The Hunter

by Melissa Faye

  I looked down at the bag of leftovers in my hand, then up at Harrison. Uh oh.

  “It’s not what it looks like!”

  Leslie Leslie sniffed the air and her jaw dropped.

  “Yes it is. You went to the restaurant across the street! You know I’m at war with their owner! You know they don’t like me, and want my little shop out of their fancy pants neighborhood! I’m not moving, I tell them! And now my Junie is going to eat there!”

  “I chose it, Leslie Leslie -” Harrison started.

  “No, Harrison! It was June! She knew better!”

  “I’m sorry!” I cried. I backed towards the door.

  Leslie Leslie unleashed a stream of shouts and curses about the restaurant owner. Harrison wished her good night and hustled me towards the entrance.

  “I’ll come back soon, I promise! I have Easy Shoes I’m working on for you!”

  Harrison dragged me out into the cold. The door jingled as it closed behind us. By the time the door shut, we were both hunched over and laughing hysterically.

  Chapter 3

  LACEY AND I WERE ON our way to get lunch after class when Marlene hurried up to us from behind.

  “Did you see?” She panted from running. “Everyone’s talking about it. Two kids!”

  “What two kids?” Lacey expertly rebraided her hair while we spoke. She usually wore two long braids on either side, and I was in awe every time I saw her make them. Her fingers flew threw her hair so fast.

  “They were murdered.”

  I scrunched up my face.

  “Yeah! It’s so weird. They were both college students, guys, and they both looked wrinkly like raisins when they were found.”

  “What are you talking about, Marlene?” Lacey turned her head in the opposite direction to reach a loose strand of hair. “Who looked like what?”

  “Raisins!”

  Marlene maintained a brisk pace as we walked into the dining hall, and we were forced to keep up to hear her explanation.

  “Two different guys. One was taking community classes, and the other was at a trade school. They were both around our age. And they were both found in the last two weeks. Only when they found the bodies, the guys looked like they were ninety years old. Wrinkled skin, balding, yellowed nails and teeth. People were talking about it in the library this morning.”

  “Are you sure? Some of the local papers tend to exaggerate.” I was thinking about one of the local papers in particular. They used the word “news” very generously. Most things counted as news, true or not, if they made for a nice headline.

  “Yes! June! I’m sure!” Marlene huffed. Lacey winked at me.

  We swiped our meal cards, grabbed trays, and met at a table once we had our food. I hadn’t been able to go to the gym as much as I used to, and was sticking mainly to salads. Fighting travelers required a certain level of stamina and energy. I needed to get back into some better habits.

  “Look. Two guys. Old men.” Marlene pushed her phone forward with the screen facing us and waved her hand in front of it. Lacey and I read the headline.

  TWO TEENS FOUND DEAD UNDER SIMILAR MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES

  There were even pictures, and like Marlene said, they were...weird.

  They looked like a cross between mummies and pictures of men in villages in the outskirts of society who live to 120 years old. Their cheeks were gaunt, and their wrinkled skin clung to their skeletons. Their hair was so pale it was almost see-through. Their nails and teeth were yellowed.

  “I don’t get it. Those aren’t teenagers.” Lacey grabbed a crouton off my plate before I could stop her.

  “They are!” Marlene had a loud, dramatic presence, but I could tell she was serious when her voice was at its loudest. She was practically shouting at us now. “They matched their dental records. It’s the teenagers. Someone is...I don’t know...poisoning random guys.”

  “That’s so gross,” Lacey murmured. “Maybe they took some drugs or something?”

  “Could be.” I looked over the pictures again. Whatever happened to those men, there had to be something chemical involved. And whoever did it was sick.

  “The cops think it’s murder! It sounds like they have more information that they’re not sharing. It’s terrifying. They were found in two different rundown buildings in different parts of the city, way far from their homes. No other evidence. I’ve been sick about it since I heard.” Marlene’s leaned in and whispered. “What if that was someone we knew?”

  Whatever was happening, it was repulsive. I looked at the dates in the article. One kid was found ten days ago. One was found last night.

  Unexplained phenomena were a time traveler sort of thing. I would need to stop by the crime scene and figure out if that’s what this was. At least I didn’t have an afternoon class.

  I TEXTED RIDGE AND Harrison to let them know what I was doing, then hopped on my bike to head to the second crime scene. It was several miles south of school. Winter was rearing its ugly head earlier than my liking this year, and my parka didn’t provide nearly enough protection. My teeth chattered as I rode down the crowded streets.

  The second body was found in an abandoned warehouse in the Meatpacking District. It was one of those shady streets where no one goes unless they’re buying drugs, selling drugs, or catching drug dealers. The cops had the block closed off. I snuck around the corner and circled the building until I found a spot perfect for sneaking in.

  I locked up my bike and scrambled into a back lot under a broken fence - being small had at least a few benefits. I stuck to the outskirts of the lot and kept an eye out for any unsavory characters.

