“Sure, more papers in the middle of the crisis, and you are not even from here. Young people these days are making me do extra work.” She was complaining without even sparing him a glance, but her hands were fast as she got the stacks of continuous sheets, green-bar microperf paper still faintly warm from the drum printer. The edges had the neat sprocket holes that used to catch on feed rails; she tore them loose without looking, practiced thumb-flicks ripping each at the perforation.
“Here, Shugah. These be the current open missing people reports you asked.” She put them in a thick grey envelope and handed it to Morty. The stack was heavy in his hands. “And here is the one about the other guy.” It was a brown folder. It had a few dozen pages. Usually, that does not bode well. “It’s just a copy I made; you said you would be taking it out of the station, so the original stays here.”
“Thank you.”
“Now, off you go. You bothered me too much already, and I've got more stuff to do, you know.”
He chuckled and nodded, thanking her again, taking his cue to leave.
He padded down the stairwell, running his fingers on the rail, claws ticking faintly on the metal. Sublevel one smelled faintly of oil and ozone. The garage stretched wide, fluorescent strips buzzing overhead. Patrol cruisers dozed in their slots, armor plates catching the pale light.
The place had that muffled quiet of machines cooling after a run. It was fairly empty. Most people are still away on a mission.
There were benches near the stairwell, bolted steel with slats rubbed smooth by years of uniforms. He dropped onto one, the folders balanced across his knees. He opened his terminal quickly and saw no notifications from his other friends. Please be safe.
No reason to waste time borrowing worries from the future.
He grabbed Kassur’s file.
>> Kassur Ferros.
Jackal. The mugshot was young, thirty maybe. A scar at the corner of the mouth like someone had once tried to shut him up with a blade. The picture had that look Morty recognized: the kind of face that made neighbors clutch their collars and whisper predator, even when one was standing still.
Well, he was a predator. There was even a copy of the positive result for the test of the vore gene. And easy to spot in his frame. No jackal gets to be 7 foot 2 without being a predator.
Birth year stamped with an asterisk: approximate, reconstructed from fragments. No school records before twelve. The kind of life that left you guessing.
There was an older photo, maybe from his teens, and it wasn’t kind. The scar was there already. Eyes like someone halfway between sleep and murder. Morty knew the type; not posturing, not puffed up, just waiting to see if the world would try him again. Tired and defiant, like someone waiting to be judged.
The record wasn’t pretty.
Juvenile record (sealed, unsealed by DAIR cross-file): fights in alleys, two hospitalizations. busted jaw on one kid, broken ribs on another. Charges never escalated past assault because nobody wanted to testify. Lived on the streets and committed some small pickpocketing.
Rumors: “bone eater” episodes — pets gone missing, cracked carcasses found. No arrest. He saw it marked as accusations but not proven.
Adulthood: odd jobs, electrical, junk hauling, livestock runs, citations for unlicensed handling. Cleared.
Last six years in Endon: steady contractor, no violent charges. Neighbors still filed noise complaints and whispered he cut corners.
Morty flicked the page with a clawtip, green eyes narrowing. It smelled like a predator trying to outrun his own trail. The kind that didn’t always make it.
Then came the newer reports.
Pages of complaints from neighbors, each thinner than the last. Scribbled calls logged:
“Predator trying to invade my neighbor's house by the roof — check it out.”
“Suspicious man with wires near the building.”
“Predator invading house late at night”.
Every time, enforcers had rolled out. And every time, the notes were the same:
“On site. Legitimate contract.”
“Cooperative. Completed repairs.”
“No suspicion of illegal consumption.”
One even added, in tidy penmanship, “Polite. Even volunteered and helped to fix a minor problem on our own cruiser when the battery died.”
Morty caught himself blinking at that one.
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He turned the last page and exhaled slowly.
The early years were smoke and teeth. But the last six? They read like someone doing the long, grinding work of getting better, and paying for it every day with suspicion he’d never escape.
Morty sat back, the file warm against his knees, the garage humming low around him. He doubted him for a heartbeat, then let the doubt bleed into something else. Curiosity. Maybe even a flicker of respect.
Kassur Ferros wasn’t clean. But he wasn’t rotting either.
Morty sat back against the cold bench slats, thumb tapping the margin. He’d seen files like this before. Men trying to outrun the first twenty years of their life with the next twenty; predators who fought every day to hold the line. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t.
The mugshot kept staring at him, eyes sharp, as if Kassur already knew what the file said, and wasn’t impressed by any of them.
He exhaled through his nose. Kassur was a noise case. The type who lived under the borough’s skin, the kind locals would whisper about because he looked the part. Morty had seen a dozen like him, and half the time, when you dug deeper, the guy was guilty of nothing worse than bad timing and worse judgment.
