The Police's Headache

6:40 AM, Brooklyn.

Three layers of police tape cordoned off the abandoned factory, the yellow plastic strips shivering in the morning breeze like the shed skin of some massive beast.

Seven or eight patrol cars were parked haphazardly along the road, their roof lights still rotating, though they were barely visible in the daylight.

Sergeant Thomas Brennan crouched at a gap in the factory's perimeter wall, a cup of stone-cold coffee clutched in his hand.

He was forty-seven years old and had served twenty-three years in the NYPD. On his left forearm were four blue stripes, the mark of twenty years of service.

"Sergeant, you need to see this."

The speaker was Detective Gina Dos Santos, thirty-two, a Detective Third Grade. Her lapel pin bore the number "81," the designation for the 81st Precinct in Brooklyn.

Her dark, curly hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she held an evidence bag containing a deformed bullet casing.

Brennan stood up, his knees popping with a sharp crack.

"How bad is it?"

Dos Santos didn't answer, simply turning to walk inside. Brennan followed, his sneakers crunching against broken glass.

After they entered the abandoned factory, Brennan saw the first body in the open space of the plant.

It was a homeless man, lying face down beside a pile of broken cardboard boxes. His back was a bloody mess, the blood on his clothes dried into dark brown, hardened crusts.

His entire life's possessions were scattered nearby; a supermarket shopping cart had been overturned, spilling blankets, plastic bottles, and scavenged magazines across the floor.

"This was the shooter's work."

Dos Santos said, her voice perfectly calm.

"Twelve-gauge shotgun, fired at close range. They started killing the moment they got inside."

Brennan crouched to take a look but said nothing.

He had seen too many bodies like this. In the abandoned buildings of Brooklyn, the homeless were the easiest to kill... no one looked for them, no one cared about them, and after they died, they were just another line on an autopsy report.

"Ignore the circumstances; the death of a homeless man has no value."

He stood up and continued forward.

The second body was at the corner of a corridor.

It was a white male wearing a generic jacket and jeans. He was lying on the ground with his rear end in the air, a fruit knife plunged into the center of his buttocks, with only the plastic handle visible.

Beneath him was a large pool of blood, already congealed into a dark red lacquer that spread along the cracks in the floor like an inverted tree.

"This one..."

Dos Santos paused.

"This method of killing isn't very common."

Brennan crouched down and looked at the position of the knife. The blade was almost entirely submerged, inserted at an upward, diagonal angle.

He had been a soldier; he knew what this kind of wound meant... the instantaneous, excruciating pain would cause the muscles to lose all strength, making it impossible to even scream.

"Approached from behind, stabbed once, and then..."

His gaze swept across the floor, catching slight friction marks near the body.

"Then the killer used the victim's own gun to finish him off... incapacitated him first, then ensured the kill."

He stood up and shook his head.

"This isn't something a normal person could do. It takes a very calm, twisted mind... are you sure the killer wasn't wearing night-vision goggles?"

"This is military-grade weaponry."

"Did you find any fingerprints on the bodies?"

"There are three sets of prints. One belongs to the shooter himself, and the other two are on the knife handle. They aren't in the police database, and I'm not sure if one of them belongs to the killer."

Dos Santos scribbled a few notes in her book and continued walking.

They passed a rusted stamping machine and saw the third body in a corridor about three meters wide.

It was a tall white man lying face down, a massive shotgun wound in his back. His clothes and flesh were fused together, his arms pinned beneath him.

"Shotgun, from behind, distance of about five to eight meters."

Dos Santos said.

"Similar to the first shooter's death. His gun was also taken and hasn't been found yet."

She pointed to the marks on the ground.

"Look here. When this man fell, his partner was right beside him. Judging by the positioning, the two of them were chasing a target, and then someone snuck up from behind."

Brennan crouched down, his gaze following the direction of the corridor. From here, he could see the entire layout of the hallway, flanked by abandoned machinery and piled debris that formed a natural path.

"The shooter came from here."

He pointed to the shadows on one side of the corridor.

"Walked to this position, fired, and then..."

His gaze shifted to the end of the aisle, where a load-bearing wall stood.

"And his companion reacted quickly, hiding over there."

He stood up and walked toward the load-bearing wall.

Dos Santos followed behind. They discovered a fourth corpse behind the load-bearing wall.

It was a short man, lying on his side in the gap between the wall and a piece of abandoned machinery, still clutching a walkie-talkie in his hand.

His manner of death was different from the others; there was no massive wound from a shotgun, but rather a single bullet hole in the back of his head.

"Pistol."

Dos Santos said.

".22 caliber, fired at close range. The shooter was calm, with a very steady hand."

She crouched down and pointed to the ground beside the corpse.

"There is another walkie-talkie here, dropped on the ground. We checked it; the channel is still open. He was talking to someone outside before he died."

