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  On top of the apartment building he could see the endless towers of the city, lit up in their nighttime displays. Six floors up, he was right in the thick of most of the buildings. He loved the city. Its residents he could do without. But with the city itself he had no quarrel.

  Neil Meriwether looked back over his shoulder and seemed to curse. He didn’t seem to know where he was. It was an all-too-common theme among the homeless in San Francisco. Markov thought back through his experiences as a cop, grasping at straws for one that might help him talk the guy down.

  Detective Markov wasn’t good at these sorts of situations. Last year he was the first to respond to a man threatening to kill himself on the Golden Gate Bridge. He was trying to talk the man down when the Crisis Team arrived. Despite trying to hand him off to the professionals, the man would only talk to Markov. They talked for about ten minutes before Markov got frustrated.

  The guy had nothing to complain about. He had a perfect life except for the acidic bitch that broke up with him for his brother. He made a six figure salary, was a good looking guy who obviously had no trouble getting women, and the car that was in the road blocking traffic was a Tesla Model S. Markov had more problems than he could count and nobody would catch him out on a ledge.

  Markov couldn’t stand people who thought they were entitled to something; anything. Admittedly, he had become jaded after so many years on the force and seeing so many relationships and families torn apart. He was no exception with two ex-wives. Regardless, what Markov said to the guy wasn’t exactly politically correct. Long story short, the guy jumped to his death. What did Markov get for his efforts? One month of sensitivity training courtesy of the hippies at City Hall.

  This case was different. This guy attacked his partner, killed several people, and had him running up God-knows how many stairs. Markov had half a mind to save himself some paperwork and tell the guy to jump. No one would know the difference. A part of him, the part that longed to be a policeman ever since he saw his daddy put on the uniform as a child, told him the guy needed help. Obviously something was physically wrong with him.

  Markov pushed the rest of the way through the doorway and held his gun out in front of him.

  “Hold it, buddy,” Markov said calmly. “You don’t want to do this.”

  The suspect turned awkwardly, his eyes glowing emeralds as they caught Markov’s stare. He bent over in pain, clutching his stomach. Markov could hear the sounds from twenty feet away. In the back of his mind he thought of Detective Hall’s hunger pangs.

  Coincidence, he thought.

  “H-Help me,” the man said while trembling.

  Neil Meriwether was unarmed so Detective Markov lowered his weapon a bit to gain the guy’s confidence. He remembered back to a negotiation seminar at the Academy. The first step was to gain the person’s confidence and build a rapport.

  “Why don’t you come down from there and we can talk about this. You look like you might need to see a doctor. We could grab something to eat on the way to the hospital, how’s that?”

  The suspect made a guttural growl in a voice too deep to be his own and turned the rest of the way around so he was facing Markov directly. He bowed his head and the meek voice that asked for help was gone, replaced by the sound of clicks and noises unfamiliar to him. Whatever he was saying didn’t even sound human. Markov heard a noise behind him and turned his head, making sure to keep the suspect in his peripheral vision.

  Detective Hall stood in the roof access doorway, one hand holding a piece of his shirt on her bloody temple and the other holding an outstretched gun. For a moment he couldn’t tell if the weapon was pointed at him or the suspect.

  “Karen, I thought I told you to stay put!”

  Detective Hall was focused on the suspect. Markov might as well have been in a different zip code because Karen didn’t acknowledge him at all. He turned his attention back to the suspect, who continued speaking in a strange tongue, this time directed at Karen. Markov half believed he was dreaming when Detective Hall spoke back in the same language. The Karen he knew didn’t even know enough Spanish to order a burrito from a food truck. She was the self-proclaimed queen of the point-and-shoot method of language translation. In other words, pointing and gesturing at something until the other person got what you were talking about. It was a skill that transcended all language barriers.

  Markov’s glare switched between Karen and the suspect. He took a half-step toward Karen and she shifted her weapon toward Markov, uttering a low pitched, inhuman noise in the process. She had a far-off look and bags under her eyes, sunken like a sickly cancer patient.

  “Shit, Karen, snap out of it!”

  Her eyes appeared glazed over. The ice blue that normally looked back at him began to change in front of his eyes. Whoever was standing before Markov was no longer the partner he traded barbs with for fun. She was a killer. He’d seen the look countless times. It was a true sociopathic look. Like the Midtown Slasher or countless other whackos he’d seen in his career.

  Karen turned her head toward the suspect once more, removing her hand from her temple and pointing to the ledge. She said something in the alien tongue that sounded like an order. Markov turned toward the man on the ledge and witnessed something that left him speechless.

  The suspect released his aching stomach and straightened up as though he were a military man being addressed by a superior. He made a gesture over his heart, turned, and jumped off the ledge.

  “NO!” Markov screamed, his hand outstretched toward the suspect.

  Moments later he heard a thud on the pavement below. Markov ran to the edge and saw the bloody mess on the sidewalk. He couldn’t help but be surprised that the body was mostly intact. It was a momentary morbid lapse. He couldn’t help it. All detectives had that kind of morbidity in them. The life of a detective attracted a certain kind of person.

