Grant Johnson sat up in his desk, knocking his knee against the bottom of it. After giving it a rub to ease the pain, he reached down to fiddle with the lever on his chair, raising up his seat, and then dropping it back down to its original position.

His mind was entirely somewhere else. Nero had tried to talk to him about something, but he couldn't quite figure out what he was trying to say. He tried to contact Fetter earlier today with a burner phone, but he didn't get an answer.

He wondered whether Nero knew anything about this. He started debating with himself whether he should go give a visit to Nero. He didn't know what he would do if Fetter wasn't there, and he really didn't know what he would do if Fetter was.

Right as he was finishing his thought, a phone went off from another cubicle.

"Johnson! We've got a call of shots fired in District 5."

Grant's voice boomed as he got up. "Shots fired? Not another stabbing?"

His boss walked over to him in her stilettos . Apart from her icicle-like demeanor, she was rather average, with shoulder length black hair and a navy suit.

"Are we sure it's not a false report from District 13? You said shots fired right?"

"A body has been found by the district police. So the ball is in our court now." She handed a clipboard over to him. "Head out there and investigate."

"Understood, Chief Sharp." He stumbled up from his cubicle, and was quickly shuffled along toward the elevator.

"I want this done fast." she said, watching his broad back awkwardly squeeze past the narrow elevator doors as they opened.

"Yes sir," he answered back as he tapped the button for the ground floor.

The door closed in front of him. He felt it was nice to be out of the stuffy office. Though he was good at the cubicle work, it was never a pleasant work environment for him. He really liked fresh air and getting to move around, but also organizing data. It's why he became an agent, to figure things out on the fly, not push papers in a box.

He stepped out into the lobby, waving to the receptionist as the entry room buzzed unlocked, letting him step out onto the streets.

***

Grant got out of the crowded shuttle, trying to squeeze past people nearly half his size. Once he broke free at the bottom of the stairs, he pulled out the clipboard and checked the location of the report. The tablets were convenient, but he preferred the feel of pen and paper.

This was his first actual case on his own in a long time. He was a little lost among the back alleys out in the field. He kept having to check his phone to make sure he was headed the right way. After a while, he came to the scene, marked off by tape. Stepping through, he caught notice of the smell, like old rotting flesh. The crime wasn't even three hours ago, it must be a different source.

The body was already gone, with a white outline on the ground. One hand was away from the body, with the other tucked on the side. He looked through the pictures on the clipboard, matching them up to the positions on the ground. The victim was a Caucasian male, suffering a single gunshot wound to the head. The entry point was behind the ear. It was instant death, and he never saw it coming.

"What would he say, 'Last thing through his mind was a bullet'? That seems about right." Grant chuckled in spite of the terrible feeling in his stomach.

"There were signs of a struggle here, a lot of gashes in the concrete, but it was a bit away from the actual victim, about fifteen feet. Though some of the gashes seemed to come from about the victims position. There seemed to be two assailants, one with the gun and one with their own powers. The nature of the powers were kinetic, but there was no residue left on any of the gashes, nor any physical instruments around." He scribbled down notes as he said them to himself.

It didn't look like the body had been moved, so Grant moved to where the bullet seemed to come from, further into the alley. He pulled out a flashlight, clicking it on as he peered into the corners of the alley. The alley ended pretty abruptly, straight into a wall at the midpoint of the buildings. There was a glint of light on the ground, off in a corner. It was a brass casing.

After slipping on a glove, he pocketed the casing into a plastic bag and quickly scrawled the label information on to it. Other than the casing, there was nothing here, except for a dumpster in the other corner. He shined the flashlight over to it. It was sitting on top of cardboard, which seemed quite odd.

Grant lifted up the edge of the cardboard, seeing if their was anything unusual there. Right under it were scratch marks, lining up with the legs of the dumpster. The marks went right up to the wall. Having a suspicion, he put his hand against the wall. It was cool to the touch, and felt exactly as he expected. It didn't give way even with a strong push.

The scratches were unusual, but this didn't seem like a fake wall. Perhaps it was built here unrelated, and something else was trying to be hidden. He wrote down his suspicions about the wall anyways.

This seemed to be as far as he could get with a second pass. He put the bagged casing into his pocket and walked back to the road. If the autopsy didn't come up with anything on the power user, this was a dead end investigation. Guns couldn't be tracked as easily as powers could. It was a part of the reason they were outlawed.

Something felt off to him, and he went back to the wall. He shut his eyes, and put his hand forward. He touched the wall, it was certainly there, but it felt different than what he would expect from a wall. It was smooth, despite how rough it looked. He opened his eyes, and brushed his hand up and down against the smooth texture. He laid his head up against it, just to see that his hand was a few millimeters off the rough surface of the wall.

He stepped back and cracked his knuckles, deciding to test if he could get rid of the wall himself. He breathed outward, feeling a stiffness come over his arm and threw his hand at the wall.

It just stopped, not even letting out a sound. He unclenched his fist and pulled out his clipboard again.

Grant decided to go back to headquarters to see if the results were in yet.

***

"Jack Lawrence. Cause of death was indeed the gunshot wound. Though he had a variety of other injuries, including an amputated hand and a few cracked ribs. Interestingly, he also suffered from malnutrition."

Grant looked at the pictures as the coroner handed them over. "Tell me more about the amputated hand."

"Well the laceration looks incredibly rough, almost like it was ripped off. I'd say it's consistent with getting crushed by machinery, but he didn't show any signs of blood loss. That was hardly the most puzzling thing about him though."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it was incredibly hard to verify his identity. Jack Lawrence was listed as deceased a decade ago. He's been off the radar since he was seventeen. The last record we have of him was as a Level 3 in high school out in District 11, completely disconnected from where we found him."

"Do we have the case file where he was listed as dead?"

"Yeah, I sent it to you already."

Grant went back to his desk, swiping through the messages on his tablet. Though he preferred to look through physical copies of photos and documents, IMB policy required digital copies of everything, so that's what he got sent. He hit the page he was looking for. A cold case from the thirties, where Jack Lawrence supposedly died. He skimmed through the details.

No body was recovered, though an absurd amount of blood matching his DNA was found at the scene. A murder weapon of a knife, covered in his blood with unknown fingerprints was recovered. Notes on the margin mentioned a slasher in the area that had started up weeks before, wondering why there wasn't a body this time.

"If that was his blood, who was he trying to kill then?" Grant muttered to himself.

The supposed murder had been part of a whole family being killed, and it seemed he was a friend of the family over visiting during a storm. None of the bodies had ever been recovered though, and there was plenty of blood for all four of the victims for the IMB to draw the conclusion they were dead.

It was possible he bled out from the family fighting back, but that didn't explain why he went into hiding after the attack. It only got linked back to him because he was filed as a missing person after that by his mother.

"Johnson!" The gravelly woman's voice said.

"Chief Sharp." Grant stood up, turning to greet her.

"How goes your investigation?"

"There are quite a few questions surrounding our victim here. Not even getting to the gun. Current suspicions are on a vigilante."

"Well find whatever vigilante is out there using a gun. It looks bad on us for there to be gun crime in the city. Re-election is soon, and I don't want to be marred by any dumb scandals."

"Yes sir."

She walked off with the points of her heels lightly clicking against the dense carpet floor.

"Always another re-election," Grant muttered to himself.