The room was dark save for the light of a computer monitor. Henry Russo sat illuminated by the blue-white light pouring from the screen and its mountain of code. His fingers flew across the keyboard with a deft awareness of the task at hand.

“Find anything yet?” Terror asked, breaking the silence that had dominated the room for the past half hour.

“Nothing,” Henry said. The youth sat in a chair dominated by the pile of junk food on the side. His blond hair was cropped close to his head and the light from the computer screen glinted off his piercings. “When you asked me to hack the LAPD’s files, I wasn’t kidding when I said it wouldn’t be easy. They have the luxury of employing people like me that they catch to guard their files for them. It’s like a shadier version of Let’s Make a Deal.”

Terror snorted. “Your daytime TV-watching habits leave somethin’ to be desired.”

“Better watch what you say,” Henry said, his eyes not leaving the screen. “I hacked the Comcast feed to figure out why you were crying. S’when I saw you were watching As the World Turns.”

“If you ever utter that sentence again, I’ll snap your neck.”

“I’d say I hit a soft spot, but apparently the drama of Scott leaving Norah already did that for you,” Henry quipped.

Terror grunted. “Scott and Norah aren’t even series regulars.”

“See?” Henry said. “Now, if you will, I’m working.” He paused. “So if you’re working with Flores, transparency and all, why’s it such a big deal that we get this from their files?”

“Flores says the department’s trying to get this fixed before the elections, I’m guessing since Chief Alvarado is back up for it, but I did a search for news articles. Nary a mention. I’m trying to figure out what’s so special about this case that they want it in the ground before it hits the press,” Terror explained.

“Makes sense. You’re a smart guy, Terror,” Henry said. “Aaaaaand I’m just a tad smarter. We’re in.”

Terror ignored the dig. “So what do we have on this guy?”

Henry frowned. “Not much. Looks like they’re trying to keep this one out of their database. Here, let’s go through autopsies, try to find who’s been dehydrated in the past few months. Maybe we can backtrack to some kind of root file from those, somewhere all the autopsies are linked to, that they branch out from.”

There was the furious sound of typing for a few seconds. “Hm. No luck on finding a root file, but I found autopsies from the last month that sound like they match our Freak.”

“All right. Give me a list of names, maybe a dossier on the ones that had a record. I’ll give them a look-over before Flores shows up tonight,” Terror said. “Good work, kid.”

Henry eyed Terror wryly. “A compliment? Oh dear.”

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s just say having a hacker on the run from whatever you’re running from in my business makes things a hell of a lot easier, and leave it at that,” Terror said. “You know, before it gets sappy.”

“Truth,” Henry said. “God knows, crying probably makes your tear ducts rot faster.”

“So what are we doing here?”

Terror and Flores sat in a nondescript sedan outside a small metalworking shop. Yellowish light filtered through the windows where pair was able to make out a man working at a table with a series of glass filters and tubes.

“Casing someone who’s likely to get killed,” Terror said. “Please tell me this isn’t your first stakeout.”

“It’s not,” Flores protested. “It’s just my first stakeout with a guy whose body parts are perpetually rotting. It’s distracting.”

“We don’t all choose our lot in life, Lieutenant Flowers. Deal with it.”

“Fine, I’ll stop my bitching. Just don’t call me that,” Flores said, pinching his nose. “So who is this guy?”

“I traced the guys who died to each other. All were drug dealers,” Terror said. “My hacker did some kind of algorithm on it. Said he thought this was the guy who’d get hit next. Kid’s smart, said he really thinks it’ll be that easy.”

As if on cue, the lights in the workshop went out.

“That’s us,” Terror said, bolting from the car.

Flores was right behind him, gun already out of the holster. “Have you thought ahead to the part where this really might be the Freak?”

“If it comes to that, I’ll kill him like any other bastard,” Terror grunted. He quickened his pace at the sound of something large and heavy hitting the inside wall of the workshop. “Let’s move!”

Terror threw open the door to the building. He paused for a moment at the entryway. There was no light coming from anywhere inside. The line had been cut. The only indication he had that anything was alive inside was the sound of animalistic panting coming from the far side of the vast room.

“Stripes?” Terror asked, using the drug dealer’s nickname. “You all right in there?”

The panting stopped. Terror hazarded a guess that Stripes was already dead, another dried-out husk on the floor. That meant it was just him, Flores, and the Freak in the building. Terror decided to remedy that. “Flores, get out. Radio for backup. It’s about to get messy in here.”

“Not arguing,” Flores said, backing out slowly. Terror kicked the door shut behind him.

