Fenrisulfr: Comes To You As To Us All

[x-cypher.livejournal.com]

Doug finds the pattern behind the attack on Shiro, Muir, and the ritual killings he's been following lately. Then he goes to Wanda for a bit of double-checking.



Doug stood in front of a corkboard covered in news clippings, photographs, and index cards with handwritten notes, biting his thumb. It was strange that he wasn't doing this at his computer, like he normally did, but he'd only hit a number of maddening dead ends. The idea had actually come from one of the trade paperbacks that sat in a tidy pile on a small table in the server room for when he needed a distraction. The DC comic Checkmate had more than a few parallels to his current job, actually, which made things all the more ironic, he supposed.

Besides, sometimes things were too big to be contained on a computer screen, or even the triptych of monitors that sat on Doug's desk.

He drummed the fingers of his other hand on his bicep, stuck with the thought that there was a connection between the killings that he wasn't seeing. For the hundredth time, he went back over the information he'd been able to dig up. They spanned the globe, each killed by having their rib cage pulled out in a grotesque mimicry of wings. Something had to tie them all together, but what?

Jay Lee, roadie/pyrotechnic engineer/groupie for a J-Pop band based out of Seattle. Donnatella Ramone, doctoral candidate in ancient languages at Georgetown. Marcus Rochre, investment banker from The Hague.

Ages ranged from late teens to late twenties, probably too wide to be a pattern. Men, women. White, Latino, Oriental. Short, tall. Blonde, brunette, redheaded. It was maddening. The victims seemed to have nothing in common, either in terms of physical appearance, background, location... Each theory Doug pushed forward was discarded based off one or more of the victims not fitting the pattern.

Joshua and Jeremy Miller, twin farmboys from Nebraska. Margot Charpentier, architect from Brussels. Adam Smythe, member of a Druidic circle near Devon.

The blood eagle stared back at Doug from several pictures, daring him to find the deeper meaning. There had to be a deeper meaning, the MO was too precise and thought out to be any kind of random thrill killing. These killings had purpose to them, he just needed to find it.

Rowena Sedgwick, veterinary nurse in Bath. Phoebe Gordon, chemist for Dupont in West Virginia.

And then there was the last picture on the board, with a large question mark next to it. Thankfully, there was no gruesome photo of this victim lying eviscerated at a crime scene. Yoshida Shiro, art student in New York. The most recent attempted victim, or so Doug was judging based off Shiro's description of his attackers.

Connection, connection, where was the connection?

Then a thought came to him. What if the killers kept killing because they hadn't found the right victims yet? He frowned and pursued the train of thought. It would explain the continuation of the killing spree. If the murders were as purposeful as he thought, they would stop when they'd found the right person. Or people. He looked at the board again. So what made all these people the wrong targets?

And then it came to him. His eyes widened. The theory was hairbrained, the leap of guesswork (he couldn't even really call it logic) tremendous...

And yet, every single entry on the corkboard matched. He scribbled quickly on a stack of blank notecards, then tacked them up over others. "Bozhemoi..." he breathed. He took the cards down and stuck them in his pocket before practically running out of the server room. Time to see if someone else could follow his train of thought, and if it would take them to the same place.

---

"Wanda," Doug said perfunctorily as he strode directly into her office, not wasting time with polite niceties. "I need your help with something," he told her, indicating with a hand that she should get up and follow him.

Startled out of deep thought, Wanda shut the file that she'd been flipping through as she looked up. "Doug?" she asked but regardless of her curiosity – it was a rare day that the young man just barged in without either knocking or having a witty comment of some form – she was already slipping her shoes back on and standing up. She trailed after Doug, asking, "What do you need help with?"

Doug said nothing until they were back in the server room, then pointed at the corkboard. "I've been working on this, and I have a theory, but I want to see if you see something that I didn't before I tell you what it is."

"Oh, you and your Doug logic," Wanda sighed with good humor. She sobered up as she got a closer look at the corkboard and the material pinned to it. "Interesting. Gruesome, mind you, but interesting." Immediately drawn to the picture of the Blood Eagle, she stepped in closer, arms over her chest. "No wonder, considering this symbol here. You've probably already figured out, or researched, the significance behind it but…" Wanda squinted at it a little closer and continued talking.

"Norse, for certain, but what's less certain is if the practice was every actually done. There are some archaeological findings to support the theory but others claim that it's, simply, hogwash. Fairy tails told to scare growing warriors, possibly expounded upon by Christian myths as many pagan rituals, real or otherwise, often were. Either way, someone took the ritual killings as something more serious than stories told by fire." She glanced back over her shoulder at Doug, face grim. "This? Is a horrible way to die. Death by suffocation and I can only hope the sheer amount of blood loss forced them to pass out long before that."

"That's about what I've been able to dig up," Doug agreed. "It gets worse, though, potentially. You see anything in the choice of victims?" he asked, a leading question considering the cards in his pocket.

Silence stretched between them as Wanda wandered back and forth, studying the pictures and the notes. Eventually she had to stop. "I don't see any pattern," Wanda admitted after a moment. "What am I missing?"

"These," Doug told her, pulling the notecards out and tacking them over the names of the victims. He pointed to them in turn. "They got the wrong people. Close, but no cigar. Flashy Oriental girl, J.R. Student of obscure languages, D.R. Upper crust European, M.R. Twins from the farmland, J.M. Belgian architecht, M.C. British mystic, A.S. Vet assistant, R.S. Smart country girl with an interest in chemistry, P.G."

Then he pointed to each of the victims in turn once again. "Jubilee. Me. Manuel. Jamie. Marie-Ange. Amanda. Rahne. Paige." He pointed to the last one. "Shiro." He snapped his fingers in realization. "And the attack at Muir not very long after Manuel came back to the mansion."

His already serious tone grew even more so. "They're targeting the people who got taken to Asgard." He really wanted to be wrong. But he didn't think he was.

As Doug had gone through his explanation, Wanda's face had slowly grown grimmer with each word. As much as neither of them wanted this to be the facts, there was no real way to avoid what it was starting to look like. "Oh, this is not good," she said after a moment. She rubbed her chin and groaned, looking incredibly worried. "With the attack on Shiro, the one on Muir before that, they're obviously starting to narrow it down. It won't be long before they find the others."

"That was my thought, too," Doug replied. "We need to take the initiative away from them, and whatever it is they want. I'd probably better warn everyone, as well." He made a note to himself to drop an email to Jamie and Alison out on the West Coast.

She clapped a hand on his shoulder as she studied the faces of the victims sadly. They had just been in the wrong place, at the wrong time in a world that had showed them that it could be crueler than one expected. "This was a good first step," Wanda said, reaching forward to tap the symbol of the Blood Eagle. "I shall see if I can find out anything more useful on our friend here."