Hunter of Vengeance

A little over a year ago I was on my way to a crime scene with my partner Raphael Moralez, he had been my partner since SWAT denied my transfer. I had transferred to a more dangerous precinct house so that at least my training would be useful. They bumped me up to Detective Specialist in response to my werewolf affiliation, though it felt at times it was more an effort to label which detective it was that got turned, not that I had any intention of hiding it.

We pulled up to a reported homicide scene to investigate a shooting. It was the same thing we had done every day for nearly two years. Raphael was one of the few people in the precinct that hadn’t treated me any differently after my attack, and as such, we had grown rather close. People warn about office romances, saying they lessen productivity, but in our case, it was just the opposite. Our arrest rate had gone up 48%, making us by far the best closers in the precinct. The chief had even recently called us into his office to praise us saying that we were making a real difference out on the streets.

Two patrolmen guarded the scene, young kids not long out from under their TO’s wings. It seemed a fairly straightforward body drop, the body of a homeless man had been left in front of a business… tire place I think it was. We did our usual sweep, bagging and tagging what little evidence there was. There were no indicators to tell us why a homeless man would have been moved to this precise place. After a long time of fruitless searching, the rollaway door went up just a few inches.

From under it rolled a metallic ball. The whole world slowed to a crawl as we tried to react in time. One of the patrolmen ran towards it, probably trying to get rid of it before it exploded. Raphael leaped in front of me… I still don’t have an idea why. He had seen me take some real damage over our partnership and shrugged it off. Why he choose that moment to become so protective… The bomb went off with the patrolman still at least a foot away. The shrapnel in the explosive tore through him and the other patrolman like they were wet paper. Their bodies at least partially shielded us from the blast.

I was already healing but Raphael had taken several hits, he couldn’t walk, heck he could barely stand. He insisted he was fine, that I should go after whoever threw the bomb at us. I took a brief moment to move him to cover behind the door of our cruiser with the tac shotgun in case they decided to finish the job. Raphael was using the cruiser’s radio to call for backup to our location when I saw a form in the window as if someone was looking over his work. I knew deep down that I shouldn’t leave him but the rage in me built to a fury I hardly understood. They tell you when you become aware that your emotions become more volatile, that’s a very dispassionate description of trying to hold onto a rabid wolf with little more than dental floss.

I set off in pursuit immediately, my mind red with thoughts of revenge. I leaped through the tattered remains of the garage door. His trail was easy enough to track without even using my nose, there were toppled tires and display stands leading to the stairs. It seemed as if he either didn’t care about anyone following him or was so rushed at the chance of someone following him he didn’t take any precautions. I got to the second floor where he had overlooked the explosion site and saw Raphael still calling into the radio below. The distant sounds of sirens approaching let me know it wouldn’t be long till help arrived. If there were two words in the English language that would cause officers to put the pedal down more than ‘officer down’ I didn’t know of them.

I continued my pursuit, out a window and onto the rooftops. Whomever this guy was he was an agile little sucker and the trail led from roof to roof, some of the gaps larger than I would expect a regular person to be able to clear. The trail ended abruptly a few blocks away, there was no place for the trail to continue. I searched around the area but found nothing to indicate anyone had continued farther. With an unexpectedly profound sense of disappointment, I returned to where I left Raphael.

When I got back to the crime scene there were dozens of officers reporting. They had found Raphael, right where I had left him except something had torn him apart. There were pieces of him lying next to and inside our cruiser; taken apart with the care of someone studying anatomy. There was an investigation which turned up nothing, there was no evidence to support my story of an attacker, a chase, or any part of my story… there wasn’t even shrapnel left from the explosive in Raphael or the two patrolmen.

Any reputation I had built over the years as a good cop was gone in an afternoon. The other officers considered me at best a cop who got anyone killed who went out in the field with her or at worst a cop-killer myself. The higher-ups requested that I take some time off to ‘process’ or some other new-age psycho-babble. It was during those months I connected with those kids at the mansion. When my time off was up I made an appearance at the precinct to cash in my accrued vacation days and went back to the compound. I suppose that’s what you could call the Cliff’s Notes of my police career…”

I stood there watching Mara as she finished her story. Both of her tales had involved no small amount of personal tragedy but she had recited them with little more emotion than one would use to recite a grocery list. Likely she had had to tell both stories to administrators inquisitors and lawyers dozens of times along the way. I could easily see how she had taken the emotion and buried it so far inside that it was a kernel of determination to make sure nothing like it happened again.

“Let me tell you a story, you’ve shared enough for one night.” I went back inside to nab a couple of beers from the fridge and brought them out to her. Lisa glared at me as I walked by before rolling over trying to get some last minutes of sleep. I opened the beer and handed it to her, opening my own. “You remember Rashidi, the guy running the video store. He wasn’t always the retail king of lower queens. He had been nominated and even took home a Nobel Prize in Physics.

The man is an absolute genius but years of constant scientific inquiry keep him away from his family for huge lengths of time. His wife and his two children tried to spend as much time as they could with him but many times he only came home to sleep. His wife and children wanted so badly to spend time with him that they often did not let him get any sleep when he did come home. A couple days a week he started checking into a hotel just to get some uninterrupted sleep. Things went on like this for a year before their research was ready for its first big test.

