Margo was kneeled down on the floor near the sidewalk, vomiting into the storm drain beside the van she arrived in. Crawl Patrol bots were minding their own business scattering around the area like bees in a hive. Carl was busy questioning one of the locals while Andrade and Jack were in the bathroom getting a closer look at the visceral art Whitey left behind.

"So to sum things up," Jack declared, staring at a blood-covered fragment of glass from the mirror. "We got three bodies, all of them teenagers. One is lying dead in the fourth stall with twelve stab wounds in his torso. Another had his throat completely ripped open; unsurprisingly died from blood loss. The third had his head repeatedly bashed into the mirror; now has multiple incisions in his face along with subarachnoid hemorrhage due to severe head trauma."

"He wasn't just slammed against the mirror," Andrade chimed in. "There are too many lacerations on his face, even if it was against glass."

Jack took another look at the body. The boy's face was completely disfigured, to the point neither of them could distinguish what he even remotely looked like before. Glass shards were lodged in his eyes and nose, and many more were impaled in his cheeks and gum line. Blood dripped out of the wounds to the floor underneath his head, surrounding Jack and Andrade in a sea of red.

Jack glanced back at the space on the wall where the mirror used to be. A faded trail of crimson ran down the wall like tire tracks, concluding with a few more specks on the sink. However, there was more dry blood at the edge of the counter, a bigger and darker blot formed right at its tip. Jack's train of thought was halted when he noticed the Apath pills scattered all over the sink beside the one he stood in front of. Horrible memories tried to crawl back out of the depths of his subconsciousness, but he shut them out.

"You're right," Jack continued. "The attacker additionally scraped the victim's face against the surface of the broken glass, effectively mangling it beyond recognition. And, evidenced by this little mess at the edge of the counter, he thought a few more hits would finish the job."

"You don't think it was an animal that did this, do you?" Andrade asked.

Jack burst out laughing. "What, you think a wolf came all the way down from Canada to eat three fucking nobodies?"

"I only said that because there are claw marks on the floor near the stall with the first victim, dickhead. So I'd suspect either a wild animal or one of those psychotic bio-hackers. Maybe even a Sentient."

Jack took her word for it and walked over toward the nearest stall, the one containing the boy with multiple stab wounds in his torso. His corpse waded in a large pool of his own blood, and a small stream of it trailed into the drain beside the claw marks Whitey left behind.

"Can't be a Sentient," Jack declared. "Artificial humans have been declared illegal ever since those clone-trafficking incidents, and they only ever happened in the West. And I highly doubt it was a Bod-Modder. There would've been more traces of metallic alloys or random chemicals."

Andrade remained silent as she used her ThoughtControl piece to control some of the Crawl Patrol bots to scan around the claw marks. "No fingerprints," she said. "No chemical traces."

Jack glanced over to the left of the toilet where the boy with the stab wounds lay. A large puddle of dark red water formed beside it, leaking in from the next stall. He apathetically stepped over the other corpses and the Crawl Patrol bots and opened up the door to the next stall.

"I was right, Andrade," he added as he held the door open. "Wasn't an animal. These deaths were way too precise for any creature to do."

"You really need to learn how to take a joke," Andrade replied. "I know it wasn't a fucking animal. Although, anyone willing to do something as bad as this might as well be."

"I found something you might want to look at."

Andrade glanced over Jack's shoulder at the dark red water. "What is it?"

"The fourth victim."

* * *

Back outside, Margo had finally composed herself. She rose from the edge of the street and brushed the dirt off her knees. Witnessing her first crime scene didn't go as well as she hoped. Granted, she knew it wasn't going to be a pleasant sight anyway, but she underestimated her ability to stomach it.

"How's your first day with the Neutralizers going?" Ellie called.

"What is it with you and calling at the worst possible time?" Margo groaned. "First day as the 'cop' in 'doctor-cop', and we already found three dead teenagers torn apart in a public restroom."

"Four," Jack chimed in as he and Andrade exited the bathroom.

"Four?" Margo repeated.

"Impressive," Ellie added.

"Shut up!" Margo hissed before hanging up. She turned back to her two colleagues. "Where was the fourth body?"

"The attacker chopped them up and crammed them down the toilet," Andrade replied in disgust. "We'll have to send Crawl Patrol bots down into the sewage system to find the rest of the body."

Margo instantly turned green in the face.

"Get used to that, Sandoval," Jack replied. "You're lucky only one of the bodies ended up like that."

"What the hell do you mean by 'lucky'?" she scoffed.

"It's been a while since an incident like that has happened here," Andrade explained, "but mass graves aren't uncommon in offline neighborhoods, especially if drug dealers or serial killers are involved. Some people even call the Psycho Slums the Necropolis because no one really knows how many missing bodies are out here."

Margo remained quiet for a few more seconds before awkwardly replying, "I think I'm gonna go see what Carl is up to."

