Riley Ross

"Jesús... carajo. What the hell could’ve done this?"

"The real question is, why hasn’t homicide taken this down yet? Forensics finished hours ago. And god—the smell. How long’s it been here again?"

"A little over a week, they said."

Inside Megaland’s House of Horrors, the entire attraction had been sealed off by police tape. Officers crawled throughout the building, though most weren’t taking the crime scene all that seriously. Yes, someone had been murdered gruesomely—but it was a known supervillain. A pedophile, even. Few felt inclined to even find out what had happened.

A pedophile was brutally killed—and that was that.

Still, some did their jobs. Two detectives stood in front of what remained of Ryan Roman’s mutilated and grotesquely mounted corpse. One of them sipped coffee as he stared up at the body impaled from end to end, held upright and hidden well within the other dolls.

"Shit," the male detective muttered. "Well... at least that’s one less loco Supe off the streets, no?"

"Or someone even worse is out there now. Look at this," his partner shot him a sideways glare as she gestured at Roman’s body. "And if we were called in, that only means one thing—whoever did this was another Super."

"Huh... crazy world we’re living in."

"Enough staring at this freak. Just looking at him makes me want to puke. Let’s do our damn jobs."

The two stepped away from the body and made their way toward the forensic team, flashing their badges at them.