Bracing himself, Terror looked into the darkness. “Well, Freak? Let’s see what you’ve got.”

He could feel it move through the room even though he couldn’t see it. The Freak launched itself forward, four-hundred pounds of muscle and bone tearing across the dead space in the building. Terror took the brunt of the hit in the shoulder, feeling the tendons and connective tissues there stretch to the limit. He was a composite man, forced to strip-mine corpses for fresh body parts as his rotted out. This hit guaranteed he’d need a new shoulder before the night was through.

“That all you got?” Terror asked. As they crashed to the ground, he reached around the Freak’s skull and, with a sharp movement, snapped its neck.

For a moment, neither of them moved. Terror shoved the fresh corpse off his form. “Who pushed the easy button? Cripes.”

There was a brief moment of silence. Terror stood. Then, with a ratcheting, snapping sound, Freak’s neck cracked back into place. Terror watched with adjusted eyes as a thick sheath grew around Freak’s neck and shoulders, ensuring that he could not pull the same trick twice.

“Well… fuck.”

So the Freak was some kind of healer, he thought. An adaptive healer. Was there any way to put down a creature like that?

Well, if there was, he’d find it.

Freak lunged at him, but Terror stepped aside, planning his next move. Part of his ability to absorb others’ flesh into his body involved the unfortunate ability to strip flesh from the living. The bulging, pulsing muscle of Freak’s chest seemed like an appeasing opportunity. He could replace some of the tissue that had already torn in the fight and attempt to kill the beast in the same shot. He activated his power, shearing off the muscle from Freak’s chest on the creature’s next pass. It howled in pain as Terror attached its muscle to his body.

“That’s more like it,” Terror said.

Light flashed behind Terror’s eyes as Freak slammed into him with a tail the length of his body—a tail that he hadn’t had before. He found himself on the floor without remembering actually hitting it. The room spun for a moment, and Terror heard Freak scamper away across the slick floor of the warehouse.

“Damn it,” Terror muttered woozily, fighting to get to his feet.

Flores ran into the warehouse, gun drawn. “Jesus, Terror! What the hell happened?”

“He healed from a snapped neck,” Terror said, hold a hand to his head. “And now my goddamn skull needs replaced.”

“Yeah, well, that’s great and all, but what do I do with this? We have a dead drug dealer and a bad guy that got away with at least three squad cars on their way for backup,” Flores said, crinkling his nose as Terror pushed part of his cracked skull back into place.

Terror cocked an eyebrow at Flores. “You figure it out. LAPD hates me. I’m going to get to Boneyard’s place and meet you back at my office. You get there as soon as you deal with the bureaucracy.”

“Right,” Flores said, looking at the mess that had been made of the warehouse, wondering how he was going to explain what happened to Chief Alvarado. “You can count on me.”

“What the hell, Terror?”

Terror grinned as Flores stormed into his office. The sun had just barely begun to climb its way over the horizon, peeking inch by inch into his office. “What are you talking about, Lieutenant?”

“Where’s my victim? You didn’t go to Boneyard! You used our drug dealer’s body to replace the parts that got damaged in the fight with Freak,” Flores said, color rising into his ears. “That’s a felony! What the hell did you think was going to happen?”

“I think Freak ran off with the body,” Terror said, folding his fingers together.

Flores stared daggers into Terror, then sighed and put his hands down on the desk. “Whatever. That’s what I told the chief happened. But please, stop fucking with me. This situation’s already gotten worse, and I don’t need you doing that to me again.”

Terror sensed there was a puzzle piece missing. “What happened, Flores?”

“We found a wallet at the scene inside the shredded back pocket of what looks like it used to be a pair of jeans. ID inside was registered to Alvarado’s son. It looks like Freak just might have been the kid’s killer,” Flores said, a somber tone entering his voice. “He was a good kid. Didn’t deserve this kind of shit one bit.”

“So that’s what this is about? How long has the chief thought this was what happened to his kid?” Terror asked, setting his jaw.

Flores put his hands up. “Whoa-whoa-whoa. I didn’t know about this. Maybe he did, but he kept me in the dark on this whole thing. I’m the messenger here, so don’t shoot me. Or take my body parts.”

“You’re safe from that,” Terror said, rolling his eyes. “I don’t repurpose body parts from fellas with tiny pricks.”

“I’ll take the hit if it means we can just get back down to business,” Flores said. “Chief is hot on my tail to get this thing wrapped up now that we have confirmation that Jimmy’s one of the Freak’s vics.”

“And if we put away the thing that killed his kid, he’ll stay on top because he’ll look like a public hero whose department administered justice in the face of a terrible situation, is that it?” Terror asked. “I hate being anyone’s lapdog, Flores. Somethin’ about this isn’t sitting right with me.”