  There was a row of filthy windows along the outer wall of the warehouse. I brushed off a layer of dust with my coat sleeve and peered inside. It was a large, open space with industrial piping and other remnants of the factory that the space must have been at one point. There were several cops and detectives pacing around or talking in small groups. Small cones marked where different pieces of evidence had been found. I counted four different criminal investigators, or CIs, at work. Three stood around a rolling cart with some sort of analysis machine and a laptop. The fourth was on the ground collecting samples near one of the cones.

  I took a few pictures with my phone and sent them to Harrison. My angle was poor. I moved to a window on the far side of the wall and took more pictures.

  I pulled my J-DAR from my messenger bag to scan the scene. The J-DAR looked like a large magnifying glass and picked up traces of chronograms that people picked up from time traveling. I held it in front of the window and peered inside. Nothing.

  I rifled through my bag to see if any other inventions might be useful, but had no other ideas. I needed to get closer.

  The lot on my side of the building was empty. Two sides of the building faced the corner and were closed off with police tape and guarded by more cops. The fourth side of the building jutted up against the next building over. I snuck over to that side to take a look.

  The buildings were almost touching, but there was a foot or two of space between the walls in a few places. Of course, there weren’t any windows on that wall. But there was one large vent.

  I edged my way between the buildings to reach the vent. It was poorly designed; it opened right into the other building as if one architect had it out for the other. It was closed with a grate, but I easily opened it with a screwdriver.

  I crawled inside, suddenly glad that Harrison wasn’t with me. He wouldn’t like me crawling into a vent with no idea what would be on the other side. I pushed aside cobwebs and dust bunnies as I crawled along. I paused to cover my nose to stop a sneeze.

  After twenty feet or so, I found myself looking through another grate into the main room. I could see every cop and detective, and watched the lone CI fiddle with his collection bags. If only I could get my hands on some of those samples...

  “People will lose it when they learn we still have no leads,” one of the detectives said to another. She wiped her foreh
ead with the back of her hand. “Is there anything here that could point to drugs?”

  The other detective flipped through a notepad and pointed to something. “This is the list of chemicals found in both victims’ bodies. They’re far more complex than any street drug we’ve seen before. The CI described them as reading like computer programs.”

  “But if the CIs haven’t found any genetic material except for the victims, perhaps they were experimenting on themselves...”

  “Possibly, but that doesn’t account for the injection sites on the victim’s skin and lack of needles anywhere in the building. The place has been wiped clean. Why would this kid be here alone doing drugs without a way to inject them?”

  The woman crossed her arms and scanned the room. Both detectives’ bodies hung low, as if they hadn’t slept in ages.

  “They think they have something, ma’am.” A police officer had approached without the detectives realizing it.

  “Yes?”

  “One of the CIs found something in a patch of dirt on the side of the building.”

  The CI in question joined the group from one of the doorways. He held a plastic bag in his hand.

  “What is it?”

  “It could be part of a syringe, but it’s not like any I’ve seen before.” The CI held the plastic bag up so the others could see. I couldn’t tell what it was from the vent.

  “It looks like someone stepped on it as they were leaving,” the CI continued. “It’s crushed. We’re still finding pieces scattered around over there. But the pieces we do have could be part of something that injects chemicals.”

  The second detective flipped his notepad to a new page and scratched out a note.

  “That supports the murder theory. But what do you mean ‘something?’ It’s bits and pieces...” He took the bag from the CI and shifted its contents around. “So you’re thinking this is the plunger?”

  “Yes, sir.” The CI gently pulled the bag out of the detective’s hands. “And these pieces wrap around the entire needle compartment. Then this part runs on technology I don’t know anything about.”

  “Keep us updated on your progress. If that’s not a syringe, and it does something else, I want to know. And if it is a syringe, I want to know why it works like that.”

  The CI nodded and scurried away.

  “It’s a lead. But it still doesn’t tell us anything about the motive. Or the connection between the victims.”

  “Or the murderer himself,” the other detective muttered.

  When they got into a heated debate about syringe use in drug busts, I backed away into the vent and out into the sunlight. No one was in the lot, so I scrambled back to my bike and headed back to the dorms.

  All signs pointed to murder by injections of chemicals so intricate that they mirrored the complexity of computer programming. Injected with a syringe using technology a CI couldn’t identify. This was a traveler, and I needed to stop him.

  Chapter 4

  RIDGE SHUFFLED AROUND his apartment in his slippers, muttering to himself and sipping his coffee. Harrison and I had interrupted his schedule, or so he said. He couldn’t articulate what exactly he did all day. But we arrived bright and early with coffee, and he couldn’t turn us away.

  Harrison wouldn’t stop asking me questions about the crime scene. What it looked like, who the detectives were, what they found, and what was in that little bag. I showed him all the pictures I took, answered his questions one time each, then tuned him out. We were armed with our laptops, my bag of inventions, and a healthy dose of enthusiasm for a Saturday morning. I was ready to jump into action.

  “I can look into the Face Finder - right?” Harrison asked.

  “No. We don’t have a picture of the traveler to trace.”

  “What about looking at video footage from around the crime scene? We could see who was there the other night?”

  “Have at it.” I pushed my tablet into Harrison’s hands. “There aren’t any cameras at that corner, so you’ll be looking at cameras a block or more away.”

