[center] [i]Collaboration between myself and [@Fiber][/i] [/center] [center] [img] https://losangelesalleys.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/michigan-alley.jpg [/img] [/center] A wry, tinny voice crackled through the alleyway, blaring out of an old boom box. A lithe woman, wearing olive skin, sung along, whilst her slender hands worked keenly, moulding skin, and blood, and bone. [center] [i] [url= https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OD-V2jHtms] “Please to meet you. Satan’s my name. I can make you sin, I can make you feel pain. I can twist, I can make you seduce me. Wanna do the Watusi? You can call me Lucy.” [/url][/i] [/center] Calantha sculpted the bodies before her, warping tattered matter together, with the kind of artful finesse that would have made Michelangelo turn scarlet with jealousy. [center] [i] Satan’s a wooooooman. Yeah, I’m a woooooooooman. Satan’s a woooooooooooman. Yeah, I’ve the evil one.”[/i] [/center] A statue of grotesquely beautiful elegance loomed above her, lording over the alleyway, like some gothic tower of old. The bricks beneath her feet were drenched with splattered gore, and flakes of muscle. A handful of writhing kine, frozen in motion, but still very much alive, had been woven together, and melded into place. They could not scream, but their twitching eyes cried out in agony and terror. Calantha took a step back, drinking in the view, and admiring her handiwork. An enormous, bloody sculpture, carved in the likeness of Morgan Holloway, stared back at her. “Beautiful,” Calantha gasped, overcome with joy, “absolutely beautiful.” [hr] The first report was from a homeless man on the street. The second came from the beat cop he flagged down. He made a few panicked radio messages before the “dry-cleaning crew” as they called it arrived on the scene. That cop would be sent for some therapy sessions, where they’d diagnose him with a stress induced psychotic break and have him back on the force after a little counseling to “clear up” what he saw. The bum would also get some help, a little extra check just to make sure he forgot what he saw. That left only the physical evidence clean up, which was being handled by the men in the van labeled “New World Cleaners”. The personnel handling the clean up were a bunch of clones, only minimally intelligent. When they saw something worse than the usual maimed corpse they had to call someone else, and Grace was the one to get the first call. She decided to check it out in person and give Julie the chance to get some rest; Julie hadn’t quite gotten used to the wakefulness pills at this point in her career whereas Grace used them every day. Her Tesla pulled up alongside the curb and then parked itself after she got out, while she doubled checked the security systems to avoid a repeat of that previous incident. One of the clones dressed in all black gestured to the alleyway and Grace stepped under the caution tape, into the part they had obscured from outside eyes. The “statue” was not a pretty sight. The organic matter in the rest of the alley was easy for them to clean up, but something this large was different. They could try to dissolve it; that would mean out losing on an opportunity to study it. Instead, Grace decided to see if could have it transported it intact. She called for something larger than the usual cleaning van to pick it up, then started a phone call. The call was routed through her neural implant, making Grace look like she was talking to herself. “Hello Isha, I’ve got one for you to take look at. Fusion-type, human-shaped, biomass is about 600 kilos. Origin unknown, but I’m investigating.” Grace grabbed a few cables from a box one of the cleaners had unloaded, then walked closer to the grotesque statue. She had a strong stomach but still didn’t like looking at it much. A quick scan revealed heat signatures, showing that whatever it was made of was still alive. Her conversation went on. “ Yeah, I’ll get it shipped as soon as I’ve got the scene cleared. You can handle it in La Jolla? That’s great, I was worried I’d have to find a way to get it to Fort Detrick. Just tell me if you want it at Scripps or Salk and it’ll be there by the morning. Oh, one more thing, it’s inert but alive. No, you don’t need to worry about what happens to them, they’re nonessential and I’ll archive the memories before I send it so you can do whatever you decide is best for your research.” As she finished the conversation Grace got close to the statue and wiped away some of the blood, looking for a good place to insert the socket. This was not what she would call a productive night, but there were tasks that needed to be resolved and ignoring them would only create worse problems. [hr] “Somewhat careless, Sister,” Johnny.C murmured, taking a drag from his cigarette, “as much as I’m sure she was beautiful. You know I