Chương 201: 190. Tracking

"So what does that mean?" Elias asked, looking over my report. I shrugged.

"No idea. I suspect the worms were responsible for his powers and that's really it," I explained. Elias sighed deeply as he put down the document, resting his head in his free hand. I sat there in silence as he massaged his temples.

"Can you track him?" he asked after a while.

"After his death? No." I shook my head.

"But an empath might be able to, assuming you give him a concrete area to search."

"Is he ready?" Elias asked, looking me in the eyes.

"I'm not sure. He did get stronger, but whether he'll be able to distinguish the man's aura from those of other people is another thing."

"Lesley was seen around a poorer area of the city near the water, but that's really all we have." I nodded.

"Do you have the Veiled Man's crime scene recreated?" I asked and got a nod of confirmation.

"Good. I'll prepare Josh for tracking as much as I can. Which is technically unpaid labor on my part."

"I'm getting you the clearances. It takes time."

"Sure." I wrote the report for Elias to make sure he understood how bad the situation could potentially get, as I wasn't sure how much they understood about magic and the granting of powers. But whoever did that cyst-parasite trick to our latest psychopath had done surprisingly good work. Sadly, I understood plague magic and disease spells only in principle, as they were mainly forbidden and, due to this, lost to time.

So whether this was the work of some genius in disease magic or simply a trick I didn't recognize, I wasn't sure. There was also a third, miracle-obsessed option, but catching on to their involvement wasn't exactly easy. I walked through the corridor, lost in thought, until I finally found Josh waiting in front of one of the interrogation rooms repurposed for the murder scene reenactment. I nodded at him in greeting, and we both entered. I had to say they did a good job.

Using realistic mannequins, they carved the runes into the bodies. The ones previously written in blood were now painted on the floor and walls in red. Both "bodies" were visible, as they didn't have two rooms in the same configuration as the crime scene, but it was okay. The runes, of course, weren't powered, since simply drawing a shape without knowing what it meant or powering it didn't do anything.

The symbolism was there, though much weaker because the drawings lacked intent, and that weaker recreation served as a good training exercise.

"Okay," I said to Josh as we entered.

"You will soon have to track someone."

"Lesley?"

"Yes. The good news is his aura kinda stood out, and the man didn't know how to control it, so he should be a relatively easy target."

"And the bad news?" Josh asked, not celebrating just yet. I smiled at that.

"The bad news is that you will most likely have to track him through a crowded place, meaning other people's auras would be there as well, muddling the picture." Josh winced at my words.

"I've never tried that."

"Well, me neither, so that makes two of us," I said happily.

"But first, tell me how you usually see things," I asked, curious.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, if you walk into a crime scene with many people, or where lab personnel have been, do you sense them? How is it that you see the correct scenes and not something else from the past?"

"Well," he hesitated.

"It's like the most recent experience is the one that lights up like a Christmas tree. It just shows the right one, I guess." I wondered for a few seconds.

"It's most likely that you can sense the memory with the strongest emotional footprint. Well, if that is the case, it would be helpful if our dead disease fan had committed some proper atrocities." Josh looked at me with raised eyebrows.

"You're hoping for atrocities?"

"It's not like we can change what happened." I shrugged.

"Anyway, today I want you to try and distinguish the correct trace," I said, pointing at the setup.

"The killer used many different runes. I imagine they light up for you in some way. You should try to read only some of them, the most obvious ones, while keeping the rest separate." Josh agreed, and we spent the next few hours on the exercise. He was quite talented at reading the environment rather than someone's mind. The runes were quite convoluted, courtesy of me, but because they had only been drawn instead of actually cast, there was less noise and less pressure.

After some time, he actually managed to reach the surface level, reading through the symbolism within the arcane arts.

"It's cold," he said, frowning deeply.

"But not like freezing—no, that's not it. It's not. It's more like no movement. Like, um, I don't know."

"Temperature might symbolize something. The issue with symbolism is learning when a skull means death, when it means danger, and when it's just a skull. You need to get a feel for a given symbol. Move the rest aside and focus on that one. Is it really cold?" I asked, looking over the mannequins, pretty sure of what he was reading.

"It's—no… It's not. It's lack of movement! It's frozen in place. It's rigor mortis!" he exclaimed, looking at me with a smile.

"The symbolism. The killer used those runes to lock those bodies in the positions they were in." The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. I nodded with a smile.

"Yes, good." He seemed excited about it, but then frowned deeply.

"Wait, you know?" he asked.

"Yes," I answered with hesitation.

"I can read arcane runes. Not sure about all of them, but most are just part of a spell."

"Then why didn't you just say so?" I chuckled lightly.

"Because the spell part is obvious and doesn't tell me anything. There is something more, something purely symbolic coded into it. It's either just the spellcasting of a madman or something the killer left behind." I looked at him.

"And I can't just read that. There's a chance you will have to move on to reading the real bodies once you figure out this setup," I said, pointing at the mannequins. He winced slightly.

"What? Aren't they cremated?"

"No. I asked Elias to keep them in the freezer." I raised my hand before he was about to flood me with questions.

