6:40 a.m., Brooklyn.
Three layers of police tape cordoned off the abandoned factory. The yellow plastic strips fluttered in the morning breeze, like the shed skin of some enormous animal.
Seven or eight patrol cars sat haphazardly along the road. Their roof lights were still spinning, though they were hard to make out in the daylight.
Sergeant Thomas Brennan crouched beside a gap in the factory wall, holding a cup of coffee that had gone cold.
He was forty-seven years old and had spent twenty-three years with the NYPD. Four blue stripes marked his left forearm, signifying twenty years of service.
"Sergeant, you need to come inside and see this."
The speaker was Detective Gina Dos Santos, thirty-two years old, a third-grade detective. Her collar pin bore the number "81," the designation of Brooklyn's 81st Precinct.
Her dark curls were tied back in a ponytail, and she held an evidence bag containing a deformed bullet.
Brennan stood up, and his knee gave a sharp crack.
"How bad?"
Dos Santos didn't answer. She simply turned and headed inside. Brennan followed, his sneakers crunching over broken glass.
Once they were inside the abandoned factory, Brennan saw the first body in the open yard.
It was a homeless man, lying facedown beside a pile of battered cardboard boxes. His back was a bloody mess, and the blood on his clothes had dried into dark brown clots.
All his worldly possessions were scattered nearby. An overturned shopping cart lay amid blankets, plastic bottles, and magazines he'd scavenged.
"This was the work of a shooter."
Dos Santos spoke in a perfectly calm voice.
"Twelve-gauge shotgun, fired at close range. They came in and started killing."
Brennan crouched for a look but said nothing.
He'd seen too many bodies like this. In Brooklyn's abandoned buildings, homeless people were among the easiest to kill... No one came looking for them, no one cared about them. When they died, they were just another line on an autopsy report.
"Ignoring a situation like this, the death of a homeless person doesn't matter."
He stood and continued on.
The second body lay at a bend in the corridor.
It was a white man in an ordinary jacket and jeans, lying facedown with his rear end sticking up. A fruit knife was buried in the middle of his buttocks, with only the plastic handle sticking out.
A large pool of blood beneath him had congealed into a dark-red, lacquer-like surface. It spread along the cracks in the floor like an upside-down tree.
"This one..."
Dos Santos paused.
"This is an unusual way to die."
Brennan crouched and studied where the knife had gone in. The blade had almost disappeared, driven in at an upward angle.
He'd been a soldier. He knew what an injury like that meant... The sudden agony would make the muscles go completely slack. The victim wouldn't even be able to scream.
"Approached from behind, stabbed him, and then..."
His gaze swept over the floor, where he noticed faint scuff marks beside the body.
"Then the killer used the victim's gun to finish him off... First he took away his ability to move, then made sure he was dead."
He stood and shook his head.
"This isn't something an ordinary person could do. It takes a really cool-headed psychopath... Are you sure the killer wasn't wearing night-vision goggles?"
"These are military weapons."
"Did you find any fingerprints on the bodies?"
"Three sets. One belonged to the shooter. The other two were on the knife handle, and neither is in the police's paper records. I can't tell if one of them belongs to the killer."
Dos Santos jotted down a few notes before continuing.
They passed a rusted stamping press and found the third body in a corridor about three meters wide.
It was a tall white man, lying facedown. A huge shotgun wound gaped in his back, his clothes mixed in with flesh, and one arm trapped beneath him.
"Shotgun, from behind, about five to eight meters away."
Dos Santos said.
"Similar to the first shooter's death. His gun was taken too, and we haven't found it yet."
She pointed to the marks on the floor.
"Look here. His partner was right beside him when he fell. Judging by where they were, the two of them were chasing a target, then someone crept up behind them."
Brennan crouched and looked down the corridor. From there, he could see its full length. Abandoned machinery and piles of junk lined both sides, forming a natural passageway.
"The shooter came from here."
He pointed to the shadows along one side of the corridor.
"He walked to this spot, fired, and then..."
His gaze shifted to the far end of the corridor, where a load-bearing wall stood.
"Then his partner reacted fast and took cover over there."
He stood and headed for the wall.
Dos Santos followed. Behind the load-bearing wall, they found the fourth body.
He was a short man, lying on his side in the narrow gap between the wall and an abandoned machine. He still clutched a walkie-talkie.
He'd died differently from the others. There was no massive shotgun wound, only a single bullet hole in the back of his head.
"Handgun."
Dos Santos said.
".22 caliber. Fired at close range. The shooter was calm, with a steady hand."
She crouched and pointed to the ground beside the body.
"There's another walkie-talkie here. It fell to the ground, and we checked it. The channel was still open. He was talking to someone outside when he died."