Half the time…
Still, names like his had a way of coming back around. I’ll clear him later. Otherwise, the stink will linger and get in the way.
He glanced at the elevators and then at his clock. He opened the missing cases envelope.
Too many faces, too many files, so he started to pay attention to key details. Names, ages. Carla Mendez — vanished at sixteen, two weeks ago, pool of blood, no body. Elias March — human, seventeen, last seen near East High. Never found, two weeks ago. Darren Koulis — lynx, fifteen, walked home from practice. The terminal pinged at a bus stop, then nothing, 1 month ago. Salvatore “Sal” Estra — elk, nineteen, college freshman. Left a party, nobody was ever found, 2 months ago. Emilia Thron — cat, 29, left work and was last seen getting into her car and driving home, 1 month ago.
Endon was a city that ate people in more ways than one. But something in the pit of his gut tugged: a rhythm. Names clustering in the same high school district.
Well, not many…. should I dig that way? Is anyone digging that way? The inspectors on these cases all have different names, so no singular focus… perhaps…
Don’t jump the gun, Mort. Patterns bite back if you force them.
Still, the itch stayed.
Bootsteps echoed down the ramp, sounding heavy and confident. Ruld’s rhythm, Muldoon’s lighter one a beat behind. Their laughter bounced off the concrete before they even came into view. Morty slid the files back into the packet.
Muldoon spotted him, and his eyes went wide, and then he smirked.
“Hey, Mortimer. I forgot to pick up my terminal. Be right back,” he said, then turned, gave Ruld a wink, and dashed back upstairs.
=================================
Ruld went slack-jawed for half a second, just long enough to realize Muldoon had vanished and the attention had landed squarely on him. He swallowed and straightened a little too fast.
He looked at Morty. Then at the files on the cat's lap.
“Got anything interesting?”
“More or less,” Morty said, scooting over to make space on the bench for the rhino’s wide bulk. Once Ruld settled beside him, Morty handed over the missing persons case. “It might just be sleep deprivation, but I think there’s something here. About a quarter of these people were students at the same high school.”
Ruld frowned as he skimmed the first page. “Are they investigating?”
“Maybe,” Morty said. “But not as one thing.”
“Oh?”
Morty leaned closer, voice dropping. His side brushed against Ruld’s, close enough that it made the rhino feel his heart doing acrobatics. Close enough that he was suddenly very aware of how easily he could lift an arm and pull the cat in.
“Look,” Morty continued, tapping the page. “Here, you can see the people in charge of the cases. The archivist printed from the computers. See how the date stamps of activity vary? It's like they are all being looked at as isolated cases.”
“Are you aware that, most of the time, cities suck and bad stuff happens to people without it being a major conspiracy, right?” Ruld asked with a tease.
Morty snorted. “Sure. But these people are part of the city. Sometimes you don’t see the pattern until you look at the city as a whole. That is how we know where to patrol more, invest more in security."
Ruld stared at him, brow lifting as Morty’s intensity hit harder than he expected. Which made Morty roll his eyes before continuing.
"Yes," he said. "It might be nothing, but it's worth investigating.”
There it was — that quiet determination. The thing that Ruld loved.
“We could do it,” Ruld said. “You and me. Find the predator responsible for that arm. Then show these slackers how to actually do their jobs.”
“And then we take Varro down,” Morty added, clearly joking.
“I’ll do that myself,” Ruld said solemnly, flexing one arm and striking a ridiculous bodybuilding pose. His biceps bulged; his pecs bounced.
They laughed.
Morty looked at him with a faint, fond smile.“My hero.”
They locked eyes. Ruld leaned in a fraction. Morty didn’t pull away. The corners of the cat's mouth curved, inviting without saying a word.
“Morty…” the rhino started.
Voices cut through the moment.
“No, Agent Muldoon. I am fucking sure that I got everything I need right here. You shut your damn mouth, I don’t need to recheck my gear.”
Bianca stormed down, looking angry and still snapping at the wolf behind her. She stopped short when she spotted Morty and Ruld sitting together.
“Technician Bianca. We are ready to go now.” Ruld said in almost a salute, getting out of the bench fast, before anyone could say anything else.
Idiot.You had it.
You actually had it.
And you just stood there.
Behind him, Ruld heard the soft sound of Morty exhaling as he bent to gather the files Ruld had dropped. Bianca looked back at Muldoon, who was pinching the bridge of his snout like he regretted every life choice that led him here.
He didn't look at Morty. Too scared to see disappointment on his face. That would break him.
Ruld clenched his jaw and forced his feet forward, every step heavier than the last.
He told himself he’d fix it later. When there wasn’t an audience. When it wouldn’t look like backpedaling.
You always say that, his inner voice snarled.
He ignored it.
That was easier than admitting he’d just chickened out.