“What? You wanna know about the Bleeding Daggers?” when Thomas and Aimee got to the police file archive the next day, and asked the receptionist about it, they got a much more surprised reaction than they’d expected.

“Why? Does it ring any bells?” Aimee asked.

“Well - I’d be a bit embarrassed to say, but it’s kind of a cool urban legend!” the receptionist displayed a keen sense of enthusiasm when he started searching for the related documents on his computer: “When they were still operating in Los Angeles, they were quite a fearsome group - they didn’t have many people but they were quite ruthless. Even the bigger local gangs were not willing to mess with them. And all of a sudden they were just gone, no one knows what really happened.”

“Hmm, could there be surviving members still operating under their name?” Thomas said while thinking: “If it was some normal gang, probably no one will do that. But if it’s a cult with devoted followers, they’d probably still use the name.”

“Good call, good call.” the receptionist nodded: “... unfortunately, looks like we don’t have any of their physical files in our archive, we have some digital copies I can print for you. But I can’t guarantee if that’ll be all of it. The digitizations of decade old case files were not done very thoroughly.”

“No problem. Just give us everything you have. Much appreciated.”

“By the way, detectives, are you or anyone in the department happened to be investigating the serial killer the department unofficially named ‘Drainer’?” the receptionist asked.

“Umm… maybe, why?” Thomas asked, surprised.

“Well, not sure if this was an angle, but I think the Bleeding Daggers were behind it.” the receptionist clicked his mouse, and the printer by his side just started printing: “From what I’ve learned, they did some pretty nasty blood rituals back in the day, and traumatised even some officers handling their cases. Draining their victims to death doesn’t exactly fit their M.O. But they’re the only one whose M.O. even came close.”

“Woah, that’s a lot of redactions.” Aimee picked up some of the printed files and pointed at some of the black bars across the texts: “That’s not normal.”

“Yeah. Of all of the years working for the department, this is the most redacted file I’ve ever seen.” the receptionist looked at the documents in Aimee’s hand and frowned: “Hmm, I don’t remember much since last time I read it - but it looked like there’s more redactions.”

“Page 33 was missing.” Aimee raised two different pages: “Looks like this one has been tampered with.”

“Yeah. ‘Tampered with’ might be too strong.” the receptionist appeared uncomfortable with Aimee’s use of verbiage: “They probably just removed the whole page in the redaction process.”

“Hey… um... Matt?” Thomas had to read the tag placed on the reception’s desk to get to know the reception’s name: “How do I get the unredacted version of this file?”

“Yeah. You’ll have to apply for clearance on them. That means you’ll have to file an application through the DOJ, and they may require additional information.” the receptionist answered: “For normal cases, it’s usually a few days to two weeks. But this one may take a while - there’s clearly too much information we normal staff working for the department are not supposed to see.”

“That’s fine. Mind giving me a copy of the application form?” Aimee sighed.

--------------------------------------

“We could’ve asked for help, you know. And I don’t just mean asking Jason and Caroline.” when Thomas and Aimee finally left the archive after wasting almost a whole afternoon filing for a redacted file access application, Thomas said: “This is clearly no longer a normal police investigation, we should use all the help we can get.”

“I know. I know. It’s just… I don’t feel like it. I thought I still wanted to look into this case, knowing what we know now. But it’s just too much.” Aimee sat on a chair by the side of the road.

“Yeah I understand. It’s all very… overwhelming. And this case pulling late nights probably won’t help much at all.” Thomas sighed and sat besides Aimee: “It’s like you’ve known all the rules and playbooks and strategies to handle all kinds of things all your life. And all of a sudden something happened and made it useless and meaningless. But whatever the case may be, you know I’m here for you. I know we can’t change what happened, and we’ve made our risky and unpredictable promises which you’ll definitely keep. But we can definitely deal with this together. ”

“Okay then. You want me to call now? Or you wanna do it yourself?”

“Let’s grab some food first. I’m starving.” Aimee stood up: “We could also ask Captain for a letter, stating that the file is of concern to an ongoing investigation. That could speed things up, you know, just in case our call doesn’t pan out.”

“Sure. You want ramen? I know a really nice ramen place around here.”

“Yeah. I want some tonkotsu ramen before heading back.”

When Aimee and Thomas came back to their precinct from the ramen store, they saw that everyone was gathering around the TV screens hanging on different parts of the common area.

“What happened?” Aimee asked one of the officers staring at the TV.

“It’s the SFPD, they said it’s a terrorist attack. But no one has any clue yet. A whole precinct just went dark.”

“Holy shit! What the fuck was that!?” multiple people gasped.

Aimee and Thomas turned to the TV, and on the live footage, they saw a huge human-shaped shadow appearing right above an SFPD precinct building.