Cruelty Is Bitter Bane Log 4

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Logan and Kitty break into the morgue



The Kirkwood morgue was dark and empty; almost metaphorically apt considering their purpose as the two X-Men bypassed all the security and alarms by walking through the wall and down several floors. The long steel tables were empty and files stacked in neat piles beside the dark computers. The antiseptic smell with just the slight undercurrent of dank rot didn't need enhanced senses to notice, lingering behind the too hopeful applications of sanitizers and strong disinfectants.

Kitty released Logan's hand only after she was sure that they were alone.

"So, where do you want to start?" Her hand rested on one of the file folders. It was cool down here, despite the outside weather, and she noticed the goosebumps prickling on the back of her arm. Not far from here, the bodies rested. She tried not to think about it, the marks that had seemed surreal and grainy on paper soon to be reflected in flesh.

Logan rolled his head from side to side. Phasing was still never his favorite thing. It fogged up his senses and always took a moment to readjust when he was solid again. "Bodies don'tcha think? See what we can see first then figure out if the ME left somethin' out."

"Yeah. I thought you might say that." Kitty's eyes lingered longingly on the paperwork for a moment before she walked to the hallway, then turned.

The chill of the room--storage room, she thought to herself and shivered--hit her and goosebumps prickled on the back of her arms. This was a place that was completely blank of its intention on the face of it. Everything was neat and sterile--the tables that were here were free of paperwork except for a single notebook. The long drawers bore little trace of their occupants besides a crisp number typed on a label and placed discreetly on the upper lefthand corner. A single computer rested at the far end of the room, its screen emanating a pale light.

"Very organized," she commented. Turning, Kitty opened the notebook. It was a simple log with notations and names. Muttering to herself, "Some people just aren't digital, I guess," she scanned the pages until she found the name they were looking for. "124-27. That's our boy."

Kitty looked at Logan, then at the drawers. "Do you want to do the honors?"

Logan shrugged and scanned the precise labels placed next to each drawer. Maybe it was who he was or the history he only had fragments of, but bodies didn't make him squeamish. Not even ones of kids. They just made him want to bash the head in of the guy that'd put them there. He walked to the one that said 124-27 and pulled it open with a cold metallic clink of well oiled wheels.

The kid looked like all kids, too young to be here and too pale to be sleeping unless you were trying to delude yourself. The tops of the Y-incision peeking out from under the draped sheet only reinforced that fact along with the crater in the middle of his forehead. Dark haired, well fed, probably only concerned with being a teenager and all that crap.

Kitty swallowed as she looked at the kid. He had a sworl of dark hair at the back of his scalp that reminded her of her cousin Ken. Shaking her head, she thought Don't try to personalize this, Kate. It will only make you crazy in the end.

"I don't..." her voice wavered, then she forced herself to stop and calm for a moment before saying, "I guess I should take off the sheet, huh?"

Her fingers reached out, touching the sheet as gently as she would have a blanket covering a baby. Then with another harsh swallow, she jerked it back, flinching as she looked at the cold naked body lying on the slab of metal. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. The boy laying so close to her hand was still. The marks that she saw were of lividity alone, bruising where the blood had pooled under delicate pale skin. There were none of the things she was afraid of--no jagged cuts or torture scars. Anything beyond the bullet that had happened had been kept on the inside. Choking back the scent of death, Kitty took a step back and looked at Logan.

Logan's face was grim. He'd been expecting the worst, just like Kitty. It's what usually happened and there was no getting around it. But this here wasn't normal. Whatever was going on had definitely needed their touch. No ordinary cop could've been able to solve this quickly even before M-Day and there was no chance in hell in the current world.

As he leaned close to the kid's body, he was strongly reminded of all the ones that'd come in and out of Xavier's doors over the years. He may not have been around for all of them or even interacted with half of them but they were still kids. And no kid deserved a fate like this. He inhaled deeply and frowned as he detected something under the sterile water and antiseptic soap. No smart killer was ever weird enough to truly stand out. Normalcy was the name of the game. So which everyday scent was gonna be ruined after this?

Evidently it was gonna be the cloying, manufactured orange of house cleaners. "Got a trace of house cleaner, that weird ass orange scent under all the soap and shit." Logan gestured vaguely at the body. "Not normal for stuff like this."

"All I can smell is--" Kitty coughed, fighting back a hint of nausea. She shook her head. "House cleaner? What was he trying to do--clean the kid? Erase something?"

"Either or. That or the asshole just likes it." Logan leaned back and looked the kid's body over once again. There wasn't anything else to see. "What's the ME's report say? And wasn't there a second body? I'll bet ya the same scent'll be on him too."

Kitty glanced back at a log, then opened a drawer. Frowning as she looked down, she answered, "Well, he definitely has a type."

Logan closed the drawer then moved over to the one Kitty had opened. "Yup. I'm still gettin' that same scent too. Means he has a routine and he'll be stickin' to it unless somethin' messes him up. That gives us a chance to get to the kid he has right now."

"Think we're lucky enough that this is a certain type of cleaner they've identified? Something rare? You can't tell, can you?" Kitty asked, moving toward the computer. She hesitated, uncertain whether trying to hack into the system was worth the risk.

"We might if they did their job and didn't just half ass it 'cause the kids were suspected mutants. And no, sorry, can't identify it. I don't usually make a habit of sniffin' household cleaners despite what people might think." It might be a good idea to have a memory bank of known smells but his brain wasn't reliable half the time and creating a database somewhere would be pointless.

Logan sniffed the second body again to see if he could pick up something new then nearly put his face against the body as he sniffed again "Well...there's the faintest trace of human under even that orange smell. I'm barely gettin' it at all most of the time. Probably explains why he used the orange in the first place." He rolled the drawer shut as he stepped back then rubbed at his nose. He'd smelled human excitement and fear. He could probably guess who contributed what. This messed up asshole needed to be put down.

"Is it worth looking in the computer? Or do you think we have enough time?" Her gaze flickered up at the clock. They hadn't been here that long but it felt like forever. Still, they risked being caught every second they stood in place.

"Yeah, go ahead. Better make sure we covered all the bases. We should be good on time and I don't hear anyone comin'." Logan heard nothing but the whir of the building's air conditioning and other systems. They were almost done here.

She turned to the computer, typing rapidly. Kitty's skin crawled. She hated doing this on the run--it felt like too much.

"This is encrypted." Kitty looked up. "I think it'll take too long. We should just go."

Logan arched an eyebrow but then he wasn't any kind of computer expert. "Okay, we got what we came for and then some. Let's get outta here then."