Pursuit. (Part One)

For the last couple of weeks people have been disappearing from the streets, from their homes, schools, places of works, and so on. No one knows who’s doing it, or why. The Mayor has tried to keep this a secret for as long as possible, to not scare the public. It failed, badly. Now the city is scared and no one knows who to trust anymore. People go missing every day and corpses appear on streets and alleyways.

Heroes and Villains have been working non-stop to find out the truth, but some other people, like me, simply do what they always have.

…Destiny had other ideas for me though, and my own investigation on a different matter led me right to the center of the mystery.

(This story takes place in the same time “Captivity” does.)

The city’s a disaster. It’s been like this for a while now.

People are going missing left and right and there’s no trace or reason left behind. The speed at which they work and the fact no one knows why they take people leaves too many scared to even go out to their daily commune.

This has been going on for some months and despite the constant investigations by police or heroes, there’s still no clue as to who is behind it.

The Mayor chose to play the long game, to try and not mention the problem and hope that it could be solved before it got worse, in the hopes that it wouldn’t scare the entire city.

Then the corpses of the missing people started appearing and he couldn’t tell people nothing was going on anymore.

Everyone in the city is on high alert, no one really knows what to do or who to trust.

…Except for a select few, who chose to continue with their own lives and business despite it all.

People like me, for example.

Another caped crusader jumping through the roofs of the city and fighting criminals. Though less of a hero and more of a detective, because there is certainly a lot of people who need something or someone found, or certain matters of theirs that need to be dealt with… discretely.

It’s like Dad always used to say, if there’s something you’re good at don’t do it for free, and according to the man himself if there’s something I’m good at it’s using my head and tinkering.

Currently moving through the city, making my way to my current objective, all the while thinking on the “case” I’m working on, if I could actually call it that. An ex-millionaire going missing, of course this was years before the problem with the disappearances started, so I’m essentially looking for a man who disappeared years ago.

However, working on a missing person case while there’s a frenzy of people going missing all over town makes it more difficult to solve it. Who would have thought that there’s plenty of people who like to kidnap defenseless civilians who have nothing to do with the bigger problem at hand?

As I move through another set of buildings, jumping on rooftops and making my way down to street level, I double check the address in my mind, now that I’m close to where I’m headed, I have to make sure I get it right, wouldn’t want to knock on the wrong door after all.

I make my way towards a small two-story house and knock on the front door, not a glamorous entrance I know but I like to keep things civil and not enter through a window like some other people do.

That’s just rude, not to mention illegal.

I don’t have to wait for long. Soon I hear shuffling inside and someone undoing the locks of the door, a woman opens the door for me. Her face looks tired and her eyes are red, she has a crumpled piece of tissue paper on her hand so she’s probably been crying.

I can tell she’s a little taken aback by the costume and before I can say anything to her, she starts a conversation.

“Are you here for Billy? Did you find anything!?” She asks pleadingly, her voice is weak but also desperate.

“…No, I’m sorry” I reply. I can see her visibly deflate at my answer and she looks like she’s about to cry again “I’m actually here to talk to your husband, is Doctor Marcus home?”

Her face scrunches up, before she asks “You know my husband?”

I nod “I’m a… private investigator of sorts” That’s the best way I can put it.

“The doctor hired me some months before to investigate something for him” It’s not until I remember what he hired me for that I quickly mention “Of course, I’m not at a liberty to discuss the details of my investigation so you’ll have to ask him about it”

The woman stares at me for a moment, processing my statement before she surprisingly opens the door further and gestures for me to enter.

“He’s… on the living room. Come in, please.”

I give her a quick thanks and make my way inside. I’ve been inside the house before, back when her husband first hired me so I know my way inside.

It doesn’t take long for us to reach her husband. He’s sitting on a couch, looking thoughtful and staring at a small portrait on the coffee table, he doesn’t notice either of our presences until his wife speaks to him and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Honey? There’s someone that wants to see you.”

“What? Who-” The man looks at his wife, then turns around to look for his visitor his eyebrows rising in surprise when his eyes find me. I notice that his eyes are red, just like his wife’s.

“Wait. What. Hood?” He speaks. There’s some awkwardness in his voice. “It’s been… A while, hasn’t it?” His eyes dart to his wife and then back to me.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, but I needed to visit you for something” I say, walking over to him.

“…This isn’t about money is it? I thought I had already paid for your-” His eyes land on his wife again for a second “-services.”

“No, no, nothing like that” I try to assure the man. He’s surprisingly jumpy tonight.

I reach inside my pockets and take out a photo of the person I’m looking for. To them it must look like I’m just reaching into my cape or something. I show the picture to Dr. Marcus and tap on it.

“I’m investigating the disappearance of Edward Callahan” The man’s eyes widen in recognition “I understand you were a coworker of his as well as one of the last people who saw him two years ago?”

