An hour after the attack, the city was in full lockdown. Two hours after that, a black helicopter landed inside the evacuation zone. If anyone had been around to see it, they would have watched sixteen soldiers, one spy, and two teenagers step out. The teenagers were dressed like private school students. Matching white buttoned shirts and red ties. They meandered through the square in stark contrast to the soldiers. They were Tracers, and more specifically Operatives.
A taxi's sign was partly covered by a smear of something blue and gooey. Monster blood? Daniel, the taller Tracer, decided it was an inside goo. This was promising. The more inside goo outside a monster, the better.
Plus, this much monster blood meant a monster chunk was around here, somewhere. He looked around at what had been a Sunday market in San Francisco. Tents hung over stalls selling now ruined artwork, still shiny earrings, and fresh-from-the-farm produce. Black masked soldiers fanned out across the square, communicating through a system of clicks and jagged hand gestures that Daniel hadn't bothered to learn.
Across the market from their helicopter, the front of a mall sagged inward. Or at least, Daniel guessed it was a mall. The metal doors had been trashed and the stenciled lettering shattered. He looked back at his goo, tracing the smear from the taxi to a nearby food truck. As usual, no one had offered him a gas mask.
The smear of blood was a trail, obviously terminating in the wreckage of the mall's front entrance. If he could find the start of the trail, maybe he'd find the bit that had been left behind. He took advantage of the fact no one cared about his safety and snagged a still warm nacho chip from the back of the food truck.
"You're snacking?" Sam asked. She was the other Operative here, maybe four years younger than him. That didn't matter to the soldiers (most of them were in their twenties, or older), but Daniel always took wins where he could get them. Being older than the rest of the Tracers meant being older than his competition. "Shouldn't you be trying to find it or something?"
"I think it went in there." Daniel said confidently, pointing at the ruined mall.
"Shut up" Sam said, equally confidently.
They both shut up when one of the soldiers shot them a glare. The monster was very clearly inside the mall, so Daniel wasn't worried, but he had a long term policy of not aggravating soldiers with guns. He circled the taco truck instead. The front end was crumpled in and smeared with the same blue gore. Not a large enough sample though.
He felt Sam stiffen beside him, "Ms. Henderson!" she hissed.
Daniel dropped to his hands and knees. If the truck had hit something, a something that had then collapsed onto the taxi (which was behind the truck), then whatever it hit would have been dragged under it.
Jackpot. Jackpot was an old person word, and Daniel regretted it being his first thought. Whatever normal teenagers say when they win big: "W", "Victory Royale". He was out of touch.
"Tracers!" Ms. Henderson snapped. "Get me a report."
Daniel rolled underneath the truck and left Sam to deal with the kind of person who'd say 'Jackpot'. The Ms. Henderson hadn't given him gloves either, not even the plastic kind you see cops wear on TV. Blue monster blood probably caused cancer or something. Not that he'd live long enough to die of cancer. Whenever Daniel thought about long term plans, he thought about climate change and decided it didn't really matter. Which was why this whole monster hunting thing really sucked.
What's the point of anything if you spend your entire day looking for monster bits under taco trucks? He pulled out his phone and switched on the flashlight.
Bingo!
That wasn't any better, only grandmothers and great aunts play bingo. But what was better than all this dripping blue slime was a congealed block of blue-black flesh wedged in the tire well of the truck.
"Sam!" he yelled.
"What!" she yelled.
"Could you pass me your knife?"
Daniel had his own, perfectly good knife which he wasn't about to stick into a block of mystery-monster-turned-roadkill.
"What's wrong with your knife?" Sam asked.
"Forgot it at the base" Daniel lied.
Something clattered down underneath the car. The blade spun towards his eye for an uncomfortable second before Daniel could grab it.
When he emerged, the block of flesh looking even more black in daylight, Ms. Henderson glared at him. "You've hit the jackpot." she said, "Good job." It was the kind of thing she had to say, even if she didn't want to. Daniel winked at Sam who cared about that kind of thing, which caused her to wrinkle her nose.
