Chapter 10 - "The Cost of the Hunt"
Part I
One of the problems that plagued us in the early days was rather mundane: Transportation.
How could we get where we needed to be fast enough to make a difference? This problem did not affect all the work we were doing but it was a major headache.
In fiction the good guys always manage to stumble across the criminals at just the right moment. Real life rarely works like that. In comic books the tradition of patrolling is well respected. We were able to do some of that. Our Speedsters and Fliers loved this sort of work.
We made a difference in a lot of ways. Local police forces across America, Canada, Mexico and a couple of other places came to respect us because of the speedsters. They had their own fully automated version of Central and any local government could request access to the system. Police, Fire, Search & Rescue, Civil Defense, once authorized any of these could put in a request for help.
24 hours a day my amazing friends buzzed into their lounge. Covering one wall was a 10' tall, 4' wide task list. Speed and his buddies would scan the list and pick what they wanted to do next. You can see them standing in place for a few moments or wandering around like normal folks as they listened to rapid-fire recorded messages. They decided if the call was worthy or immediate.
I offered to assign staff more than once to help them out but they turned me down. I got the distinct impression that they were laughing at me every time I offered. I just did not understand that they did not need any help. Keying in the index code off the list gave them all the data they needed Especially it set up navigations for their wrist display unit. Then off they went.
Another large wall screen showed a map and tracked the locations of not only the speedsters but all Olympus MetaHumans. The number of people they rescued, located, or apprehended is staggering and constantly growing.
As we began to look at the other things we could do besides deal with other MetaHumans we considered a lot of options. We did not just want to stop certain types of crime, we wanted to eliminate them if at all possible. By that I do not mean kill them. Our dealings with human criminals have to the greatest degree been in line with human law enforcement techniques.
Except in a few special cases.
Since we could not be everywhere or even in the right place at the right time often enough we considered other possibilities. Where could we do the most good?
Serial Killers.
We knew that out in the world there were men stalking other humans like prey. You know the names of many of these sick individuals and I will not mention any here. Like any disease what you see, what can be caught, is only the beginning of the story.
We hunted them.
Forgive what is going to sound like an arbitrary and callous judgment but we decided it took 5 kills to qualify as a serial killer. Not accidental, not crimes of passion, but cold-blooded murder, often much worse than simple killings, is what it took to make our list.
There was only one way to find them. Our Telepaths had to shift the population and look. It turned out that these sorts of people deserve to be called evil. When a serial killer interacts with another human there is a psychic trauma inflicted. This is nothing you would know consciously but it is real and most importantly it is detectable.
A Telepath and a Scanner Meta along with a small team of defenders and support people would move around a city in civilian clothes. Psyche, Selene, or Circe would look for the traces I described. When those were found a closer examination of the person's mind was conducted. It usually only took a few people with the traces for the girls to figure out who left them.
Pathfinder or Seeker would then take the supplied mental image and begin to look for the target. They usually found them.
The team would get close enough to the target for the Telepath to do a full reading. If the person had indeed committed multiple murders we took action.
If the killer had a living victim we moved in as soon as we knew where they were exactly. Speedsters got to do a lot of rescue work here as usual. But the teams did not always call for them. Some of these guys were beyond any sort of bad you can imagine and the need to take personal action sometimes took over. I know that happened to me once.
When we knew the whole truth about this guy I pulled the whole team back to the vehicles. I got out and walked into the house. The door turned to dust. This was not a man that cowered before me. It was a thing. A monster.
I will not tell you what he had done, I cannot put that here for all time. But he had been doing it for 56 years. He died screaming silent screams and it took 5 minutes.
If I am supposed to feel bad about what I did I am sorry but I don't. This is not Pulsar the MetaHuman talking this is a human being who shot a rapid dog. Needed to be done. Was done.
We would record all the important information about the life of the now deceased killer and present it to the local authorities. People who had never known what had happened to their child, their wife, their daughter or sister at least finally learned the truth.
27 days into the first month of doing this work we discovered the real cost.
I was with the current search team because Psyche was with them. Selene was working the target but Psyche was there for moral support. We already knew this work was hard on the girls. We just did not know how hard. Selene had one more target to track down and then we were all going to a late lunch.
You might find that a little heartless perhaps. We had accepted our life and we still had to eat.
We found the guy. He had killed 36 teen boys over 22 years.
He was alone in his house and then he was dead.
Selene was outside the RV we were using as a command post. She looked depressed and sad which was normal considering.
She slumped to the ground.
Psyche ran to her. I flew. She still beat me to her.
Psyche always answered my really serious questions without my having to verbalize them. In moments of stress that is how it has always been.
She was not saying anything.
“Psyche?”
“Something is very wrong but I do not know what. I cannot reach her and she is in pain”
“Tell us what we need to do.”
“I don't know. Give me time.”
“I am taking command. Get ready to move out everybody.” I said raising my voice so it would carry.
Psyche held Selene's head in her lap and tried to make some sort of contact. I could see her energy, controlled and focused. But I could also see random spikes shooting out of Selene. I did not know what it meant, but it was wrong.
Minutes ticked by. I had a team of superpowered people straining at the leash. We all wanted someone to lash out at. Some target we could hit. Instead we waited.
“Oh god, it is him. The killer, his mind, somehow absorbing it has sent her into some sort of internal spiral. She is there, but so is he.” she spit out in a haunted voice.
Internal spiral, that made sense to me. Overload perhaps, feedback maybe, energy out of whack, that put me back on familiar ground.
“Can we get him out of her, erase the memory, anything?” I asked.
“No, we cannot forget, you know that.”
If we cannot get rid of it maybe we could...
“Pulsar to Central.”
“Central online.”
“I need the location of the nearest school, not a college, I need kids, find it fast.”
“Say again.”
“Find me a school, elementary, high school, whatever.”
“Working on it.”
“Everybody. Load up.”
The coordinates were not long in coming. An elementary school about 15 minutes away.
“Central to Pulsar.”
“Pulsar. Go.”
“Do you want us to contact the school?” they were confused and trying to cover all the bases.
“Negative, I doubt that would help. There is no danger there. Selene needs their help. Pulsar out.”
Psyche gave me her maybe look in response to my unspoken question.
She did not know if it would work either.
Pulsar, Psyche & Selene
MetaWar Chapter Eleven
MetaWar Chapter Nine