It takes a moment for the doctor to collect himself, he blinks a couple of times before speaking.

“That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while…” He pauses for again and then shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I… can’t really do anything right now, I’m- There’s something going on right now.”

Looking back to he and his wife, I’m completely sure something has them on edge. All it takes for me to realize what is wrong is to take a look at the picture on top of the table.

“I’m sorry if I’m overstepping, but did something happen to your son?” I ask.

My response is a whimper from his wife, with the doctor biting his lower lip before answering.

“…Yes” He sighs. It’s a weary sigh, the kind of one a person lets out when they’re about to cry.

He rubs his hands on his face “Billy disappeared two weeks ago” He lets out a shudder “The police believe it was related to X8”

X8 being the name they’ve given to the serial kidnapping case. They do that for whatever world ending threat or big occurrence of the year shows up that requires several heroes to stop.

That makes me raise my eyebrows.

…Not that they can see them behind my mask.

“The kidnappings? They think your son was taken by the same people responsible for them?”

The doctor looks down to the picture on the table, this time joined by his wife who embraces him with one arm.

“They say it looks exactly like the other cases, no trails, no evidence, no hero can track his position… Nothing.”

He grabs the picture again and looks at it for some time before turning to me.

Now that I have a good look at his face, I can see the man is filled with sadness just like his wife.

“I’m sorry, you came here for answers and… I’m sorry” Another sigh.

I’m the one that’s sorry is what I think on saying, I came here looking for answers on something and interrupted these two on their weakest moment.

I was about to apologize and leave until his wife spoke again and broke the silence between us.

“Richard, you said you hired this man for something right?” She begins, separating herself from her husband and gesturing to me. “Can’t we just get him to look for Billy? For anything about what happened to him?”

Her husband looks back at me, somewhat unconvinced, but his wife doesn’t stop there.

“If you could… look in to what happened to our son” His wife trails off.

“I know it may be too much to ask for” Her husband stares at her “But if you do look up about Billy, anything at all, then I’ll tell you everything we know about Edward.”

“Honey, it’s not that simple- He can’t just!”

They start arguing after that. I don’t focus on them; I just think on what to do now.

The second I was hired to look for a man that was kidnapped I was ready to decline, because it may have something to do with X-08, it was only thanks to the man’s lover who convinced me that it was not related that I took the job in the first place.

Even though there’s some good money on the line I was ready to decline if it involved getting into this mess.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s just that selfless heroics hardly pays the bills and jumping around with a costume and throwing gadgets burns through your budget fairly quickly, so I tend to outright refuse jobs that get me involved in something bigger than me, or something that just doesn’t pay right.

Still…

As my gaze wanders over to the Marcus’ family photo again, I can’t help but feel something at this scene, I can’t help but feel something for Marcus’ son, despite just being a passerby.

I can’t help but taste something akin to disgust in my own mouth when I consider not helping them.

“Are the police not doing anything about your son?” I break their discussion myself.

The couple stops what they’re doing at stare at me for a moment. Seeing their red eyes, probably from all their crying for losing their son almost makes me flinch.

Almost.

“…The police said to wait” Marcus responds “All the cases are the same and all we can do is wait until they find something, but they’re acting as though it was impossible to”

His wife perks up next “We know it’s asking too much but…” She grabs her husband’s hand “We’ll be grateful if you can find anything, no matter how small it is.”

I take another second to think.

Everyone has been searching non-stop ever since the beginning, stress and tension building up when they realized no one has found anything conclusive, even more so when the city realized that the kidnapping rumors weren’t just rumors anymore.

Every day that passes makes it feel like stopping it is an impossible task, just like they said. But again, a part of me can’t stop but feel disgust at the idea of giving up on them.

“I can’t promise I can find your son.” They both visibly deflate at that, their faces hopeless.

I tried. I really tried to stay as far as possible from this fiasco but it seems fate just won’t let me stay the hell away from it.

“I could promise you that I could search as much as possible about this” I start “Maybe even end up with the same conclusions that the police have”

“But I can promise you that I won’t stop until I find out what happened to your son”

…Dad always said I was a man led by his own emotions.

They both brighten up somewhat at my response, with Marcus’ wife being the first one to respond to my claim.

“Thank you… That’s all we ask.”

That’s all I can do. I look Marcus in the eye and ask him again “But first, I need you to tell me about Mister Callahan”

Marcus’ blinks “What? Why?” His eyes narrow “…You don’t think he has something to do with this?”

“Not really, no.” I move over and take a seat on another chair “But I’d like to get this one thing done with before starting on your son” I respond.

Besides, if my luck is any good then maybe Edward will too end up another victim, and maybe I’ll end up finding who’s responsible for it all, that’s two birds with one stone!

…Yeah right, as if that would happen.