"The Legendary Assassin?"
"Yes."
George listened to Jason's rapid-fire description and Kate's technical supplements. He now had a full mental picture of the chaotic events that had just unfolded at the NYPD morgue. But the logic wasn't tracking.
George frowned, his exhaustion making his voice gravelly. "Have you scrubbed the surveillance footage? Every angle?"
Kate shook her head, her expression a mix of frustration and awe. "We've gone through it three times already. Nothing. Not a single frame. It's physically impossible. To get from the main entrance to the Medical Examiner's office, you must take the elevator. The elevator logs show it moved, but the internal cameras recorded a completely empty car. It's like he was a ghost."
Even more baffling was the timeline. They had mobilized the moment the gunshot rang out. The window of opportunity for an exit was mere seconds. A human beingâeven a highly trained oneâshouldn't have been able to slip through a building crawling with alerted, armed police officers without so much as a shadow being cast. Yet Peerless had left, and he had done so with an almost insulting level of nonchalance.
"Jason, focus. When you first laid eyes on him, what was his body language? What was he doing?"
"He was just standing there," Jason muttered, his hand still throbbing from the impact that had ruined his service weapon. "Standing right over Jeff's table. Like he was... inspecting him."
"...Is that right?"
George looked at Jason, then back at the glowing "In Surgery" sign. He processed the doctor's earlier reportâthe one about Jeff's "impossible" vitals. "I need to go in there."
Jason and Kate exchanged a startled look. Before they could protest, George pushed through the double doors of the surgical suite. A nurse tried to intercept him, but one look at the Captain's face made her reconsider. He didn't stay long. Within a minute, the doors swung open again, and George stepped back into the hallway.
He stood there, head bowed, seemingly lost in thought.
George had just forced the lead surgeon to pause for ten seconds so he could inspect Jeff's neck. He was looking for something specific. There were no marks. No small, twin punctures. No bruising that suggested a struggle. Not even a stray scratch.
George Stacy wasn't like the green recruits fresh out of the Academy. To them, New York was a city of skyscrapers and street crime. To George, who had patrolled these streets for over twenty years, the city had a much darker, much stranger history.
He still remembered a case from sixteen years ago, during his first year as a detective. A junkie had been found dead, his throat shredded as if by a wild animal. It seemed like a routine, albeit gruesome, overdose-adjacent tragedy.
Until that night.
The morgue alarm had screamed. By the time they arrived, the body was gone. When they pulled the footage, George's blood had run cold. The "corpse" had simply stood up, stumbled across the room, and smashed through a window to escape. Back then, the morgue was on the first floor. Because of that incidentâand the official silence that followedâit was moved to the second basement level.
George had tried to investigate, but two men claiming to be from a "special branch" of the FBI had seized the files. The department brass, eager to bury a "ghost story," let them take it. George had spent years digging into urban legends of "vampires," but eventually, he stopped. Gwen had just been born. He looked at his infant daughter and realized he wanted to be there to see her grow up, rather than disappear into some shadow war.
Hearing Jason and Kate describe the "impossible" survival of a man who should have been dead on arrival had awakened those dormant, dusty memories. He was certain Jeff had died. He had seen the body. Yet now, Jeff was fighting for his life.
But there were no transformation marks on the neck. George rubbed his temples. 'Was Jeff just a freak medical miracle? Did he merely fall into a state of suspended animation?'
...
The next morning, Locke retrieved his watch from the dresser, checked his reflection, and headed down to his R8. He drove through the awakening city to Gwen's apartment. After picking her up, they headed straight for New Amsterdam Hospital.
By the time they arrived, Jeff had been moved to a recovery ward. Doris sat by the bed, her hand tightly clutching her husband's, her lips moving in silent, desperate prayer. George was slumped in a chair in the hallway, eyes closed. He hadn't slept a wink, and at his age, an all-nighter felt like a week-long illness.
"Dad."
George's eyes snapped open. He blinked at Gwen. "You're here? Why aren't you in school?"
Gwen handed him a thermal bag. "Mom made breakfast. She knew you'd stay here until the sun went down and probably forget to eat."
George smiled tiredly, taking the container. He then looked up at Locke. "Did Gwen drag you into chauffeur duty?"