  Markov began to turn to Karen when he noticed a black van pull up beside the body. The windowless side door opened and two men in suits got out. Even from six floors up he could tell it was Agents Shaw and Brown from that morning. The two men looked up, waved, and then picked up the body with gloved hands, tossing the lifeless corpse into the van. Before Markov could yell out at them, the van’s tires squealed and the agents were gone.

  “Shit. Do you believe those guys, Karen?”

  There was no response.

  “Karen?” Markov asked while turning around.

  Detective Hall stood with arms at her side, her face expressionless. The green tint that inhabited her eyes faded and she dropped her weapon and the bloody piece of Markov’s shirt. She held her stomach and howled in pain, collapsing into a lifeless heap on the ground. Sirens blared into the night, their sound providing little comfort to Markov. Whatever had happened to the jumper was happening to his partner. That meant that those goons in the fancy suits would come for her too.

  Markov steeled himself. He picked up her small limp body in his arms and started to leave the apartment building. No one was going to take his partner away from him. Whatever was happening to her was his responsibility too. He was going to get to the bottom of it if it was the last thing he did.

  It very well could be, he thought.

  “Hold on, Karen, I’ll find a way to help you. I promise.”

  18

  1015 Hours – Day 3 – The Pinnacle Apartment Building

  Detective Markov wiped Karen’s forehead with a wet washcloth. She had woken up three times during the night to eat and had nearly gone through all of the food in her house. It should be noted she didn’t have a ton of food to begin with, but what she did have had now dwindled down to pretzel sticks and half a wheel of Gouda cheese. She lay there in a stained white wife-beater and blood-stained jeans. Despite the chill of her apartment, she took off her blouse during the night in one of her dashes to the kitchen.

  Markov didn’t know how long he could take this. Something was happening to her body and he didn’t know how to help her. All this anxiety m
ade him crave a cigarette. Karen had a strict no-smoking policy ever since her dad died of lung cancer the year before. Before, Karen had only tolerated his smoking.

  Karen’s cat Gizmo paced around his feet, bashing his legs with his head. Markov wasn’t much of a cat person. His mindset was if he had a pet it should be able to have his back in a fight. He once had a Husky that might have been part-wolf, but Grace, his first wife, had gotten him in the divorce. Markov kicked the feline away, prompting a strained meow. He felt over his arm for the nicotine patch. It was supposed to work for twenty-four hours, but that had to have been bullshit. He’d never made it past eight. His thoughts returned to Karen’s condition.

  The hospital wasn’t able to help the last guy with this thing, and if he took her then the government agents would surely come and take her away like they did Neil Meriwether. They obviously knew something Markov didn’t, but what was it? What could have been so important that they would steal a dead guy from the street? It wasn’t adding up.

  Markov’s phone rang for the third time since he left the roof of the apartment complex. It was Captain Riggs again. What was he going to tell him? For a moment he wondered if maybe the Captain would understand and have some constructive advice. Markov had to laugh at that sentiment.

  Markov saw Captain Riggs as a very practical man who had no room for error. Whatever the hell happened last night would be out of his little box of understanding. Markov knew what he heard and saw. Those voices were something else, that language foreign. Not foreign in the sense of France or something. Foreign as in not of this Earth.

  Karen’s eyelids twitched and she sat up a bit on the couch, slowly making it to her elbows. She looked around the room and locked eyes with Markov. For the first time since the rooftop she seemed to be in a clear frame of mind, not a zombie in search of a meal.

  “What happened?”

  “You’ve been scaring me shitless, that’s what,” Markov spat.

  “Easy tiger, I’ve got a splitting headache.”

  Markov dabbed her forehead with the damp washcloth and she brushed his hand away defiantly. Karen could be a pain in the ass when he was trying to help her, hell, especially when he was trying to help her.

  “What do you remember from last night?”

  Detective Hall hesitated. She looked to be calculating her answer carefully. That wasn’t like her at all. Normally she came out guns blazing with whatever witty retort she could think of at the time. Now she was hesitant. That wasn’t a quality he admired in anyone, especially a partner.

  “I just remember getting whacked with that bar. I hit the ground and then—”

  Karen stopped talking. She looked to Markov and closed her jaw tight. She seemed to be recalling something painful. He didn’t think it was physical pain either. Karen had been shot several times, once without a vest on, and she never shed a tear. She was tough. This sense of vulnerability wasn’t like her at all, which made it all the more disconcerting.

  She continued, “Maybe you should be telling me. What happened to our suspect?”

  “You told him to jump off the roof,” Markov said flatly.

  “I what?”

  “At least that’s what it looked like to me,” Markov began. “I can’t keep thinking I’ve been imagining things. Something truly messed up is going on.”

  Karen pinched the bridge of her nose, squinting with what Markov was sure was one killer migraine. He knew she probably had a concussion and that he was supposed to keep her awake, but there was no reaching her in the state she was in. He threw cold water on her, made her drink caffeine. Ultimately, as Markov’s mother always told him, sometimes the body just needs to rest to work through whatever was going on. Markov sincerely hoped that was true.

  “What do you mean?” Karen asked, opening her eyes once more and staring at him inquisitively.