Without another word, Margo made her way over to Carl, who stood near the abandoned playground questioning a man living nearby. The man looked like he barely woke up a few minutes ago as he wore only a dirty white tank top covered by a buttoned jacket along with shorts. A quick scan by Margo's ThoughtControl piece revealed he wasn't registered to the P3S, as he had only recently moved into Psychwatch's radius. Must've been from the Western United States beyond the SanityScan's reach.

"So how often do these kids come by here, James?" Carl asked the man, the holographic lens of his piece hovering in front of his left eye.

"Definitely a little more often than any other kid around their age should," James replied in a gruff voice. "I couldn't help but feel for them. You could tell they definitely had some shit going on in their lives."

"What makes you say that?"

"A couple weeks ago, I caught them hanging around the broken swings. There was one boy you could tell was the leader of their little clique. Wore a hoodie from his high school, dark green with glowing orange letters on it. He always kept his sleeves down, but one day he didn't care much about concealing the cuts or the Apaths."

"Did you catch the name of the school or even any of the kids?" Margo asked.

Before James could answer, a car screeched to halt beside their parked van. The door opened up and from it rose a young man in a light blue dress shirt and jeans. Even though he appeared to be in his late thirties, there were small streaks of gray hair across his scalp. He held a portable holo-computer in his hand and everyone had their eyes on him as he approached the doctor-cops without hesitation like most others would.

"Good morning," he said. "I'm Arthur Cohen. I'm a journalist working for an online tabloid called the Perceiver and I'd like to gather some info for a new story."

"Margo Sandoval," Margo greeted. "This is my colleague, Carl Maslow. But I'm afraid you can't—"

"Four children were butchered in that public restroom!" James shouted. "Sure, they weren't exactly the best of people, but did they really deserve that kind of fate?"

"And what is your name, sir?" Arthur asked, typing across a holographic keyboard floating in front of him.

"Just call me James."

"Mr. Cohen," Carl said, "I'm afraid we're gonna have to ask you to vacate these premises. It's not safe for an individual like yourself."

"Just let him stay, officer," James chimed in. "He doesn't mean us any harm."

"Thank you, sir," Arthur replied. "Do you mind describing the attacker for me?"

"That won't be necessary," Margo interrupted. "We have an interrogation-grade Psych Expressor piece that will recreate images directly from your memory, so verbal descriptions won't be necessary."

"Wait," Carl said. He paused as he noticed something sticking out of James's pocket, almost like a toy flute. He quickly nabbed it away, revealing it to be an empty Blue Caterpillar. "Damn it, sir! You looked so trustworthy!"

"That's not mine!" James added nervously. "I don't know how that got there."

"Well," Margo awkwardly said, "looks like we can no longer depend on you for an accurate account. We can, however, provide you with the best rehabilitation therapy in the city if you'd like."

"Last I checked, you guys were the only rehab in this city," James muttered. "And no thanks. Besides, I'm not even in the System."

"Now you are, hombre!" Andrade shouted as she stood near the van with Jack. She pointed at a medium-sized antenna tower extending from the top of the van, flashing a bright blue light. "This whole neighborhood has been temporarily placed under Psychwatch's surveillance. Every officer you see here is now a walking SanityScan. And you, James DeShawn, are now a registered drug addict."

James didn't even argue or show any sign of fear. He only delivered one monotone pair of words. "Fuck you."

"Please step inside the van," Andrade continued.

Arthur panicked. "Mr. DeShawn!" he said, walking alongside the man on his way to the van, "Forget the doctor-cops. Tell me what you saw!"

"Whoa, you really want to ask a Wonderland addict that?" Jack quipped. "And while he was investigating children? Horrible combination, buddy."

"The leader of the group," James continued while Arthur typed down his notes at rapid-fire speed. "His name tag said Donny Redford. Wore a dark green hoodie with orange letters from the nearby high school. He was waiting in the bathroom for some kid around his age."

"What did the kid look like?"

James was only a few more steps away from the van. All of the officers had their Fatemakers trained on him. "Pretty sure he was an albino. White hair, white eyelashes, red eyes..."

Arthur immediately froze in place, his floating holographic keyboard fading out in a blink. His mouth was gaping open. He recognized Whitey's description. He didn't realize the Multi Man was already willing to unleash himself and his goons on the rest of the city so soon.

"And that guy over there!" James shouted as Jack shoved him into the van. "They wore masks just like that!"

Jack let out a forced chuckle. "Sure, they did, buddy. They totally—"

Margo saw what James was talking about. Down the street rested the abandoned zoo. Security drones floated around the premises like dragonflies around a pond, yet they didn't seem to notice the masked stranger standing in front of a massive crevice in the zoo's wall. Luckily, Margo was fully aware, and her target bolted into the miniature ghost town behind him.

"Stop!" she shouted, already speeding on-foot after the stranger. She quickly activated her gun's Incapacitate mode.

"Send more drones after him," Jack ordered as the doors to the van closed behind him. "I think I'm starting to like her." And he bolted after Margo and the stranger, Fatemaker in hand.