It had rained three days in a row. The sort of rain that did not merely wet the pavement but appeared to press against the city's very bones. The neon signs bled across the slick pavement, and every gutter was a throat constricting around water.
Detective Mark Miller lit the last of his cigarettes beneath a liquor store's awning. The flame sizzled amidst the windy dampness. He looked like a man who carried too many sleepless nights—blurred eyes sharpened by years of unanswered questions.
The car radio sputtered to life.
> "Unit Seven, we've got an incident. Coordinates transmitting now. Containment teams are on route. Do not engage. Just observe until further notice."
It was the same voice, dead-pan and cold. H.A.F.O's voice—though as they referred to it on the inside of the files, Monford.
He stubbed out theigarette beneath his boot heel and continued driving.
It was already cordoned off when he arrived. Floodlights lit the scene in cold white. A sea of uniforms stood mute, gazing at the thing across the devastation of pavement.
At first glance, Mark thought it was an aircraft wreck. Twisted, metallic, out of place. But as he walked closer, the details sharpened into something far stranger.
It was a wing. A house-sized wing, its feathers burned black at the edges as if it had plummeted through flame. The blood bubbling on the pavement wasn't red—it sparkled like molten glass, refilling the light in broken prisms.
He murmured: "An angel?
He knelt. His hands hovered over the feathers, close enough that he could feel a heartbeat coming from them as if the thing was still alive. His thinking brain attempted to classify it—bird, mutation, escaped from government tests. But way down deep in him another voice nagged at his consciousness, a voice that had no words, a voice that was not him.
Behind him the director of Monford emerged from a black coat, face impassive. "Detective Miller," she said, "This is the flip side of the job description. From here onwards, you do not merely hunt after men. You hunt after the impossible."
He stood up, staring at the wing lying across the wet pavement.
For the first time in his career, logic didn't matter. And somewhere out there in the distance above the endless storm clouds, something unknown stirred.