A blanket of dull clouds rolled by overhead. Winter’s trademarked overcast skies drained the colors from everything it touched; like a vampire, it sucked the whole world dry. I used to think that the deadening of the environment lowered my sensitivity, but it never did. There was as much comfort in those gray hues as the cement sidewalk under my feet. Besides, these days I didn’t want to be walking around dead anymore. I wanted to feel the air with or without an insufferably sticky humidity. Today the air was dry and devoid of rain. The clouds gave only what they took: absence.

  The clean, manicured lawn greeted us out front. Our unlucky victim's doorstep was only a few steps away. The untouched features gave off the telltale signs of being freshly constructed. What a shame a place like this had already been desecrated so early into its lifespan.

  "Get ready," I said.

  Back in that small apartment, if you could call it that, Nathan Ming was only a hologram projected before us. There was no flesh and blood body to confront us with our humanity. We weren't called because the beat cops got spooked. We were called because the gun was still smoking, and they weren't even going to touch it this time. Things had changed around here since our little cultist extravaganza made headlines. The media was hungry to get its next fix, and the populace was dying to be fed.

  Gabe grimaced beside me.

  “Remind you of something?” I asked.

  “Probably the same thing you’re thinking of,” he said. “Some bastards don’t wanna stay dead.”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could pick and choose?” I asked.

  “Don’t play God, Lana. It doesn’t suit you,” Gabe said.

  Maybe it didn’t, but it did sound good. Living in a world ready to knock you on your ass when you least expected it made you crave a sense of control. What if instead of being at the mercy of wherever your luck landed for the day, you could make the dice reroll and get a second try? Thoughts like that made you greedy, and it was better not to think about such dangerous things.

  The problem with wanting control was the process of getting your hands on it. Suddenly, you could start asking where your lover was going or questioning who they spent their time with. Alternatively, you could micromanage your kids to death and throw out all their beloved items because of the minor chance of it giving them bad ideas. God forbid they found out who they were on their own without you. You could gradually attach everyone you cared about to your hip and hold them down with a cage. In the end, you’d drive yourself insane with not much to show for it. After all, even if your lover betrayed you, you’d be better off with them gone.

  “Don’t worry, if I ever turned into a villain, you’d hold me back,” I said.

  “Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t grumble about it,” he snapped back.

  We held each other accountable and joked about it at the same time. It wasn’t always about bonding. Sometimes we were just trying to defuse the tension in the room. We took care of each other that way. With work like this, you couldn’t afford to lose your footing.

  We drew our guns and stepped inside. The entryway was clean and spacious without any signs of a struggle. There was no displaced furniture, tipped-over lamps, or bloody marks. I almost thought we’d come to the wrong house when a uniformed officer addressed us from down the hall.

  “There’s no need for that,” she said. “We already cleared the house.”

  Unlike me, she looked straight-laced. Her pulled-back hair paired nicely with her freshly pressed uniform. I could still see the creases the iron left. Regulation or otherwise, nothing could have forced me to wear my hair that way. I hated being restricted in any way, and my hair bound tightly to my head just wasn’t going to cut it.

  “We weren’t informed,” I said, holstering my gun. “Where’s your team?”

  So much for teamwork. No one bothered to tell us there would be someone waiting for us inside. That would have ended worse if we were the type to shoot first and ask questions later.

  “They left,” she said. “It’s just me.”

  It’d been a long time since I’d worn that uniform. Once you made it to where we were, you got a little more leniency with your dress. As long as we bore our insignia patch on our shoulder, it would do. The rest didn’t matter as long as it didn’t get in the way of our work.

  “Got ditched, huh?” Gabe asked. “Tough luck.”

  She pointedly ignored him.

  “I’m glad you’re here. I was getting the creeps standing around by myself,” she said.

  She had the air of an overachiever, if anyone would have known it was me. It takes one to know one. I was almost tempted to warn her against it, but it wasn’t my place to pry. Not everyone had the same circumstances. In this line of work, your general temperament and disposition could either make or break you.