Brennan bent down and picked up the walkie-talkie. He pressed the talk button, but all he heard was static.
"This man..."
He pointed to the body of the short shooter.
"He knew the shooter was nearby. He was calling for help, but didn't get the chance."
He glanced at the load-bearing wall, then toward the other end of the corridor.
"The shooter killed one man, then changed position without stopping. While this one was on the radio, he circled around behind him."
He shook his head.
"This wasn't a firefight. It was a hunt."
They continued on. The shadows of the abandoned machinery stretched across the floor like toppled monuments.
At intervals throughout the factory, there was at least one body. Some were shooters, some were homeless people.
The shooters' gear was a hodgepodge. Aside from the guns that had disappeared, most of them wore ordinary clothes with black vests over them to distinguish friend from foe.
The homeless had nothing at all. They'd simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Brennan made a rough count. Among the bodies he'd seen, there were twenty-one shooters and around fifty homeless people.
Then they reached the warehouse at the end of the corridor.
An abandoned overhead crane stood there. Beside it lay something that was the strangest goddamn thing Brennan had ever seen.
It was curled up like a large dog hit by a car, but when Brennan approached, he finally saw its true size. If it were alive and standing, it would be at least two meters tall.
Its fur was black, gleaming with an unnatural sheen in the morning light. Its doglike face had been shot to pieces.
Brennan could see damage from at least three different kinds of bullets. A shotgun blast had torn a hole in its left cheek. Two .22 rounds had struck its forehead and lodged in its skull, while a 7.62-millimeter bullet had gone through its right eye socket and blown out the back of its head.
But the most unsettling thing about it wasn't its size or its teeth. It was its hands.
They were far too long, with fingers twice the length of a normal person's. The knuckles jutted out, and its nails were thick and hard, like the claws of some reptile.
Even dead, its fingers were still slightly curled, as if it were grasping for something.
"What the fuck is that?"
Brennan muttered.
Dos Santos stood beside him with her arms folded across her chest.
"Don't know. The Animal Control Bureau said it wasn't their problem, and the CDC wouldn't even come. They said they didn't want to get involved."
"What about the ballistics?"
"That's what I wanted to show you."
Dos Santos led him around the other side of the stamping press and pointed to the shell casings marked with evidence tags. The little yellow markers covered the floor like some diseased field of dandelions.
"We've found more than three hundred casings so far, and there are more we haven't found."
She explained.
"9mm, .45, .22, 5.56×45mm rifle rounds, 7.62×39mm, and 12-gauge shotgun shells. They came from at least seven different weapons, both military and civilian. The shooters brought quite a mix of guns."
"But they were all killed, and the killer took their weapons."
Brennan said.
"Right."
Dos Santos nodded.
"Besides that, based on questioning the surviving homeless people and my own analysis, he had an accomplice: the target the shooters were hunting. The accomplice fired too, but according to the ballistics, he didn't hit anything."
"So, in other words, one man killed all those shooters and the monster?"
"Right."
Dos Santos nodded, and Brennan scratched his head.
Can you tell how many times that man fired?
"It took fifty-two shots to kill the shooters: twenty-one shotgun rounds and thirty-one .22 rounds."
Dos Santos glanced at her notebook.
"We found forty-two casings, and at least ten are still missing. They may have fallen into a drain or been covered by something."
"Fifty-two bullets to kill twenty-two shooters... And how many shots did he fire at that two-meter-tall monster?"
"Don't know."
Dos Santos said.
"I'm still investigating. He fired too many shots at the monster, and the bullets went everywhere. It's hard to count them.
"I also suspect that his accomplice joined the fight at the end, wrestling the monster hand-to-hand and creating an opening for him to execute it at close range with a military short-barreled assault rifle."
"Impressive."
Brennan whistled.
"Do you know what that means?"
Dos Santos looked at him.
"It means that this man never panicked once throughout the entire killing."
Brennan said, deliberately lowering his voice, as if afraid a third person might hear him.
"When he came in, there were at least twenty shooters with long guns, chasing his accomplice. He went in alone to rescue him, killed most of the shooters, scared off the rest, and then killed a monster."
He paused and looked down at the monster's body.
"And there's this thing. Look at the bullet strikes nearby. This man was switching guns as he moved, keeping up a steady stream of fire and giving the monster no chance... That means he knew what he was doing, and he was strong. Most people couldn't carry that many guns and that much ammunition and still move like that."
He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and pulled one out, holding it under his nose to smell it.
"I spent fourteen months in Fallujah."
He said.
"I've seen people shoot—Marine Force Recon, Delta, SEALs... I'm certain that even the ones who made killing their trade wouldn't have been as calm and composed as this man, alone against that monster."
