shrugged and feigned indifference: “How about this, Mick, you leave these files to me, and I put all of the videos through the software and share with you? There are at least a hundred clips on your drive, it’s gonna take a while if I run them one by one.”

 

“Alright.” Mick frowned slightly, but did not object as Kevin copied and pasted all the files from the drive: “Let me know!”

 

“Sorry Mick, can I have a word with Marcus? I just thought of something.” After copying all of the files and putting them on a processing batch, Kevin clapped his own forehead and asked.

 

“... no problem.” Mick took a weird look at Kevin, then Marcus, and exited the office: “Let me know.”

 

“Okay. Marcus. Watch this.” When the door shut, Kevin immediately clicked open the last clip they saw: “I bet you didn’t expect our video analyzing software to have certain light and shade filters.”

 

“I - can’t say I did.” Marcus raised his eyebrows: “But what do you mean?”

 

“I meant - this.” Kevin tapped a few keys, and the lighting and shade on the video clip changed. A lot of elements were shown in higher contrast, some elements became dimmer, some became brighter. And the faint white shadow in the middle of the screen was shown in clearer shape: it was the blurry shadow of a woman with long hair, standing right next to the front of the car. She then turned towards the camera. One stiff step at a time, with her arms locked in strange positions, she walked towards the camera, and eventually stopped when she could not get any closer without jumping or floating. She seemed to be staring at the camera during the final seconds of the clip. But neither Kevin or Marcus could tell, for the clip was still not clear enough to show the details of her face or her eyes.

 

Kevin’s face was covered in cold sweat, and Marcus patted him on the shoulder. “Looks like it’s Lydia Mu.” Marcus whispered to himself. “Revenge, that’s what she wants.”