Gwen rolled her eyes. "Dad, really?"
Locke leaned against the wall. "With a killer like that still on the loose, I wouldn't let Gwen travel alone even if she asked me to stay home."
George nodded. The Legendary Assassin had been a nuisance before, but this new killerâthe imposterâwas a different breed of animal altogether. Principles were what made a vigilante predictable. A criminal with no bottom line was a nightmare.
"Besides," Gwen added, "Locke and I have to visit the insurance office later today."
She had mentioned the insurance policy to her parents the night before. She told them that once the claim was paid out, she intended to donate $300,000 to the Martin family. George and Helen had nearly choked. $300,000? Since when did their daughter have that kind of money to throw around?
Gwen had explained the travel insurance Locke had insisted on for the Poseidon trip. Locke hadn't objected; the money was essentially a windfall, and since Gwen was the beneficiary, she could use it however she pleased. Her nature was to help, and knowing the bond between the Stacys and the Martins, Locke had felt justified in using his expensive potion to bring Jeff back.
Initially, George and Helen were stunned. It felt surrealâsurviving a shipwreck and coming home with a million-dollar payout from an insurance company? That was ten years of George's salary. But they soon realized the weight of it. That money was bought with lives. If Gwen hadn't come back, they'd have the million, but their world would be empty.
They respected Locke's foresight. In their world, a good insurance policy was the only shield against the sudden cruelty of fate.
"Is the payout moving that quickly?" George asked, his detective's mind surfacing. "Insurance companies usually spend months looking for excuses not to pay."
Locke explained calmly, "The Poseidon tragedy is still at the top of the news cycle. And now, with this new string of high-profile murders in the city, the optics are sensitive."
George understood immediately. Insurance companies are run by capitalists, not philanthropists. Usually, they'd hire thirty lawyers to find a loophole in the fine print. But with Locke and Gwen, the situation was different. The Poseidon survivors were media darlings right now. If a major insurer tried to screw over a "heroic survivor" of a national tragedy over technicalities, the PR fallout would cost them ten times the payout.
Plus, Locke was a "high-value client." The insurance company was already debating whether to keep him on the "preferred" list or move him to "high risk," but for now, paying out quickly allowed them to run an "unofficial" ad campaign about their reliability. Four million dollars was a drop in the bucket if it bought them a reputation for integrity during a crisis.
Locke looked through the glass at Jeff. He saw the pale man hooked up to a dozen monitors and Doris, who looked like she hadn't breathed in hours. "How is Officer Martin doing, really?"
George took a sip of the coffee Gwen had brought. "The doctors are calling it a miracle of sheer will. They say his survival instinct is 'aggressive.' He's going to make it."
Gwen beamed. "That's amazing."
George paused, his expression turning slightly weird. "The surgeon mentioned something odd, though. During the operation, Jeff actually started to wake up. Not just a twitchâhe was trying to sit up. They had to use a massive dose of anesthesia just to keep him under. It was like his body was repairing itself faster than they could cut."
George didn't say it out loud, but after his midnight inspection of Jeff's neck and the report of his bizarre resilience, a small, irrational part of him was starting to wonder if his old friend was still entirely human.
Locke, however, just offered a polite, knowing smile. He knew exactly why Jeff was so "resilient." He also knew that his next task was to find the person who had forced him to use such a rare item.
...
"Gwen, we should probably get going if we want to beat the mid-morning rush at the office," Locke said gently.
Gwen nodded, kissed her father on the cheek, and followed Locke toward the elevators. As the doors slid shut, Locke's expression shifted from the supportive boyfriend to something much colder.
"Locke? You okay?" Gwen asked, sensing the change in temperature.
"Just thinking about the donation," Locke lied smoothly. "I think $300,000 is a good start. But if the hospital bills get out of hand, let me know. I have plenty left over from my share."
Gwen leaned her head on his shoulder. "You're a good man, Locke Lane."
Locke looked at his reflection in the polished elevator doors. 'A good man? Maybe. But a very, very vengeful one.'
While George was busy looking for vampires and the NYPD was looking for a ghost, Locke was going to look for a body. Specifically, the body of the person who thought they could play dress-up with his reputation.
***
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