It had been long theorized that if multiple planes of existence were real then there would have to be some sort of common bond between them. Even if the bond was as small as some of the particles whose collision caused the big bang. If all realities were results of different decisions and properties you could go back far enough to a point before the first separation happened and all realities would spring from that. This experiment would somehow prove the existence of this origin particle and simultaneously prove the existence of a multiverse.

While the machine was powering up, the crew told Rashidi to take a stroll to clear his head before they were ready to begin. The way he tells it he walked along the water, just enjoying the quiet lack of stress before the experiment loaded him with twice as much. He thought to himself, hopefully soon I can enjoy more of these small moments of peace. A glint of light beneath some rocks caught his attention; he reached underneath and found a tiny crystal decanter. His fingers just grasped it when the lab exploded behind him. Reaching for that bottle saved his life, it had put him under protection from the debris raining down so he took it home.

It took them weeks to replace the manpower and equipment so that they could continue their research. During that time he took many walks along the water, some with his family and sometimes alone but he kept the bottle with him. To him, it was a good luck charm I suppose, until he opened it to put some seawater inside. The bottle had contained a genie this whole time. At first, he had wanted to wish that his experiments would be successful but he thought of that as cheating. So, instead, the genie encouraged him to at least get enough time to finish.

So he made his first wish, for the next year his family was respectful of his wishes, his higher-ups didn’t call him asking for progress reports to justify funding, and reporters from physics magazines stopped pestering him for comments. All his time was simply devoted to work. As a result, they made progress by leaps and bounds. They proved the existence of other realities which led to thousands of new theories cropping up based on their work. Their contributions to quantum physics that year won them the Nobel Prize.

He began talking to the genie again, hoping to make another wish to make his new problems disappear. This time the genie manipulated him into wording the wish differently, tricking him into wishing for time to himself, without his family. As soon as the genie granted his wish thugs broke into his home and brutally killed his wife and children. They went out of their way to make the scene as shocking as humanly possible for Rashidi to find. That night when he returned home the sight of his destroyed family broke something fundamental in him.

I first met him nearly three months later. He had stopped leaving his house, experimenting in his basement with poor substitutes for lab equipment trying to get his family back. Any disturbance was met with angry yelling and screaming. I don’t think he had bathed or even eaten in days when I broke down the door. I killed the jinn and got him all the help I could offer. He told me later that the genie kept taunting him with the deaths of his family he caused, turning him against people in general for interrupting him. The jinn was trying to push him into wishing it all would just go away. It’s funny now to think I might have saved the entire world that day and didn’t even get a simple raise.

Rashidi left the hospital and returned to his research with a clear head. He developed a way to watch other realms and see the differences between there and here. Every single dimension he discovered the first thing he would do was check on his family. Every time he looked they were dead, on the same day, at the same time. It wasn’t always his fault, car accidents, poison, explosions, cardiac arrest… it always ended the same.

He now believes that there are certain moments that simply must happen, set in time forever not to be changed. Certainly, a good portion of this belief is an attempt to assuage his sense of guilt but there is a surprising amount of evidence to support it. Some things are simply meant to be.”

“And you are trying to insinuate that my squad and my partner getting killed with me unable to stop it are such events?” Mara glared at me, putting the empty beer bottle down.

“Oh no, no, no, of course not. Those kinds of singular events are extremely rare. I just wanted to point out how anyone can have a real shitty day, but what matters is what you do the next day and the day after. Plus I kinda like the sound of my own voice.” That, at least, got a smile out of her.

“Well you’re the only one, some people are trying to get some sleep.” Mara and I looked over to where Lisa was sitting up barely awake. Her eyes opened a little wider when she saw us looking at her. “Fine, I suppose since we’re sharing stories you want mine, right? Well, listen up, ‘cause it’s a doozy. I was on a school trip to Tokyo Tower at the same time as two other schools. All the sudden while at the top I heard a voice calling me, and the next thing I knew I’m falling over this weird-looking world I didn’t recognize with two of the other girls who were at the tower.”

“Very funny, my daughter loved that cartoon also. If you don’t feel like sharing with the rest of the group no one will make you.”

“First of all, it’s not cartoons, it’s called anime. Second, why would you wanna hear another sob story? Some bad stuff happened, then some good, and now we’re here. You’ve got to set a goal in front of you that takes all you’re attention so you won’t be tempted to look back. That’s what this is.” She pointed to the tattoos on her face. When I was a kid I was trapped, I wasn’t able to travel anywhere so I swore to myself I would see all four corners of the world. Even though I found out that phrase was so outdated I kept my promise and added a line for each one.”

“What about the star?” Mara asked softly from behind me.

“That’s to remember that to one person, a young, dumb, homeless kid would always be a star. Without Uncle Tony I wouldn’t be here, I never would have become anything better in this life. He even sees through the ditsy-girl not worth your-attention act. I don’t know what I would do without his strong center of my universe… I just hope it’s a long time before I have to find out.”

“I’m sure Tony will be just fine, he’s a tough old sonuvabitch. He’s dragged my sorry ass out of the fire more times than I care to admit, he’s probably using the hospital stay as a spa day to hit on nurses.”

“Yeah, but I still worry about him, and with the phones down I can’t even check.” The television crackled back to life. The power was being restored as we spoke.

“Hunter…” Holly’s voice, filled with static rang out in my ear. I grunted a response instinctively. “No… don’t react, we’re back online but I think we need to talk.”