Chương 160: CDM 3, Chapter 36: Off-the-Books Consulting

"Three hours ago, every government agency involved in the investigation of Martin Kielar's murder announced that they were 'scaling back' the resources devoted to the case," George Baker said, speaking from behind a podium in a nondescript room. The cameras hadn't stopped flashing since the recording began. This press conference was originally livestreamed, but I was head-down in paperwork and hadn't heard it was happening. And I was grateful.

I preferred watching this alone in my car after my shift instead of having to manage my reactions with a crowd of coworkers around me.

"This is another failure of the American justice system," Baker continued.

"We all know that if anyone else had been murdered, law enforcement wouldn't rest until the killer was brought to justice, but since this was a crawler, they can't be bothered to give it their all." He paused to look at his notecards.

"Crawlers have endured this abuse for too long, and I'm not staying quiet any longer. In honor of my friend and a hero to our community, I am announcing my candidacy for Governor of Pennsylvania." That was as much as I could stomach. I turned the video off and rubbed my eyes. I was tired and already dreading an election season full of "Vote Baker" yard signs and television spots. My phone rang.

"Enforcer Carmino?"

"Yes, who's this?"

"Agent Porter with the EPA. We met to discuss your werewolf encounter a few weeks back."

"I remember." She eventually apologized for the FBI arresting me, but she had also stood there and watched it happen.

"What can I do for you?"

"I was hoping to get your opinion on a possible werewolf sighting. Unlike you, I've never seen or met a werewolf, and I'm not a crawler either."

"Sure. Email me the stuff, and I'll take a look." She hesitated.

"I'm not permitted to distribute the materials, I'm afraid. Any chance you and your partner could meet me for tea tonight?"

"Osheski is on duty tonight," I answered.

"Are you available?" I was, but I really didn't want to be. Then again, this was how you networked, and everyone always that was important for your career.

"Sure," I answered.

"I was leaving the office right now, actually."

"You're a lifesaver. Thank you. There's a little tea shop on the corner of Market Square."

"I know it."

"Great! See you soon." Agent Porter paid for my tea and passed a folder across the table. She looked much different in civilian clothes, like a middle school English teacher I had once.

"Those photos were taken outside of Buffalo, New York," she explained.

"A wolf-like creature was caught on camera attacking a kid shooting hoops in his driveway one evening." The video wasn't in the folder, of course, but the top documents were a series of stills of a young teen playing basketball in a suburban neighborhood. He lines up to take a shot, and a black blur comes into frame, snatches the boy in its jaws, and keeps running. The clearest images looked a lot like the Backyard Werewolf, but this monster seemed larger.

Then again, the proportions of a child might have skewed my perception of size.

"There's snow on the ground," I said. Porter shrugged.

"That confused me too. I guess it's not that rare for kids in that area to play basketball when it's cold. They get more snow than most places in the country and get tired of waiting. Or so I'm told." I hadn't actually considered whether it was strange for someone to play basketball this early in the spring. My mind went more in the direction of the snow being good for tracking, especially since the boy was likely bleeding. Most anything would bleed clamped by a mouth like that.

"Other missing persons?" I asked.

"Six months ago, a boy took the trash outside and never came back, but otherwise, no. Does that tell us something?"

"I'm not a werewolf expert," I said.

"We found that one by accident." She reached across and moved a few pages out of the way to reveal images of paw prints.

"Those are twice as large as the ones we saw, but yeah, they look similar," I confirmed. She moved another few pages for me. It looked like the edge of a bare footprint in some mud, but it wasn't very clean. You could argue it wasn't a footprint at all.

"That was found in the direction the wolf's tracks took us," she said.

"In the direction of?"

"We lost the trail after a hundred yards or so. This print was about 50 yards farther on that course near a wooded road." I frowned.

"I know that's a long shot," Agent Porter admitted.

"Like I said, I'm desperate. We looked into every other crawler in a 5-mile radius, and that was with the FBI working the case with us. Any of the active crawlers in the area either had alibis or had recently done a lycanthropy test. The handful of retired crawlers we found all had alibis as well. Good ones too."

"alright."

"What am I not trying? Is there anything you would have done that you don't see here?" Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

"Have you looked into missing pets?" I asked.

"Yes, and nothing strange there."

"Have any other sightings been reported?" She shook her head.

"Every yard in this neighborhood butts up against woods, though." So it had lots of cover to work with. The Backyard Werewolf hunted with a similar strategy, traveling through the forest and leaving the trees only briefly to snatch a meal. The Ross Park Mall Goblins did the same.

"I wish I had more to offer," I said.

"I'm not a master tracker or anything like that."

"But you've found monsters other people couldn't."

"Only a couple."

"Would you be willing to look at the area?" she asked.

"In New York? I'm pretty busy at work, and that's really Enforcer Chapman's call. You'd have to ask her."

"I was thinking you could do it as a Diva rather than as CDM. We can work a lot faster that way." That made me push the files back across the table.

