The Stray

[James Harding]

He'd hated coffee for such a long time. Even through the academy, he'd never touched the stuff, choosing instead to get his blood pumping through exercise and getting up an hour or so before he really needed to get up. It was tough, but frequency made it almost second nature; despite the alluring smell of the beans and brewing his friends would tease him with every morning.

Right now though, the smell of the coffee in front of him was more tempting than ever. He was fighting it with the temptation to crush the hand holding the cup in front of him.

“Is this necessary, sir?” he asked. The Captain shrugged, sipping at the caffeinated beverage with far too much satisfaction for his taste.

“Those're the orders, Jim,” the Captain said, looking at him. “I know you've invested a lot of time and effort into this, but there's a department for mutants now.”

“With neither the staffing or the experience –”

“Do you know how much of the population is estimated to be a mutant?” Captain Ibañez asked, giving the younger policeman a long-suffering look. “One to three percent. How much staffing do they need?”

He stopped.

“You're tired, Jim. I've read the reports, and seen the pictures. That kid should have been killed, if not from where the bullets hit, but from infection and lack of care. He's damn lucky.”

James nodded. Lucky he was one of one to three percent of the population. Whatever chance there was in all this mutant gene getting passed on or whatever, Julian Doe was lucky that he'd gotten it. Fate and chance and all that were above him in terms of interest; at that moment, all that saved the kid was him being a mutant, and for that, he was lucky. Lucky like a soldier getting shot in the heart while wearing a Kevlar vest.

“Take all the documentation and sources, and whatever contacts you've picked up for the case and hand it over to the MCU, and then take a damn nap.”

James nodded and stood, still desiring that coffee; the desire to crush the Captain's hand was gone. He stood on the other side of the closed door for a moment before poking his head back inside.

“Sorry Captain, but where's the MCU?”

[Stern]

"This way." Michael Stern light-jumped into the precinct every morning with a handful of minutes to spare before he was supposed to be on the clock. The light jump was a useful power. It was pretty precise, but not always accurate. For instance, he could always be assured that if he wanted to light-jump to the precinct, he could. He might end up in his own office, the break room, someone else's office, the men's room, the ladies' room (that one was embarassing), and once even in the boiler room in the basement. So precise, but not accurate.

This time he happened to have light-jumped just inside earshot of James Harding's conversation with Captain Ibañez. He couldn't decide how to take the exchange about his unit, so he decided to to comment at the moment. Though one thing was certain, despite mutants only being 3% of the population at most, they sure did get up to a lot of crime. It was beginning to wear him down.

"Captain Michael Stern, MCU. We're up stairs in the back corner of the building. Come on, and I'll walk you there, just so you know where to go in the future."

[James Harding]

“Yeah, sure,” he grunted, narrowing his eyes to deal with the glare. “Let me grab the documents first.”

He turned and wound his way through the myriad desks set up in the space, finally reaching a neater, more organized looking desk with an older model computer humming on top of it. One of the small organizers on top of the desk held a thin manila folder.

Harding picked up the folder and turned to Captain Stern.

“Lead the way, Captain,” he said, and followed the man through the station up to the MCU offices. They seemed anticlimactic, considering the people who sat at these desks were something like superheroes.

[Stern]

"It's odd, isn't it? If it weren't for the fact that this place is the MCU, you might not even be able to guess these people were mutants. They look as normal as you."

He left out "or I," on purpose. Michael Stern's mutation manifested a few slight changes in his physical appearance, resulting in clear hair that took on the color of the light he emitted along with dilating his pupils to the point he had to wear tinted goggles to protect his vision--even at night.

"And here is my office. That folder doesn't look like much, but if you could take the time out to summarize it for me while I thumb through it, I would greatly appreciate it."

Stern flashed a friendly smile and waved a hand at the seat. "If you don't mind, Officer Harding."

[James Harding]

Harding nodded, handing the folder over.