“You told me to deal with the bureaucracy,” Flores said. “I’ll handle the politics. I just need this thing wrapped up or my job’s on the line. I’ve got a kid on the way. Come on, Terror.”

“Then tell your pregnant wife you aren’t coming home until this job’s wrapped up,” Terror said. “The faster we get this done, the better I’ll feel.”

“Good,” Flores said. “Because we’ve got a lead on Freak. A few maintenance workers were in the sewers, radioed in that they found a nest of some kind. Never came back. I think it’s a hot lead, and I was given clearance to make us the investigation team on the disappearance.”

“Why’re we talking up here, then?” Terror said. “Let’s nail this sonuvabitch.”

“This weekend is seriously testing my tolerance for gross things,” Flores said, sloshing down into the sewer. “I didn’t expect there to be overflow after so long without rain.”

“You’re about to be a daddy,” Terror said. “Consider this grossness training.”

“Don’t remind me,” Flores said, shoving his free hand in his pocket so that it wouldn’t touch the wall. The other hand waved a flashlight down the sewage tunnel. “I’ve got my radio on me, so if we get confirmation or if we find the maintenance workers we can get someone else down here.”

“Sure, whatever,” Terror said. “Thing is, if we run into Freak, I want you as far away from here as possible. It took me down. You and a pistol aren’t going to do too hot.”

“I already know where not to shoot,” Flores said. “You said it’s grown a carapace around its neck and it already had a shell on the back of its head. My bullets are going straight into the bastard’s mouth.”

“Whatever you say, hotshot,” Terror said. He waved a hand in front of his nose. “Shit. I recognize that smell.”

“I can’t smell anything over the sewage. What is it?”

“Decay. I smell it every day. I think we’re about to find out maintenance workers.”

Terror’s words rang true when Flores’ light illuminated a human hand sticking out of the sewage. “Oh, Dios Mio, that is awful,” he said. “We found them all right.”

Pulling on the arm, Terror found that it was attached to… nothing. “Don’t count your body parts until they all show up,” he said. “But if that kneecap further up the tunnel is any indication, I’d bet we’re getting close.”

Flores swallowed the lump in his throat as they trudged forward through the muck, counting the body parts as they went. He looked up from a thigh to see Terror had stopped. “What’s wrong?”

“I think we don’t have to go any further,” Terror said. “I’d call for backup now.”

Freak crawled toward them in the muck, its bald, raw skin glistening with a cocktail of blood and muck.

“It has a tail now?!”

“Run, dammit!” Terror shouted, throwing himself at Freak. The tail was something he’d been wondering about himself. Was it that Freak’s healing powers had to do with animalistic genetics mixed with human genes? It would explain the turtle-like shell that he developed in places he’d been shot.

Freak snarled, extending a set of feral claws. The claws ripped at Terror’s shirt and into the flesh below. Terror grunted, but it wasn’t damage that couldn’t be repaired later with new flesh.

Terror shoved Freak’s face down into the muck, holding the struggling creature there as its limbs began to twitch until finally it stopped twitching again. “Heal from that,” Terror muttered.

He walked over to one of the access ladders and ripped it out at the screws. If he couldn’t kill the thing, he would at least bring it in so that someone could contain it. S.H.I.E.L.D. would be ideal, especially if this thing had murdered its way out of a police morgue before.

The ladder was knocked out of Terror’s hands by Freak’s tail. It advanced again, mudskipper-like gills waving at its neck and closing off as they tasted oxygen again. “For fuck’s sake!”

Freak attacked again, knocking Terror back into the deeper flow of sewage. He flailed and tried to fight his way back up out of the waste with Freak on top of him. With his last kill, he had inadvertently given Freak and advantage in this environment. It was a mistake he wouldn’t make again, one way or another.

Terror kicked, feeling satisfaction as Freak screamed from its hip being ripped out of its socket. He attempted to do the same to Freak’s other hip, but the creature swiped again at his belly, cutting deep. Terror kicked Freak away, digging his way toward the side of the tunnel. If he was going to kill Freak again, it would have to be on land.

Freak advanced with the swimming movements of a crocodile, weaving his way through the sewage. Its teeth looked like those of a rat, sharp at the incisors up front and smaller in the back. If those teeth got on Terror, he wouldn’t be able to get out of the sewer without help.

“Well, let’s do this already,” Terror said, stuffing his intestines back into his torso. “I ain’t got all day.”

Freak stood on its hind legs, unhindered as its hip snapped back into place. It lunged.