  Meanwhile, I collected every document I could find online and in print about the two crimes. There were dozens of articles from different news sources. My plan was to read everything and see if any other signs pointed to time travel or if anyone had seen even a hint of the murderer.

  “Look at this, Wires.” Harrison tugged at my elbow to look at the tablet. “I can see people walking one block away from the warehouse in the direction of the warehouse.”

  “Good job, I guess?”

  “No, that’s only half of it.” He swiped through the program to another feed. “This video feed is five hundred feet from the other crime scene. We can’t see who entered that building, but we can get an even closer look at who’s approaching that area.”

  “So are you going to look those over?”

  “They’re kind of crowded...” Harrison stroked his chin with his hand. “I was thinking you might be able to create some sort of program for us. You could make it so it compares people in the feeds from a six hour period around the time of death for each victim. See if any faces overlap.”

  “That’s a good idea, Harrison!” Ridge called from his couch. He was already laid back in his favorite spot. He’d stolen one of the newspapers I came with and the papers crunched as he flipped through them.

  “Alright, gimme.” I switched spots with Harrison and got to work. The Face Finder was already set to check all the cameras in the city for a single face. Adjusting the program to compare two feeds and search for a common face was nothing.

  And the Face Finder worked quickly. I finished the program, and it pulled up a face on the two feeds within thirty seconds. He was a middle-aged man with a thick moustache wearing a factory uniform. I plugged his face back into the original Face Finder and pulled up his location.

  “That was a good idea, Harrison.” I showed him the picture. “I think we have our murderer.”

  “What now?”

  “Now I send him home!”

  “June, what are you talking about?” Suddenly Ridge was moving much faster. “This man murdered two young men, and you don’t know how or why, but you’re going to confront him?”

  “Ridge, I’m perfectly capable of sending a traveler home. And I’ll bring the gun.”

  “We could wait a little longer. See if the cops turn up anything else...” Harrison avoided my eyes as he said it, and I snickered. Coward.

  “If we go, we can try out the Gravity Boots,” I murmured. “And besides, I’m going either way. I’ll be safer if you come with me.”

  Harrison and Ridge shared one of those glances that said “June is a pain but we put up with her anyways.” I packed my bag.

  “That was it? I barely finished my coffee. You sure you don’t want to stay a bit longer, June?” Ridge asked, grasping at straws.

  “We’re off. I’ll text you the address, Ridge.”

  “Are the two of you just going to leave all these papers here?” he called after us. I ignored him.

  WE TOOK THE SUBWAY down to the traveler’s apartment building. Harrison bugged me the whole way down about the Gravity Boots. I showed him the prototype. They were small, black, quarter-sized tokens with a magnetic charge that pulled them towards a person you were throwing them at. They should slow the person down; ideally they would stop a person’s motion completely.

  I led the way as we biked several more blocks from the subway station to the man’s address. He lived in a modest apartment building located above a pet store.

  The Face Finder showed us that this was where the traveler was last seen, but didn’t tell us his name or apartment number. Luckily, I had the J-DAR. It could look inside buildings and through people and other objects.

  I passed it to Harrison. He held it out in front of his face and scanned the building, carefully going left and right across each floor.

  He scratched the back of the head and started his search at the beginning. Back and forth. Up and down. Finally, he handed
the J-DAR back to me.

  “He’s not there. Do you think he left?”

  I did a spot check. No chronograms. I checked the Face Finder again. There were no other videos of the traveler since he appeared at this building the night before.

  “He could have avoided the cameras. But I doubt he did, since he hasn’t avoided them before.” I rifled through my messenger bag, sorting through my traveler-fighting tools. It was an automatic reflex when I wasn’t sure what to do next.

  “Maybe it’s the wrong building.” Harrison scanned the buildings nearby for chronogram trails. Nothing.

  “We’re here. Let’s at least look inside.”

  I led us into the traveler’s apartment building. The doorman was shouting at someone on the phone.

  “Yes! Please hurry! The Super only found him a few minutes ago!” The doorman noticed us and turned away with the phone glued to his ear. I held Harrison in place. I wanted to hear more.

  “He’s up there right now with the resident. Says he looks like the others. White hair, dried out skin...Yes. Thank you.”

  The doorman hung up the phone and turned to us with wide eyes.

  “Can you believe that? On my shift, in my building. The last doorman said the guy got home last night at around midnight. Then this morning someone hears shouting and...”

  “Who is that, sir? Someone else was...was found like the other two kids? Suddenly aged?” Harrison spoke in a calm, reassuring tone, and the doorman locked eyes with him.

  “Yeah, that’s it. I don’t even know the guy’s name. He’s lived here for a month or two, and he’s a good guy, doesn’t talk much, works at a factory in Brooklyn. The Super never heard any complaints about him til an hour ago.”

  “What complaints?”

  “Some people yelling. Shouting. Then nothing. The Super went up with his keys and found him like that. I didn’t go up and see it - I don’t need to see none of that.”

  I bit my lip. The traveler killed his own neighbor? Why? This was the first murder to take place in a private residence; there had to be a reason.