Ms. Henderson watched while he unpacked his kit. She was older than him, which is to say: an adult. If he had to guess, she was in her forties, but it was difficult to tell. The agent wore a standard issue navy suit, slightly too small. She moved stiffly, like a wound-up toy, her hair straining against an impossibly tight bun.
Daniel plunged two needles into the chunk of flesh. The first popped back out within seconds. Around the other, the flesh curled and charred. A good sign.
"Silver bullets!" Ms. Henderson shouted. The soldiers, now clustered near the ruined doors of the mall, translated the command into a series of clicks and then translated those clicks into a ripple of carefully practiced movement. Magazines were swapped out; side arms were reloaded. They were ready to go.
"Anything else?" Ms. Henderson asked expectantly.
"It's human sized or shorter," Daniel said, "small enough to get dragged under a moving vehicle. It's skin is translucent, see how blue it looks under my flashlight? That probably means it prefers the dark. Check storerooms, parking structures. Assume it'll avoid any well-lit areas." He gestured at the mess in front of him. "See how quickly it got out of the sun? It didn't even stop when someone hit it with a truck."
Sam grinned. "So, it's badly hurt!"
Daniel shook his head. "I don't think so. The blood trail narrows over there at the taxi. It probably regenerates like other Class 2's. Silver seems to have the expected reaction, but I wouldn't trust anything else to hurt it."
Sam wrinkled her nose again and was about to say something until Ms. Henderson smacked her hard with the side of her hand; which drew a wet gasp instead. Sam wasn't going to cry, Daniel knew that. Ms. Henderson hated it when you cried. It had been years since either of them made that mistake.
"Good work Daniel. Take Samantha and see if you can retrace it's steps. We'll deal with the creature."
Daniel ate the rest of the nachos while pretending to watch Ms. Henderson and the soldiers enter the building. 3 chips in, Sam's breathing returned to normal.
"Hey," she said eventually, "give me one."
Her voice was still a little shaky, but Daniel pretended not to notice. He pushed the tray towards her, she muttered a thanks.
"You done?" she asked, after she'd eaten the last few.
"You ready to kill anything that tries to eat me?" Daniel asked.
"Only if you run fast enough."
"Deal."
You could barely tell she'd almost cried. Daniel turned and followed the smell of magic. He could taste it in the air, like fog on a pier. A wet, sparkling, popping, sensation that danced eastward. Towards the waterfront.
After a few blocks Sam started to get nervous. "Do you think they know where we went?" she asked. Daniel looked at her like she was an idiot, mostly because she was.
"You're wearing an ankle monitor Sam."
"Well, sure. But still." She ended the sentence with a vague gesture that said, 'You know?' which Daniel didn't. The Agency always knew where their Operatives were going. Daniel had gotten lost in Denver once; Ms. Henderson had requisitioned a satellite to find him.
"Why does Ms. Henderson give you a gun?"
"What?"
"None of the other operatives get a gun."
Daniel shrugged. "I'm older than everyone else, maybe you'll get one."
"I think it's because your trace is 'having good hearing' or something lame like that."
Daniel already regretted being nice to her.
They were nearing the bay which meant that real fog and salt were starting to muddy the air. Daniel closed his eyes and focused. The pier was silent. An empty parking lot oversaw a row of uninhabited warehouses. Behind the two Operatives a row of tourist traps and restaurants stood empty, their lights still on. The Agency quarantine extended down here, which must mean there had been sightings. But he must have missed something. There was magic all around here, but no trace of an six foot tall blue monster.
"Duh."
Sam frowned "Who says Duh?"
"I'm trying it out—shut up." Daniel spun around, looking for any sign of the monster. Destruction, blood, anything. "What's wrong here, Sam?"
Sam looked around too. "No cars?"
Daniel nodded. "No stopped cars."
"So, nothing made a mess here?"
"So whatever destroyed the front of the mall behaved like an angel the entire time it was here."
Sam wrinkled her nose again. "That is weird. What did it want in the mall?"
Daniel could almost taste the magic again. It blew up across the bay, past the warehouses, across the parking lot. Anything he could smell here was being carried up from the pier. Which meant he'd had it in the wrong order. "I think the right question is, what was it running from down here?"