Brennan bent down to pick up the walkie-talkie and pressed the talk button, but only the hiss of static came through.

"This man..."

He pointed to the corpse of the short gunman.

"He knew the shooter was nearby. He was using the walkie-talkie to call for help, but he didn't have enough time."

He glanced at the position of the load-bearing wall, then looked toward the other end of the aisle.

"The shooter killed one, then changed positions, never stopping for a second, circling behind him while he was on the phone."

He shook his head.

"This isn't a firefight. This is a hunt."

They continued walking forward, the shadows of the abandoned machinery casting long shapes on the ground like rows of collapsed monuments.

There was at least one corpse lying every few meters throughout the factory area; some were gunmen, others were homeless people.

The gunmen's gear was chaotic. Aside from the missing firearms, these corpses were essentially wearing ordinary clothes with a black vest over them to distinguish friend from foe.

The homeless people had nothing; they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Brennan made a rough count. Among the bodies he saw, there were twenty-one gunmen and over fifty homeless people.

Then they walked into the warehouse at the end of the aisle.

There was an abandoned Gantry Crane there, and lying next to it was something—the most goddamn strange thing he had ever seen in his life.

It was curled up like a large dog hit by a car, but as Brennan drew closer, he saw the true size of the thing—if it were still alive and standing, it would be at least two meters tall.

The fur was black, shimmering with an unnatural oily sheen in the morning light. Its dog-like face had been beaten into an unrecognizable mess by bullets.

Brennan could see damage caused by at least three different types of projectiles: a shotgun blast had torn a hole in the left cheek, two .22 rounds were embedded in the forehead with the bullets lodged in the skull, and a 7.62mm round had drilled into its right eye socket, blowing out the back of its head.

But the most unsettling thing about this creature wasn't its size or its teeth; it was its hands.

Those hands were too long, with fingers twice the length of a normal human's. The joints were knobby and protruding, and the nails were thick and hard, like the claws of some reptile.

Even in death, those fingers were slightly curled, as if they were still grasping for something.

"What the hell is this?"

Brennan said in a low voice.

Dos Santos stood beside him, arms crossed over her chest.

"Don't know. The people from the Animal Control Bureau said this isn't their jurisdiction, and the people from the CDC wouldn't even come, saying they didn't want to get involved in this."

"What about the ballistics?"

"That's what I wanted to show you."

Dos Santos led him to the other side of the stamping press and pointed to the shell casings on the ground marked with evidence tags. Those small yellow tags were densely scattered across the floor like some morbid field of dandelions.

"We have found over three hundred shell casings so far, and there are more we haven't found yet."

She explained.

"9mm, .45, .22, 5.56×45mm rifle rounds, 7.62×39mm, 12-gauge shotgun shells—they come from at least seven different types of weapons, both military and civilian. The weapons those gunmen brought were quite a mix."

"But they were all killed, and their weapons were taken by the killer."

Brennan said.

"Correct."

Dos Santos nodded.

"Besides that, based on the interrogation of the surviving homeless people and my own analysis, he had an accomplice—the target those gunmen were hunting. He fired shots too, but according to the ballistic analysis, he didn't hit anything."

"In other words, these gunmen and the monster were all killed by that one person?"

"Correct."

Dos Santos nodded, and Brennan immediately scratched his head.

"Can you confirm how many shots that person fired?"

"Fifty-two rounds were used to kill the gunmen, including twenty-one shotgun shells and thirty-one .22 caliber rounds."

Dos Santos glanced at the notebook in her hand.

"We found forty-two casings, and at least ten are still missing; they probably fell into the sewer or were covered by something."

"Fifty-two bullets to kill twenty-two gunmen... and then, how many shots did he fire to kill that two-meter-tall monster?"

"Not sure."

Dos Santos said.

"I'm still investigating. He fired too many shots while fighting the monster, and the projectiles are scattered everywhere, making it hard to count.

Furthermore, I suspect that his accomplice also participated in the final battle, grappling with the monster in hand-to-hand combat to create an opportunity for this man to execute the monster at close range with a short-barreled military assault rifle."

"Impressive."

Brennan let out a low whistle.

"Do you know what this means?"

Dos Santos looked at him.

"It means this person never panicked throughout the entire killing process."

Brennan said, his voice deliberately lowered, as if afraid of being overheard by a third party.

"When he came in, there were at least twenty gunmen with long guns chasing his companion. He came in alone to rescue them, killed most of the gunmen, scared off the rest, and finally killed a monster."

He paused, looking down at the monster's corpse on the ground.

"And this thing—look at the impact points nearby. This person was switching weapons while moving, maintaining continuous firepower so the monster wouldn't have a chance... This shows he knew exactly what he was doing, and he's also very strong. An average person couldn't carry that many guns and that much ammunition while moving like that."

He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, took one out, and held it under his nose to smell it.