love your work, hun, I really do, but do we need the heat right now?” Calantha took the cigarette out of Johnny.C’s mouth, slipping it between her own, currently plump, lips. “You sound like one of those craven Camarilla dogs, brother,” she teased, drawing in a mouthful of smoke, and then blowing it out through her nostrils, “are we not Cain’s sword? If we need to fight, then fight we shall.” Johnny.C pinched back the straight, yoinking it right out of Calantha’s mouth, and returned to smoking. “I love a good scrap as much as the next Canaanite, Sister,” he countered, a thin, silver trail leaking out of the end of his smoke, “I’m just being realistic about our odds, if we get too...reckless.” Calantha regarded the white suit-clad man with a curious glance. “Reckless?” she prompted. Johnny.C spread his arms out over the balcony, gesturing to the lights of L.A’s towers and spires, glistening in the dark, like a sea of burning orange. “I don’t want to lose what we’ve got here, Sister,” the suave figure told her, “I like this existence. I’m content. There’s more than enough tramps and hookers to keep my camera rolling, from now until Gehenna. This city spews out the downtrodden like it’s going out of fashion. Where else would I find such a ripe cesspit of losers, that no ones ever gonna miss, or ask after? I’m a king here, Sister, and -” Without warning, Calantha grabbed Johnny.C by the back of his neck, and thrust him forwards, slamming his head into the steel bannister in front of them. The cigarette fell from his mouth, and tumbled downwards, vanishing into the night below. Johnny.C let out a yelp of surprise as his head connected with the metal. A few moments later, and he was hoisted up off of the ground, his feet dangling in the air. Calantha’s lithe, olive fingers threaded around his throat, slithering like liquid putty. Within moments, he was being choked by a pool of flowing skin and bone, mud-like flesh pouring into his mouth, and down his throat. “You pompous, Ventrue poser,” she snarled, whilst Johnny gargled a mouthful of bubbling tissue, “you prize your vanity and laziness over the great work which we do? You’re lucky that our brethren can’t hear you.” Calantha tossed Johnny.C to the floor, releasing her liquid hold upon him, as her hand reverted to a more natural shape. The Ventrue crashed to the ground, his head cracking the tiled balcony floor. Johnny.C let out a dull groan. “I will graciously advise you not to question me, ever again, brother.” Calantha sneered “and I will recommend that you don’t get up until I am long gone, for your own safety.” And with that, Calantha vanished back inside, leaving Johnny.C to stew on the ground. [hr] Uncompressed memories took up a lot of disk space, but Grace didn’t have to worry about that, infrastructure was quite good in this region. At the start she was worried that the memories and the readings taken at the site would reveal Nephandi activity, but then the review showed it was the work of a vampire, something she was far less familiar with. She had a video file made from the memories and circulated as a security bulletin, full of jargon and given an unremarkable priority. She wondered if anyone internally would care, if the vampire could shapeshift then any footage would only be useful for revealing a preferred form at best. It was an isolated point of data, no pattern, no connection to anything she knew of at the moment. As she looked outside the window inside a desolate office tower, Grace took a deep breath and thought if there was anything else to do with this latest dilemma. There was one other angle, one person who might care. Grace thought about how to word something less formal than the bulletin, and then started typing the email through thought alone. “Seems like our city has a littering problem, or I guess some might call it an attempt at public art. Some public nuisance made a ten foot tall sculpture and used the bodies of a half dozen Angelenos as the raw material. I’ve already handled the removal and processing, if you want a look at it I can arrange that, but let me know quickly because the team that has it is not known for keeping specimens intact. From what we’ve been able to deduce it was likely the work of someone in the blood-drinking community, which is why I’m informing you. My knowledge is limited but I believe something like this is within the capabilities and interests of a known subset of them. I’ve attached the footage I have of the culprit, whatever use that may be to you. I will be happy to answer any further inquiries you have about this matter, and until we speak again, I wish you luck averting the apocalypse and other lighter matters.” Signed, Grace Once it was ready and properly encrypted, Grace sent it off to an old address she had for Eva. After that she put it out of her mind, not knowing if any reply would ever come.