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Chapter 2: February

"The authorities have still chosen to not comment on the events that had happened late last month. Witnesses to the event claim to have witnessed a single individual turning into an animal before their very eyes before it ran into the street. What is known is that there was a ring of light that came out of an animal on that day that disrupted all nearby electrical equipment for about an hour. So far none of the terrorist groups have stepped forward claiming responsibility for the event."

"Turn that thing off, would you?" Amanda demands as she throws the case file onto the desk before scooting back and out of her chair. After standing up she adjusts the dark colored work dress she had been wearing, her auburn hair somewhat of a mess after all of the times she had mashed her hands through her hair in frustration.

"Okay," Richard states as he clicks on the remote and puts it down onto the table. "We've arranged it so that that story will be pulled from the news broadcasts so that should help reduce some of the pressure on us, at least until we have more we can actually say about the subject. So how about we go through everything we've found out so far again and maybe this time we can figure out something we didn't before."

"I don't know how much that will help. The bigger part of the problem has to deal with how much of the tale is actually true. The electronics thing I can more than buy. Someone could easily have just slipped some animal an EMP on a timer and then released it on the city. But the whole thing about a person being transformed into an animal just seems a bit too impossible for me to think as being real."

"Well we're left with a major problem either way. If it isn't true then we either have a missing persons case or an accomplice. We know for a fact that Mr. Pralor showed up to work and at least sat down at his desk. We have no reason to deny the testimony that he then proceeded to go to the bathroom. So if it isn't true then somehow he managed to leave the building without ever leaving that room or released a trained fox and then slipped out unnoticed during the panic. And changed clothes at the same time to try and lead us off his case."

"Why trained?"

"Because the only way out is through a non-automatic door. I highly doubt a wild fox would have been able to press the handicap button so that it could escape."

"Whatever became of that animal? Did the vet have anything to say?"

"Well the fox that was caught near the area of incident didn't seem to have anything of note. Other than the fact that its intestinal tract was completely empty as if it hadn't eaten anything in a long time even though it looked fairly healthy there were no differences between that animal and any other fox. Of course we can't even verify beyond a doubt that the fox we picked up is the one that caused this and not just some other one that lived in the city. And I'll be damned if we're going to let whoever did this trick us into going into a wild goose chase in order to try and find an animal that we may have already caught on the off chance that it may give us a clue. And none of the nearby fox shelters seem to have any missing foxes so unless we expand the search to include the possibility that someone brought in a domestic fox from across the country or even from another country to use for this one act we have no chance of tracing who did it by the fox anyway."

"Well the only other possibility is that it wasn't a trained fox but rather just that person being transformed."

"And if he did transform, however, that opens up a whole new can of worms."

"Like the question of if it's possible to somehow turn a human into a fox, then what other things do we think that are impossible can happen?"

"Exactly," Richard comments before the two of them go rather quiet for a moment or two. "I suppose one step to take is to try and find out the source of the EMP. If we assume that the burst was made via technological means then we'd be dealing with some rather advanced piece of equipment. To remove any trace we'd be talking something that is probably bio-degradable and would break down in that fox's stomach, and yet be powerful enough to not only affect that large an area, but do so for so long and yet not destroy any of the circuitry."

"I suppose that that is somewhere to start. At least in trying to get a feel for just all that we're dealing with. I'm pretty sure that there are probably very few people or companies with the resources or intellect to be able to pull off anything nearly of that caliber."

"So what can you make out of the paper that was left behind?" Richard asks after picking up a photocopy of the note that had been given to Paul along with the chess piece.

"Well the biggest thing about the note is that the grammar isn't quite good enough. Implying that either the wording was intentional and that there's some sort of code embedded in the note and that we're up against someone that is well educated or the person who wrote it does not have that firm a grasp of the English language, implying that the person is not from an English speaking country. From what little we have so far we cannot have anything conclusive. The only prints we managed to pull from anywhere in the near vicinity of the note or on the note itself turned out to all just be the person who is reputed to have disappeared. As for the note itself it seems pretty incoherent. It makes vague generalities about being the start of something and then makes almost random sentences afterwards."

"What do you think about that one part of the message, the one that seemed to be almost daring us to find him?"

"Well I think it's more of a personal joke than anything. I don't think waiting to see if some bird magically falls out of a plane or whatever the second part is supposed to mean will be anything more than a waste of our time. The bad grammar is more important to me than anything it actually says."

"Well the only other thing we have as evidence really would then be that piece of marble. Did the labs turn up anything on it?"

"The results of the trace analysis on the chess piece did come in and it didn't have anything on it out of the ordinary, least of all anything that could explain what had happened. So if we assume that what happened was real then we're left with the issue of not having any initiator that I can see. So we're left with the issue of someone was somehow transformed and we have no idea who did it or how they even did it. So far, though, it is just that single incident so we don't know if there's any danger of it happening again."

"It's just so very frustrating that a month into the investigation the only real lead we have to make out of anything is that 'some male wearing glasses and a lab coat' was in the building at the time of the incident and none of the workers knew who he was nor could recall anything else about him. And to top it off we have good cause to believe the message on the stall was written by him and yet we have no prints or anything to identify him. Even the cameras didn't catch anything of his face."

"Well if it's a one-time thing we can probably arrange for someone to take the fall and claim it's wrapped up. But we would have to wait for a while to see if he makes a move again. If he does I'm sure he'll make some sort of mistake and then we'll take care of it then. Either way there is no reason to rush and show our hand right now."

"But even still, we do still need to be doing something while waiting for something else to happen, if it ever does."

"Well the simplest thing we can do is run the note through a program, see if we can discern anything from it. The chess piece is also something we can try and track. Though we may not be able to tell exactly who got it we can tell some things from the traits of the marble and find where it was sold."

"Is there anything else?"

"Only the obvious leads. We go through the list of everyone he had contact with for the last few weeks and see if we can pin down and find if he either had someone suspicious that could either do this or had something against him to have this arranged to be used against him."

"I think some of his coworkers said he was talking with a therapist. Perhaps talking to her again would be the best course of action. Who knows she might be able to tell us if he ever talked about that might give us an actual lead we can use."