  Gizmo jumped up on her lap and started pawing at her for pets. All she had to do was put her hand out and the cat did the rest, walking underneath her hand, petting himself.

  “I mean you spoke in tongues.”

  “Like that crazy fundamentalist church shit? You know I don’t go to church.”

  “No,” Markov said with a sigh, then continued forcefully, “I mean like a full conversation in a real language. Something…not from here.”

  “Like France?” Karen asked in an innocent voice.

  “No, not like France!”

  Markov was growing frustrated. How could he tell exactly what happened without sounding crazy himself? He hardly got a wink of sleep the night before because he was constantly worried about his partner. Every time he did sleep he had dreams of being locked up in a mental institution after telling everyone he saw aliens.

  “Well you could help me out here,” Karen said.

  Markov had enough of this beating around the bush. She was his partner.

  “I mean alien! Christ. Do I have to spell out everything for you?”

  “I’m sorry, partner, alien wasn’t first on my list.”

  “Come on Karen, you see what’s happening to you; what happened to the suspect. It’s no coincidence. Something bigger is going on here.”

  Karen stood up slowly, prompting Gizmo to jump to the floor, and cradled her head in her hands as she did. She turned her back to Markov. He could tell she was hiding something. She wasn’t the best liar in the world, despite knowing how to catch some of the best in the business. If he was right, she was going through some of the same mental hoops as him: how to be honest without sounding like a loon.

  “Look, there might have been some weird things yesterday, but it was no big deal. I’m fine now.”

  “What kind of things,” Markov asked, also standing up. “Karen, what the hell is going on?”

  Karen hesitated. She started to move her hands as though she were trying to find the right words but was failing miserably. Finally, she found the words.

  “After the BART collapse, I examined the meteorite. Just for a second! After that, when I got out of the shower there was a weird green goop in my eye. But it’s gone, it was a fluke.”

  “Christ, Karen!”

  “I thought it was some kind of bacterial infection, I was going to the hospital to sort it out with some antibiotics.”

  Markov took her arm and spun her around.

  “Bullshit,” he said. “The nurse said you were investigating the pathologist’s death.”

  Markov pulled the scientist’s wrinkled black notepad out from his coat pocket and tossed it on the coffee table. Markov pulled out his notes from the interview with Officer Johnson. He flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for. He read from his notes.

  -Suspect ravaged grocery store, eating everything in sight.

  -Appeared emaciated, acted animalistic

  -Possibly sick or mentally deranged; check eyes for green coloring

  -Withstood 3 Tasers for short period; check for drugs

  Karen’s appetite had been insatiable, she looked like she had lost 10 pounds overnight, she was able to make it to the roof despite her injuries, and now her eyes had green goop in them. Almost all of the symptoms from the first patient were present. The only thing missing was the violence. For a moment Markov thought back to the rooftop and wondered why Karen had pointed her gun at him. She wouldn’t have pulled the trigger, would she?

  “All right, fine,” she said while angrily poking Markov in the chest with her index finger. “I don’t like being sidelined and you know it. What did you expect to happen?”

  Karen was half his size and more than a foot shorter, but when she was angry she had a presence that was off-putting to most men. When she was a rookie one of the other cops was giving her a hard time and she ended up breaking his finger. The report chalked it up to an accident, but everyone knew what really happened. He’d pushed her too far; hit a nerve.

  “Don’t treat me like a child, Markov!”

  Detective Hall’s eyes flashed as though a second set of eyes lay behind her real
, ice-blue ones. She began speaking in a lower register. Not like the exorcist or anything, but a noticeable change nevertheless.

  “The suspect is dead and this case is over.”

  Her voice had a tone of finality. It was as though he were ordering him, her superior, to stand down. Markov grasped her elbows in his massive hands, restraining her.

  “Listen to yourself, Karen. You know there’s more to this case and you’re living proof. The Karen I know would never let a case die until she was sure as shit every angle was covered. Agents Shaw and Brown from the BART station took the body, Karen. Why the hell would they do that if this were an isolated incident?”

  Detective Hall’s eyes returned to normal and she let her body relax. Her cold stare was enough to chill anyone.

  “I saw them at the hospital,” she said in a far-off voice. “They took evidence from the lab. I saw them again when I was leaving.”

  “What did they take, Karen?”

  “I don’t know, but they missed something.”

  “What?” Markov asked urgently.

  Karen paced the living room, using her hands as aides to help her unravel the mystery.

  “Dr. Hannover was analyzing the sample. There was a broken slide on the ground and a small amount of the sample was left.”

  “How did they miss that? If they were trying to cover this up, surely they would have taken that too.”

  “It wasn’t on the slide. It…had moved away.”

  Markov had heard stranger things in the last 24 hours. Still, it was a little hard to take in. A sample of brain tissue gets up and walks away. It sounded like the beginning of some terrible scientist joke.

  “Hold on, I have an idea,” Markov said, reaching for his phone.

  “If you’re ordering pizza I want the meat lovers.”

  “Come on, you’re going to leave yourself open for that one?” Markov retorted.

  Detective Hall shot him a sideways glance. He knew her mind and it was as dirty as his. Maybe dirtier.