  “Don’t mind me. I’m just having fun,” he said, trying to smooth things over.

  She crossed her hands across her chest.

  “There’s not a lot of us either,” she said.

  There was a time I felt the need to explain everything I did too. The slightest suggestion would put me on edge. It was as if everyone else was a wolf, and I, the lone rabbit in the center of a wide-open field had to always be on the lookout. I explained myself before anyone got the chance to take a dig at me or start asking questions. These days, I saw the futility in it and bristled to see the same tendencies in another. Sometimes people could feel like an accusatory reflection on your psyche. They shined a light on the parts of you even you couldn’t stand.

  “The body’s in the back. Do you need anything else, or can I go?” she asked.

  I could’ve kept her. It’d be the pragmatic thing to do. She’d already seen the crime scene and could tell us what her team had already found, but I was itching to let her go.

  “I think we’ll manage,” I said. “Don’t let us hold you up. You’re right; there are not as many of us as there used to be.”

  She nodded, almost hesitating as she made her way down the hall. Both of us knew that the right option would have been to stay and get us up to speed, but sometimes the heart wants what it wants, and she sped down the hall like a bat out of hell. After she slammed the front door shut, Gabe turned to look at me.

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  “You sure we should have cut her loose?” he asked.

  There was a minor tinge of concern in his voice. Maybe he was onto me.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I work better with just you. We don’t need her.”

  He didn’t seem to believe me and hesitated a moment before following me to the back room. Clearly, one of us thought we weren’t ready to move on yet. I could have lingered a bit to talk about it, but I didn’t want to be a burden. Part of me knew that was no way to think. He’d tell me as much if I ever had enough guts to say it out loud, but I held it in regardless.

  The light cascaded down the unlit halls. We were walking from the darkness into the light. Our shadows cast dark silhouettes on the ground as we went. It was as if hints of darkness were mixing with the white, and for a moment that dream flashed before my eyes. The thick, vicious white that bloomed with black everywhere I went led straight to a deep, dark pit with a small illuminated center. Yin and Yang once more.

  I braced myself for the darkness, but the brightness only grew. There was no fall either. In the middle of the room, a lone figure laid on the floor surrounded by three lamps. The overhead light combined with those lamps made the room blindingly bright. In the trinity, the three points each represented the father, the son, and the holy spirit, while the center was their shared godhood. Someone absolutely wanted us to see, but the god we were meant to see was not this man.

  Gabe stepped past me as I wavered in the doorframe. He made a beeline to the corpse and circled around to get a better look. From where I stood, I could only see his back. He was lying on his side with a blanket beneath him and a pillow on which to rest his weary head. The peaceful arrangement seemed unnaturally perfect. I had a feeling he hadn’t laid down that way himself. Carefully displayed corpses were a move straight out of Zenith’s playbook. If Mercy was playing copycat, this is exactly what she’d do.

  “You might not want to see this,” Gabe said.

  “Don’t you think it’s a little late for that?” I asked, quirking a brow.

  “It’s not that you can’t handle it, Lana,” he said. “But you might not need to. You get me?”

  I could have taken him up on that and let him bear it on his own, but I had a pesky tendency to gravitate to whatever wasn’t good for me. Instead of staying back, I moved to stand beside him and peered down at the man’s head. His hair fell over the utterly unrecognizable remnants of a face. Jagged fragments of white bone and red flesh were beaten back from their proper place. His entire face was caved in, and his hands were clutched tightly to his chest and bound into a prayer pose.

  “Blunt force trauma,” I muttered.

  “Our killer gave him a makeover, but they left the rest of him alone,” Gabe said. “Think it was personal?”

  In general, the more brutal the murder, the more likely it was personal. This rule held true across race, gender, and culture alike. Few could hate a stranger as much as someone they knew, loved, or were betrayed by. Of course, there were outliers too. Some unwitting victims could find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. They could resemble someone they’d never met or stood out enough to rub their killer the wrong way. Anything that made someone different or special put a target on their back. Strangers killed out of practicality. Maybe they’d take a few extra hits to keep their target from getting back up, but overkill like this? No. This wasn’t a robbery gone wrong.