“There's a reason it's so thin,” the 'mundane' officer began, settling himself into the chair opposite Captain Stern with a slow enjoyment. “We haven't gotten anything, and I mean anything, on this runaway. Blood samples and everything turned up nothing. No prints, no missing persons reports in any department we could reach that matched this case.”

Stern seemed to be reading the reports and documents, but also listening intently to him.

“You remember the news from a couple weeks back? A wolf was running loose in Yellowstone, raiding people's food containers and such. We caught him about two weeks ago. Only, it's a kid. Male, roughly fourteen to seventeen years old, if we can trust the dental scans we've gotten. He's a runaway, but doesn't remember or isn't telling us where he's from. First name is Julian, but no last name. He says he ran away when he was eight, but also claims to have memory issues. We haven't ruled out abuse: from what I saw it's likely neglect. We got a shrink's opinion backing me up in there, but it's based on the tape and not a firsthand session, or interview, or whatever they call it. I haven't gotten around to getting something like that scheduled, either. The forms for a city or licensed private psychiatric examination are in there.”

He paused, gathering his thoughts for short moment before continuing.

“He turns into a wolf, and apparently something else.” Harding paused again, though this time, the look on his face was clearly incredulous. “From what I could gather, it's something like a werewolf. He had joined with a wolf pack at some point, and some hunters shot one of the wolves. He changed into his... third form, and attacked them. He was shot, multiple times, and still has the scars. The scar tissue and the quick physical he has undergone indicates that he never had them treated. The pictures are in there.”

Harding leaned back, shaking his head as Stern flipped to the photos, marking Julian Doe and showing the boy shirtless, looking at the camera, but not directly. There were six obvious wounds on the boy's chest. There were other pictures, one a profile, highlighting a long, white scar along his hip, and from behind, the exit wounds, especially on his left shoulder, were prominent.

“He claims the attack occurred in Montana. We counted six entry wounds and four exit wounds. Likely rifle-grade ammunition, but we can't be sure. X-rays don't show any remaining bullets in him. The kid should be dead, from that alone. He also has scar tissue indicative of a knife or bladed instrument along his hip and in his shoulder, barely missing the collar bone. He claims he 'hurt' one of the hunters and then attacked the others, but doesn't go into much more detail than that.”

So far, Stern had remained quiet. Reciting what he knew made Harding dwell on the fact that they were moving him from this case. He hated being reassigned, because that meant that the higher-ups thought the case was likely unsolvable, or was using up too much resources for the potential gain. He disliked both reasons.

“With his memory like it is, we aren't able to take what he has said at face value. Our best lead so far is the attack on the hunters. The rangers are in touch with the Montana rangers, but we don't have anything so far, and given the amount of time, we won't likely get anything. He says he doesn't have much control over what triggers the changes he undergoes.”

Harding lifted his hands in a gesture of weary surrender and sighed.

“And that's it. We've got nothing else on this kid.”

[Stern]

Stern let silence stand a moment before he replied to the summary and the folder.

"Well," he said at last, absently rubbing his arm where the scars from a nuclear burn touched him so long ago, "I think I might be able to pick up somewhere in all this. Those missing bullets were likely expelled from his body when he changed shape. Most shape shifters have some degree of healing capability in the moment they move from one form to the next just as a by-product of their cells realigning and whatnot. Severe damage is still likely to leave scars."

The MCU captain ran a finger around the edge of one goggle lens. "So, once upon a time he was in custody, as we see by these photographs. Where is he now? Are we still in Montana, or do we think he has moved about since then?"

[James Harding]

Officer Harding blinked in confusion, letting the more technical explanation of the bullets pass by without comment.

"Sir, he's actually living in L.A. at the moment," he said. "When the wolf was captured and we all found out it was actually a kid, we had him sent to... the Redención House. We weren't sure, and we couldn't keep him in jail, so..."

He trailed off.

"We can't tell where exactly Julian's been. We only have reported sightings in Yellowstone and Angeles National Park. We've looked into missing persons reports in Montana eight years ago, but we've not received any word back from Helena yet, so that's that."