Terror ducked, plunging his fist into Freak’s belly. He tore his way up under the rib cage and clenched Freak’s heart, crunching it mid-beat. Freak’s eyes bulged out before they went blank again. Terror knew that it wouldn’t take.

He groped around for the ladder as quickly as possible, curving it into a full-body restraint for Freak. When he turned around, Freak filled his vision, rat’s teeth in its mouth open wide and prepped to take Terror’s head off at the neck. For the first time, Terror thought he might not walk out of the sewer at all. Light flashed off Freak’s teeth, reflecting of the saliva that Terror realized was about to aid on digesting him.

BLAMBLAMBLAM!

Freak’s eyes rolled into the back of its head as three bullets opened its mouth and entered its gullet, killing it again. Its body fell back down into the muck. Terror got over his shock and wrapped the metal ladder around Freak as many times as he could, crushing its rib cage for good measure.

“Told you I wasn’t going to run,” Flores said, keeping his gun trained on Freak. “S.H.I.E.L.D. is on its way. Fuck bureaucracy.”

“It’s gonna come back, you know.”

“It took six hours to come back from a bullet wound before. It’ll stay down long enough for you to hand it off.”

“Ralton won’t be happy you handed his prize off to another organization,” Terror said.

“Yeah? Alvarado also wanted me to kill it. I killed it. It’s going to come back. I can’t kill it again. So Alvarado can get over it,” Flores said. When he stopped talking, the sound of multiple sets of footsteps sloshing through the muck became audible. “Cavalry’s here.”

Terror kept his arms wrapped tight around Freak. “Forgive me if I don’t let go of my buddy here until we get him gone.”

“Your call, Terror. I always knew you liked ‘em bald and meaty.”

The next day, Flores counted out the stack of hundred dollar bills onto Terror’s desk. After a visit to Boneyard for a new set of guts, Terror was good as new, and now he had the money to pay her. “LAPD says, through gritted teeth, pleasure doing business with you,” Flores joked.

Terror shrugged. “If you guys keep paying, I’ll come back and keep slaying.”

“I’m going to let you get away with that awful rhyme, if only so I can get out of here,” Flores said. “Until we meet again?”

“Sounds good, Lieutenant. Give your wife my regards.”

“And Ms. Primo mine.”

“Wait, we’re not—” Terror’s words died in his throat as Flores went out the door. “Damn it, Flowers.”

“Hey Terror, you done with the LAPD? I’ve got something,” Henry said, poking his head into the office. He was beaming with a look that suggested he had his hidden hand in the cookie jar.

Terror waved his hand. “Come on in. That was our only ongoing job, so I’m yours right now. What’s the story?”

“I got into Alvarado’s kid’s file, finally. Looks like they were using a Centurius design on the file, something I hadn’t considered. Law enforcement’s getting really good at adapting super-villain encryption into their own use.”

“Great. So what’s up with the file?”

Henry produced a print-out. “You’re going to want to look at the cause of death.”

Terror scanned the document. “Bullets to the back of the head? That doesn’t make sense. Freak killed him. It should be something a little more… primitive.”

“You’re missing something. Who else took two to the back of the skull?”

Terror’s eyes widened. “Freak himself, the first time they brought him it. Fuck me. We were played.”

Henry nodded. “Best I can tell, Alvarado’s kid turned into Freak, they found it out in the morgue, and Alvarado used Flores as a patsy to get us to take care of their dirty work. If the press got wind that his kid became a mass-murdering super-freak, he might as well resign, let alone knowing he’d have to drop out of the race.”

“I knew something felt wrong about this,” Terror grunted. “And now Freak’s out of LAPD jurisdiction, away from their files and everything that ties Alvarado’s boy to these murders.”

Henry coughed pointedly. “About that. I already took the liberty of e-mailing this to them. And Terror? Flores is clean on this. He had no idea. I made sure that nothing in that file could be linked back to him. I didn’t want Alvarado making him a fall guy here.”

Terror smiled. “You know, Henry, I give you a lot of shit, but today you did good.”

Rolling his eyes, Henry began to back out of the room. “Yeah, yeah. Appreciate my awesomeness. If you need me, I’ll be playing Xbox in the computer room.”

“And in an instant, you lose my respect again,” Terror said.

Henry left the room without comment, and Terror turned to the window. He hated when he was taken advantage of, but there was a kind of grim satisfaction when everyone got their just desserts. As he watched a S.H.I.E.L.D. mini-carrier drop out of the sky into a hovering position over the police station downtown in the distance, he felt that the satisfaction in his gut was well-deserved indeed.

Next: Black Fog Rolls In!