Chapter 9: The blip
"That again?" a man muttered, grimacing at the sight of a white sheet stained with blood, the crimson pooling beneath and seeping through the creases like a slow, living thing.
They stood amidst futuristic plastic buildings, sleek and translucent, their smooth surfaces glinting faintly under the cyan glow of his uniform’s headpiece. The dark streets pressed in around them, heavy with the weight of an unnatural silence that hung in the cool night air.
"Yeah, another anomaly case—" sighed the second officer, his frost-white hair standing stark against the shadows. He bent forward, one hand braced on his knee, his pale skin glowing faintly under the cyan stripes of his suit. Despite his nausea, nothing came up. His thumb pressed against his jaw—a frustrated tic that only grew more insistent as his teeth clenched.
"Apparently, this one got out and stabbed the first woman he saw before he turned," he continued, his voice strained as his thumb dug harder against his skin.
"Got out?" his partner asked, his voice low, eyes narrowing with worry as he took in the grim scene before them.
"Yeah, the bastard went berserk. I don’t know what else to say."
"Any sign of drug abuse?" the first officer asked, kneeling to tug at the edge of the sheet. His expression tightened as he revealed the man’s lifeless face, twisted in an expression of frozen rage. The woman beside him lay still, her features contorted in pain, blood staining her lifeless hands.
"We haven’t run the tests yet..." The crouching officer bit at his nail, gnawing at its edge like a compulsion, his anxiety bleeding into every motion.
"Tch—honestly. Centuries since the first abnormal awakening, and you’d think we’d know how to handle this by now."
"Yeah..."
The officer’s words echoed faintly.