"It was suggested to me once that killing an Earth-born werewolf could be considered murder. I think you were there for that."

"We would prefer to capture it alive."

"Even more reason not to hire us. I've seen enough angry animals to know that subduing one is way different from killing it. This has to be a pass."

"Wait," she said with a pleading tone.

"What if I could guarantee that killing the wolf-version of the werewolf wouldn't be considered a crime? Would you consider it then?"

"Listen. I'm one step above entry level, and I'm on a Rapid Dungeon Response team. Most of my days off are already booked for mandatory training. If the Divas do a hunt, we need more to go on. We don't have enough free time to do a long investigation."

"This is important."

"I feel for the kid and his family," I replied.

"That's a terrible thing to happen to anyone." Porter looked around. The cafe was mostly empty, and the counter was on the other side of the shop.

"This is important because the werewolf problem is bigger than anyone is letting on," she explained, lowering her voice.

"My bosses and their bosses are all hoping this blows over, but this is spreading. I have a friend on the science team, and he confirmed that the virus gets more active when ambient mana goes up. Tested it in a lab himself."

"Yes, I agree that sounds bad."

"Have you had chickenpox?"

"Yeah."

"Do you know what shingles are?" I nodded.

"Do you know that shingles is the chickenpox virus reactivating? It hangs out in your system doing nothing until one day it resurfaces. Many viruses can be latent for years, and many people don't even know they're carrying them."

"Oh. Shit."

"Yes, 'oh shit' is right. Could the grandchild of a former crawler inherit the virus without ever being in a gate? What about all the crawlers who donated blood? Can it be sexually transmitted? If any of those scenarios are true, civilians could be walking around with the virus right now. If Stage 2 gets bad enough, who knows how many of those viruses activate."

A verse from Revelation floated to the top of my mind: These Two Witnesses have the power to shut up the sky, so that it may not rain during the days of their prophecy. They have power over the waters, to turn them into blood, and to strike the earth with every plague, as often as they desire.

"I'm not trying to blow you off, and I'm not suggesting this isn't serious," I said.

"I don't have the expertise or the time you're looking for." Porter wilted and collected her files.

"I'm sorry to hear that. Call me if you have a change of heart." A thought struck me before I left my chair. I asked, "Is vampirism the same way? Does it become more active as mana levels go up?"

"Vampirism is something different from a virus," Porter answered.

"We know even less about how that works, but from where I sit? That explanation makes sense given that we saw those cases around the same time we started finding werewolves." Wonderful.

I checked my system profile before I went into the guild house: Class: Archer Level: 13 XP Progress: 88, 611 / 409, 600 Str: 10 Dex: 19 Con: 14 Int: 9 Cha: 3 Abilities: Piercing Shot Dual Nocking Multi-Shot Vengeful Arrow Splintering Arrow Traits: Ranged Accuracy Improved Reload Sharpen Momentum Swift Hands Bloody Hands Battle Hardened Improved Recovery Steady Hands Spells: (none) I don't know why I couldn't help but pull up my profile several times a day.

Nothing I had done recently would change my XP, yet I continued to remind myself that I was stagnating. Enforcer McDouglas promised another leveling session, but he never said when. Running E and D gates for the CDM wouldn't help much, given the crap XP, but at least I would be doing something. I didn't like going this long without a crawl, and we had wilderness training this weekend, so I wouldn't get to hunt then either.

Shooting some mall rat goblins helped a little bit, but we spent very little time on that mission actually fighting. No, Dorion. Be thankful for where you are. You thought that progress like this was forever out of your reach. Be happy, not frustrated. Beth texted me as I reached for the door handle of my car.

"Soooo Nad-Nade wants the Divas to do a photoshoot with TheUnderDome. Swimsuits. Chrissy is suggesting that Megan and I wear helmets to represent the Divas and hide our faces."

"That guy seems like a dirtbag."

"That's what bothers you? Not your little sister doing a bikini shoot?"

"No, I don't like that either, but that part of it is more your choice than mine."

"What should I tell Chrissy?"

"We should probably let everyone else weigh in. This would be a soft no from me without UnderDome involved. With him in the mix, it's a hard no."

"His Insta is a bunch of almost-naked women on yachts. How do that many women like a guy like that?"

"Most of those are prostitutes."

"You've looked that far into him?"

"No, but that's how you get that many women in one place. It's pretty common among influencers."

"I thought that was illegal."

"It is."

"So you can just make posts about you doing crimes and no one cares?"

"Guess so."

"I wouldn't be comfortable taking those kinds of pictures. Should I still loop in the others?"

"Yeah. Who knows, maybe Meg and Rainy have dreamed of being swimsuit models since they were little girls." To the group chat, Beth wrote,"Nad-Nade is asking for me and Megan to do a swimsuit shoot with Nad-Nade. They can pull TheUnderDome off his show for half a day to do it." I saw the pop-up dots of Megan typing. Mere seconds after Beth sent that text, Megan replied,"Fuck no. UnderDome can suck my big fat dick."