"I spent fourteen months in Fallujah."

He said.

"I've seen people shoot—Marine scouts, Delta, SEALs... I'm certain that those who treat killing as a craft would never be as calm and composed as this person when facing this monster alone."

He turned to look at Dos Santos, his eyes showing a hint of fear.

"This person... is a natural-born cold-blooded killer, a killing machine."

He shoved the cigarette back into his pocket and put his hands on his hips.

"Do you know how we teach rookies at the police academy? When facing gunmen with superior firepower and numbers, find cover, call for backup, and wait for support. That's standard procedure.

But this guy is different. He walked in, killed the first person with a fruit knife, grabbed a gun, then killed the rest one by one, and finally slaughtered a monster over two meters tall with fur that could serve as a bulletproof vest."

He smiled, but there was no joy in that smile.

"What the hell, when I became a cop, why didn't anyone tell me that police would need to catch monsters like this?"

Dos Santos was silent for a moment.

"We can't track his identity; all the witnesses are dead. We found three survivors among the homeless, but they didn't see anything... The situation now is that unless this person commits another crime and leaves behind fingerprint information, we have no hope."

"And his accomplice?"

She hesitated for a moment.

"About the same, no witnesses... However, there is human blood at the spot where he had the final showdown with the monster. We judge that it was left behind when his companion grappled with the monster.

That guy is inhumanly strong. Judging by the punch marks on the monster's hide, the impact force of his fist is about the same as Tyson's."

Brennan looked at her.

"Did you check the police department's biometric database?"

"Checked it. No matches."

"Did you find any useful traces outside?"

"No."

Dos Santos shook her head.

"Still no witnesses, and the residents or commercial cameras near the factory didn't capture anything useful."

"If that's the case, it's going to be a bit of a headache to track him down."

Despite calling it a headache, Brennan started to laugh.

"But this doesn't really have much to do with us. At most, the Chief will have a headache when facing the reporters."

"A headache?"

Dos Santos looked at him, not quite understanding.

"Chief, you seem quite happy?"

Brennan put his cigarette back into his pocket, placed his hands on his hips, and looked around.

"Happy? No, Dos Santos, this isn't called happy. This is called..."

He thought for a moment, unable to find the right word.

"It's called a sigh of relief."

"A sigh of relief?"

"Think about it."

He turned to look at her.

"This guy walks in, kills over twenty gunmen, and even manages to butcher a damn two-meter-tall monster on his way out. Then he leaves. He wasn't after us, he wasn't after civilians; he was after those bastards."

He pointed at the corpses of the gunmen on the ground.

"These mercenaries were slaughtering homeless people in this city, carrying monsters, wielding illegal automatic weapons, and then someone walks in and kills them all."

He shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged.

"From that perspective, he did us a favor by handling something that was giving us a headache. So, I'm relieved. This guy isn't our problem; he's the problem of whoever is behind these corpses."

Dos Santos was silent for a moment, digesting his words.

"So you don't intend to track him down?"

"Track him down?"

Brennan let out a laugh and spread his hands.

"How? There are no records of his fingerprints or DNA, no living witnesses, not even a blurry photo."

He looked down at the shell casings on the ground, silent for a few seconds.

"Still, if we ever mention this person in a file, we need to call him something."

Dos Santos opened her notebook, her pen hovering over the paper.

"Do you have any ideas?"

Brennan didn't answer immediately.

He turned around, took one last look at the factory area behind him, and thought about the people who had been killed. An image surfaced in his mind.

A man moving through the darkness, silent and soundless, like a fish swimming in the deep sea.

"Shadow."

He said.

"Shadow?"

"Yeah, Shadow."

He turned his head to look at Dos Santos.

"You can't find a trace of his existence at the scene. No blood, no fingerprints, no two bullets fired from the same position. He's just like a shadow; you can feel that he's there, but you can't catch him."

Dos Santos wrote the word in her notebook, then looked up.

"Shadow."

She repeated.

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

Brennan said.

"Sometimes the simplest name is the most fitting."

He turned and walked toward the exit of the factory, but after a few steps, he stopped.

"Though, don't be surprised if you hear someone calling him by another name one day."

"What do you mean?"

"Those gunmen and monsters didn't just appear out of thin air. In my experience, this definitely isn't going to end here."

He paused.

"It won't be long before our chief gives this guy a name—a name that sounds much more terrifying.

That way, he can ask for a bigger budget from the higher-ups and tell the media, 'We are currently hunting down an extremely dangerous terrorist.'

Forget it, it's not worth the trouble. Let's go."

Brennan turned around.

"The FBI will definitely take over this case. Before those guys in suits arrive, we still have time to grab some breakfast."

They walked out of the factory, and as soon as they stepped outside, they saw three black Fords driving toward the facility. Brennan remarked.

"Well, the FBI is here. Our chief won't have to worry about it for now."