He turned to look at Dos Santos, a trace of fear in his eyes.
"This man... He's a born cold-blooded killer. A killing machine."
He slipped the cigarette back into his pocket and put his hands on his hips.
"Do you know what they teach rookies at the police academy? When the criminals have superior firepower and numbers, find cover, call for backup, and wait for reinforcements. That's standard procedure.
"But this man was different. He walked in, killed the first man with a fruit knife, took his gun, then killed the rest one by one. And in the end, he slaughtered a monster over two meters tall with fur tough enough to serve as body armor."
He smiled, but there was no joy in it.
"Jesus fucking Christ. When I became a cop, why didn't anyone tell me we'd have to catch monsters like this?"
Dos Santos was silent for a moment.
"We can't find out who he is. All the witnesses are dead. We found three surviving homeless people, but they didn't see anything... As things stand, unless this man commits another crime and leaves us his fingerprints, we have no hope."
"What about his accomplice?"
She hesitated.
"More or less the same. No witnesses... But there was human blood at the site of the final fight with the monster. We believe it was left by his accomplice when he wrestled with the monster.
"This guy was almost inhumanly strong. Judging by the fist marks on the monster's fur, his punches hit about as hard as Tyson's."
Brennan looked at her.
"Did you check the police department's biometric database?"
"We did. No match."
"Did you find any useful evidence outside?"
"No."
Dos Santos shook her head.
"There are still no witnesses. The residential and commercial cameras near the factory didn't capture anything useful either."
"That's going to make the investigation a bit difficult."
Though he called it difficult, Brennan smiled.
"But this doesn't have much to do with us. At most, the Director will have a headache when facing the press."
"Difficult?"
Dos Santos looked at him, confused.
"Sergeant, you seem pretty happy."
Brennan slipped the cigarette back into his pocket, put his hands on his hips, and looked around.
"Happy? No, Dos Santos, this isn't happiness. It's..."
He thought for a moment, unable to find the right word.
"It's called a sense of relief."
"A sense of relief?"
"Think about it."
He turned to look at her.
"This guy came in, killed more than twenty gunmen, then took out a goddamn two-meter-tall monster on his way out. He wasn't after us, and he wasn't after the civilians. He was after those bastards."
He pointed at the gunmen's bodies on the ground.
"These mercenaries were slaughtering homeless people in this city, with a monster and illegal automatic weapons. Then one guy walked in and killed them all."
He put his hands in his pockets and shrugged.
"From that angle, he took care of a problem that's been giving us a headache. So, yeah, I'm relieved. This guy isn't our problem. He's a problem for whoever's behind these bodies."
Dos Santos was silent for a while, absorbing what he'd said.
"So you're not going to investigate him?"
"Investigate him?"
Brennan gave a short laugh and spread his hands.
"How? There's no record of his fingerprints or DNA, and there aren't any living witnesses. We don't even have a blurry photo."
He looked down at the shell casings on the ground and fell silent for a few seconds.
"Still, if we're going to mention this guy in our reports, we'll need something to call him."
Dos Santos opened her notebook, pen poised over the page.
"Any ideas?"
Brennan didn't answer right away.
He turned and took one last look at the industrial complex behind them. Thinking about the people who'd been shot dead, he pictured the scene in his mind.
A person moving through the dark, silent and unseen, like a fish swimming in the deep sea.
"Shadow."
He said it.
"Shadow?"
"Yeah. Shadow."
He turned to look at Dos Santos.
"You can't find any trace of him at the scene. No blood, no fingerprints, no two bullets fired from the same spot. He's like a shadow. You can feel he's there, but you can't catch him."
Dos Santos wrote the word in her notebook, then looked up.
"Shadow."
She repeated it.
"Just like that?"
"Just like that,"
Brennan said.
"Sometimes the simplest name is the best fit."
He turned and headed out of the factory building. After a few steps, he stopped.
"Still, if you hear someone call him by another name someday, don't be too surprised."
"What do you mean?"
"Those gunmen and that monster didn't just appear out of nowhere. In my experience, this definitely isn't going to end here."
He paused.
"Before long, our Director will give this guy a name. Something scarier.
That way, she can get more funding from the higher-ups and tell the media, 'We're hunting an extremely dangerous terrorist.'
Forget it. It's not going to come to that. Let's go."
Brennan turned around.
"The FBI will definitely take over this case. We've still got time to grab breakfast before those guys in suits show up."
They headed out of the factory. As soon as they stepped outside, they saw three black Fords driving toward the factory, and Brennan said,
"All right, the FBI's here. Our Director can stop worrying for now."