The next morning, Hells Kitchen.
A homeless man named Old Tom pushed his creaking shopping cart through the alleys, searching for bottles and cans to exchange for a few cents.
When he passed by that meat processing plant in the West Side that had been abandoned for years, his footsteps stopped.
A thick, inescapable smell of rust, mixed with a more pungent stench, drifted out from the gaps of the factory's tightly closed doors and into his nostrils.
Old Tom frowned; years of street experience told him this smell wasn't right. It wasn't a dead rat, nor was it rotting trash.
It was blood.
Driven by a sliver of curiosity, he circled to the side of the factory where there was a grime-covered window with a broken corner. He stood on his tiptoes and cautiously leaned in, peering through the hole.
In the next second, the cloudiness in Old Tom's eyes was instantly filled with extreme terror, and a strangled gurgling sound came from his throat.
As if he had seen a ghost, he fell backward abruptly, scrambling on the ground with both hands and feet. Abandoning even his precious shopping cart, he scrambled and crawled away, disappearing at the end of the alley.
---
By noon, a long yellow Police cordon had been set up around the abandoned factory. Dozens of Police cars with flashing red and blue lights had the entire area locked down tightly.
Outside the cordon, news reporters with senses sharper than hounds pointed their cameras at the factory gates, trying to capture any shred of valuable footage.
Curious crowds gathered further away, whispering and speculating about what major case had occurred inside.
A black car stopped in front of the cordon, and a determined-looking middle-aged man in a trench coat stepped out. He was the Director of the New York City Police Department, Captain George Stacy.
"Director."
The officer guarding the entrance immediately saluted.
George nodded, lifted the cordon with a solemn expression, and bent down to enter.
He was met with a thick, almost suffocating smell of blood.
Even for an old Police officer like Captain George Stacy, who had spent decades in the force and was used to all kinds of bloody scenes, his stomach churned violently the moment he saw the interior of the factory.
That wasn't a crime scene; it was a slaughterhouse.
No, even a slaughterhouse would be cleaner and more orderly than this.
Bodies, bodies were everywhere. Some were slumped in pools of blood, some were leaning against walls, and some still held their guns in a firing position.
Fresh blood stained the floor and soaked the walls, appearing a nauseating dark brown under the dim lights. The air was filled with a stench of blood, gunpowder smoke, and excrement.
Several young officers behind George could no longer endure this double assault on their vision and smell; they bent over and began to vomit violently.
George forcibly suppressed the discomfort rising in his throat, his gaze sweeping over this hell on Earth. His eyes were cold, but his clenched fists betrayed the turmoil within.
"Mike, Sean," he called out in a low voice.
A lean man in a Detective's uniform and a Medical Examiner wearing a mask and gloves quickly walked over.
"Director." Detective Mike Miller was George's most capable subordinate, and his face was also exceptionally grim at this moment.
George's gaze did not leave the bodies: "Tell me the situation."
"We initially received a report of a gang shootout," Mike pointed to the bodies on the ground.
"The identities of the deceased have mostly been confirmed: Boris's men from the Russian Gang and the local Jiru Gang, two groups. We initially thought it was a case of gangs robbing each other, until our people came inside—"
Mike paused, seemingly organizing his words.
"We found that things aren't that simple. So we immediately cordoned off the scene and called you. You had to see this scene for yourself."
George's gaze fell on the scattered shell casings next to a body: "A shootout?"
"That's where the problem is." Mike led George toward an open space in the center of the factory, "Look here."
He pointed to the concrete wall behind the clearing.
George looked in the direction he pointed, his pupils shrinking slightly.
The wall was riddled with dense bullet holes; large patches of concrete had peeled off, exposing the rebar. The distribution of bullet holes was extremely concentrated, as if everyone in the factory at the time had been firing frantically at the same target.
"We checked the bullets in all the deceased's firearms and compared them with the ballistics at the scene," Mike's voice carried a hint of the inconceivable.
"The conclusion is that Boris's men and Jiru's men were not firing at each other at the time. Their target was the same person, or rather—the same thing. Right at this position."
He pointed to the open space in front of the bullet-riddled wall.
A single enemy against over fifty automatic rifles?
George's brow furrowed deeply. This didn't sound like a shootout; it sounded more like an encirclement. A bizarre encirclement—that ended with the total annihilation of the encircling party.
"Sean," George turned to the Medical Examiner beside him, "cause of death?"
Medical Examiner Sean Allen pushed his glasses, his eyes reflecting the confusion and gravity of a professional facing the unknown.
"Director, that is exactly what I was going to say, and it's the most troublesome part." Sean knelt down and pointed to a wound on a body's chest.
"There are indeed a large number of bullet holes and shell casings at the scene, but not a single body died from a gunshot wound."
"What?"
"Their causes of death are all sorts of strange, but they all—fall outside my scope of knowledge." Sean's voice was a bit dry.
"Look at this one, a huge penetrating wound in the chest with smooth edges, as if pierced by some high-speed rotating cylinder. And that one," he pointed to another body.
"The throat was torn open, but the cut doesn't look like a knife wound; it looks more like it was bitten through by the fangs of some giant beast. And even stranger—"
He led George to a body curled up in a corner; the body's expression was frozen in extreme terror, but the physical form was intact.
"This one has no external wounds, but the internal organs are all shattered, as if crushed from the inside by an invisible force." Sean took off his gloves and rubbed his brow.
"I've been a Medical Examiner for thirty years and have autopsied more bodies than some butchers have handled livestock. But I swear, I have never seen wounds like these, nor can I think of any weapon or animal on Earth that could cause this effect."
Mike added, "No blood, fingerprints, or any DNA traces from a third party other than them were found at the scene. The killer is like a ghost who came, slaughtered, and then vanished without a trace."
George fell silent.
He stood in the middle of the mountain of corpses and sea of blood, his mind racing.
A gang deal, a shootout, a mysterious and invulnerable enemy, and unheard-of killing methods.
Combined, these clues pointed not to a criminal, but to a monster.
He knew the evils of Hells Kitchen like the back of his hand. He had dealt with the brutality of Kingpin and the Hells Kitchen gangs. But even those heinous criminals followed the basic laws of physics in their killing.
Everything before him had already exceeded the bounds of common sense.
Since the Battle of New York, and with the constant exposure of the superhero group known as the Avengers, more and more extraordinary people and events have been emerging across the World. Perhaps this was the handiwork of some perverted serial killer with superpowers.
"Seal all information and classify it as top secret," George finally spoke, his voice hoarse but firm.
"Publicly announce that a gas leak occurred in the abandoned factory. No media or unauthorized personnel are allowed to come into contact with the actual situation at the scene."
"Understood," Mike immediately replied.
"Sean, you need a team to take all the bodies back and, with the most rigorous attitude, give me a detailed report. I need to know exactly what killed them."
"I will, Director George."
Having given his orders, Captain George Stacy looked around the bloody factory once more and turned to walk out.
When he was bathed in sunlight again, the noise of the outside World seemed to come from another World.
He knew that from today on, in the darkness of New York, there was an existence far more terrifying and unknown than Kingpin.