"For now, figure out what this is supposed to be. Then we can argue about the bodies." We spent the day in the room, with me giving him as much advice as I could based on my limited knowledge of how his powers worked. In the meantime, while he sat around concentrating on different parts of the runework, I was scrolling through my favorite conspiracy department's work on social media. And I had to say, the guys must have been having a field day.

The regular news was citing solar flares, satellite work, or tower work as the causes of technology going haywire. But the conspiracy side? They ate well. For now, UFOs were the leading theory, with government takeover in second place. The UFO specialists pointed out that no solar flares this big could be observed, skillfully turning an actual issue with the theory into conspiracy talk.

There were also lesser-known stories about ghosts and strange animals, but, thankfully, with society's dependence on technology, phone outages took precedence over photos of actual wendigos scurrying around in the woods. Finally, after spending the day training, I gave my seal of approval for Josh to try to track someone out in the field. The next day, we drove to the area where the now-dead suspect had supposedly been spotted a few times.

Interestingly, traffic cameras or local security cameras weren't very useful, as there were apparently widespread failures throughout the area. And that meant one thing—mana veins.

"My phone lost signal," Filip said, looking at his device with confusion.

"Same," Marvin commented.

"The GPS also seems to be fucking up." I turned to Josh, who was looking around, slightly confused.

"You sense something?" I asked, curious. There was a mid-sized mana vein somewhere nearby, not inside a building but out in the open, just spilling the energy all around. Since the mana veins had connected some time ago, several streets should have relatively high concentrations of magic. The good news was that this meant we were most likely in a good spot. The bad news… One could do quite a few "interesting" things with a mana supply under your nose—like traps.

"It's like a presence," he said, rather confused by his own words.

"Like the same person was everywhere with a very strange feeling? What do you call it?"

"Aura."

"A very strange aura all around, but like… see-through? Like it doesn't obscure other auras, just is there as a background. It's strange."

"First time you've felt it?" Marvin asked from behind the wheel before I could say the same.

"No. I don't think so. It was usually a faint feeling, but now it's much more pronounced." I was curious how he felt and saw magic, but it was not the time for interviews. We stopped in the area and got out of the cars to look around. It was an old industrial part of the city with a few brick buildings, now used as warehouses or simply left empty, becoming places for people to squat. But there was one strange thing we noticed once we were out of the cars: the silence.

New York had a strange overall structure, with a mix of buildings that didn't quite fit together, so not every building here was an old factory. Some were clearly apartment complexes. But there was no one on the streets. And we weren't in the middle of the night. It was Monday, around midday, when we got there. Yet the place looked like a graveyard.

"Is this normal?" Filip asked as we got out of the car.

"Yes," Rey answered, and we all turned to him.

"And if it's the same as in Los Angeles, then we won't be getting any backup either. Not from the police, at least."

"What do you mean?" Marvin asked. Rey sighed before speaking slowly.

"My buddy told me there is a neighborhood like that in LA. Where you can't ask for backup, the radio works when it wants, and sometimes strange things happen. It's not official, but the police usually pretend it doesn't exist."

"Any explanation?" Marvin asked. Rey chuckled.

"Many. None made sense. At least not to me…" As he spoke, he looked at me, tilting his head lightly.

"There's only one weird spot for now, so it's more of a local legend, but they say more are appearing." The rest also turned to me.

"It must be the aliens," I proclaimed with a deadly serious expression. Rey gave me a look while the rest scoffed. We slowly began our tasks. Rey got behind Josh, pushing the wheelchair around as our empath concentrated. As we moved, he sometimes frowned, other times relaxed, or groaned. Throughout the walk, he would just say quick commands—left, right, back, forward. A couple of times, we had to circle around. Other times, he would lead us right into a wall or simply lose the "scent."

We had a book from Lesley's workshop to remind him of the aura he was looking for, like giving a hunting dog a scent. But finally, after a good two hours, we stopped in front of a particular industrial building. It was large and seemingly abandoned. It also wasn't at the center of the mid-sized mana vein, but was relatively close to it.

"I think it's here," Josh finally said, sighing deeply, as he massaged his temples.

"Okay," I said, extending my consciousness around me. The place felt strange. It had an aura, a strange, ever-present feeling of presence I couldn't put my finger on. I looked from side to side, trying to see any runes. Rey and Filip were also sizing up the structure as if it were a living creature.

"Th-there is something," Josh said, struggling with the words. I looked behind me at the empath and noticed him close his eyes. His face scrunched tighter and tighter as he clearly struggled with the reading. I turned my eyes to the building, trying to sense anything that could be lurking in the empty windows. Then an uncomfortable sensation assaulted me. It was a purely instinctive sense that most people with strong minds possessed, telling them when someone was openly staring at them.

I turned around, ready for an attack. But the streets were just as empty as before. And then I lowered my gaze to Josh. He was no longer in the meditative state, nor was he struggling. Instead, he was looking straight at me, eyes wide, glued to my face, the look in them strangely foreign.

"Waiting, waiting, waiting. I, I, I," he began. His breathing quickened until he began to hyperventilate.

"I, I, I, I."

"Josh!" Filip shouted, shaking the kid.

"Move him away from the building!" I shouted, as Rey simply threw him over his shoulder and began to run.

"I, I, I AM WAITING," Josh shouted before finally going limp over the policeman's shoulder.