  “Bound hands. No face,” I said. “I’m starting to see a pattern.”

  “This one’s worse than the last one,” Gabe muttered, rubbing the stubble along his chin.

  He wasn’t wrong; there was no way to put this one other than nasty. It was brutal, violent, and visceral in a way that was difficult to stomach. However, despite all that damage, there were no signs of a struggle. The setup was almost romantic. Two wine glasses sat untouched on the counter. An uncorked wine bottle sat next to them.

  “He let them in, and didn’t fight back,” I said. “Why?”

  “Didn’t think they were a threat,” he said.

  “Looks like they drank straight from the bottle,” I said.

  “Kinda wild for a date,” he said.

  “Is this Mercy?” I muttered.

  In the right circumstance, mercy could be putting someone out of their misery. In others, it was snuffing out their opportunity for free will and their possibilities for the future. It was too early to tell if the woman who called herself Mercy thought she embodied the essence of that word as well. Who was this man to her? The gentle arrangement and lack of free-flowing blood meant that she had laid him down to sleep and waited for him to pass before beating in his skull. In his last moments, he spent time with a damaged, beautiful woman who smelled like danger and ecstasy. Her pale complexion paired with being a bit too thin and a touch of eyes deadened to the world gave her a look that many found alluring.

  “Talk about mixed signals,” he said. “Other than for the murder, this could have been a fun night.”

  A little drink to put him to sleep. A soft blanket to rest his head on. Bright lights to keep away the monsters that hid in the dark. All of those things held some semblance of mercy. They held in contrast the things that weren’t.

  “Do you think he was desperate? Lonely?” I asked, crouching down to get a better look.

  “Could have been,” he said. “Gotta count your blessings. No matter what you’re after, someone’s died trying for the same thing.”

  Despite the dramatic flair to his death, his appearance was almost uneventful. His clothes were mostly clean and unblemished. A plain white button-up shirt and black slacks, the standard go-to attire for semi-formal events. His short black hair was cut in the most common and ordinary style. His body type was average. He wasn’t especially thin or thick and showed no significant muscle definition. This guy could have been anybody. There was only one thing that stood out: the piece of parchment peeking out from between his fingers. The placement was both overly subtle and glaringly apparent. She wanted us to see it, but not at a glance.

  “He’s got something in his hands,” I said.

  Gabe crouched down next to me. It wasn’t until he put his fingers to his temple to scan the sheet of parchment that I remembered I didn’t have to rely on my eyes either. Our Irises easily latched onto the visible pieces, amplified them, and lined them up neatly together.

  “The Velvet Veil,” I muttered. “Do you know what it is?”

  “Got some hits on the cybersphere,” he said. “Looks like it’s a brothel.”

  “I’m not sure this is the kind of advertisement they were hoping for,” I said.

  Gabe laughed bitterly. Sometimes it was all you could do. In the toughest times, there was nothing to do but laugh at the absurdity of the world you existed in.

  “That’s our lead,” Gabe said. “Well, that and the bottle. The rest of the room has almost nothing in it.”

  “We shouldn’t mess with it till we get forensics to see what else they can get out of this body,” I said, straightening up.

  Gabe took my lead and stood up beside me. He knew me well enough to know I wasn’t excited about our next destination. We bagged up what we could in silence and hit the road. All the way back to the precinct, my head ran in circles. Images of those big city projections and performers angling for business by those doors straight into temptation burned into my skull.

  Lust was no more beautiful than any of the other seven deadly sins outside of the arms of a lover. The red light district always rubbed me the wrong way. Places like those were crawling with crime. Every time I went, I saw something I didn’t want to see. Exploitation was the undercurrent between the fake smiles and neon lights. Big flashy outfits. Cooing girls. Boys ready to do whatever you wanted. They sold dreams between drinks and sheets, but none the kind I wanted.

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