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The alley reeked of bleach.

Morbius crouched on the rooftop ledge, watching the narrow space below like a hawk watching a field already stripped of prey. Three nights had passed since another body was found, bloodless, lifeless, dumped like garbage between two dumpsters off Delancey. The newspapers called it a "cult killing." Social media screamed vampires. The cops had already moved on, another body tagged and bagged in a city too busy to mourn its dead. But Morbius hadn't left. Something about this whole thing was wrong. Wronger than usual. He'd seen his fair share of weirdos on both sides of the super spectrum, but this was just weird.

He dropped down silently, boots splashing in a shallow puddle. The chalk outline had already faded, washed away by the rain, but the scent still lingered. Not blood, that was long gone. It was something else, something sharp and chemical. The kind of smell you didn't associate with an alley but with a lab. Or worse, a hospital that stopped caring about patients.

He knelt, talons tracing the cracked concrete. No drag marks. The body hadn't been moved here postmortem, it had died here. A controlled space. Cleaned afterward. Too clean. His fingers brushed a piece of metal tucked against the wall. It was small, he almost missed it. A needle. No, not quite, a fine syringe, still capped, marked with faded lettering. He held it up to the moonlight. Most of the print had worn off, but three words were still faintly legible.

"Trial Use Only."

His eyes narrowed. He slipped the syringe into a pouch on his belt and turned to leave, then paused. A faint vibration ran through the bricks beside him. Not sound, not movement. Something deeper. A whine, almost imperceptible, building beneath the surface like a buried machine.

He followed it.